Wow...what a lot of Chicken Little drama junkie puppies. The article is about the management post, not the elimination of Automator, AppleScript etc
If Apple had a better track record supporting its professional users recently, then your head in the clouds attitude might be warranted. Also the lack of transparency in regards to Apple's plans for its professional technologies helps fuel negative speculation. And those of us who have been around awhile know that Applescript has seemingly always been under threat of removal. Your speculation that Apple may have some other plan in the works is just that, speculation. It is similar to the speculation that Apple must have been making a REALLY awesome update to Aperture because it hadn't been updated in so long. And the replacement for Aperture, an upgraded iPhoto that takes plug-ins, was a sorry substitute for Aperture. So if Apple handles "upgrades" to its automation tools in a similar way to how it handled Aperture, then we are all in for a big disappointment. But this all gets back to how Apple needs to be more transparent with its professional software development roadmaps. I understand their need to keep secret the next big thing for iPad or whatever. But I do not see any value in Apple keeping its professional users in the dark about the future of Applescript and Automator. Just tell us where you are going with these things and stop the negative rumors.
I agree to some extent. But, Apple has been pretty clear that they consider Swift to be a System Programming Language -- not just apps, but Shell scripts, OAS Scripts and, likely, Web scripts.
your script could have been written in Objective C or C, or whatever. Swift doesnt add any new functionality.
Wow...what a lot of Chicken Little drama junkie puppies. The article is about the management post, not the elimination of Automator, AppleScript etc
If Apple had a better track record supporting its professional users recently, then your head in the clouds attitude might be warranted. Also the lack of transparency in regards to Apple's plans for its professional technologies helps fuel negative speculation. And those of us who have been around awhile know that Applescript has seemingly always been under threat of removal. Your speculation that Apple may have some other plan in the works is just that, speculation. It is similar to the speculation that Apple must have been making a REALLY awesome update to Aperture because it hadn't been updated in so long. And the replacement for Aperture, an upgraded iPhoto that takes plug-ins, was a sorry substitute for Aperture. So if Apple handles "upgrades" to its automation tools in a similar way to how it handled Aperture, then we are all in for a big disappointment. But this all gets back to how Apple needs to be more transparent with its professional software development roadmaps. I understand their need to keep secret the next big thing for iPad or whatever. But I do not see any value in Apple keeping its professional users in the dark about the future of Applescript and Automator. Just tell us where you are going with these things and stop the negative rumors.
I agree to some extent. But, Apple has been pretty clear that they consider Swift to be a System Programming Language -- not just apps, but Shell scripts, OAS Scripts and, likely, Web scripts.
your script could have been written in Objective C or C, or whatever. Swift doesnt add any new functionality.
Your comment reveals that you have no clue about what Objective-C, C or Swift are... No one would write a script with C. Calling this a script is an insult to the C language.
> If AppleScript is now dead it is a crying shame.
No, it's not. It's a terrible implementation and always has been.
MS's implementation of the same concept on Windows, VBA, is light years better in terms of power, expressiveness, pervasiveness and especially speed. Practically every Windows app is scriptable to some degree, and MS's own apps like Office are *extremely* scriptable to a degree that would make HyperCard blanch. You don't even need an app, you can string together DLLs.
AS suffered from day one from second-system-effect. Although it's 20 years old, at no time was there any serious effort to fix it. It just kept shambling along like a zombie. Automator was a great idea, but based on AS.
Its time to do this right. That likely means basing everything on JS, which is orders of magnitude faster than AS, widely understood, widely supported, and with literally billions of code examples.
> If AppleScript is now dead it is a crying shame.
No, it's not. It's a terrible implementation and always has been.
MS's implementation of the same concept on Windows, VBA, is light years better in terms of power, expressiveness, pervasiveness and especially speed. Practically every Windows app is scriptable to some degree, and MS's own apps like Office are *extremely* scriptable to a degree that would make HyperCard blanch. You don't even need an app, you can string together DLLs.
AS suffered from day one from second-system-effect. Although it's 20 years old, at no time was there any serious effort to fix it. It just kept shambling along like a zombie. Automator was a great idea, but based on AS.
Its time to do this right. That likely means basing everything on JS, which is orders of magnitude faster than AS, widely understood, widely supported, and with literally billions of code examples.
I doubt that Apple will invest in reimplementing system scripting in JavaScript, as they (and many others) consider Swift to be a superior solution.
As it turns out, Swift (and Objective-C) can run JavaScript code With Swift, you can run/test your code interactively within a Playground:
The dissolution of the post doesn't imply that "automation technologies are no longer a priority at Apple". Maybe the post itself was an obstacle to the development of these technologies?
