10 ms·

AppleScript, the perfect adjunct to iTunes: An open letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook

94 points by davidbarker 10y ago

dahdum 10y ago
AppleScript and other user automation are pro features. They've steadily moved away from that market so I think it's unsurprising if it were retired / abandoned.
- aikah 10y ago
  AppleScript certainly doesn't feel like a language for "pro". It feels like a language for people that can't learn regular computer languages. The irony is a language with a small syntax is easier to learn than something that tries to mimic real languages.
hashkb 10y ago
OP understands the argument is about user freedom and wants Apple to act to preserve it? Really? #wrongtree
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
Apple, can you sink no lower? Even MS has this one figured out. I guess I'm just pissed because Apple's stuff used to be so good, in so many ways. Heck, I was raised on OS9, and later OSX (both PPC and Intel): I couldn't stand Windows, and was an Apple fanatic for years, viewing even Linux is a worse alternative. I only fell into the Linux thing because I was building my own computer, and no way in hell was I installing Windows on it (Yes, really: And what a faithful decision it was). And now... Jeez. What a mess. Seriously, Apple. Up your game.
- CalChris 10y ago
  I don't think Apple needs to up its game. I think it needs to put some of the gray hairs out to pasture. If I see another video of Jony Ive looking soulfully into the camera telling me that I really really don't need USB and MagSafe because the future ... Love my SE. Love my Mid 2014 MBP. Don't need a watch.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    Oh yes. Speaking of which, have you seen CH's videos mocking this? They're quite funny, especially the one on the iPhone 7: Apple: Johnny giveth, and Johnny taketh away.
    - DashRattlesnake 10y ago
      Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgBDdDdSqNE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgBDdDdSqNE
- vlunkr 10y ago
  Well, this article is basically all speculation, so I wouldn't complain yet.
- simonh 10y ago
  I don't believe it's all over for Application automation on the Mac. Final Cut Pro X and recent updates to iWork apps have all included system automation hooks. This was one of the concerns with the recent rewrites of their apps, that automation would get deprecated, but in reality that hasn't happened. It's always a worth these days, which is disappointing that it's even a concern, but it's not all over yet. On the bright side, at least OSX has a single standard application automation system that still has decent support. For all the moaning about Apple closing up their platform, arguably OSX still has a far more capable and better supported application automation story than Linux. That's one advantage of a centrally planned platform that has actually delivered benefits to users.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    Better automation than a system where most serious applications expose all functionality to the command line? You've got to be kidding. Better supported, more consistant, yes. But more capable? I doubt it.
    - hhas01 10y ago
      Can Linux command line do this? https://twitter.com/hhas01/status/793853777111646213 https://twitter.com/hhas01/status/793853777111646213 Message passing vs streams. Both powerful, valuable technologies, but optimized for different problem spaces IMO.
Osmium 10y ago
All we can do is guess, but maybe they're retiring AppleScript specifically, rather than automation support generally? Yosemite added JavaScript for Automation (JXA)[1]. Very few people actually enjoy writing AppleScript, I think most see it as a noble but failed experiment in human-language syntax. Perhaps this is just a sign that Apple's removing AppleScript altogether in favour of JavaScript? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7862973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7862973
- mmastrac 10y ago
  I'd be very happy to see AppleScript retired in favour of JavaScript. The pseudo-english syntax has always been painful. It might have been reasonable with a good IDE, but I have never found one that can tell me how to write what I want to write.
  - peterburkimsher 10y ago
    JavaScript is not AppleScript. JavaScript is only useful with dozens of libraries imported, and they introduce their own quirky syntax (I'm looking at you, JQuery). JavaScript can't "do shell script" (even PHP can do exec). JavaScript can't read and write files. JavaScript can't read the selection in one program, pull data from another program, and merge it in with something on the clipboard to piece together what you're actually wanting. JavaScript can't handle unicode to my satisfaction. Even escaping strings is a pain. AppleScript's string manipulation is so clean. Regex that would be very complicated to put together without a trip to StackOverflow is translated into something super easy ("every word of last paragraph").
