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Apple Acquires Popular Automation App Workflow

I use workflow on my iPad Pro and I love it. I used it to automate the movement of PDF files captured via camera to my files systems (I have gone paperless for over three years now).

I am a bit more optimistic about this acquisition as it is for iOS and wil probably be made a native part of the OS. If so - it makes iOS more powerful and make it stound out from Android and others.

Apple doesn't kill everything it buys - and i think this acquisition complements the other areas Apple has been actively investing in ---- AI, Siri and Homekit.

If this acquisition gives iOS a built-in IFTTT capability, then we are talking a winner.
 
cgsnipinva said:
I use workflow on my iPad Pro and I love it. I used it to automate the movement of PDF files captured via camera to my files systems (I have gone paperless for over three years now).

I am a bit more optimistic about this acquisition as it is for iOS and wil probably be made a native part of the OS. If so - it makes iOS more powerful and make it stound out from Android and others.

Apple doesn't kill everything it buys - and i think this acquisition complements the other areas Apple has been actively investing in ---- AI, Siri and Homekit.

If this acquisition gives iOS a built-in IFTTT capability, then we are talking a winner.
Click to expand...
Also -- and apologies if it was mentioned previously in this thread, TestFlight was acquired this time last year and was mentioned in the WWDC Keynote. TestFlight has worked out pretty well from the few apps I've tested.
 
cgsnipinva said:
Apple doesn't kill everything it buys - and i think this acquisition complements the other areas Apple has been actively investing in ---- AI, Siri and Homekit.

If this acquisition gives iOS a built-in IFTTT capability, then we are talking a winner.
Click to expand...

The level of Apple activity to support HomeKit is debatable. Aside from us tech geeks it's not really understood by consumers. Apple has done zero public education. Also Apple makes HomeKit really hard to get licensed because of its hardware requirements, not to mention untethered "Hey, Siri" is only available in some iDevices and isn't available in any standalone device like Amazon's Echo line. Workflow might be incorporated into Siri and HomeKit, but it's really almost too late. Amazon is a few laps ahead in home automation. I use HomeKit, but very frustrated by its product and voice control limitations. Automation is the least of it's problems.

More probable is Apple will use this in some lame way to manage Apple Music or Stickers.
 
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This is huge news! It's the first time in a long time they invest in a non-dev oriented pro-tool. Let's hope Apple is making a comeback into the pro-world. Releasing toys for teenage girls was a very smart business decision, but I would be very happy if they (at least partially) get back to their roots.
 
Just tried the app, it's a little bit buggy but it has some nice integrations. I like the fact I can put the stuff on the home screen and it can log some data into the Health app

For one I created two workflows that I wish Health App had

#1 Blood Pressure with Heart Rate, since most home BP machines would also count the heart rate, it might as well ask the three values rather than navigating back and forth like I do in the health app.

#2 Put in the BMI which is kg/m^2 using the last known height value in Health converted to meters and the weight entered (in my case I am still used to lbs) then convert to kg. Then directly store it.

Not really sure how to share it but I did mark it for sharing and I put the description already.
 
simonmet said:
I like Automator for the Mac, but its features stagnated and not many developers supported it.
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I don't think Automator was ever intended for application development. I figured it was for "power users" who had a particular.. uh.. workflow (yup!) and wanted a way to get repetitive tasks done to their liking.

I poked around with Automator a couple times soon after its unveiling but never did anything complex enough to need it. I wondered what it was fully capable of doing. And, as I think about it, it would've needed a big renovation to work with the iOS/iCloud/macOS ecosystem.

I hadn't heard of Workflow before this week. It's interesting to hear what people already do with it.
 
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ArcaneDevice said:
Companies always say that when there is a buyout. Sure it might last for a year before the talent pool is raped and pillaged but in the end the product dies a death or is changed beyond recognition.

It's rare for an acquisition to be given autonomy and resources to exist outside of the corporate umbrella infrastructure.
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FileMaker might be an exception, but I doubt that will be the case here—especially since they've already restricted it some with the new update. I think the best we can hope for is that it fades out while having some of the functionality baked into iOS. The biggest problem I have is that Apple wants us to only use their services—even if they don't provide an equivalent—and that's just not how the world works. The reason an app like this is successful is because you can use it with lots of different things.
 
thingstoponder said:
Why would they buy it just to kill it? They could just block it from the app store if they wanted it dead. They'll probably make it an integral part of the OS.
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They wouldn't intentionally, but a lot of times small companies get bought by Apple, they shut down their user-facing app while the team goes to work on internal Apple projects, and then nothing quite as good as the original app manages to make it into the native OS.
 
