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The action "Watch Me Do" encountered an error. The operation couldn’t be completed. (OSStatus error -50.)

Morning,


  • Hardware: Apple Macbook Air 13", mid 2013. 1.7 GHz Intel Core i7. 8GB 1600 MHz DDR3. Etc...
  • Software El Capitan Vers. 10.11.2
  • Automator Vers. 2.6 (419)


I am trying to Automate downloads via iTunes to take place during early morning to avoid using more expensive bandwidth. The operation (apologies if I have the wrong terms, not a tech guy) fails and returns this error:


The action "Watch Me Do" encountered an error.

The operation couldn’t be completed. (OSStatus error -50.)


User uploaded file

Is this something anyone else has seen before or to which there is a known solution?


Regards

James

Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Posted on Jan 4, 2016 11:22 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Jan 5, 2016 12:20 AM

Watch Me Do is designed to replay the same mouse click and keyboard events at the same speed. Think of driving your car to work and recording each turn and stop. Then replay each turn and stop at the same speed. What if during the replay the traffic is moving slightly faster or slightly slower? If you drive the same route to work you might get a red light at an intersection that you had a green light at yesterday. "Watch Me Do" doesn't know how to deviate from these changes so it's just going to stop and report an error. If iTunes launches slower or an event during the replay takes longer to perform due to different background processes running, it's going to have the same affect.


Enabling automatic downloads in iTunes and using Automator to enable your network device at a designated time might be a better solution.

5 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Jan 5, 2016 12:20 AM in response to TTEKWOB

Watch Me Do is designed to replay the same mouse click and keyboard events at the same speed. Think of driving your car to work and recording each turn and stop. Then replay each turn and stop at the same speed. What if during the replay the traffic is moving slightly faster or slightly slower? If you drive the same route to work you might get a red light at an intersection that you had a green light at yesterday. "Watch Me Do" doesn't know how to deviate from these changes so it's just going to stop and report an error. If iTunes launches slower or an event during the replay takes longer to perform due to different background processes running, it's going to have the same affect.


Enabling automatic downloads in iTunes and using Automator to enable your network device at a designated time might be a better solution.

Jan 5, 2016 1:09 AM in response to TTEKWOB

Personally haven't tested this myself with iTunes but did with having automatic updates enabled in the App Store.



First get your interfaces device name from System Report.

User uploaded file


Then create a shell script event in Automator:


networksetup -setairportpower en1 on

User uploaded file


Change "en1" to the device name in System Information on your computer. Since you're on a MacBook Air your wifi adapter is most likely en0.

Jan 5, 2016 1:09 AM in response to chroot

Thanks chroot,


Unfortunately iTunes doesn't like it if I try to 'Resume Downloads' while Airport is turned off. It fails and doesn't seem to try to Resume after Airport is turned on again. Your Automated Airport Switch works however, I'm going to try adding the Watch Me Do afterwards and see if that helps.


Also I noted a 'timeout' feature that by default is 2 seconds, perhaps adjusting this would help?


Regards

James


I tried the addition of Watch Me Do afterwards. Still fails.

The action "Watch Me Do" encountered an error. The operation couldn’t be completed. (OSStatus error -50.)

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