• Open Menu Close Menu
  • Apple
  • Shopping Bag
  • Apple
  • Mac
  • iPad
  • iPhone
  • Watch
  • TV
  • Music
  • Support
  • Search apple.com
  • Shopping Bag

Lists

Open Menu Close Menu
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Lists hosted on this site
  • Email the Postmaster
  • Tips for posting to public mailing lists
Re: Apple script and hypercard
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Apple script and hypercard


  • Subject: Re: Apple script and hypercard
  • From: has <email@hidden>
  • Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2016 13:00:45 +0000

edmund ronald wrote:
Look guys, the automation target environment these days is not the PC or
even the phone, it's the IOT.

IoT is where all the _hype_ is; I'm less than convinced there's an overwhelming number of genuine use cases put forth for it—refrigerators that browse porn? I guess—while the one thing IoT _does_ have in overwhelming numbers is holes. Holes that customers don't even know exist because they're not technically literate to understand how stuff works. Holes that are there because vendors pay for the cheapest "talent" it can to write that crap, and get away with it because: see users. These last few months have seen DDoS attacks on unprecedended scale; we're talking _magnitudes_ here beyond anything the old MS Windows botware could even have dreamed of.

> Applescript is simply not where things are going to happen anymore, and frankly I doubt that proprietary is going to cut it.

Open protocols matter. Then anyone can hook anything to anything. The Apple event protocol isn't open, but as I've already says, who cares? Obsolete IPC tech that's only an extra layer of compatibility crud over Mach messages now anyway. You can rip that bit out and put in anything you like; easy. You can put all your security and routing on that bottom level; anything on top only needs to negotiate permissions (e.g. if it needs read-only vs read-write, and to some parts of the app interface or all).

Here's another thing: The Apple Event Object Model is a general-purpose interface design. There's no reason you can't implement one on a faceless background process, an internet application server, or anything else. I've been saying for ages iTunes should be built this way: as a GUI-less always-on service to which any application can talk, be it a thin classic iTunes-style GUI app running on the same (or another) Mac, your iPhone's app on your home network, a webserver that allows you to control iTunes from any web-enabled device, any third-party app that wants to, and any script or voice command that you, the user, might wish to give to it.

...

All that is incredibly, incredibly powerful stuff. It's what the web would have been had web programmers utterly misunderstood how it was designed to work, which is so everyone could read, everyone could write, any kind of app that understood HTTP and hyperlinks could access it, and nobody in the world ever had to write HTML code or FTP commands ever, because all you needed was a Word-like WSYWIG app that, instead of reading and writing data from/to your local hard disk, would read and write it to anywhere in the world.

A rebooted, reinvigorated Automation strategy on macOS wouldn't just inform Apple how to get full blooded Automation onto iPhone and iPad (where it's actually needed far more, since 1,000,000x users!), it could provide a working template for fixing the web itself: taking direct control back from the corporations and the web programmers, and putting it back in the hands of the users—everyone.

You all see an infinite chasm of impossibility from where you're standing, _only_ because you never needed, nor thought, to step to a different position, and view it from there. I have, and not only can I see how totally achievable it is, I'm laughing/crying at how little investment, faith, and big brass balls it needs to step that gap from where we are now.

I dunno about you, but I don't even _want_ to live in a world where the corporations know more about what my lightbulbs are thinking than I do. You want an IoT that works for *all of us*, you start by learning your history. 70 years of it, easy. Further back too you go, the more you learn. Ossification only started to set in during the 70s; Incompetent Cult of Religion the 90s. (Q. What were the seminal events that triggered this? What were the parallel events that could've changed the game and its result entirely?) Questions, answers, they're already there; the only problem we all have is far too much control has already slid into the hands of an industry that does not learn from its own mistakes, it cannot even learn from its own successes.

...

To restate: SwiftAutomation on 10.13 is not the end goal; it's not even the beginning. It's little more than breathing space and a proof-of-concept demo—to show Apple and its upcoming army of Swift App developers how much unrealized potential in the _current_ Automation architecture—never mind the architecture it could evolve and grow into with just a little more TLC. So much potential, knowledge, and experience, that to toss Automation to one side at this critical moment in time is not merely telling Siri to shoot herself in the foot, but to commit straight up suicide!


Look, AppleScript _will_ die, eventually, and I'm going to hold to my original bet it's within the next 5 years; and there's a fine bottle of malt in it for anyone who wants to hope otherwise. You still fear that; I don't. CHANGE IS OPPORTUNITY! The only thing that matters is that by the time AppleScript does snuff it, nobody here even minds any more, but because everybody—us, Apple, schools, the world—are already building OUR Automation on AppleScript's rightful heir—faster, easier, and greater than ever before.

Folks, there's none so blind as those that can't see past the end of their own noses. You've all been far too cosy here, far too long. Think Jobs would've created Apple 2.0 had he not done his 10-year service in the wilderness? Get up off your fucking asses. Please.

I've been working this one little corner of one little problem for 13 years. Instead of despairingly repeating what can't be done, step up and propose us a plan. Any plan! Ideally a plan better and more coherent (and concise!) than my plan, but just anything as long as you put it on the table. Cos if you can't even TRY to be architects of even a little part of your _own_ destiny, why on Earth did you get into Automation in the first place?


Jeez, and I thought I was always the depressing bastard. 15½ years ago, you people were the Gods of Automation to a green-assed know-nothing newbie who fell into this same as all you before him. All I ask of you now, and I _know_ you will do it if you can just get your shit together again: Impress me once more.

Thanks,

has
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
AppleScript-Users mailing list      (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
Archives: http://lists.apple.com/archives/applescript-users

This email sent to email@hidden


  • Prev by Date: Re: For the Future of Mac Automation: a Call to Arms [Re: Sal]
  • Next by Date: Swiftautomation...
  • Previous by thread: Re: Apple script and hypercard
  • Next by thread: Re: "If you build it…"
  • Index(es):
    • Date
    • Thread