“My position as Product Manager of Automation Technologies was eliminated”

171 84 10 years ago

Q. I hear you no longer work for Apple; is that true?

A. Correct. I joined Apple in January of 1997, almost twenty years ago, because of my profound belief that “the power of the computer should reside in the hands of the one using it.” That credo remains my truth to this day. Recently, I was informed that my position as Product Manager of Automation Technologies was eliminated for business reasons. Consequently, I am no longer employed by Apple Inc. But, I still believe my credo to be as true today as ever.

Because who needs or expects anything remotely 'pro' at Apple any more?

mc32• 10 years ago

"I was informed that my position as Product Manager of Automation Technologies was eliminated for business reasons"

At one of my former employers, when they wanted to get rid of someone nicely, that is provide them their due retirement benefits, etc. They'd eliminate the position. Few months later they'd come up with a new position with similar function with a new person in charge.

At least they were nice about it, I suppose, but appeared quite transparent.

endgame2• 10 years ago

“the power of the computer should reside in the hands of the one using it.”

A great vision, and one that I share. But I think that it's also a vision that is completely incompatible with Apple.

Razengan3• 10 years ago

Automation in macOS appears to be remaining as strong as ever. What makes you think it has suffered?

In fact, I believe macOS gives you more control than Windows.

mikeyouse• 10 years ago

Just for fun / boredom, if he was granted $100,000 worth of shares every year since 1997 and reinvested his dividends after they started paying out, he'd have somewhere near 800,000 shares today worth nearly $85 million.

hueving• 10 years ago

Holding onto shares you are granted is one of the most reckless things you can do financially.

Whenever you are granted shares, ask yourself the following question. If you were given the equivalent amount in a cash bonus, would you use that cash bonus to buy stock in a single company?

For every Apple example, there are 100+ cases where people held onto their shares and rode them right into company bankruptcy, at which point they lost all of their bonus AND their job.

Johnny5552• 10 years ago

Does Apple give anyone that's not a senior executive nearly that many shares? If they do, I need to go return a recruiter call immediately.

tedmiston5• 10 years ago

The best way to invest is with information you don't have until the future.

crack-the-code• 10 years ago

Does that mean that he was effectively fired? I can't help but think there must be some additional context as to why he was terminated and not transitioned to another role (assuming my understanding of the situation is correct). Is Apple really doing that bad?

kasey_junk• 10 years ago

Why would you think that? It's relatively uncommon for companies to transition employees when they decide to remove whole business functions.

maxxxxx2• 10 years ago

It seems stupid that they just throw away talented people. And then they pay millions for talented people through buying startups.

serf• 10 years ago

Apple famously renames positions in order to 'softly' get rid of an employee. That's why I would personally think along similar lines.

jomohn• 10 years ago

maybe he automated his own position

rhizome2• 10 years ago

My understanding is that Apple rarely "fires" people. It was explained to me that they merely suggest it's time to move on. Repeatedly.

microtherion4• 10 years ago

It seems very unlikely to me that this was anything personal or age related. However, Sal was highly identified with his role. He's an absolutely awesome guy who lives and breathes user automation every waking minute. Personally, I'd find it hard to imagine him in a different role, and maybe Apple mgt was suffering from a similar failure in imagination — or maybe Sal himself just wasn't interested in a different role.

cpr• 10 years ago

Sad day. Sal is and has been the biggest cheerleader for macOS automation technologies ever.

sarreph• 10 years ago

What a shame. I really thought we'd see some interesting developments in the macOS automation space, as only a couple of years ago JS was introduced as a scripting language alongside AScript. However, this is worrying as there are so so many individuals who rely on bespoke, fine-grained task automation (and not just glossy consumer apps) to use their Mac productively.

matt40772• 10 years ago

I'm quite happy with hammerspoon for MacOS GUI automation. I'm using it to collect the screenshots for a hyper(term) theme gallery (https://hyperthemes.matthi.coffee).

Although now I'm not sure how much hammerspoon relies on the official APIs.

i336_• 10 years ago

Two things:

1. You have "https:/" (<-- one "/") in the hyper.io link

2. "server can't find hyper.io: SERVFAIL"

I'm interested in terminals, but this has an impossible-to-Google name (for obvious reasons).

The themes look really cool though!

Spooky232• 10 years ago

Apple is intensely focused on monetization of anything now that the iPhone is turning into a more mature (i.e. Lower growth) product.

Do you really expect that a company that is monetizing power brick extension cables in $3000 laptops and USB cables in $700 phones is going to continue to give away the store with things that deliver high value at low cost?

tedmiston5• 10 years ago

I think JavaScript was added and AppleScript Editor renamed to Script Editor as Apple's hint that AppleScript is a dead language.

