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Note that this shortcut was built by someone who is a lawyer and had only minor experience with "scripts for macOS in the past". It's great to see Apple buildin

Note that this shortcut was built by someone who is a lawyer and had only minor experience with "scripts for macOS in the past". It's great to see Apple building technologies for this audience on the iPhone like they have with Automator on macOS.

gdubs 8y ago
In the early days of personal computing, things like AppleScript, HyperCard, and Basic, were used by the typical computer user. Computer users were rather self-selected, had invested a lot of money to own a computer, and generally bought into the promise of computing as a “bicycle for the mind.” The iPhone opened the floodgates, bringing TONS of people to computing for the first time, and it resulted in a shift from computing as a creation medium, to one of consumption. It’s interesting to see it start to come full circle. It’s taken about a decade, but something that used to be mainstream in computing (programming your machine to do something interesting interesting / useful) is on the cusp of becoming mainstream once more.
- Illniyar 8y ago
  The iPhone is responsible for many things but "bringing tons of people to computing for the first time" is probably not one of them. The vast majority of iPhone users have a computer, it was even more prevalent in 2007 when the first iPhone came out, and was a luxury gadget that was mostly purchased by technology minded and wealthy people - a group who were vastly more likely to own home computers.
  - alwillis 8y ago
    I see plenty of young people with iPhones who aren’t wealthy and because I work in education, I can tell you many of them don’t have computers at home. If there’s a computer at home, it may not have broadband. The iPhone is their computer. If a kid needs a traditional computer after school lets out and they live in an urban area, they go to a library or to a community center. I was surprised to see Mac Pros at the main branch of the Boston Public Library this summer for young people to use for media production, for example.
    - emptyfile 8y ago
      "Young poor people" buying 1000$ phones is a strictly American phenomenon.
      - cprecioso 8y ago
        I'm from Spain and I can 100% confirm it is not only in America.
      - alwillis 8y ago
        You’re right about that. Because as long as you have income and your credit isn’t terrible and you pay your monthly bill, you can get an expensive cell phone.
    - Illniyar 8y ago
      In 2015 roughly 85% of households had a laptop or PC[1]. iPhone's marketshare in the U.S. is roughly 40%[2]. Even if you assume that all those without a computer at home have an iPhone at home, that still means that 62.5% of iPhone users have a computer at home, and that's just unthinkable. It should be obvious that the vast majority have iPhone users have computers at home and it's most likely was even more pronounced in 2007. Also, broadband is irrelevant to the discussion. [1]-https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2017/acs/acs-37.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio... [2]-https://www.macrumors.com/2017/04/20/iphone-ownership-all-time-high-us/ https://www.macrumors.com/2017/04/20/iphone-ownership-all-ti...
      - gdubs 8y ago
        You’re comparing household statistics to individuals. Plus, totally anecdotal, but even if every house in the 90s had a PC (and it was really more like 40% around 1997), they weren’t used anywhere remotely like the TV in the household was. Like, a couple of teenagers maybe spent all day on it, and everyone had the tech savvy aunt or uncle, but it just was nothing like today where it’s typical to see grandma and grandpa FaceTiming.
        8y ago
  - gdubs 8y ago
    Outside of certain demographics you just don’t see people staring into their computers in line at the bakery, on the subway platform, at dinner, at the grocery store. Television remained a dominant media deep into the penetration of the personal computer with people spending hours and hours watching every day. Again, outside certain demographics, this just wasn’t the experience of most people with respect to computers. For me and my friends, yes - we spend all day on our computers. Most didn’t. Today, people are glued to their smartphones. I’m not saying that literally everyone owns an iPhone, either. What I am saying is that smartphone adoption hit an inflection point with the iPhone - heading upwards into the stratosphere. When you look at the concepts people had for what an Apple phone might look like pre-iphone, no one was prepared for what was coming.
- entropy_ 8y ago
  The iPhone definitely did not definitely did not bring tons of people to computing for the first time. By the time the iPhone came out PCs and laptops were pretty much in every home anyway. Let me put it this way, I live in a third world country(Lebanon), and the first time we had a computer at home was in 1996(11 years before the iPhone), and by that point most of my friends in school already had a PC at home. We were not wealthy by any measure(more like lower to middle class at the time). The iPhone did many things, but that is not one of them. No, what brought computing to the masses was Windows and cheap computers(around the time of the 486~pentium era). While I agree that nowadays it's common for a child's first interaction with computers to be a smartphone, this was definitely not the case when the iPhone was first introduced in 2007 and access to computers was already quite common and cheap everywhere around the world
  - gdubs 8y ago
    Access != adoption. Even if every house had a PC, it doesn’t mean everyone in that house used it. Today it’s not uncommon for every person in the house to have their own smartphone. And they use them on levels rivaling television at its peak — hours and hours a day. And it includes the grandmas, grandpas, aunts and uncles who wouldn’t even touch the PC. The iPhone and the smartphone era it ushered in a seismic shift in society, is that not obvious? Something like 2 billion smartphone users globally today, roughly a decade from the iPhone introduction. In the late 90s PC users measured in the millions.
    - slededit 8y ago
      Kids used their PCs to write homework assignments. Parents used it to print out directions from map quest. The iPhone likely dramatically increased the frequency of use but PC penetration was near universal by the late 2000s. FWIW my grandpa and most others at the retirement home use a dumb phone.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > In the late 90s PC users measured in the millions. In the late 1990s, internet users (which, as the smartphone revolution hadn't happened, were largely a subset of PC users) were in the hundreds of millions and doubling roughly annually, though that slowed dramatically around 2000, but still was rapid enough to reach over a billion before the iPhone was introduced. The smartphone revolution did a lot, but even so your are way overstating it.
- meatsock 8y ago
  what is the hypercard of the iphone
  - taneq 8y ago
    Html5

gdubs 8y ago

In the early days of personal computing, things like AppleScript, HyperCard, and Basic, were used by the typical computer user. Computer users were rather self-selected, had invested a lot of money to own a computer, and generally bought into the promise of computing as a “bicycle for the mind.” The iPhone opened the floodgates, bringing TONS of people to computing for the first time, and it resulted in a shift from computing as a creation medium, to one of consumption. It’s interesting to see it start to come full circle. It’s taken about a decade, but something that used to be mainstream in computing (programming your machine to do something interesting interesting / useful) is on the cusp of becoming mainstream once more.

