How to Get Information Such As, Users Window for Example Using The Nstask Class in Swift, for Osx Apps

Real time NSTask output to NSTextView with Swift

(See Patrick F.'s answer for an update to Swift 3/4.)

You can read asynchronously from a pipe, using notifications.
Here is a simple example demonstrating how it works, hopefully that
helps you to get started:

let task = NSTask()
task.launchPath = "/bin/sh"
task.arguments = ["-c", "echo 1 ; sleep 1 ; echo 2 ; sleep 1 ; echo 3 ; sleep 1 ; echo 4"]

let pipe = NSPipe()
task.standardOutput = pipe
let outHandle = pipe.fileHandleForReading
outHandle.waitForDataInBackgroundAndNotify()

var obs1 : NSObjectProtocol!
obs1 = NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().addObserverForName(NSFileHandleDataAvailableNotification,
    object: outHandle, queue: nil) {  notification -> Void in
        let data = outHandle.availableData
        if data.length > 0 {
            if let str = NSString(data: data, encoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding) {
                print("got output: \(str)")
            }
            outHandle.waitForDataInBackgroundAndNotify()
        } else {
            print("EOF on stdout from process")
            NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().removeObserver(obs1)
        }
}

var obs2 : NSObjectProtocol!
obs2 = NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().addObserverForName(NSTaskDidTerminateNotification,
    object: task, queue: nil) { notification -> Void in
        print("terminated")
        NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().removeObserver(obs2)
}

task.launch()

Instead of print("got output: \(str)") you can append the received
string to your text view.

The above code assumes that a runloop is active (which is the case
in a default Cocoa application).

How to launch application and bring it to front using Cocoa api?

To launch an application :

[[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] launchApplication:@"/Applications/Safari.app"];

To activate an app :

NSRunningApplication* app = [NSRunningApplication
                             runningApplicationWithProcessIdentifier: PID];
[app activateWithOptions: NSApplicationActivateAllWindows];
// or
NSArray* apps = [NSRunningApplication
                 runningApplicationsWithBundleIdentifier:@"com.bla.blah"];
[(NSRunningApplication*)[apps objectAtIndex:0]
 activateWithOptions: NSApplicationActivateAllWindows];

Obtain Model Identifier string on OS X

You can use sysctl

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>
#import <sys/sysctl.h>

NSString *ModelIdentifier()
{
    NSString *result=@"Unknown Mac";
    size_t len=0;
    sysctlbyname("hw.model", NULL, &len, NULL, 0);
    if (len) {
        NSMutableData *data=[NSMutableData dataWithLength:len];
        sysctlbyname("hw.model", [data mutableBytes], &len, NULL, 0);
        result=[NSString stringWithUTF8String:[data bytes]];
    }
    return result;
}

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