It’s Thanksgiving in the U.S. today, so I’m just reflecting and saying thanks:
http://www.automatedworkflows.com/2016/11/24/sal-soghoian-in-appreciation/
Ray,
Thanks for the post. I hear the name a lot over time but I never knew much about him beyond the book he and Bill Cheeseman wrote called AppleScript 1-2-3. He was always a mythical person to me and it’s nice to have some details.
Shane and Mark,
It was sort of like that for me with Shane. He was like mythical fountain of knowledge and then one I joined the group and actually corresponded with him directly. I would like to express my thanks to Shane for being so willing to share and teach. Nearly every time I found something “really” useful about Applescript on the internet it seemed to have his name on it. Sometime when I searched for something on Applescript and I would get too many hits I would enter Shane Stanley and the applescript problem then I could easily find the perfect answer. Shane saved me many times when it came to AppleScript long before I joined the Script Debugger group. There is a huge amount of useful info out on the internet with his name on it.
And of course there is Mark. I remember the perpetual death sentence AppleScript had on it for so long. But Mark stuck with Script Debugger. Mark’s debugger was the only serious development tool for AppleScript and he always held up the highest standards for ScriptDebugger. I would like express my thanks to Mark as well. As I have said in the past Script Debugger literally changed my career, which then changed my life very much for the better.
Bill
I agree with Ray, Mark’s post is the wisest I have read on this topic. For what it’s worth, I was at the MacTech conference last week and had a 2 hour discussion with Sal over lunch on Friday. He made it clear he had no idea what direction Apple was going to take in regard to automation – whenever asked he simply said “ask Apple”. I will say he seemed to be in a genuinely good mood – and he had some great SJ stories 
Apple is doing housecleaning throughout the business (dumping its rambling Apple Car plans, amongst others) as it tries to refocus on building markets, not fripperies. Apple’s been cruising for some time now with no clear strategy on where to go next, and squandering much of the inertia it had previously built up, so hopefully (for them) this is a sign that the lessons taught to it by Steve Jobs 2.0 are once again back in play, before they sleepwalk into replicating the mistakes of late 80s and early 90s Apple.
In other words, Sal’s sacking is not personal, just business, and a reflection on his professional performance as a Product Manager who failed to sell any new product to any new customers, not on the man himself. As I’ve said elsewhere: Lovely bloke, heart in the right place, couldn’t manage a pissup in a brewery.
Next month, when Sal’s licked his wounds and [hopefully] thinking on how to move forward, I’m going to contact him proposing a targeted proactive plan that gives us, the users, the best chance of nudging Automation in the direction that will serve all our interests—your, mine, Apple’s, and the other 98% of computing users (from your grannie to the Swiftiest developer) who after 20 years are still so locked out of all this power and potential that they don’t even realize what exists, never mind what it could do for them too.
I’ve already put forth a plan to the AppleScript community on what we can do to get Apple’s attention (protip: change.org whining won’t cut it; Apple’s long since done all that math). Some folks agree it is worth pursuing. Jean-Christophe Hellary, who was first to post his own Radar tickets to OpenRadar.appspot.com and let us know he’d done it and where to find them (http://lists.apple.com/archives/applescript-users/2016/Nov/msg00182.html), so everyone else can easily cut-n-paste submit them too. I might’ve applied a slight arm twist, but he’s clearly genuine in his own belief that it’s the best hope we’ve got. So I’ve told him to carry, and I’ll stay out of his way so he can give it his best crack. And I encourage anyone who think his pitch could be further improved on offer him constructive criticisms and suggestions on how to do that (after first duping his tickets, of course!). Everyone has to start learning somewhere (look at how thoroughly I cratered appscript while trying to do that), and Jean-Christophe isn’t hampered by polarizing opions as I am, so he and others like him are the best hope for that.
Otherwise, I am not interested in arguing politics or religion, or who’s in it for herself or whose ego feels unhappy or threatened by change I propose. Cos change is coming regardless—Apple is already on it—and the only two options for everyone else are either get to the front and try help to nudge that jjuggernaut in positive direction, or hide in the back with her fond memories and dying platform, where she can keep on telling herself it’s going to be okay…at least until that ax finally drops.
And that’s me said my bit on that part.
…
I’ll make a separate post later, cos folk are talking about historical record of AppleScript ‘alternatives’ (appscript, SB, JXA, et al) and why they failed so miserably to build huge new Automation markets, cos as one of the culprits I’m best placed to provide details and corrections on that. Plus a bit on the work I’ve already done and am continuing to do to make up for that.
The only other two things I would say are:
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Don’t use childish terms like “Mickeysoft”, because it makes you sound petty and naive, and no grownup decision maker is going to pay attention to that. The name is “Microsoft”. My main client has already happily switched its entire graphics shop onto a virtualized Windows+Adobe setup; it works perfectly well and is an increasingly attractive professional alternative to Apple’s increasingly prosumer platform. (And will become moreso as consumer markets move from Windows to Android, allowing MS to refocus purely on professional users.)