    - adrianmalacoda 10y ago
      JavaScript can do whatever the environment lets it do. Obviously browser based JavaScript is extremely limited but JavaScript running outside of a browser (e.g. on a server, or in a desktop application) can and does do all of those things you say it can't do. It's been a long time since I've ever done any AppleScript so I can't really compare, but it does seem like the JXA environment can do any of those things, since it has an Objective-C bridge[0]. [0] https://developer.apple.com/library/content/releasenotes/InterapplicationCommunication/RN-JavaScriptForAutomation/Articles/OSX10-10.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40014508-CH109-SW1 https://developer.apple.com/library/content/releasenotes/Int...
dangero 10y ago
Part of how Microsoft got into a bad spot was refusing to end-of-life anything. The hardest choice in making products is what not to build and what to take away. Apple cannot maintain an infinite number of components, so I find this type of argument unconvincing. If this feature is so important I need to see numbers. How many people are using it? The thing is, Apple probably already knows this from system analytics and they know that they are better off putting 50 engineers on facetime and zero on this. If you want to argue a feature is important, show me numbers. They cannot please everyone.
- ddebernardy 10y ago
  But they can please the right type of people. You know, the users who talk about your product all day long to anyone you asks and end up bringing all of their relatives onboard. You want those too, and raw numbers won't let you know who they are.
  - dangero 10y ago
    It's a fair point. Not all users are equal but I'm very unconvinced by this user's issue because there are a million little oddball use cases out there and Apple does not solve those for everyone. The only issue here is that they used to solve this issue for this user and now they are maybe taking it away.
    - foobarian 10y ago
      If they can mess with swipe to unlock and make my kid cry then really anything is on the table and we just have to adapt.
      - Ar-Curunir 10y ago
        "Have to adapt"? There's choice in the market, you know? I'm pretty happy with my Nexus 6P, for instance.
        10y ago
nemo 10y ago
So long as OSA sticks around, it'd be hard to shed a tear over AppleScript - you can use saner languages to do everything Applescript does through OSA. AppleScript is a complete abomination of a language. Killing OSA would be a terrible idea though. Not enough information to really know what's happening, regardless.
based2 10y ago
Bring us back another HyperWebCard with a born again ResEdit.
- kkylin 10y ago
  Second that! Like many (almost all?) others, I find AppleScript the language really painful to use. As I recall HyperTalk was similarly laden with unnecessary syntactic sugar, but the HyperCard environment was so much fun to use that I really did not mind the language.
  - watersb 10y ago
    I really enjoyed working in HyperCard, HyperTalk 2.0 -- but never felt that way about AppleScript. I don't know why, exactly. Perhaps it was that HyperCard defined a domain. Applying the same primitives to every app could get clumsy. A hand-waving example: making every useful procedure a function hanging off of a single Window object. Except for the two functions that are actually in the Application object... (I don't have specific example at the moment but this sort of thing was discouraging for me.)
    - kkylin 10y ago
      I think what was fun about HyperCard was that it was not purely textual -- a lot of the work (and fun) in building a stack was graphical. AppleScript seems more like a traditional programming language, but with syntax I have a hard time remembering (only use it very occasionally) and a lot of extra typing.
- astrodust 10y ago
  A workable Hypercard on iPad would be nice, but who's stepping up?
  - simonh 10y ago
    That would be Novocard[0]. It has a stack based metaphor and uses a superset of a JavaScript. I've not used it myself as Im a Pythonista fan. [0] http://plectrum.com/novocard/NovoCard.html http://plectrum.com/novocard/NovoCard.html
lostgame 10y ago