Automator is what it is (I don't use it), but we have to be realistic in admitting it never really caught on. Even drag-and-drop GUI programming is too intimidating to the average user.

I hope this is not a harbinger of Apple giving up on user automation entirely.

r00fus2• 10 years ago

Sad to hear about Sal's departure (I'm not going to speculate on the reasoning).

What I guessing as I read into this is that Apple is likely moving towards cloud-based everything, and de-emphasizing OS-level functionality that's not tied to cloud.

Jerry25• 10 years ago

Apple's plan for the future does not include Mac or MacOS. They've been treating macOS as a second-tier OS for years and have been barely updating it. And when they do update it, they just backport some iOS features to it. You can also tell that macOS is not a priority because security updates for same kernel issues always come weeks after they've been fixed on iOS.

And let's not even get into Mac hardware and how there's no more true Pro options and how rarely they even update them.

Cook's infamous quote says it all about the future of Mac:

“I think if you’re looking at a PC, why would you buy a PC anymore? No really, why would you buy one?” – Tim Cook, talking about the iPad Pro

Requiem for the Mac is in order.

mikek• 10 years ago

"PC" in Apple lingo refers to Windows machines.

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/10/31/cook-why-would-y...

0xcde4c3db• 10 years ago

You're not wrong about "PC", but Cook was pretty clearly talking about a larger market shift away from laptops and desktops:

Yes, the iPad Pro is a replacement for a notebook or a desktop for many, many people. They will start using it and conclude they no longer need to use anything else, other than their phones.

I don't really buy the downplaying of the "many, many people" wording in the linked blog post. I think the fact that Cook was silent about Mac while still bothering to mention "other than their phones" is a kind of statement in itself.

blinkingled2• 10 years ago

But does that make any sense? Why would people not need PCs but need Macs?

mtw• 10 years ago

Well perhaps they can get Xcode on iPad Pro!

ThomPete2• 10 years ago

Well what machines are they going to be making all the apps on then? You really think iOS will overtake?

maxxxxx2• 10 years ago

They are far, far away from iOS being a dev platform.

Jerry25• 10 years ago

I expect Xcode for iOS (or whatever they call it) to make its debut next year. It might come as a "lite" version or something like that but an app that allows you to make iOS app with iOS is something I'd bet a lot of money on.

Apple's 'Swift Playgrounds' for iOS was their first step towards turning iOS into a dev platform.

rimantas• 10 years ago

Or they have been treating macOS as a mature OS where there is little space for the revolution. Except that part of "barely touching" is not really true.

  > You can also tell that macOS is not a priority because
  > security updates for same kernel issues always come weeks
  > after they've been fixed on iOS.

Or you can tell that iOS has much larger user base and hence the priority for security fixes.

binaryapparatus2• 10 years ago

Or you can tell that iOS has much larger user base and hence the priority for security fixes.

Yeah because that single guy that needs to code all security patches has to finish iOS first before he goes to another building to work on macOS?

We are often discussing (me included) Apple moves like they have very little resources to do anything. Then I think again and d'oh.

Jerry25• 10 years ago

Are you telling me that the richest and most valuable company in the world can't coordinate security patches of two of its biggest OSes that share a lot of kernel code?

Johnny5552• 10 years ago

You can also tell that macOS is not a priority

...

OS has much larger user base and hence the priority

Didn't you just repeat what he said?

Kadin• 10 years ago

I am not entirely convinced that Apple has a coherent plan for the future, at least one that is stable and not shifting every few months.

I mean, they clearly had some sort of iCar focus which they just shifted away from, which puts them back squarely on iOS devices. But smartphones aren't the growth market that they were a few years ago. Unless they can find some sort of new market to expand into, they're not going to be able to be the same sort of asymptotic-growth-fueled company they were since the iPod came out.

Either they need another iPod / iPhone / iPad (and I'm not entirely sure that the iPad deserves to be there, next to the prior two, but it kept things going for a while), or they have to really retrench to be a stable-market company, serving the upgrade-every-few-years premium smartphone buyer.

ethbro• 10 years ago

If one believes that Apple has always been an integration leader rather than a technology leader, then the idea follows that there may exist points in time where the technological state-of-the-art and consumer desires simply have no overlap that allows for new products on the level of the iPod/iPhone/iPad.

