6 ms·

On the other hand, Testflight has a pretty good acquisition story. It got "merged into main" and is now a first class citizen of the iOS development ecosystem.

On the other hand, Testflight has a pretty good acquisition story. It got "merged into main" and is now a first class citizen of the iOS development ecosystem. Workflow being acquired and turning into Shortcuts is a pretty successful outcome IMHO. Beats still continues to make slightly cheaper headphones. FoundationDB is still there. Apart from Dark Sky, what other products with users has Apple acquired and shut down? Being acquired by Apple doesn't seem to be the obvious death knell that it is for other companies.

kstrauser 2y ago
I wish every acquisition improved the end product as much as Workflow's did. All Apple's OSes got better for embracing it. I can write and have written AppleScript things, but Shortcuts is a vastly more convenient UX for the things it's good at.
- azinman2 2y ago
  What do you use it for?
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    Let's see, I have 157 shortcuts defined at the moment. That wasn't due to some mass effort, just a bunch of little things that accumulated over time. I have one shortcut that shares the song I'm currently listening to in Apple Music to Mastodon. I use iA Writer for my work notes, and another shortcut creates a new note with today's date with wiki links to yesterday's and tomorrow's notes. (I use that one with Keyboard Maestro: if I'm in iA Writer and press F2, it opens that note (or creates it if it didn't already exist)). One runs on a cron job and copies any new links I've added to GoodLinks to my Pocket account so that it'll sync to my Kobo. Here's one that runs a custom sorting script on my OmniFocus projects. This one dims my office lights; I use Keyboard Maestro (again) to link it to one of the buttons on my Stream Deck. Basically, for me it's the equivalent of shell scripting for GUI apps. I wouldn't want to write a whole app with it, but for quick and dirty automation jobs it's terrific.
  - xnyan 2y ago
    I have tons that solve small annoyances or paper over things I forget. As an example, I listen to an audiobook in audible many nights to sleep, but I often forget to set the sleep timer. Very annoying to have to scrub back hours to find the last thing you remember. I have a shortcut that activates when my iphone is in sleep focus that automatically sets the audible sleep timer for me. It's a little thing, but it's a great quality of life improvement and eliminates my need to think about sleep timers.
  - 0x38B 2y ago
    Some of my favorite Shortcuts do things like: - toggle the white point setting on or off to warm and dim the display for nighttime, - present a menu that makes and displays QR codes for my contact (from vCard text), Wifi info, and more, - turn off Wifi and cellular at the same time (this one's on my homescreen), - upload a .torrent file to qBittorrent's watch folder via SSH. I use Shortcuts at work, too, like sharing a Wifi network with visitors - easier than fiddling with settings and they can take a picture of the QR code to share with others in their party. My favorite and most handy Shortcut took a picture of an order form, OCRed it, applied a regex to find the order #, and finally showed a QR code I could scan with my scanner; This was at a job where customers would come to pick up, and would often have their order email on their phone or as a printout. The Shortcut meant I could snap the photo first thing and then chit-chat in the time it took the Shortcut to run, instead of them passing their phone to me or reading out the number. Shortcuts is one of the things that keeps me on iOS.
    - Cockbrand 2y ago
      > turn off Wifi and cellular at the same time (this one's on my homescreen) Out of curiosity - how is this different from enabling Airplane Mode?
      - potench 2y ago
        Airplane mode leaves WiFi on.
        Cockbrand 2y ago
        Not on my 13 mini w/ iOS 18.1, and I don’t remember WiFi ever staying on when enabling airplane mode. Weird that it seems to be different for different people, though.
        valenceelectron 2y ago