Literally the only thing I'd improve about this article is that I wish they'd not be so 'iTunes-specific'. AppleScript is beyond useful for just iTunes - back in the 10.4/10.5 days, I used to use AppleScript for some pretty interesting things, including modifying the 'Extras.rsrc' file to perform some interesting functions like colouring windows and changing font files that OS X simply didn't support at the time. I also recall making an AppleScript that did some other OS/GUI-level modification, such as choosing to have my icons at the left side rather than the right on the desktop (coming from Windows this was rather annoying)...it's an incredibly powerful and useful tool when utilized correctly and I sincerely hope Apple keeps it around. EDIT: Damn, I looked around to find that old 'Cloak' program but it looks like macthemes.net has been gone for a long time...makes sense since there's no real 'scene' for that anymore as it's all dynamically-generated now :/
- duckarmada 10y ago
  Hell, at my last gig, we used AppleScript to build custom DMGs. No doubt there are probably easier ways to go about it, but we didn't need a GUI and the end result was consistent.
jkaptur 10y ago
I'm not an expert, but it seems like there's at least some separation between AppleScript (the programming language), Automator (the visual IDE), and the Open Scripting Architecture (the language-agnostic framework that actually interacts with the OS and applications). Does anyone know if it's possible to either build open-source clones of Applescript and Automator? I can see why Apple would be leery of supporting a team of people to support those, but maintaining and supporting the OSA seems to bring a broad set of benefits.
toyg 10y ago
They have also just killed wifi routers, which likely means Time Machine is also living on borrowed time (clearly it's all going to iCloud very soon). At least this should free them to focus on their real revenue generators: dongles and "jet white" phones.
Animats 10y ago
You want to script iTunes? That's such a niche usage that it's surprising Apple allows it at all. ITunes is for content consumption.
- osi 10y ago
  did you read the article? scripting itunes is for curating the consumption library.
- adiabatty 10y ago
  I was going to say what I use Automator for in iTunes, but then I read the article and what the author does is pretty much the same thing as what I do.
ethanpil 10y ago
LOL. He writes "You see, it’s all about freedom. Freedom to do things we want that Apple doesn’t think we need to be able to do." Apple was never about freedom. Apple has always been about control. They take freedom and control away from consumers to deliver a "better experience" and charge a premium for it. If you don't align with Apple's vision, you are always SOL. Their whole business model is built on a gamble that they know better then everyone else. no Floppy, iPhone, iPad, no headphone jack... (although the headphone jack is probably a bust)
- barbs 10y ago
  Exactly. If he seriously cared about freedom he'd be using an open-source operating system.
  - roblabla 10y ago
    You can give user freedom to customize the OS in a closed source system TBH. Look at World of Warcraft. The interface can be customized to the user's need, yet WoW isn't open source. And macos is based on an open source Kernel (darwin), and does a lot of open source stuff in general.
    - the_duke 10y ago
      Of course a closed source system can be very customizable, but as OP noted, Apple has never been about freedom of choice. Their whole business model is about locking you in to their products. They are not the only ones who do this, of course. But I also had to actually laugh out loud when I read the whole "it's about freedom" paragraph. The Apple ecosystem is the wrong mothership if you care about these things.
- fossuser 10y ago
  Yep - and this model generally works because when it comes down to it choice sucks. I'd rather have a high quality thing with good defaults than a thousand different things to choose from. Ultimately the best would be a combination where you have high quality software with sane defaults that also allows a power user to make changes when necessary, but in practice it's hard to do both without tradeoffs that cause you to end up with neither. This doesn't mean I don't like playing around with linux or that everything Apple does is high quality (looking at you Apple Music), but generally reducing choices a user is required to make is a good thing.
chiph 10y ago
I would think that if they're getting ready to introduce a replacement technology ("SwiftScript" maybe?) they wouldn't let go their expert on the old tech just yet.
- spdegabrielle 10y ago
  Just Swift I hope. I'd guess it more likely that scripting was dropped alltogether as the number of users of AppleScript is probably under 1%.
guelo 10y ago
