Quake3World

...what the automater is for and why I should use it?

Its for automating certain tasks, eg. make an automater script to check a folder and upload all new images to a certain location. Its basically a GUI for Applescript.

right. so something i'll never use with a great icon.

Unless you do moderately complex things a lot of times, like these: http://www.automatorworld.com/category/workflows/

then its quite useless. I'm hoping that linked site becomes more popular, as I hear automator has a lot of useful things for people who repeat tasks a lot.

yeah, i can see it taking off. kind of like how i batch level, unsharpen mask, name and save shot in RAW format with the click of a button

Startup routines would be cool if it could do them. I can imagine setting up the thing to open specific programs, place certain windows at certain locations, and do several other routine tasks that I do at startup.

You can already open specific programs at startup, and they remember window placement...

Not if you have your monitor off...the thing resets to 640x480 on startup.