Apple apparently believed smartcars were there, but I'd guess their implementation of the technology wasn't hitting targets. It does still seems bizarre they aren't pushing VR/AR given their creative-professional heavy userbase.

gurkendoktor• 10 years ago

I often read that macOS is doomed because it is obviously understaffed and not aimed at pros anymore. Maybe. But I don't agree that the iPad is in better shape (as Tim Cook's comment might suggest).

iOS 10 on iPad Pro has been just as buggy as macOS 10.12 on my Mac, but nobody even mentions iCloud failures anymore, or glitchy layouts after rotating the device (hello status bar??).

iOS 10 also hasn't brought any new "pro-ness" to the iPad. Most updates have felt like "me-too" releases next to the iPhone (except for iOS 9 with split screen and Pencil support).

Depending on which analytics site you ask, Apple has cut off ~35% of deployed iPads from updates this fall, which means that iPad app developers can't be smug about fragmentation anymore. It's also hard to look down on AppKit as the framework that hasn't aged well next to the complicated monster that UIKit has become (compared to iOS 5, sigh).

Not to mention that tablet sales have slowed down, and both current iPad models (Pro 9.7" and 12.9") are too expensive to buy on a whim.

If Apple has a plan for the future, then I don't see it on the horizon yet.

WesBrownSQL• 10 years ago

Hey, 20 years come get your reduction prize. This guys salary is probably a rounding error on a spreadsheet but what he knows about Apple in any line of their business would be worth the money. Just a shame.

mevile• 10 years ago

was informed that my position as Product Manager of Automation Technologies was eliminated for business reasons. Consequently.

Business reasons to not have a head of automation for an Operating System? It truly could be the case, but honestly I'd be ok if someone investigated companies like Apple to see if there's an illegal pattern of letting go people over the age of 40.

jballanc• 10 years ago

I can't speak for the Apple of today, but when I left Apple in 2010 there were more wizened, "gray-beard" programmers working for Apple than at probably all the SOMA startups combined. Of all the things you could accuse Apple of (and there are plenty), I think ageism has got to be near the bottom of that list.

bootload2• 10 years ago

"UNIX CLI (shell, python, ruby, perl), System Services, Apple Events (JavaScript, AppleScript, AppleScriptObj-C, Scripting Bridge), Automator, Apple Configurator (AppleScript, Automator), and Application scripting support in Photos, iWork, Finder, Mail, and other Apple applications."

I can speculate why Apple has made this decision. Notice the amount of siri integration into macOS? This theoretically makes automation by code the black sheep in Apples grand plan. Do away with code, push voice.

cauterized• 10 years ago

Yup, that's exactly what my company's open plan office is missing. 50 people muttering aloud at their computers all day.

blacksmith_tb• 10 years ago

And accidentally automating each other's machines...

bootload2• 10 years ago

"The integration of an at least partially voice-controlled intelligent digital assistant into a desktop, laptop, and/or tablet computer environment provides additional capabilities to the digital assistant, and enhances the usability and capabilities of the desktop, laptop, and/or tablet computer."

"Intelligent Digital Assistant in a Desktop Environment", 2013 Apple patent ~ http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H...

Spooky232• 10 years ago

I can't wait for the asshole 50 feet away whose quiet voice sounds like a hotdog guy at a baseball game yells "Hey Siri" and 30 computers respond.

redial• 10 years ago

Voice control is not automation, you just replace using your mouse/keyboard to perform actions with using your voice to perform them, but you still have to do each one. Automation is having the computer perform multiple seemingly disconnected tasks one after the other without supervision. How you start the automated workflow is irrelevant.

SyneRyder• 10 years ago

The part that really scares me there is "UNIX CLI (shell)". Does that mean Terminal itself could be about to go? I'm sure Apple could explain it away with "there are many third-party offerings like Cathode & Prompt for the handful that need it".

carsongross• 10 years ago

Remember this the next time you hear corporations complain about ruthless employees who are willing to jump ship for mere money.

draw_down• 10 years ago

Unfortunately they have been neglecting this aspect of the Mac for a long time. It's a real shame because it used to be a solid advantage of the Mac over other OSs. Recently I looked to see if Automator is still on my system, I was surprised it's still included. They clearly don't care about this part of macOS and it's such a shame.

matt40772• 10 years ago

It's there, it works, you haven't looked at it in years. Apple may or may not care about it, but apparently neither do you.

Automation probably gets us excited about ideas to streamline our lives, but nobody ever gets around to it. I certainly hope it remains well-supported because there are people who actually need it (accessibility comes to mind). Also because I did actually just use it in a toy project.

nicky02• 10 years ago

It can't be all that important to you if you couldn't even remember if it was installed.

bluthru• 10 years ago

This is a great way to scare pro users after a lukewarm reaction to the latest MacBook Pro's.

“My position as Product Manager of Automation Technologies was eliminated”

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