The concept of a general computer is under attack by Apple, Google and Microsoft because consumers don't care and would ultimately prefer an appliance over a general computer. I think it means that the future of general computers will increasingly be relegated to open systems, namely Linux.
- simonh 10y ago
  They're not attacking anything, they're just presenting an alternative. Nobody is trying to take away your Linux distribution.
  - guelo 10y ago
    Maybe attacking was the wrong word. Apple and Microsoft, at least, have historically produced general computers but they're moving away from that as computers move more and more from the domain of us nerds to an everyday appliance involved in all aspects of our lives.
todd8 10y ago
Next year I will have been programming for half a century; in this time I've used a few dozen languages (counting things like awk, m4, and SQL in addition to ordinary programming languages). AppleScript has to be near my least favorite language. It's so called natural language syntax is verbose, unintuitive, and ambiguous to me. Almost any real programming language would be better: bash, python, Lua, JavaScript, tcl, ruby, whatever. AppleScript seems to be a valiant effort to design a language for non-programmers, but the English like syntax just adds complexity to writing even simple programs. See Dijkstra's take on "natural language" programming[1]. [1] https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD667.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/E...
- tedmiston 10y ago
  You're also not the audience that AppleScript's natural language programming was designed for (similar with Automator). Don't get me wrong, I feel the same pain points, but AppleScript never was a programming language for developers.
  - todd8 10y ago
    Yes you're right. Perhaps something like Automator or even Scratch might work for non-programmers instead of AppleScript. I find both of those quite intuitive (although slower to code in for a trained programmer).
    - seanp2k2 10y ago
      IMO just use Lua as it's easy to embed and well-suited for the task of ad-hoc scripting. There's also a large community and plenty of library support to help get weird interactions working.
  - CountSessine 10y ago
    I think its a lot worse than this though; it isn't realistically a language for anyone. Anyone working on almost any task in Applescript is going to be frustrated. In particular, just the ambiguities in the language for doing simple queries on containers makes writing even simple scripts needlessly painful.
tedmiston 10y ago
> It’s not clear whether the termination of Mr. Soghoian means the demise of AppleScript altogether It's not? It's pretty clear to me… Unfortunately the effectiveness of this argument is lost in the times. The author gets really caught up in metadata, bur we're in a year where Apple just wants you to subscribe to Apple Music and stop managing music files manually. To be clear, I'm not disagreeing with the author, just echoing why I think the argument wasn't effective.
Jimmie_Rustle 10y ago
|You see, it’s all about freedom. I think Apple would disagree with you
graublau 10y ago
Scripting iTunes metadata made sense when Apple wasn't pushing a streaming service.
peterburkimsher 10y ago
AppleScript is my first language. When I was 7 years old I learned a little bit of Logo, but I stopped using it. When I was 13, half my life ago, I taught myself AppleScript. Many of my scripts were for iTunes, but I also expanded to scripting my whole OS. I still use it daily. If there are any comparable programs for Linux, I really want to know. I don't trust Apple's direction, and AppleScript is a killer feature tying me to this platform for now.
vbezhenar 10y ago
AppleScript just needs nice IDE with code snippets, etc. Script Editor is just a bit more than TextEdit and it's not enough. It's interesting language, but it's not used widely, so when you have to use it, you need to remember syntax, etc, and that's much easier with good IDE. I doubt that I would be happier to use Python, because I used it once or twice in my life and I would google for every bit of language anyway.
hhas01 10y ago
Please help us get SwiftAutomation into 10.13 by taking a moment to duplicate the two following Radar tickets (include their rdar:// numbers to help Radar maintainers determine they're dupes), and telling everyone you know to do likewise, and so on: http://openradar.appspot.com/29329704 http://openradar.appspot.com/29329704 http://openradar.appspot.com/29363517 http://openradar.appspot.com/29363517 More duplicate requests = more likely to get Apple's attention. See also: http://lists.apple.com/archives/applescript-users/2016/Nov/msg00182.html http://lists.apple.com/archives/applescript-users/2016/Nov/m...