        According to an help article by Apple [1], if you activate wifi or bluetooth during airplane mode, it will remember that and not disable those when you use airplane mode again. I was also surprised reading your comment as for my phone wifi and bluetooth stay on during airplane mode. I must've activated them once and then it just stayed like that ever since. [1] https://support.apple.com/en-my/guide/iphone/iphb771143ee/ios https://support.apple.com/en-my/guide/iphone/iphb771143ee/io...
  - tzs 2y ago
    I've got a few handy Shortcuts. • Turn off a particular smart plug I use this in an automation that runs on my iPad. That automation is set to run when the battery charge goes above 80%. My iPad charger is plugged into that smart plug, so this effectively gives me the 80% charge limit option that so far Apple has only added to the settings for iPhone 15 and 16, iPad Pro (M4), and iPad Air (M2). My iPad is a plain iPad. • A series of shortcuts to control my Denon A/V receiver. My receiver is from 2012, long before voice control was available. It does have network control (and serial port control). I've got a script on an RPi that can use the network control to change inputs, mute/unmute, and change the volume. I've got shortcuts for mute, unmute, various volume levels, and getting the current settings for input, mute, and volume. They work by using the Shortcut action "Run script over SSH" to invoke the script on the RPi. I've got an Amazon Echo Dot next to the Denon, with the line out of the Dot connection to one of the Denon analog inputs. When line out is connected to a Dot the internal speaker is disabled, which makes that Dot useless for things like checking the weather or timers unless the corresponding Denon input is selected, so I've got the mic on the Dot disabled and use an Echo Show in the same room for all those things. The Dot's job is strictly to supply input to the Denon. So let's say I want to listen to some music. I can say "<Apple>, Denon Dot" to switch the input to the Dot. (I'm writing "<Apple>" instead of Apple's phrase to trigger their voice assistant so if anyone ever happens to run this through text to speech it will be less annoying. Similar for Amazon's voice assistant). Then I can say "<Amazon>, on Dot listen to Classical KING FM on Dot" and the echo Show will start the Dot streaming KING FM to the Denon. (It is only actually necessary to say "on Dot" once, but which of the two is necessary occasionally changes, and it is easier to just say it twice). • Open the "OTP Auth" app. That's the app I use for TOTP codes on my iPhone. It supports Apple Watch, but asking Apple's voice assistant on the watch to "open OTP Auth" isn't reliable (maybe...[1]). My first choice alternative to voice would be a widget in the Smart Stack but OTP Auth does not have one. Shortcuts can be put in the Smart Stack. Hence, a Shortcut on the watch that simply launches OTP Auth. [1] I say maybe because that is based on my old Series 4 watch. I recently upgraded to a Series 10. That has on-device Siri, and I've noticed that is way better. It did not occur to me to check of "open OTP Auth" is reliable.
    - tn1 2y ago
      As a fellow 2012 Denon owner (AVR 3313) you can probably remove the RPi and just use HTTP. Just use devtools on your browser to do an action in the web UI and see what request it sends, then replicate it in shortcuts. And there's a internet radio capability built in - you have to pay $20 or so a year for it but it should be easy enough to set up a competing service since it uses unencrypted HTTP - probably just a matter of reimplementing the protocol and then DNS redirect.
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  I think the crucial different is Workflow was targeted at what Apple should have been doing from the start. I see it the same way Karabiner, BarTender or QuickSilver (DropBox?) improve the OS experience in ways the platform owner would ideally could have figured out on their own. Those fundamentally tend to butt against the OS limitations and benefit from becoming a blessed first party utility or feature.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    Bartender sold to some sketchy company. We’ve all been moving to the open source Ice app now.
dbbk 2y ago
I totally forgot TestFlight started out third party
- KoftaBob 2y ago
  As was Siri itself!
gardaani 2y ago
> what other products with users has Apple acquired and shut down? Shake was acquired in 2002 and killed 7 years later.
- xattt 2y ago
