OS X: launcher for iOS Simulator and bypassing Xcode

On OS X, the best way to almost natively test apps or websites is by using the so called “iOS Simulator” (now named simply “Simulator”) which is available as part of the installed Xcode Development Tools.
So to bypass Xcode for starting the Simulator, I wrote a simple Automator application which directly launches the Simulator.app – you can download it in this post or create it yourself following the instructions.

6. March 2016
Automator Icon

Using Automator to quickly access a website – TV show episode list example

Automator itself is a really powerful tool for automating recurring tasks in OS X. Unfortunately it’s still not really something regular Mac users are using for making tasks and working in OS X more efficient. The following example will show you, how to directly open the Wikipedia page containing the List of Episodes of a given TV show. Think outside the box in order to adapt this for many other uses.

15. September 2013
Wunderlist Logo

Automator-Service to add Task to Wunderlist

I started using the fantastic app “Wunderlist” for my personal Task Management on the Mac, of course with synchronisation to iPhone and the web. Thanks to a Blog post from James O’Donnell on Scribd, I got my hands quickly on the required AppleScript. However, I didn’t like the fact that he made the script ask for a new User Input which will be created as new task – rather than just taking the currently selected text. So I adjusted his AppleScript code and put it into an Automator Service workflow, which you can download here.

4. April 2012