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In article <2013113016440438283-savageduck1@REMOVESPAMmecom>, Savageduck <savageduck1@{REMOVESPAM}me.com>wrote:

Eric Stevens
A friend of mine sold Apple computers in the distant past

Savageduck
That had to be before OSX came on the scene in 2001. Before that there was quite a bit which could be done using Apple Script from OS7 on, if your pal didn't let you know about that then he failed his Apple employers. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Script >

nospam
not just applescript, which is far more powerful than people realize (and can even be used to write apps), but there was also apple's unix known as a/ux and also mpw shell scripts, both of which were mid- to late 1980s.

you could even run mac apps on top of a/ux back then, and there was a gui interface to unix commands in case you didn't remember which hard to remember switch was the one you needed (optional, of course, but handy for lesser used commands).