Apple Releases Golden Master Version of iOS 12 Shortcuts App

[- rob -]

That’s exactly what it’ll do.

A lot of people are missing the real news here: Shortcuts isn’t just an app, it’s a framework. ..

The Shortcuts app itself is just the user facing UI that will allow you to build these manually. Most people will never touch the app but almost everyone will no doubt benefit from shortcuts that Siri will build for you.

This. The ultimate goal for Watch and iphone is to nest deeply in the daily routine of Apple customers.

This means offering multi-app-driven services and crucial notifications at just the right time.

Allowing normal end users to create and share Shortcuts is a lot like how Apple handles new SW frameworks like ARKit.

Anyone can “develop” a potentially popular inter-app routine.

Apple gets to learn and promote what is the most useful or entertaining ones. Apple can include those in app updates.

 

[ipedro]

. It’s nothing more than a voice-triggered macro. The user still has to set up the sequence of actions. Siri isn’t doing anything other than triggering the macro. We still can’t interact with apps using Siri.

Shortcuts is a feeble attempt at making Siri seem more competitive. It might be a nice feature, although I doubt I’ll use it personally. Macros have existed for decades. This is the same thing, repackaged. There’s nothing special going on here. You still have to do all the work by setting up the macros. You know things are slowing down in the inspiration department at Apple when voice-triggered macros is the big, new, exciting feature.

Jesus. You people have no idea what you’re talking about. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Shortcuts — the app — is just the manual interface for Shortcuts — the framework — to give tinkerers more control. You don’t have to manually build shortcuts. Siri will build shortcuts for you.

If you do something regularly, like ordering dinner at your usual place in an App and turning on your thermostat at home with HomeKit just as you leave the office and set your Maps to see the traffic to give you the best route home, Siri will notice the routine and suggest a Shortcut that does those things.

App developers can create Shortcut hooks within their apps to do complex things that with the push of one button will give you direct access to functions in an app by using Siri from anywhere in iOS. You can interact with apps using Siri. The complexity of those functions depend on what the developer builds in. Users won’t have to go into the Shortcuts app to do those things. They’re within the apps themselves and Siri will pop up Shortcut suggestions that it builds for you on the lock screen.

The least you could do is to have listened to the WWDC keynote where Shortcuts was introduced before criticizing.

 

[Skeptical.me]

This site may end up being an interesting one once more people start sharing the Shortcuts they create https://sharecuts.app/ It'll be interesting to see how many similar sites pop up on the net.
[doublepost=1537076057][/doublepost]lol, he really has no idea. It's best to be informed before commenting.

 

[Romeo_Nightfall]

Apparently people think artificial intelligence means the capability to read their mind.

Yes, exactly what google already does, so what’s your point?

 

[rom3o]

It's stuff like this that shows there is a great deal of potential for expanding the capabilities of this App. It's obvious that Apple saw this (why else buy the Workflow app). I'm sure over the next few versions of it we'll see more and more features and integration. It's great to see progress being made!

I wouldn’t get too excited. The Workflow app hasn’t evolved that much in terms of functionality since Apple bought them and is still very limited. For example you can’t set workflows to be performed on a specific schedule. There are workarounds combining Workflow with another app called Launch Center Pro but the only thing this does is to prompt you with a notification at the desired time. You have to manually tap the notification in order to start LCP that afterwards launches Workflows for the actions to be performed - not very neat. :/

 

[dan110]

Taking in consideration how far artificial intelligence is today, Siri should be doing this. What about quantum computers? IBM, Google, Microsoft are working on that. IBM gives free access to that system, Microsoft gives a free quantum simulator to anyone that wants to play with it. What about Apple? iOS 12 with shortcuts...

All good points. With Apple's cash hoard they could probably buy all of IBMs IP if not the entire company and use their expertise for AI development.

(BTW Ignore the trolls with the mindless one-liners)

 

[TheSkywalker77]

This is the feature I’m looking most forward to in iOS 12.

