Yes, because it is the best code available to do the job. Heck, it’s the only code available”outside OR inside Apple”that’s near-to-production-quality, or ever likely to be, and it’s all but ready to drop in at minimal cost to Apple: just the obligatory auditing, documentation polish, and sticking their own copyrights onto it all.
If anyone’s nose is feeling at all put out: tough. Cos some of you have been AppleScripting even longer than I have, so it’s not like you’ve not had plenty time to do better yourself. And now the future”not of AppleScript but of users’ own right to control their own tools”is on the line, as Apple debates which of its two businesses is worth saving more: its Fortune 100, or its Fortune 1”now Fortune 2, and on its way to relegation if it doesn’t turn around soon. You have Script Editor: you do the math.
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It is not enough to wring hands and wail against a world that is changing. You want to maximize chances of it changing for the better, step up and propose”and even provide”a positive direction in which it may go, and make a convincing business case for it to do so. OUR Radar tickets”thousands of them”will start to build that case:
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AppleScript Standard Library shows there is still a market for improvements to AppleScript.
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SwiftAutomation shows there is a totally untapped market to be found in the fastest growing language in history.
Furthermore, there is solid precedent for my proposition: Python appscript and Ruby appscript were two of the AE bridges Apple considered for inclusion in 10.5”and Apple were the ones who approached me expressing their interest. And maybe if I’d not been asleep at the wheel, it would have gotten included to, and by now there’d be hundreds of thousands of Mac Automators by now, because the Python and Ruby communities are a hundred times the size of the AS community, and a hundred times more enthusiastic and vigorous in rolling up their own sleeves and pitching in to help build them too.
Had I done that, appscript’s 1000 user base could”would”been multiplied 10-, then 100-fold, once it was instantly available, self-sufficient and able to generate its own growth and community, no installation (or me!) required, and officially blessed and supported by the #1 computer company in the world. And not just “scripters”, but Professional Programmers too. And what do those make, aye?
And had I not dropped that unique opportunity on the floor, and not even know till far too late, we wouldn’t be needing this discussion now on how to keep the last thousand users of a moribund, insecure AppleScript from losing even that too. Cos Sal’d be busy at Apple, running his team of dozens; and end-user scripting and automation would be powerful and famous, and extend to and through every part of macOS.and iOS too!
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Not everyone gets a second chance to make up for past failures. Sal had a second and a third. I’m under no illusions: this last Hail Mary is far more likely to fail. It would have had a better chance of success had Sal taken it when I freely offered it a year ago. Now it is also up against the plans and ambitions of hungry young Siri and App Extensions teams to make their own mark on Apple’s internal political and power structures. Which is not done by embracing the failures”or even successes”of their predecessors’ as their own, but by burning all those to ashes, clearing the ground to build their own reputations and empires on top. (Or why d’you think all your favorite shows get canceled at the exact same rate Hollywood TV execs turn over?!)
Getting your foot in the door is the first and hardest step towards clinching the sale. Even a thousand AppleScripters, pulling together now, and descending en masse on Radar all demanding the exact same things, is going to make it blip. That’s all I’m asking from all of you (though if there is more you can do, pitch in!). If Apple takes it, it’s all theirs”code, copyright, right to identify as author; the lot. I don’t want it”I don’t want the responsibility. Look what I did to it last time! Foot in the door; that’s my job done. Then I get to be just another user once more; and others get the (positive!) challenge of building that foundation into their own Great Success.
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Don’t worry, Nigel, your kingly seat atop the AppleScript hill is perfectly secure.from me. From Apple though.
Well, if you can’t even try, then five years from now do not say I did not warn you. (And I’ll put a bottle of whisky on that.)
As for me, I have a few other things to do. Like trying to conquer the Packaging Automation world with the most advanced artwork automation in the world, putting that power straight into the hands of end-users, not executive tools, kicking Kallik and iBrams to the kerb, and finally selling out to Esko for a good several mil. (Have I mentioned precedence?) And then they’ll have their challenge, and I’ll have my desert island.complete with a lawn y’all can get off too! ;p