94 points by davidbarker 10y ago

AppleScript and other user automation are pro features. They've steadily moved away from that market so I think it's unsurprising if it were retired / abandoned.

aikah 10y ago
AppleScript certainly doesn't feel like a language for "pro". It feels like a language for people that can't learn regular computer languages. The irony is a language with a small syntax is easier to learn than something that tries to mimic real languages.

hashkb 10y ago

OP understands the argument is about user freedom and wants Apple to act to preserve it? Really? #wrongtree

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

Apple, can you sink no lower? Even MS has this one figured out. I guess I'm just pissed because Apple's stuff used to be so good, in so many ways. Heck, I was raised on OS9, and later OSX (both PPC and Intel): I couldn't stand Windows, and was an Apple fanatic for years, viewing even Linux is a worse alternative. I only fell into the Linux thing because I was building my own computer, and no way in hell was I installing Windows on it (Yes, really: And what a faithful decision it was). And now... Jeez. What a mess. Seriously, Apple. Up your game.

CalChris 10y ago
I don't think Apple needs to up its game. I think it needs to put some of the gray hairs out to pasture. If I see another video of Jony Ive looking soulfully into the camera telling me that I really really don't need USB and MagSafe because the future ... Love my SE. Love my Mid 2014 MBP. Don't need a watch.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Oh yes. Speaking of which, have you seen CH's videos mocking this? They're quite funny, especially the one on the iPhone 7: Apple: Johnny giveth, and Johnny taketh away.
  - DashRattlesnake 10y ago
    Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgBDdDdSqNE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgBDdDdSqNE
vlunkr 10y ago
Well, this article is basically all speculation, so I wouldn't complain yet.
simonh 10y ago
I don't believe it's all over for Application automation on the Mac. Final Cut Pro X and recent updates to iWork apps have all included system automation hooks. This was one of the concerns with the recent rewrites of their apps, that automation would get deprecated, but in reality that hasn't happened. It's always a worth these days, which is disappointing that it's even a concern, but it's not all over yet. On the bright side, at least OSX has a single standard application automation system that still has decent support. For all the moaning about Apple closing up their platform, arguably OSX still has a far more capable and better supported application automation story than Linux. That's one advantage of a centrally planned platform that has actually delivered benefits to users.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Better automation than a system where most serious applications expose all functionality to the command line? You've got to be kidding. Better supported, more consistant, yes. But more capable? I doubt it.
  - hhas01 10y ago
    Can Linux command line do this? https://twitter.com/hhas01/status/793853777111646213 https://twitter.com/hhas01/status/793853777111646213 Message passing vs streams. Both powerful, valuable technologies, but optimized for different problem spaces IMO.

Osmium 10y ago

All we can do is guess, but maybe they're retiring AppleScript specifically, rather than automation support generally? Yosemite added JavaScript for Automation (JXA)[1]. Very few people actually enjoy writing AppleScript, I think most see it as a noble but failed experiment in human-language syntax. Perhaps this is just a sign that Apple's removing AppleScript altogether in favour of JavaScript? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7862973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7862973

