Are we headed for a Mac automation schism?

“The Mac is currently at the start of a pretty dramatic transition,” Jason Snell writes for Six Colors. “This year, the platform will be flooded with apps that are based on the iOS app development system, UIKit, using a system that everyone calls Marzipan because Apple hasn’t given it a name.”

“Part of this transition affects user automation. macOS has a bunch of different system-level user automation technologies of various ages, but none of them work with iOS and Apple has shown no intention of changing that now,” Snell writes. “AppleEvents, AppleScript, and Automator already feel like legacy technologies that are maintained minimally to keep up compatibility, but they don’t feel like the future.”

“So what happens when iOS apps comes to the Mac this fall? It seems impossible that Apple will allow them to be controlled by AppleScript and Automator. On iOS, they can be controlled by Shortcuts. Does that app make the move to macOS? According to 9to5Mac’s Guilherme Rambo, it might, and Siri Shortcuts will,” Snell writes. “Will “classic” Mac apps get the ability to be controlled via Shortcuts, too? Or will there be a schism between the two different classes of apps?”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Clean up in aisle X!

SEE ALSO:
Siri Shortcuts, Screen Time, and more coming to the Mac – April 19, 2019
Apple releases Shortcuts 2.2 – March 27, 2019
Check out these 150 custom shortcuts for Apple’s Shortcuts App – March 8, 2019
Apple’s Siri Shortcuts may just be misunderstood – March 1, 2019
Apple’s Siri Shortcuts help boost health and fitness routines – March 1, 2019
Apple uses Siri Shortcuts to catch up to Alexa, Google Assistant – February 28, 2019

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]