They Both Require Effort
When news broke that Apple decided it no longer needed a Product Manager of Automation Technologies, all of Sal Soghoian’s long-lost friends came out of the wood work. And apparently, he had lots of friends.
All of a sudden, from countless directions I started hearing about Automator and Applescripts from people who never mentioned them before. They openly lamented that more people didn’t take advantage of these tools. Being a former Apple hater, who had never touched a Mac prior to 2012, I had no idea what they were talking about. I still don’t, but they sound like great time savers that most people are unaware of.
Even though it’s nowhere near as powerful as Automator or AppleScripts, 3D Touch seems to exist in a similar space in the iOS world. It’s there, it’s great, and it can make you more efficient. And most people have no idea how to use it. The old phrase rings truer than ever, “Out of sight is out of mind”.
I love 3D Touch, and I even enjoy looking for new functions that I can add to my tool box. For whatever reason, I get a sense of satisfaction out of using a 3D Touch shortcut and bypassing the menu options that everyone else uses. It’s like finding an empty cashier at Walmart while everyone is waiting in a line ten deep.
But Automator and AppleScripts took time and effort to master. Much more so than 3D Touch. But the payoff is commensurately larger. If you used Macs and were motivated to streamline your workflow, you did what you had to do.
The principle is the same with 3D Touch. No one is going to hold your hand and help you use it. You have to take it upon yourself to search out these shortcuts and commit them to memory.
But what surprised me the most was when I heard people extol the virtues of Automator who’ve in the past said that they find little use for 3D Touch. That doesn’t make any sense to me. There are uses―they just don’t know about them or made no effort to remember them. They have become the very thing that they decry. They’ve become apathetic or lazy.
Even though it’s nowhere near as powerful as Automator or AppleScripts, 3D Touch seems to exist in a similar space in the iOS world. It’s there, it’s great, and it can make you more efficient. And most people have no idea how to use it. The old phrase rings truer than ever, “Out of sight is out of mind”.
I love 3D Touch, and I even enjoy looking for new functions that I can add to my tool box. For whatever reason, I get a sense of satisfaction out of using a 3D Touch shortcut and bypassing the menu options that everyone else uses. It’s like finding an empty cashier at Walmart while everyone is waiting in a line ten deep.
But Automator and AppleScripts took time and effort to master. Much more so than 3D Touch. But the payoff is commensurately larger. If you used Macs and were motivated to streamline your workflow, you did what you had to do.
The principle is the same with 3D Touch. No one is going to hold your hand and help you use it. You have to take it upon yourself to search out these shortcuts and commit them to memory.
But what surprised me the most was when I heard people extol the virtues of Automator who’ve in the past said that they find little use for 3D Touch. That doesn’t make any sense to me. There are uses―they just don’t know about them or made no effort to remember them. They have become the very thing that they decry. They’ve become apathetic or lazy.
RSS Feed