Re: Apple script and hypercard
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
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