 

[fabian9]

I wouldn’t get too excited. The Workflow app hasn’t evolved that much in terms of functionality since Apple bought them and is still very limited. For example you can’t set workflows to be performed on a specific schedule. There are workarounds combining Workflow with another app called Launch Center Pro but the only thing this does is to prompt you with a notification at the desired time. You have to manually tap the notification in order to start LCP that afterwards launches Workflows for the actions to be performed - not very neat. :/

They’ve primarily focused on keeping the workflow app running since Apple bought them.

Doesn’t mean that behind the scenes they haven’t worked on new stuff that will now be included with shortcuts.

 

[Jimmy Bubbles]

Not true. Quantum-resistant cryptography has been tested for years. More info here, https://openquantumsafe.org

Thanks for this reference! Cool.
[doublepost=1537115138][/doublepost]

Lolwut?

I know, so mind-blowing that it affected your spelling.

 

[BornAgainMac]

I want a shortcut to ask Siri to purchase the next iPhone when the store opens at 3:00am for next year. I am tired of setting my alarm and purchasing the iPhone manually.

 

[harriska2]

Jesus. You people have no idea what you’re talking about. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Shortcuts — the app — is just the manual interface for Shortcuts — the framework — to give tinkerers more control. You don’t have to manually build shortcuts. Siri will build shortcuts for you.

If you do something regularly, like ordering dinner at your usual place in an App and turning on your thermostat at home with HomeKit just as you leave the office and set your Maps to see the traffic to give you the best route home, Siri will notice the routine and suggest a Shortcut that does those things.

App developers can create Shortcut hooks within their apps to do complex things that with the push of one button will give you direct access to functions in an app by using Siri from anywhere in iOS. You can interact with apps using Siri. The complexity of those functions depend on what the developer builds in. Users won’t have to go into the Shortcuts app to do those things. They’re within the apps themselves and Siri will pop up Shortcut suggestions that it builds for you on the lock screen.

The least you could do is to have listened to the WWDC keynote where Shortcuts was introduced before criticizing.

I always wondered if my apple watch activities would ever pick up the fact that I walk to work every weekday at 6:30am. Maybe this is the first step to a truly smart device that not only takes custom voice commands but also asks you, “hey, it looks like you’re starting your morning walk, do you want me to start the activity app for you?” I would answer “Why sure, that would be wonderful. Thanks Siri, I forgot to start it, again.” I guess I want SARA from the TV show, Eureka.

 

[robbyx]

Jesus. You people have no idea what you’re talking about. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Shortcuts — the app — is just the manual interface for Shortcuts — the framework — to give tinkerers more control. You don’t have to manually build shortcuts. Siri will build shortcuts for you.

If you do something regularly, like ordering dinner at your usual place in an App and turning on your thermostat at home with HomeKit just as you leave the office and set your Maps to see the traffic to give you the best route home, Siri will notice the routine and suggest a Shortcut that does those things.

App developers can create Shortcut hooks within their apps to do complex things that with the push of one button will give you direct access to functions in an app by using Siri from anywhere in iOS. You can interact with apps using Siri. The complexity of those functions depend on what the developer builds in. Users won’t have to go into the Shortcuts app to do those things. They’re within the apps themselves and Siri will pop up Shortcut suggestions that it builds for you on the lock screen.

The least you could do is to have listened to the WWDC keynote where Shortcuts was introduced before criticizing.

So it builds the macro based on observing your behavior? It’s still a macro. And I’m sure it’ll never build macros that include functionality you won’t want. After all, Siri is so smart. Yeah right. You’ll need to edit and tweak the shortcuts.

We’ll see how it all works, but it doesn’t look like a particularly compelling or useful feature to me. I’m not interested in creating macros. I want to say “hey Siri, log this meal in MyFitnessPal” or “hey Siri, what’s my checking account balance”, etc. Frankly, what you describe above is complicated and will alienate most users. Just like hardly anyone uses Automator on the Mac.

