Rating: 
Summary: Big disappointment
Review: Save some money and read the real reviews of this book elsewhere online before buying. Why?
- The book contains nothing not already covered in Apple's own documentation - and THEY DO A BETTER JOB.
- No scripting of 3rd-party applications is included.
- It is not readable at all, beyond tedious.
- Other problems: it is verbose and dry.
- The only value the book has is providing syntax for the typical AppleScript core command set.
Rating:
Summary: Worst ever O'Reilly book
Review: This book is beyond dreadful. Admittedly, AS is a mess anyway, with no clearly defined central concepts and a syntax that makes Macromedia's Lingo look good. The book itself has no idea who its audience is. If it is for beginners, then comparisons with Perl, C++ etc, are useless.For an example of the editing, look at Table 4-1. How quickly can you make sense of it ? Tip - ignore the columns. O'Reilly books are generally great, and the Nutshell series are designed for quick access to information. There is room for a good O'Reilly AS book, but this isn't it.
Rating:
Summary: Worst ever O'Reilly book
Review: This book is beyond dreadful. Admittedly, AS is a mess anyway, with no clearly defined central concepts and a syntax that makes Macromedia's Lingo look good. The book itself has no idea who its audience is. If it is for beginners, then comparisons with Perl, C++ etc, are useless. For an example of the editing, look at Table 4-1. How quickly can you make sense of it ? Tip - ignore the columns. O'Reilly books are generally great, and the Nutshell series are designed for quick access to information. There is room for a good O'Reilly AS book, but this isn't it.
Rating: 
Summary: Think of it as a dictionary...
Review: This book is more like an expansion of the Apple downloadable resources for Applescript. It covers most everything regarding Finder scripting, and has some examples. I feel that the actual script examples in the book need more of the surrounding script for better context, but overall you can get the idea. This is more of a desk reference for me, since I can't fathom trying to read it straight through unless I've had waaaaay too much caffiene. Of all of the Applescript publications, this is the closest there is to a reference book, but it will not teach you to program in Applescript per se.
Rating: 
Summary: The most poorly edited book I've ever read
Review: This book is somewhat out of date, first of all; it covers only a fairly old version of OS X, doesn't mention AppleScript Studio at all, etc. This is somewhat understandable, and it is at least much more up-to-date than Danny Goodman's book.
But the writing -- my god! It has the feel of a book that was written in one draft and never edited. Every single page of the book (and I just finished reading it cover to cover) had errors, typos, bugs, and poorly worded or unclear passages. In many cases I re-read sections several times and was simply unable to decipher what they were trying to say at all. I am a very experienced programmer (worked at Apple for several years, in fact), and I couldn't make head or tail of some of the passages in the book. There are huge omissions (I can find no explicit description of what "get" does, for example, anywhere in the reference section of the book). Many subtle (but important) details are glossed over completely.
Just pathetic that this is the best book available on AppleScript. I wish I could get my money back, on this and on Danny Goodman's book. I give it two stars instead of one because at least it is reasonably up to date and occasionally helpful.
Rating:
Summary: The most poorly edited book I've ever read
Review: This book is somewhat out of date, first of all; it covers only a fairly old version of OS X, doesn't mention AppleScript Studio at all, etc. This is somewhat understandable, and it is at least much more up-to-date than Danny Goodman's book.
But the writing -- my god! It has the feel of a book that was written in one draft and never edited. Every single page of the book (and I just finished reading it cover to cover) had errors, typos, bugs, and poorly worded or unclear passages. In many cases I re-read sections several times and was simply unable to decipher what they were trying to say at all. I am a very experienced programmer (worked at Apple for several years, in fact), and I couldn't make head or tail of some of the passages in the book. There are huge omissions (I can find no explicit description of what "get" does, for example, anywhere in the reference section of the book). Many subtle (but important) details are glossed over completely.
Just pathetic that this is the best book available on AppleScript. I wish I could get my money back, on this and on Danny Goodman's book. I give it two stars instead of one because at least it is reasonably up to date and occasionally helpful.
Rating: 
Summary: The First and Only book for AppleScript
Review: We've selected this book as one of our "2001 BEST BOOKS" because it's clear content is perfect for both seasoned Applescripters and the beginner just getting started. It did the best job answering reader's questions about AppleScript -- and in some cases was the ONLY book on our bookshelf to give concise answers within a page.
... Five Stars for this one! A Design Bookshelf "BEST" selection for 2001.
Rating:
Summary: Rewrite it O'Reilly! Keep your good rep...
Review: What happened here? O'Reilly usually has SUCH good books - this is not one of them. Looks like the author could have used some help on this subject matter... A rewrite is in order if O'Reilly really wants to prove to Mac users that it cares about the platform. I mean AppleScript is the only truly native language to the Mac.
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