  It was wild to see Linux and a Pentium III listed as a supported system on an Apple site in 2004. https://web.archive.org/web/20040613170323/http://www.apple.com/shake/specs.html https://web.archive.org/web/20040613170323/http://www.apple....
  - wut42 2y ago
    Funny how they were selling the Linux version for $2000 more.
    - philistine 2y ago
      OH MY GOD ! I would bet a million bucks that Jobs put that price in because he basically said well if they buy the Linux version we're down one Mac sale from them so charge them our profit margin on a Mac Pro.
      - sgerenser 2y ago
        To be fair, I think they just left the Linux version at the same price it was when they bought it, but greatly reduced the price of the Mac version.
awwstn 2y ago
Shazam is a huge success story!
- jhdias 2y ago
  In what way, specifically for android users?
  - crossroadsguy 2y ago
    In this way https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shazam.android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shazam.and...
    - mh- 2y ago
      For posterity: > 4.8 star / 10.5M reviews > 500M+ Downloads > No data shared with third parties
      - mintplant 2y ago
        It (optionally) integrates with the Apple Music Android app now, and offers to add to your library there whenever you scan a song, so I assume it's a good funnel for them to get people into their service ecosystem.
- madeofpalk 2y ago
  We'll put Shazam in the Filemaker category of continuing to exist, but not really benefiting from Apple.
  - culi 2y ago
    It's built in to Siri though. So Apple benefitted from Shazam. I'd say Apple's Weather app has also significantly benefitted (albeit a bit late) from Dark Sky's acquisition
    - 2y ago
jcheng 2y ago
FingerWorks! I had their iGesture Pad. Although maybe they were on their last legs before the acquisition, and it led to multitouch being everywhere, so great outcome anyway.
- snowwrestler 2y ago
  That iGesture pad was a life saver when I was using a PC at work. I eventually switched to Mac and got used to their trackpad gestures, although I still change the settings to enable 3-finger click-and-drag like the iGesture.
docmars 2y ago
Another controversial one was Lala.com, if I recall right — they shut it down right away, but it had an avid user base. I get why Apple wouldn't want to maintain two music services, so that engineering talent likely got absorbed into iTunes. It's yet another story where the competition was offering something really good / unique, drawing in customers interested in those differentiators, and it ended up disappointing a lot of people getting bought out.
kergonath 2y ago
> Beats still continues to make slightly cheaper headphones. FoundationDB is still there. Final Cut Pro was bought from Macromedia. And Logic from Emagic. And off the top of my head Astarte (iDVD), FileMaker (FileMaker Pro and Bento, though that was originally spun out or Apple in the first place), SoundJam (iTunes), Siri (Siri). All of these were mildly- to hugely-successful products.
- kccqzy 2y ago
  I didn't know iDVD also came from Astarte. But DVD Studio Pro definitely came from Astarte. And then of course it was discontinued.
  - kergonath 2y ago
    You are right: the direct continuity was DVD Studio Pro. iDVD was developed by ex-Astarte people but did not exist before the acquisition.
- troupo 2y ago
  Note how most of them are from the era when Apple cared about software, especially pro software. And how Siri is a barely functioning stagnant service. You'd be hard pressed to find any more recent success stories.
DidYaWipe 2y ago
Shake was a big one. Apple loved to put Lord of the Rings and King Kong on its homepage, but Jobs always seemed pissed that they couldn't dumb Shake down. Artists at Weta, ILM, Etc and others were not about to tolerate a gimped product. Unfortunate side note: Apple was going to open-source Shake, but abandoned the idea after realizing it would face an endless parade of patent trolls if people were able to scour the entire codebase line by line.
generalpf 2y ago
BuddyBuild was acquired by Apple and used for their server CI platform, almost immediately cutting off Android support. That was a shame because it was a great platform for Android builds. https://www.biv.com/news/technology/bye-bye-android-apple-acquires-vancouver-startup-b-8251615 https://www.biv.com/news/technology/bye-bye-android-apple-ac...
dools 2y ago
Same with Workflow/shortcuts

