Shortcuts is the opposite of "enough rope to hang yourself with": not enough rope to even tie a knot.
This is an exaggeration, though. I managed to use Shortcuts even while writing this text, so it definitely is useful.
But why is Apple so goddamn afraid that if I get to do what I want, something terrible will happen? Why can't my shortcut paste, keystroke, or use SMS as triggers? I understand there could be unintended consequences, but to me at least, the limitations of Shortcuts as it is now are obviously not technical but philosophical/political from Apple. Give me keystroke shortcuts and proper triggers! I promise I won't abuse it, and I also promise to not run with scissors!
More than anything it makes me wonder who the hell it is for. My personal devices are the full Apple loadout and it's still hard to make anything meaningful with it, too confusing for the average user, not powerful enough for the power user.
It could become interesting if there were some integrations with Apple Intelligence: the tasks you'd delegate to a shortcut are the kind of low-stakes stuff AI integration is a good fit for. It doesn't look like it's in the cards, though...
I’ve built a lot of small little things with shortcuts, but the only thing I still use is one I made to change my background/lock screen to a random photo from an album. I set it to run every morning so I wake up to a new photo. I shared the album with my partner too so they can add photos to the rotation. It’s small but I love it!
I also made a shortcut that lives on my home screen to open a notes page for today, creating a new one if it doesn’t exist already. That one would be more used if I could ever get a journaling habit to stick.
It’s certainly very limited and suffers a lot from a poor interface, but I don’t think people give it enough credit.
It is for me. Apparently you can’t turn on Wifi Hotspot on a single tap on iOS, or switch off Bluetooth or Wifi completely on iOS so a few shortcuts to do these in control center it is.
I use it daily to turn my iOS device to low power when I use a photo and video app - this little trick turns off HDR that I profoundly detest and can't visually stand for.
Perhaps the reasoning is not that you will abuse it. But could other people abuse it and use it against you.
If you try to paste anything into the dev tools in Chrome, it forces you to specifically allow pasting because scammers have convinced people to do it over the phone to con them into something. How I’m not quite sure.
Security concerns are one thing that hold Shortcuts back, but a lot of the stuff just doesn't work. It's pretty half assed. For example, sending messages is broken and according to forum posts has been for a few years.
It's pretty obvious that automation for non-developers is not a priority at Apple.
You shouldn't have to make any promises to a corporation about what you will and won't do with a device that you purchase from them, including what software you wish to run.
True in principle. Looking at it from Apple’s side, they are selling an ecosystem of clients to digital (or physical) service providers with certain guarantees on how that ecosystem operates.
Opening up automation is a double whammy for Apple:
- More savvy users are able to solve more of their problems themselves, reducing the LTV of their potentially most engaged clients who might buy less on the App Store as a result
- Some guarantees of the ecosystem crumble (banking apps don’t know anymore if it is really you who initiated that transaction, ID verification apps don’t know if that camera stream is really from your device, and plenty other things devs suddenly have to worry about)
As a final nail in the coffin, it also means that the networks that Apple sells to its _users_ are less reliable or have less guarantees as a result - you don’t know if the text you received was really sent now or scheduled in advance etc.
Of course a lot of these rules are not justified, user hostile or plain non-sensical, but what I’m trying to say is that from Apple’s perspective the consideration is not just “user owns device” but a lot of interplaying dynamics that do not seem to be in favor of empowering users.
All of these things are beneficial to various corporations attempting to financially exploit me, but not necessarily beneficial to me, the owner and operator of the device.
The hotspot settings are particularly barren. You can turn the hotspot on/off, change the password... and... that's it. They can't be used for anything useful, like detecting when a device connects/disconnects. I'm not sure why they added Shortcuts in this state.
The problem is not you, nor anyone tech savvy enough to comment on hacker news, but the masses who can barely paw their way through their smartphone screen. It will be abused and cause problems, and Apple knows that.
>But why is Apple so goddamn afraid that if I get to do what I want, something terrible will happen?
I feel like this is the general business ethos of modern consumer-facing tech. They don't want to sell tools that serve you. They want to sell a service to chew your food for you as you accept whatever mush they feed you.
This is an exaggeration, though. I managed to use Shortcuts even while writing this text, so it definitely is useful.
But why is Apple so goddamn afraid that if I get to do what I want, something terrible will happen? Why can't my shortcut paste, keystroke, or use SMS as triggers? I understand there could be unintended consequences, but to me at least, the limitations of Shortcuts as it is now are obviously not technical but philosophical/political from Apple. Give me keystroke shortcuts and proper triggers! I promise I won't abuse it, and I also promise to not run with scissors!