mmastrac 10y ago
I'd be very happy to see AppleScript retired in favour of JavaScript. The pseudo-english syntax has always been painful. It might have been reasonable with a good IDE, but I have never found one that can tell me how to write what I want to write.
- peterburkimsher 10y ago
  JavaScript is not AppleScript. JavaScript is only useful with dozens of libraries imported, and they introduce their own quirky syntax (I'm looking at you, JQuery). JavaScript can't "do shell script" (even PHP can do exec). JavaScript can't read and write files. JavaScript can't read the selection in one program, pull data from another program, and merge it in with something on the clipboard to piece together what you're actually wanting. JavaScript can't handle unicode to my satisfaction. Even escaping strings is a pain. AppleScript's string manipulation is so clean. Regex that would be very complicated to put together without a trip to StackOverflow is translated into something super easy ("every word of last paragraph").
  - adrianmalacoda 10y ago
    JavaScript can do whatever the environment lets it do. Obviously browser based JavaScript is extremely limited but JavaScript running outside of a browser (e.g. on a server, or in a desktop application) can and does do all of those things you say it can't do. It's been a long time since I've ever done any AppleScript so I can't really compare, but it does seem like the JXA environment can do any of those things, since it has an Objective-C bridge[0]. [0] https://developer.apple.com/library/content/releasenotes/InterapplicationCommunication/RN-JavaScriptForAutomation/Articles/OSX10-10.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40014508-CH109-SW1 https://developer.apple.com/library/content/releasenotes/Int...

dangero 10y ago

Part of how Microsoft got into a bad spot was refusing to end-of-life anything. The hardest choice in making products is what not to build and what to take away. Apple cannot maintain an infinite number of components, so I find this type of argument unconvincing. If this feature is so important I need to see numbers. How many people are using it? The thing is, Apple probably already knows this from system analytics and they know that they are better off putting 50 engineers on facetime and zero on this. If you want to argue a feature is important, show me numbers. They cannot please everyone.

ddebernardy 10y ago
But they can please the right type of people. You know, the users who talk about your product all day long to anyone you asks and end up bringing all of their relatives onboard. You want those too, and raw numbers won't let you know who they are.
- dangero 10y ago
  It's a fair point. Not all users are equal but I'm very unconvinced by this user's issue because there are a million little oddball use cases out there and Apple does not solve those for everyone. The only issue here is that they used to solve this issue for this user and now they are maybe taking it away.
  - foobarian 10y ago
    If they can mess with swipe to unlock and make my kid cry then really anything is on the table and we just have to adapt.
    - Ar-Curunir 10y ago
      "Have to adapt"? There's choice in the market, you know? I'm pretty happy with my Nexus 6P, for instance.
      - 10y ago

nemo 10y ago

So long as OSA sticks around, it'd be hard to shed a tear over AppleScript - you can use saner languages to do everything Applescript does through OSA. AppleScript is a complete abomination of a language. Killing OSA would be a terrible idea though. Not enough information to really know what's happening, regardless.

based2 10y ago

Bring us back another HyperWebCard with a born again ResEdit.

kkylin 10y ago
Second that! Like many (almost all?) others, I find AppleScript the language really painful to use. As I recall HyperTalk was similarly laden with unnecessary syntactic sugar, but the HyperCard environment was so much fun to use that I really did not mind the language.
- watersb 10y ago
  I really enjoyed working in HyperCard, HyperTalk 2.0 -- but never felt that way about AppleScript. I don't know why, exactly. Perhaps it was that HyperCard defined a domain. Applying the same primitives to every app could get clumsy. A hand-waving example: making every useful procedure a function hanging off of a single Window object. Except for the two functions that are actually in the Application object... (I don't have specific example at the moment but this sort of thing was discouraging for me.)
  - kkylin 10y ago
    I think what was fun about HyperCard was that it was not purely textual -- a lot of the work (and fun) in building a stack was graphical. AppleScript seems more like a traditional programming language, but with syntax I have a hard time remembering (only use it very occasionally) and a lot of extra typing.
astrodust 10y ago
A workable Hypercard on iPad would be nice, but who's stepping up?
- simonh 10y ago
  That would be Novocard[0]. It has a stack based metaphor and uses a superset of a JavaScript. I've not used it myself as Im a Pythonista fan. [0] http://plectrum.com/novocard/NovoCard.html http://plectrum.com/novocard/NovoCard.html

