{"id":32055,"date":"2021-04-02T16:47:50","date_gmt":"2021-04-02T20:47:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=32055"},"modified":"2021-04-02T16:47:50","modified_gmt":"2021-04-02T20:47:50","slug":"the-mac-needs-shortcuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/02\/the-mac-needs-shortcuts\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mac Needs Shortcuts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sixcolors.com\/post\/2021\/03\/the-mac-needs-shortcuts\/\">Jason Snell<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/sixcolors.com\/post\/2021\/03\/the-mac-needs-shortcuts\/\"><p>The problem is that today, everything about user automation on Apple&rsquo;s platforms <a href=\"https:\/\/sixcolors.com\/post\/2019\/05\/are-we-headed-for-a-mac-automation-schism\/\">is fractured<\/a>. On the Mac, the technologies feel old-fashioned, adrift, and increasingly unsupported. On iOS, Shortcuts has some weaknesses and an every-app-for-itself mindset prevails. And between the two platforms there&rsquo;s no connectivity at all.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>As much as I like the impetus behind Automator&mdash;automation for the masses!&mdash;it died on the vine. Apps didn&rsquo;t support it well, and Apple failed to provide a robust enough library of actions to make it work well on its own. If I ever thought Automator was okay, one glance at Shortcuts (or its predecessor, Workflow) would disabuse me of the notion. Still, I end up using Automator regularly because it allows me to <a href=\"https:\/\/sixcolors.com\/post\/2015\/03\/bad-applescript-shell-scripting-and-automator\/\">integrate AppleScript and unix\/shell scripting directly into the Finder<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>It&rsquo;s clear to me now: Apple needs to make Shortcuts available everywhere.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s a lot to ask, but since I&rsquo;m on a roll, I&rsquo;ll once again suggest that Apple needs to more explicitly support scripting languages on both platforms.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/03\/24\/shared-shortcuts-urls-broken\/\">Shared Shortcuts URLs Broken<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/06\/04\/scripting-languages-to-be-removed\/\">Scripting Languages to Be Removed<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/29\/the-under-appreciated-awesomeness-of-apple-events-the-technology\/\">The Under-Appreciated Awesomeness of Apple Events (the Technology)<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/27\/shortcuts-js\/\">Shortcuts JS<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/14\/shortcuts-a-new-vision-for-siri-and-ios-automation\/\">Shortcuts: A New Vision for Siri and iOS Automation<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/01\/11\/app-extensions-are-not-a-replacement-for-user-automation\/\">App Extensions Are Not a Replacement for User Automation<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2016\/11\/16\/thank-you-sal\/\">Thank You, Sal<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jason Snell: The problem is that today, everything about user automation on Apple&rsquo;s platforms is fractured. On the Mac, the technologies feel old-fashioned, adrift, and increasingly unsupported. On iOS, Shortcuts has some weaknesses and an every-app-for-itself mindset prevails. And between the two platforms there&rsquo;s no connectivity at all. [&#8230;] As much as I like the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2021-04-02T20:47:53Z","apple_news_api_id":"78a5fc50-a0ec-4083-89c2-d2ac77bf39e9","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2021-04-02T20:47:54Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AeKX8UKDsQIOJwtKsd7856Q","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[159,1040,30,1891,1686],"class_list":["post-32055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-applescript","tag-automator","tag-mac","tag-macos-11-0","tag-shortcuts"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32055"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32056,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32055\/revisions\/32056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}