Earlier this week, Apple let go of Sal Soghoian, who was the company’s Product Manager of Automation Technologies—meaning he was responsible for AppleScript and Automator. The news about Soghoian, who worked at Apple for nearly 20 years, raised concern in the Mac community that Apple no longer was interested in automation features in macOS.
Maybe the latest news from Apple will help ease the concerned. According to 9to5Mac, one of its readers sent an email to Apple Senior VP Craig Federighi about the future of macOS automation. The reader received the following response and forwarded it to 9to5Mac, which has verified the email:
Hi [redacted],
We have every intent to continue our support for the great automation technologies in macOS! Thanks for being an Apple customer!
— craig
As you can see, the email lacks details. We don’t know a roadmap for AppleScript and Automator, nor do we have any insight as to how automation is being handled on the macOS team. As 9to5Mac notes, it’s possible that automation is in maintenance mode, a status of a feature that’s still supported but isn’t set to have any new features.
Why this matters: Automation features like AppleScript and Automator let users create scripts that can perform tasks. It’s especially handy for performing repetitive tasks. You can create a script and have macOS do all the work for you. iOS doesn’t have any automation features, so third-party solutions such as Workflow are used. It could be possible that if AppleScript and Automator aren’t upgraded in future macOS releases, third-party scripting tools will have to be considered.
Author: Roman Loyola, Senior Editor
Roman has covered technology since the early 1990s. His career started at MacUser, and he's worked for MacAddict, Mac|Life, and TechTV.