The second statement is a possibility and that's what I hope it's about. Maybe Soghoian has been clinging tightly to technologies Apple has been wanting to overhaul, similar to when the system became UNIX based. Maybe he has ruffled feathers and they don't see the need to replace him. Who knows? (Yet)
But with regard to the first, I think Apple does have a well deserved reputation for at least the perception that they allow certain functions many grow to depend on to get cobwebbed and stale as they focus on other things, so it's not surprising people are thinking they're ignoring it, even if it's not the case. They've done it before.
In 2016 Applescript is no fun compared to other options. Should they make it, or whatever replaces it, the best out there? Or should they scrub it?
> If AppleScript is now dead it is a crying shame.
No, it's not. It's a terrible implementation and always has been.
MS's implementation of the same concept on Windows, VBA, is light years better in terms of power, expressiveness, pervasiveness and especially speed. Practically every Windows app is scriptable to some degree, and MS's own apps like Office are *extremely* scriptable to a degree that would make HyperCard blanch. You don't even need an app, you can string together DLLs.
AS suffered from day one from second-system-effect. Although it's 20 years old, at no time was there any serious effort to fix it. It just kept shambling along like a zombie. Automator was a great idea, but based on AS.
Its time to do this right. That likely means basing everything on JS, which is orders of magnitude faster than AS, widely understood, widely supported, and with literally billions of code examples.
My point was that it had been there for as long as I can remember and in spite of not fitting in anywhere (it was a bit of an oddbod) it managed to survive and people actually took advantage of it and had great success with. Many still do. It got no real love from Apple, no real commitment and always had the axe hanging over its head. Put into perspective, it was a wonderful thing for those who use it. Yes, other technologies have matured and are better but AS has served many very well and still does.
Just like VB did on Windows. Great for Windows users. Let's not forget that when MS tried to kill it off the first time, the backlash was so great they rethought the plan. VB on the Mac was completely different to the Windows version and it was a miracle the Windows and Mac versions could even understand each other. My wife had no end of problems moving Excel files back and forth between Mac and Windows Office. Pure voodoo. The people on the Mac Office team couldn't even figure the problems out and they asked to see my files many times! There were so many variables in play and one of them was localisation. In the end they killed it on Mac Office and asked users to use AppleScript instead. Then there was a backlash on losing it. When you put these kinds of technologies into the wild you have to commit to them seriously, even in death. As someone mentioned here, Apple has been a failure in terms of communication. If an API is going to be phased out developers are told beforehand. If AS is going to be dropped, the right thing would be to declare their intentions, provide a roadmap of support so that users may prepare for the change and transition over to whatever Apple recommends. One thing is for sure, there will always be a need for automation. Someone joked about it but I'm sure Siri will be involved for the simple stuff.
If AS is going to be dropped, the right thing would be to declare their intentions, provide a roadmap of support so that users may prepare for the change and transition over to whatever Apple recommends. One thing is for sure, there will always be a need for automation.
* #!/usr/bin/swift
* Free Hour of Code sessions.
* Swift playground. * Swift as a first class citizen within terminal.
Theres your road map.
AppleScript still exists but the future path is very very clear. This is no different than the transition from carbon to cocoa. At some point when Swift is mature enough Apple will declare AppleScript deprecated. And then eventually removed.
As other folks have theorized I too think Sal may gotten in the way of progress without
If AS is going to be dropped, the right thing would be to declare their intentions, provide a roadmap of support so that users may prepare for the change and transition over to whatever Apple recommends. One thing is for sure, there will always be a need for automation.
* #!/usr/bin/swift
* Free Hour of Code sessions.
* Swift playground. * Swift as a first class citizen within terminal.
Theres your road map.
AppleScript still exists but the future path is very very clear. This is no different than the transition from carbon to cocoa. At some point when Swift is mature enough Apple will declare AppleScript deprecated. And then eventually removed.
As other folks have theorized I too think Sal may gotten in the way of progress without
the protection that Steve may have once provided.
^^^ Yes!
Then there's this straight from the horse's mouth, er bird's beak (emphasis, mine):
Swift is friendly to new programmers. It is the first industrial-quality systems programming language that is as expressive and enjoyable as a scripting language. It supports playgrounds, an innovative feature that allows programmers to experiment with Swift code and see the results immediately, without the overhead of building and running an app.
Swift combines the best in modern language thinking with wisdom from the wider Apple engineering culture. The compiler is optimized for performance, and the language is optimized for development, without compromising on either. It’s designed to scale from “hello, world” to an entire operating system. All this makes Swift a sound future investment for developers and for Apple.
