It seems that one of the things that encourages many people to move to a Mac from a Windows machine is iTunes. While there are many reasons to like iTunes, one of the best ones is the incredibly simple way you can create rules for use in Smart Playlists.

As these switchers find out, iTunes is just one of many applications that use this approach to rule building. Apple Mail does it, as does the operating system for creating Smart Folders. But even better, a number of add-on utilities for OS X also maintain this structure for creating sets of rules, making them very easy to learn and customize.

Arguably the best of the lot is a utility called Hazel, which at first blush seems almost ridiculously simple. It serves one main purpose - to help you automate the process of cleaning up after yourself and the programs you run. But the beauty, as we've been alluding to, is in the rule creation process.

Simply choose a folder, and start populating a set of rules to use to decide what should be done with the contents of that folder. They can be based on file properties like the file extension or whether the files have been labeled with a specific color, or simply based on age.

One note - be careful. Hazel does what it does with amazing efficiency. One wrong when running a new rule, and you can find that you've moved everything from a folder to a new location, rather than just the ones you intended. Cleaning up after a mistake like that can be a bit daunting. Luckily, Hazel has a function allowing you to preview rule matches, and make sure the rule you have created will only apply to the files you intended.

Hazel has a fully functional 14 day evaluation mode after which it switches to demo mode. Demo mode continues indefinitely, however only one folder can be monitored with it, and only two the first two rules will run for that folder. A license for Hazel will set you back $16 USD.

[via Kinkless]