kstrauser 2y ago

I wish every acquisition improved the end product as much as Workflow's did. All Apple's OSes got better for embracing it. I can write and have written AppleScript things, but Shortcuts is a vastly more convenient UX for the things it's good at.

azinman2 2y ago
What do you use it for?
- kstrauser 2y ago
  Let's see, I have 157 shortcuts defined at the moment. That wasn't due to some mass effort, just a bunch of little things that accumulated over time. I have one shortcut that shares the song I'm currently listening to in Apple Music to Mastodon. I use iA Writer for my work notes, and another shortcut creates a new note with today's date with wiki links to yesterday's and tomorrow's notes. (I use that one with Keyboard Maestro: if I'm in iA Writer and press F2, it opens that note (or creates it if it didn't already exist)). One runs on a cron job and copies any new links I've added to GoodLinks to my Pocket account so that it'll sync to my Kobo. Here's one that runs a custom sorting script on my OmniFocus projects. This one dims my office lights; I use Keyboard Maestro (again) to link it to one of the buttons on my Stream Deck. Basically, for me it's the equivalent of shell scripting for GUI apps. I wouldn't want to write a whole app with it, but for quick and dirty automation jobs it's terrific.
- xnyan 2y ago
  I have tons that solve small annoyances or paper over things I forget. As an example, I listen to an audiobook in audible many nights to sleep, but I often forget to set the sleep timer. Very annoying to have to scrub back hours to find the last thing you remember. I have a shortcut that activates when my iphone is in sleep focus that automatically sets the audible sleep timer for me. It's a little thing, but it's a great quality of life improvement and eliminates my need to think about sleep timers.
- 0x38B 2y ago
  Some of my favorite Shortcuts do things like: - toggle the white point setting on or off to warm and dim the display for nighttime, - present a menu that makes and displays QR codes for my contact (from vCard text), Wifi info, and more, - turn off Wifi and cellular at the same time (this one's on my homescreen), - upload a .torrent file to qBittorrent's watch folder via SSH. I use Shortcuts at work, too, like sharing a Wifi network with visitors - easier than fiddling with settings and they can take a picture of the QR code to share with others in their party. My favorite and most handy Shortcut took a picture of an order form, OCRed it, applied a regex to find the order #, and finally showed a QR code I could scan with my scanner; This was at a job where customers would come to pick up, and would often have their order email on their phone or as a printout. The Shortcut meant I could snap the photo first thing and then chit-chat in the time it took the Shortcut to run, instead of them passing their phone to me or reading out the number. Shortcuts is one of the things that keeps me on iOS.
  - Cockbrand 2y ago
    > turn off Wifi and cellular at the same time (this one's on my homescreen) Out of curiosity - how is this different from enabling Airplane Mode?
    - potench 2y ago
      Airplane mode leaves WiFi on.
      - Cockbrand 2y ago
        Not on my 13 mini w/ iOS 18.1, and I don’t remember WiFi ever staying on when enabling airplane mode. Weird that it seems to be different for different people, though.
        valenceelectron 2y ago
        According to an help article by Apple [1], if you activate wifi or bluetooth during airplane mode, it will remember that and not disable those when you use airplane mode again. I was also surprised reading your comment as for my phone wifi and bluetooth stay on during airplane mode. I must've activated them once and then it just stayed like that ever since. [1] https://support.apple.com/en-my/guide/iphone/iphb771143ee/ios https://support.apple.com/en-my/guide/iphone/iphb771143ee/io...
- tzs 2y ago
  I've got a few handy Shortcuts. • Turn off a particular smart plug I use this in an automation that runs on my iPad. That automation is set to run when the battery charge goes above 80%. My iPad charger is plugged into that smart plug, so this effectively gives me the 80% charge limit option that so far Apple has only added to the settings for iPhone 15 and 16, iPad Pro (M4), and iPad Air (M2). My iPad is a plain iPad. • A series of shortcuts to control my Denon A/V receiver. My receiver is from 2012, long before voice control was available. It does have network control (and serial port control). I've got a script on an RPi that can use the network control to change inputs, mute/unmute, and change the volume. I've got shortcuts for mute, unmute, various volume levels, and getting the current settings for input, mute, and volume. They work by using the Shortcut action "Run script over SSH" to invoke the script on the RPi. I've got an Amazon Echo Dot next to the Denon, with the line out of the Dot connection to one of the Denon analog inputs. When line out is connected to a Dot the internal speaker is disabled, which makes that Dot useless for things like checking the weather or timers unless the corresponding Denon input is selected, so I've got the mic on the Dot disabled and use an Echo Show in the same room for all those things. The Dot's job is strictly to supply input to the Denon. So let's say I want to listen to some music. I can say "<Apple>, Denon Dot" to switch the input to the Dot. (I'm writing "<Apple>" instead of Apple's phrase to trigger their voice assistant so if anyone ever happens to run this through text to speech it will be less annoying. Similar for Amazon's voice assistant). Then I can say "<Amazon>, on Dot listen to Classical KING FM on Dot" and the echo Show will start the Dot streaming KING FM to the Denon. (It is only actually necessary to say "on Dot" once, but which of the two is necessary occasionally changes, and it is easier to just say it twice). • Open the "OTP Auth" app. That's the app I use for TOTP codes on my iPhone. It supports Apple Watch, but asking Apple's voice assistant on the watch to "open OTP Auth" isn't reliable (maybe...[1]). My first choice alternative to voice would be a widget in the Smart Stack but OTP Auth does not have one. Shortcuts can be put in the Smart Stack. Hence, a Shortcut on the watch that simply launches OTP Auth. [1] I say maybe because that is based on my old Series 4 watch. I recently upgraded to a Series 10. That has on-device Siri, and I've noticed that is way better. It did not occur to me to check of "open OTP Auth" is reliable.
  - tn1 2y ago
    As a fellow 2012 Denon owner (AVR 3313) you can probably remove the RPi and just use HTTP. Just use devtools on your browser to do an action in the web UI and see what request it sends, then replicate it in shortcuts. And there's a internet radio capability built in - you have to pay $20 or so a year for it but it should be easy enough to set up a competing service since it uses unencrypted HTTP - probably just a matter of reimplementing the protocol and then DNS redirect.
makeitdouble 2y ago
I think the crucial different is Workflow was targeted at what Apple should have been doing from the start. I see it the same way Karabiner, BarTender or QuickSilver (DropBox?) improve the OS experience in ways the platform owner would ideally could have figured out on their own. Those fundamentally tend to butt against the OS limitations and benefit from becoming a blessed first party utility or feature.
- kstrauser 2y ago
  Bartender sold to some sketchy company. We’ve all been moving to the open source Ice app now.