I don’t want Siri pestering me with suggested “shortcuts”, nor do I want to have to build macros, or whatever you want to call them.

 

[jonblatho]

Hey folks, can you please help. All our family iOS devices are on beta train, mine is on dev build and my wife’s is on public build. What should I do to get off beta train? Do I delete the profile and wait until Monday? Or do I need to erase iPhones and iPads? I couldn’t find the answer on Apple website.

If you downloaded the update made available on Wednesday, that's the iOS 12 Golden Master seed, which is what will be released to the public tomorrow.

Delete the beta profile under Settings > General > Profile(s) and you should be good to go.

 

[ipedro]

I wouldn’t get too excited. The Workflow app hasn’t evolved that much in terms of functionality since Apple bought them and is still very limited. For example you can’t set workflows to be performed on a specific schedule. There are workarounds combining Workflow with another app called Launch Center Pro but the only thing this does is to prompt you with a notification at the desired time. You have to manually tap the notification in order to start LCP that afterwards launches Workflows for the actions to be performed - not very neat. :/

Have you maybe wondered why? Maybe they've been, I dunno, building a new app? Why would they be updating Workflow when they've been building Shortcuts?

 

[ItsGavinC]

I always wondered if my apple watch activities would ever pick up the fact that I walk to work every weekday at 6:30am. Maybe this is the first step to a truly smart device that not only takes custom voice commands but also asks you, “hey, it looks like you’re starting your morning walk, do you want me to start the activity app for you?” I would answer “Why sure, that would be wonderful. Thanks Siri, I forgot to start it, again.” I guess I want SARA from the TV show, Eureka.

Your watch does ask you this with the new os.

 

[Justanotherfanboy]

Thanks for this reference! Cool.
[doublepost=1537115138][/doublepost]
I know, so mind-blowing that it affected your spelling.

There’s nothing “mind-blowing” about pretending you understand technology that you likely read one Wired article about like 10 years ago...

When you’ve been in the tech industry as long as I have- you start to recognize it.

The idea that passwords & encryption will be “useless in the age of quantum computing... no matter how strong your password or the encryption” is not even some half-baked fallacy that some believe & some don’t. It’s categorically false.
That’s not even a narrative I’m aware is being purported.*
You’re spreading FUD. Hopefully, it sounds preposterous enough that nobody believes you.

To be fair: there was a brief, hypothetical discussion many years ago about quantum computing being able to instantly crack passwords, if there were ZERO safeguards in place & it (the computer) could pass all combinations simultaneously, as an array... thus instantly passing the correct one over on “first guess”, since that first guess would contain every possible guess.
It was more researchers marveling at how much data could be passed at once after the advent of quantum computing, than genuine concern about security, as even then (and certainly now) secure content that is password protected actually DOES have safeguards; one of them being that you can’t pass an array of guesses as a single attempt.

*Edit: I stand corrected!
Google tells me (hidden amongst all the results bearing titles like “quantum computing won’t invalidate encryption”), apparently there is a Republican from Texas that shares your opinion that this poses some looming new insurmountable security hazard.

 

[newtestleper]

Thanks for explaining! When I restore, will I restore to iOS 11 or 12 and, if latter, why is this step needed? And what do you mean update/restore? Update or restore? Restore to what?

I hope you didn’t follow that advice; it isn’t necessary.

 

[TokMok3]

Shortcuts is a feeble attempt at making Siri seem more competitive. It might be a nice feature, although I doubt I’ll use it personally. Macros have existed for decades. This is the same thing, repackaged. There’s nothing special going on here. You still have to do all the work by setting up the macros. You know things are slowing down in the inspiration department at Apple when voice-triggered macros is the big, new, exciting feature.

For those of us that had been since the inception of the microcomputer, the ms-dos and it's TSR (terminate and state resident) programs running in a very limited memory environment written in a mixture of C language with Assambler, that is impressive, now that I recalled. This Shorcuts macros are not impressive.

