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 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.
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.
It's pretty obvious that automation for non-developers is not a priority at Apple.
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.
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!