dbbk 2y ago

I totally forgot TestFlight started out third party

KoftaBob 2y ago
As was Siri itself!

gardaani 2y ago

> what other products with users has Apple acquired and shut down? Shake was acquired in 2002 and killed 7 years later.

xattt 2y ago
It was wild to see Linux and a Pentium III listed as a supported system on an Apple site in 2004. https://web.archive.org/web/20040613170323/http://www.apple.com/shake/specs.html https://web.archive.org/web/20040613170323/http://www.apple....
- wut42 2y ago
  Funny how they were selling the Linux version for $2000 more.
  - philistine 2y ago
    OH MY GOD ! I would bet a million bucks that Jobs put that price in because he basically said well if they buy the Linux version we're down one Mac sale from them so charge them our profit margin on a Mac Pro.
    - sgerenser 2y ago
      To be fair, I think they just left the Linux version at the same price it was when they bought it, but greatly reduced the price of the Mac version.

awwstn 2y ago

Shazam is a huge success story!

jhdias 2y ago
In what way, specifically for android users?
- crossroadsguy 2y ago
  In this way https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shazam.android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shazam.and...
  - mh- 2y ago
    For posterity: > 4.8 star / 10.5M reviews > 500M+ Downloads > No data shared with third parties
    - mintplant 2y ago
      It (optionally) integrates with the Apple Music Android app now, and offers to add to your library there whenever you scan a song, so I assume it's a good funnel for them to get people into their service ecosystem.
madeofpalk 2y ago
We'll put Shazam in the Filemaker category of continuing to exist, but not really benefiting from Apple.
- culi 2y ago
  It's built in to Siri though. So Apple benefitted from Shazam. I'd say Apple's Weather app has also significantly benefitted (albeit a bit late) from Dark Sky's acquisition
  - 2y ago

jcheng 2y ago

FingerWorks! I had their iGesture Pad. Although maybe they were on their last legs before the acquisition, and it led to multitouch being everywhere, so great outcome anyway.

snowwrestler 2y ago
That iGesture pad was a life saver when I was using a PC at work. I eventually switched to Mac and got used to their trackpad gestures, although I still change the settings to enable 3-finger click-and-drag like the iGesture.

docmars 2y ago

Another controversial one was Lala.com, if I recall right — they shut it down right away, but it had an avid user base. I get why Apple wouldn't want to maintain two music services, so that engineering talent likely got absorbed into iTunes. It's yet another story where the competition was offering something really good / unique, drawing in customers interested in those differentiators, and it ended up disappointing a lot of people getting bought out.

kergonath 2y ago

> Beats still continues to make slightly cheaper headphones. FoundationDB is still there. Final Cut Pro was bought from Macromedia. And Logic from Emagic. And off the top of my head Astarte (iDVD), FileMaker (FileMaker Pro and Bento, though that was originally spun out or Apple in the first place), SoundJam (iTunes), Siri (Siri). All of these were mildly- to hugely-successful products.

kccqzy 2y ago
I didn't know iDVD also came from Astarte. But DVD Studio Pro definitely came from Astarte. And then of course it was discontinued.
- kergonath 2y ago
  You are right: the direct continuity was DVD Studio Pro. iDVD was developed by ex-Astarte people but did not exist before the acquisition.
troupo 2y ago
Note how most of them are from the era when Apple cared about software, especially pro software. And how Siri is a barely functioning stagnant service. You'd be hard pressed to find any more recent success stories.

DidYaWipe 2y ago

Shake was a big one. Apple loved to put Lord of the Rings and King Kong on its homepage, but Jobs always seemed pissed that they couldn't dumb Shake down. Artists at Weta, ILM, Etc and others were not about to tolerate a gimped product. Unfortunate side note: Apple was going to open-source Shake, but abandoned the idea after realizing it would face an endless parade of patent trolls if people were able to scour the entire codebase line by line.

generalpf 2y ago

BuddyBuild was acquired by Apple and used for their server CI platform, almost immediately cutting off Android support. That was a shame because it was a great platform for Android builds. https://www.biv.com/news/technology/bye-bye-android-apple-acquires-vancouver-startup-b-8251615 https://www.biv.com/news/technology/bye-bye-android-apple-ac...

dools 2y ago

Same with Workflow/shortcuts