 

[sgtaylor5]

What I don’t understand is why they haven’t included this app with iOS 12, especially given it’s probably the best new feature and you can uninstall built-in apps now. Is it going to get really frequent updates or something? I just feel like a lot of people aren’t going to use it if it’s not installed by default. It’s one of the most useful features I’ve seen in years! This could make Siri much more useful and yet it’s tucked away in the App Store.

It’s in Settings, Siri and Search, top of the list

 

[jonblatho]

Have you maybe wondered why? Maybe they've been, I dunno, building a new app? Why would they be updating Workflow when they've been building Shortcuts?

I mean, the functionality mentioned by the person you were replying to isn’t in Shortcuts, either.
[doublepost=1537130733][/doublepost]

It’s in Settings, Siri and Search, top of the list

No, it’s not. Very limited Shortcuts functionality is available in Settings, but for the actual scripting/automation aspect, you have to download the Shortcuts app.

 

[erinsarah]

I can definitely see playing with this, killing many more hours inventing shortcuts than actually using them. But I'm curious if this will work...Currently I have a Wink home hub and a garage door open/closed sensor. The only way I can check to see if the doors are open or closed is to open the Wink app and click into the garage door "robot" and see the status. I'd like to create a shortcut where I ask, "Hey Siri, are my garage doors closed" and have her answer appropriately by looking at the app for me.

 

[DeepIn2U]

Taking in consideration how far artificial intelligence is today, Siri should be doing this. What about quantum computers? IBM, Google, Microsoft are working on that. IBM gives free access to that system, Microsoft gives a free quantum simulator to anyone that wants to play with it. What about Apple? iOS 12 with shortcuts...

According to last Friday’s Bloomberg post about quantum cpu’s they can only solve some mathematical problems thus far. Not nearly capable. IBM has Watson a very powerful AI that I’d love Siri to tap into.

 

[ipedro]

I always wondered if my apple watch activities would ever pick up the fact that I walk to work every weekday at 6:30am. Maybe this is the first step to a truly smart device that not only takes custom voice commands but also asks you, “hey, it looks like you’re starting your morning walk, do you want me to start the activity app for you?” I would answer “Why sure, that would be wonderful. Thanks Siri, I forgot to start it, again.” I guess I want SARA from the TV show, Eureka.

watchOS 5 does exactly that.

 

[tribalhere10]

Why it’s not showing update on this.

 

[TokMok3]

Jesus. You people have no idea what you’re talking about. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Shortcuts — the app — is just the manual interface for Shortcuts — the framework — to give tinkerers more control. You don’t have to manually build shortcuts. Siri will build shortcuts for you.

If you do something regularly, like ordering dinner at your usual place in an App and turning on your thermostat at home with HomeKit just as you leave the office and set your Maps to see the traffic to give you the best route home, Siri will notice the routine and suggest a Shortcut that does those things.

App developers can create Shortcut hooks within their apps to do complex things that with the push of one button will give you direct access to functions in an app by using Siri from anywhere in iOS. You can interact with apps using Siri. The complexity of those functions depend on what the developer builds in. Users won’t have to go into the Shortcuts app to do those things. They’re within the apps themselves and Siri will pop up Shortcut suggestions that it builds for you on the lock screen.

The least you could do is to have listened to the WWDC keynote where Shortcuts was introduced before criticizing.

At this very moment Apple can't direct, it just follows

According to last Friday’s Bloomberg post about quantum cpu’s they can only solve some mathematical problems thus far. Not nearly capable. IBM has Watson a very powerful AI that I’d love Siri to tap into.

The engineers accomplished the most difficult task, and that was to put a photon in a state of superposition and have enough time to take a picture of that, or measure it. What they are working is in creating a computer language like c, pascal or fortran to be easy for us humans to interface in an easy way with that machine. It's like being in the 50's again with the Eniac and using punch cards to make a program. We need to evolve our thinking mechanism to think in quantum concepts. This are very excitement times. The machine is there in full glory, just waiting for us the emoji generation. It has been done!