Illniyar 8y ago
The iPhone is responsible for many things but "bringing tons of people to computing for the first time" is probably not one of them. The vast majority of iPhone users have a computer, it was even more prevalent in 2007 when the first iPhone came out, and was a luxury gadget that was mostly purchased by technology minded and wealthy people - a group who were vastly more likely to own home computers.
- alwillis 8y ago
  I see plenty of young people with iPhones who aren’t wealthy and because I work in education, I can tell you many of them don’t have computers at home. If there’s a computer at home, it may not have broadband. The iPhone is their computer. If a kid needs a traditional computer after school lets out and they live in an urban area, they go to a library or to a community center. I was surprised to see Mac Pros at the main branch of the Boston Public Library this summer for young people to use for media production, for example.
  - emptyfile 8y ago
    "Young poor people" buying 1000$ phones is a strictly American phenomenon.
    - cprecioso 8y ago
      I'm from Spain and I can 100% confirm it is not only in America.
    - alwillis 8y ago
      You’re right about that. Because as long as you have income and your credit isn’t terrible and you pay your monthly bill, you can get an expensive cell phone.
  - Illniyar 8y ago
    In 2015 roughly 85% of households had a laptop or PC[1]. iPhone's marketshare in the U.S. is roughly 40%[2]. Even if you assume that all those without a computer at home have an iPhone at home, that still means that 62.5% of iPhone users have a computer at home, and that's just unthinkable. It should be obvious that the vast majority have iPhone users have computers at home and it's most likely was even more pronounced in 2007. Also, broadband is irrelevant to the discussion. [1]-https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2017/acs/acs-37.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio... [2]-https://www.macrumors.com/2017/04/20/iphone-ownership-all-time-high-us/ https://www.macrumors.com/2017/04/20/iphone-ownership-all-ti...
    - gdubs 8y ago
      You’re comparing household statistics to individuals. Plus, totally anecdotal, but even if every house in the 90s had a PC (and it was really more like 40% around 1997), they weren’t used anywhere remotely like the TV in the household was. Like, a couple of teenagers maybe spent all day on it, and everyone had the tech savvy aunt or uncle, but it just was nothing like today where it’s typical to see grandma and grandpa FaceTiming.
      - 8y ago
- gdubs 8y ago
  Outside of certain demographics you just don’t see people staring into their computers in line at the bakery, on the subway platform, at dinner, at the grocery store. Television remained a dominant media deep into the penetration of the personal computer with people spending hours and hours watching every day. Again, outside certain demographics, this just wasn’t the experience of most people with respect to computers. For me and my friends, yes - we spend all day on our computers. Most didn’t. Today, people are glued to their smartphones. I’m not saying that literally everyone owns an iPhone, either. What I am saying is that smartphone adoption hit an inflection point with the iPhone - heading upwards into the stratosphere. When you look at the concepts people had for what an Apple phone might look like pre-iphone, no one was prepared for what was coming.
entropy_ 8y ago
The iPhone definitely did not definitely did not bring tons of people to computing for the first time. By the time the iPhone came out PCs and laptops were pretty much in every home anyway. Let me put it this way, I live in a third world country(Lebanon), and the first time we had a computer at home was in 1996(11 years before the iPhone), and by that point most of my friends in school already had a PC at home. We were not wealthy by any measure(more like lower to middle class at the time). The iPhone did many things, but that is not one of them. No, what brought computing to the masses was Windows and cheap computers(around the time of the 486~pentium era). While I agree that nowadays it's common for a child's first interaction with computers to be a smartphone, this was definitely not the case when the iPhone was first introduced in 2007 and access to computers was already quite common and cheap everywhere around the world
- gdubs 8y ago
  Access != adoption. Even if every house had a PC, it doesn’t mean everyone in that house used it. Today it’s not uncommon for every person in the house to have their own smartphone. And they use them on levels rivaling television at its peak — hours and hours a day. And it includes the grandmas, grandpas, aunts and uncles who wouldn’t even touch the PC. The iPhone and the smartphone era it ushered in a seismic shift in society, is that not obvious? Something like 2 billion smartphone users globally today, roughly a decade from the iPhone introduction. In the late 90s PC users measured in the millions.
  - slededit 8y ago
    Kids used their PCs to write homework assignments. Parents used it to print out directions from map quest. The iPhone likely dramatically increased the frequency of use but PC penetration was near universal by the late 2000s. FWIW my grandpa and most others at the retirement home use a dumb phone.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > In the late 90s PC users measured in the millions. In the late 1990s, internet users (which, as the smartphone revolution hadn't happened, were largely a subset of PC users) were in the hundreds of millions and doubling roughly annually, though that slowed dramatically around 2000, but still was rapid enough to reach over a billion before the iPhone was introduced. The smartphone revolution did a lot, but even so your are way overstating it.
meatsock 8y ago
what is the hypercard of the iphone
- taneq 8y ago
  Html5