lostgame 10y ago

Literally the only thing I'd improve about this article is that I wish they'd not be so 'iTunes-specific'. AppleScript is beyond useful for just iTunes - back in the 10.4/10.5 days, I used to use AppleScript for some pretty interesting things, including modifying the 'Extras.rsrc' file to perform some interesting functions like colouring windows and changing font files that OS X simply didn't support at the time. I also recall making an AppleScript that did some other OS/GUI-level modification, such as choosing to have my icons at the left side rather than the right on the desktop (coming from Windows this was rather annoying)...it's an incredibly powerful and useful tool when utilized correctly and I sincerely hope Apple keeps it around. EDIT: Damn, I looked around to find that old 'Cloak' program but it looks like macthemes.net has been gone for a long time...makes sense since there's no real 'scene' for that anymore as it's all dynamically-generated now :/

duckarmada 10y ago
Hell, at my last gig, we used AppleScript to build custom DMGs. No doubt there are probably easier ways to go about it, but we didn't need a GUI and the end result was consistent.

jkaptur 10y ago

I'm not an expert, but it seems like there's at least some separation between AppleScript (the programming language), Automator (the visual IDE), and the Open Scripting Architecture (the language-agnostic framework that actually interacts with the OS and applications). Does anyone know if it's possible to either build open-source clones of Applescript and Automator? I can see why Apple would be leery of supporting a team of people to support those, but maintaining and supporting the OSA seems to bring a broad set of benefits.

toyg 10y ago

They have also just killed wifi routers, which likely means Time Machine is also living on borrowed time (clearly it's all going to iCloud very soon). At least this should free them to focus on their real revenue generators: dongles and "jet white" phones.

Animats 10y ago

You want to script iTunes? That's such a niche usage that it's surprising Apple allows it at all. ITunes is for content consumption.

osi 10y ago
did you read the article? scripting itunes is for curating the consumption library.
adiabatty 10y ago
I was going to say what I use Automator for in iTunes, but then I read the article and what the author does is pretty much the same thing as what I do.

ethanpil 10y ago

LOL. He writes "You see, it’s all about freedom. Freedom to do things we want that Apple doesn’t think we need to be able to do." Apple was never about freedom. Apple has always been about control. They take freedom and control away from consumers to deliver a "better experience" and charge a premium for it. If you don't align with Apple's vision, you are always SOL. Their whole business model is built on a gamble that they know better then everyone else. no Floppy, iPhone, iPad, no headphone jack... (although the headphone jack is probably a bust)

barbs 10y ago
Exactly. If he seriously cared about freedom he'd be using an open-source operating system.
- roblabla 10y ago
  You can give user freedom to customize the OS in a closed source system TBH. Look at World of Warcraft. The interface can be customized to the user's need, yet WoW isn't open source. And macos is based on an open source Kernel (darwin), and does a lot of open source stuff in general.
  - the_duke 10y ago
    Of course a closed source system can be very customizable, but as OP noted, Apple has never been about freedom of choice. Their whole business model is about locking you in to their products. They are not the only ones who do this, of course. But I also had to actually laugh out loud when I read the whole "it's about freedom" paragraph. The Apple ecosystem is the wrong mothership if you care about these things.
fossuser 10y ago
Yep - and this model generally works because when it comes down to it choice sucks. I'd rather have a high quality thing with good defaults than a thousand different things to choose from. Ultimately the best would be a combination where you have high quality software with sane defaults that also allows a power user to make changes when necessary, but in practice it's hard to do both without tradeoffs that cause you to end up with neither. This doesn't mean I don't like playing around with linux or that everything Apple does is high quality (looking at you Apple Music), but generally reducing choices a user is required to make is a good thing.

chiph 10y ago

I would think that if they're getting ready to introduce a replacement technology ("SwiftScript" maybe?) they wouldn't let go their expert on the old tech just yet.

spdegabrielle 10y ago
Just Swift I hope. I'd guess it more likely that scripting was dropped alltogether as the number of users of AppleScript is probably under 1%.

guelo 10y ago

The concept of a general computer is under attack by Apple, Google and Microsoft because consumers don't care and would ultimately prefer an appliance over a general computer. I think it means that the future of general computers will increasingly be relegated to open systems, namely Linux.