Chupa Chupa said:
The level of Apple activity to support HomeKit is debatable. Aside from us tech geeks it's not really understood by consumers. Apple has done zero public education. Also Apple makes HomeKit really hard to get licensed because of its hardware requirements, not to mention untethered "Hey, Siri" is only available in some iDevices and isn't available in any standalone device like Amazon's Echo line. Workflow might be incorporated into Siri and HomeKit, but it's really almost too late. Amazon is a few laps ahead in home automation. I use HomeKit, but very frustrated by its product and voice control limitations. Automation is the least of it's problems.

More probable is Apple will use this in some lame way to manage Apple Music or Stickers.
Click to expand...

I don't think it is too late. Workflow integrates with external non-apple applications and data. Apple set up a homekit website with aid and support to end users. Product licensing has been mostly held up because Apple has pretty stringent security requirements that make it more expensive. This investment is consistent with Apple's previous movements with iOS and mobile.
 
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This was probably my biggest "huh!" news of the year. It surprised me. I've had workflow installed for years, and think it's the coolest thing, but never can really find good uses for it. The most I've done with it, is I've made a workflow to display RSS feeds on my Apple Watch. The UI is horrible, but it's the only way to really display content from sites I want on my watch.

I'm in the camp of folks hoping that Apple gives it a few more powers, because I feel like it currently falls just a hair short of being truly useful for a much wider breadth of tasks.
 
cgsnipinva said:
Workflow integrates with external non-apple applications and data. Apple set up a homekit website with aid and support to end users. Product licensing has been mostly held up because Apple has pretty stringent security requirements that make it more expensive. This investment is consistent with Apple's previous movements with iOS and mobile.
Click to expand...


All of that it true, but Amazon is kicking Apple's pant in this area. Once consumer get comfortable with a tech system inertia sets in and it's hard to get them to move to something different because of cost, learning curve time, or both. Alexa has just about taken over the home automation/voice control space. No, Echo and Alexa devices are not as secure as Homekit, but it's ubiquitous, versitile, and cheap, like Velveeta. Betamax was superior to VHS, right.
 
Chupa Chupa said:
All of that it true, but Amazon is kicking Apple's pant in this area. Once consumer get comfortable with a tech system inertia sets in and it's hard to get them to move to something different because of cost, learning curve time, or both. Alexa has just about taken over the home automation/voice control space. No, Echo and Alexa devices are not as secure as Homekit, but it's ubiquitous, versitile, and cheap, like Velveeta. Betamax was superior to VHS, right.
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No you make good points. I don't think its as a sticky market though as the devices for voice automation are relatively cheap. Apple needs to up its game - but they are putting money in the area which demonstrates they see it as a priority. Execution on strategy will be a test.
 
Downloaded and quite quickly deleted. If this was baked into iOS it could be huge. The standalone app is way too limited to stay on my device. Lot of stuff you'd maaaaybe use once and never again.
 
Great, another app I need to leave in my update queue and try to remember to skip. I don't consider it an update if it removes functionality.
 
0029937 said:
Downloaded and quite quickly deleted. If this was baked into iOS it could be huge. The standalone app is way too limited to stay on my device. Lot of stuff you'd maaaaybe use once and never again.
Click to expand...

Don't just look at the gallery - build a couple. I have made a few pretty powerful workflows. If development on capability and baked into iOS - it would be a very powerful addition in functinoality.
 
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Donka said:
1. I think should be a given and I hope that is the case.
2. Is another sensible choice but I'm not convinced this will happen given the functionality that has been removed. Apple clearly want users to use the Apple apps first as part of the user's workflows so will not make it easy for the likes of Google Maps to Chrome to be easily integrated.
3. I don't see the need for this. Only certain apps are a natural fit for Workflow so to make it a requirement seems overkill. Hopefully make it easy to integrate and then leave it up to the developers to decide if they want to add support.
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According to Marco Arment, the service removals were due to those companies refusing to sign Workflow's contract to allow API access, and not because Apple was trying to sideline certain services. I imagine when Workflow is integrated into iOS, the standard developer TOS will cover this.

It seems logical to me that Apple wants to make Workflow a standard way to chain together tasks, possibly with Siri stitching together tasks behind the scenes when you make a complex request. Then again, Apple aren't always logical so who knows.

All that being said, it's kind of a bad look to fire Sal and eliminate his position, then buy an automation company. I hope at least they plan to put this Workflow functionality on the Mac. I haven't used Automator in a long time mostly because the support was never good enough, but a well-supported tool like this could be very handy.
 
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simonmet said:
What do they do?
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I have one that takes some of my screen shots or pictures that have accumulated for say a project or notes that I want to send to Evernote. So I have it generate a note for me, I can tell it which notebook I want to send it to, I can add tags, even adds a date to the note for me. I am then able to pick the pictures to add to the note and once completed I have it set up for a prompt to delete the pictures or save them. I setup an icon on my home screen that allows me to run it from the home screen without having to actually open the app up and then click the workflow.

That is just one of the items I have that I use almost on a daily basis.
 
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Anything is better than nothing but it looks very basic and primitive compared to Automagic, Tasker, etc. for Android.
 
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