Wow...what a lot of Chicken Little drama junkie puppies. The article is about the management post, not the elimination of Automator, AppleScript etc
If Apple had a better track record supporting its professional users recently, then your head in the clouds attitude might be warranted. Also the lack of transparency in regards to Apple's plans for its professional technologies helps fuel negative speculation. And those of us who have been around awhile know that Applescript has seemingly always been under threat of removal. Your speculation that Apple may have some other plan in the works is just that, speculation. It is similar to the speculation that Apple must have been making a REALLY awesome update to Aperture because it hadn't been updated in so long. And the replacement for Aperture, an upgraded iPhoto that takes plug-ins, was a sorry substitute for Aperture. So if Apple handles "upgrades" to its automation tools in a similar way to how it handled Aperture, then we are all in for a big disappointment. But this all gets back to how Apple needs to be more transparent with its professional software development roadmaps. I understand their need to keep secret the next big thing for iPad or whatever. But I do not see any value in Apple keeping its professional users in the dark about the future of Applescript and Automator. Just tell us where you are going with these things and stop the negative rumors.
I agree to some extent. But, Apple has been pretty clear that they consider Swift to be a System Programming Language -- not just apps, but Shell scripts, OAS Scripts and, likely, Web scripts.
your script could have been written in Objective C or C, or whatever. Swift doesnt add any new functionality.
Your comment reveals that you have no clue about what Objective-C, C or Swift are... No one would write a script with C. Calling this a script is an insult to the C language.
Of course you can write a script with a script with C. Ffs. the standard main function in C takes in parameters from command line inputs.
swift is an ok language. Like Brendan behan said of Canada it will be ok when its finished. It's neither as revolutionary nor as easy as people think. It's not a reinvention that's going to get millions of non-ciders coding, in fact it gets fairly advanced fairly quickly.
Comments
No, it's not. It's a terrible implementation and always has been.
MS's implementation of the same concept on Windows, VBA, is light years better in terms of power, expressiveness, pervasiveness and especially speed. Practically every Windows app is scriptable to some degree, and MS's own apps like Office are *extremely* scriptable to a degree that would make HyperCard blanch. You don't even need an app, you can string together DLLs.
AS suffered from day one from second-system-effect. Although it's 20 years old, at no time was there any serious effort to fix it. It just kept shambling along like a zombie. Automator was a great idea, but based on AS.
Its time to do this right. That likely means basing everything on JS, which is orders of magnitude faster than AS, widely understood, widely supported, and with literally billions of code examples.
As it turns out, Swift (and Objective-C) can run JavaScript code With Swift, you can run/test your code interactively within a Playground:
1) In WebKitView:
Executing JavaScript
func evaluateJavaScript(String, completionHandler: ((Any?, Error?) -> Void)? = nil)Evaluates a JavaScript string.
https://developer.apple.com/reference/webkit/wkwebview
2) Within an app:
But with regard to the first, I think Apple does have a well deserved reputation for at least the perception that they allow certain functions many grow to depend on to get cobwebbed and stale as they focus on other things, so it's not surprising people are thinking they're ignoring it, even if it's not the case. They've done it before.
In 2016 Applescript is no fun compared to other options. Should they make it, or whatever replaces it, the best out there? Or should they scrub it?
Just like VB did on Windows. Great for Windows users. Let's not forget that when MS tried to kill it off the first time, the backlash was so great they rethought the plan. VB on the Mac was completely different to the Windows version and it was a miracle the Windows and Mac versions could even understand each other. My wife had no end of problems moving Excel files back and forth between Mac and Windows Office. Pure voodoo. The people on the Mac Office team couldn't even figure the problems out and they asked to see my files many times! There were so many variables in play and one of them was localisation. In the end they killed it on Mac Office and asked users to use AppleScript instead. Then there was a backlash on losing it. When you put these kinds of technologies into the wild you have to commit to them seriously, even in death. As someone mentioned here, Apple has been a failure in terms of communication. If an API is going to be phased out developers are told beforehand. If AS is going to be dropped, the right thing would be to declare their intentions, provide a roadmap of support so that users may prepare for the change and transition over to whatever Apple recommends. One thing is for sure, there will always be a need for automation. Someone joked about it but I'm sure Siri will be involved for the simple stuff.
* Swift as a first class citizen within terminal.
Then there's this straight from the horse's mouth, er bird's beak (emphasis, mine):
swift is an ok language. Like Brendan behan said of Canada it will be ok when its finished. It's neither as revolutionary nor as easy as people think. It's not a reinvention that's going to get millions of non-ciders coding, in fact it gets fairly advanced fairly quickly.