simonh 10y ago
They're not attacking anything, they're just presenting an alternative. Nobody is trying to take away your Linux distribution.
- guelo 10y ago
  Maybe attacking was the wrong word. Apple and Microsoft, at least, have historically produced general computers but they're moving away from that as computers move more and more from the domain of us nerds to an everyday appliance involved in all aspects of our lives.

todd8 10y ago

Next year I will have been programming for half a century; in this time I've used a few dozen languages (counting things like awk, m4, and SQL in addition to ordinary programming languages). AppleScript has to be near my least favorite language. It's so called natural language syntax is verbose, unintuitive, and ambiguous to me. Almost any real programming language would be better: bash, python, Lua, JavaScript, tcl, ruby, whatever. AppleScript seems to be a valiant effort to design a language for non-programmers, but the English like syntax just adds complexity to writing even simple programs. See Dijkstra's take on "natural language" programming[1]. [1] https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD667.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/E...

tedmiston 10y ago
You're also not the audience that AppleScript's natural language programming was designed for (similar with Automator). Don't get me wrong, I feel the same pain points, but AppleScript never was a programming language for developers.
- todd8 10y ago
  Yes you're right. Perhaps something like Automator or even Scratch might work for non-programmers instead of AppleScript. I find both of those quite intuitive (although slower to code in for a trained programmer).
  - seanp2k2 10y ago
    IMO just use Lua as it's easy to embed and well-suited for the task of ad-hoc scripting. There's also a large community and plenty of library support to help get weird interactions working.
- CountSessine 10y ago
  I think its a lot worse than this though; it isn't realistically a language for anyone. Anyone working on almost any task in Applescript is going to be frustrated. In particular, just the ambiguities in the language for doing simple queries on containers makes writing even simple scripts needlessly painful.

tedmiston 10y ago

> It’s not clear whether the termination of Mr. Soghoian means the demise of AppleScript altogether It's not? It's pretty clear to me… Unfortunately the effectiveness of this argument is lost in the times. The author gets really caught up in metadata, bur we're in a year where Apple just wants you to subscribe to Apple Music and stop managing music files manually. To be clear, I'm not disagreeing with the author, just echoing why I think the argument wasn't effective.

Jimmie_Rustle 10y ago

|You see, it’s all about freedom. I think Apple would disagree with you

graublau 10y ago

Scripting iTunes metadata made sense when Apple wasn't pushing a streaming service.

peterburkimsher 10y ago

AppleScript is my first language. When I was 7 years old I learned a little bit of Logo, but I stopped using it. When I was 13, half my life ago, I taught myself AppleScript. Many of my scripts were for iTunes, but I also expanded to scripting my whole OS. I still use it daily. If there are any comparable programs for Linux, I really want to know. I don't trust Apple's direction, and AppleScript is a killer feature tying me to this platform for now.

vbezhenar 10y ago

AppleScript just needs nice IDE with code snippets, etc. Script Editor is just a bit more than TextEdit and it's not enough. It's interesting language, but it's not used widely, so when you have to use it, you need to remember syntax, etc, and that's much easier with good IDE. I doubt that I would be happier to use Python, because I used it once or twice in my life and I would google for every bit of language anyway.

hhas01 10y ago

Please help us get SwiftAutomation into 10.13 by taking a moment to duplicate the two following Radar tickets (include their rdar:// numbers to help Radar maintainers determine they're dupes), and telling everyone you know to do likewise, and so on: http://openradar.appspot.com/29329704 http://openradar.appspot.com/29329704 http://openradar.appspot.com/29363517 http://openradar.appspot.com/29363517 More duplicate requests = more likely to get Apple's attention. See also: http://lists.apple.com/archives/applescript-users/2016/Nov/msg00182.html http://lists.apple.com/archives/applescript-users/2016/Nov/m...