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Let me embarrass Mark in public by asking if he’s thought to trademark “Swift Debugger” yet? Cos I’m already hearing people say they’re really like a ‘script’ editor for Apple’s next up-n-comer (bag of knackers as a decent, accessible language it might be). Gotta be fresh market openings in that—especially if we can give Apple the nudge that’ll let Mark make SD’s already awesome Automation features as shoe-in to #SwiftLang as well!
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The first indication of what a post-Sal automation landscape at Apple looks like:
Exactly as has said in other places: Apple’s business is now centered on iOS. Fascinating. In all likeliness prosumers will slowly move to iPad Pro (or future instances of it) and only developers will stay on Macs, where they don’t really need Applescript, or Automator etc.
And yet in the latest upgrade to Xcode they’ve restored and in some cases expanded AppleScript support.
FWIW, I think the biggest mistake you can make if you want to be an Apple pundit is to treat the company as if it’s a single entity. It was once described to me as a collection of warring fiefdoms, and I suspect that’s as much the case as ever.
Do you have details for Xcode expanded AS support ?
And, I don’t want to be a pundit about anything I just want to get my job done
Xcode 6 & 7 had an old AS dictionary, most of which did nothing. Xcode 8 includes a revamped dictionary. It’s a long way from perfect, but someone’s clearly put in some time – it even includes a couple of examples of use in the dictionary.
If I have learned anything about Apple it is tying to figure out Apple will at best give you a big headache. AppleScript has been left for dead so many times I’m actually not sure how many times its been any more. They never seem to try to kill it but are can be really good at ignoring it.
The first thing I thought when I hear about apple and Workflow is that’s probably why they eliminated Sals position. They just don’t want to develop it in house any more. I would guess they’ll do something with AppleScript if the mood strikes them and they have time.
Bringing scripting to iOS is big news. Apple didn’t spend all that money because they thought scripting is useless. It also brings new opportunities to AppleScripters as well. Scripting iOS is brand new stuff. ASObj-C is also a big deal and Apple keep making small but steady improvements on that.
Bill
There are pointers to loads more speculation here:
Well the work flow page was interesting reading. Although I was surprised when it said “It sounds like Apple was more keen on the accessibility than the automation.” Those 2 are often linked. Scripting often uses things labeled as accessibility to make automation better and the reverse can also be true. It just seemed strange to think of it as one or other but not both.
Bill
A lot of developers are already using cross-platform tools to make iOS apps without macs anyway.
If Apple ported Xcode and the APIs to Linux (Swift is already there), or made it cross-platform, it’s hard to see why they would continue making macs at all in the long-term.
Phil,
Just out of curiosity would you develop software on an iPod? There are many things not suited for iPads. iOS makes a number of haptic compromises to work on a platform that is geared around portability. Being portable makes it a better choice for a lot of social tasks. But there are some things iOS devices are just not good for. I constantly see people using iOS devices giving their device far more attention then Mac OSX Macs. But this is also due in some part to the newness of this type of interface.
It just depends on the user. But it is a lot harder to have 2 different windows open at the same time on an iPad. Almost all my work on computers is done using multiple windows. I compare a lot of stuff, or look at something in one window and take notes in another. There are just too many things to where iOS isn’t a good fit. But there are also a lot of things were iOS is a great fit. Both platforms have their advantages. It isn’t that Mac aren’t bought much any more. People still by a lot of Macs. But Apple sells an insane amount of iPhones and that dwarfs the Mac sales. By itself Mac sales is still enough to be a fortune 500 company.
The long term goals of the entire industry is slowly moving to a completely different kind of computing. Distributed computing is a very different kind of thing. With that the differences in the platforms become irrelevant. Well actually the different kinds of platforms would probably become 1 very different thing. Many companies are working on moving that direction right now. So it would depend on which market force caused a change first if Macs being done away with ever happened.
But as other things become more intelligent and more connectable the less value the computers we have today will be. I think the movement toward distributed computing with intelligent agents is far more like to take out Mac’s then a push toward iOS. But at the same time such a move will almost certainly beef up the power of a cell phone because they are build to be portable. But this subject is to big to get into in a post. Whole books are written about this stuff, many, many books.
Ok so now can imagine iOS not replacing Macs
Bill
Sorry. Bill. I think you entirely missed my point.
Nobody except a masochist is going to try to write an app on iOS.
My point was that you don’t need a mac to write apps for iOS. There are already cross-platform IDEs that work on Windows and LInux machines.
If Apple actually created their own cross-platform development version of Xcode, they wouldn’t need to make macs anymore (if the premise is: the only people that would buy macs are developers).
Sal appeared on the Mac Power User’s podcast.
Thanks. I feel better. Sal had nice things to say about Script Debugger and Shane.
Very cool!
That was a great episode.
Never heard him speak before. He sounds like Bob Odenkirk in Better Call Saul.
He definitely sounds like he looks