I've been thinking more recently, do you think that an OpenAi-Apple merger will happen this cycle as it did with AOL-TimeWarner in the past? The thought being that an aging gatekeeper attempts to merge with an up-and-coming company when they feel it's too late to be relevant only for there to be another paradigm shift that obsoletes that decision. Though that is very much speculation.
MS was sizing them up a short time ago, I would imagine it'd be something strange like laying everyone off then hiring them again, or moving the IP to a child corporation Firefox-style
I've personally known Ari, the guy behind Sky, since the mid 2000s when he was a frequent visitor to the forum insanelymac.com, back when OSx86 was a big deal. Even back then, he really stood out and I'm glad he's continuing to make waves.
There are a few other comments like yours but it it doesn't mean anything to someone who doesn't use iOS. I had to look it up and it lets you create automated tasks using different iOS apps.
Shortcuts is the strangest programming "language" that I make useful things in.
My favorite is an automation that triggers when I turn on my motorcycle helmet's bluetooth module, it checks the time of day and starts playing my favorite type of music for riding at that time - hard rock at daytime, EDM/synthy music at night.
The founders originally built Shortcuts as a separate startup. From memory I think both were under 20 at the time. They were acquired by Apple, and turned their startup into a default application that people actually like.
One of my younger teammates got into programming thanks to their app.
That makes me so happy to hear! I programmed my dad's old TI-82 to stay entertained in high school math, and I always wondered if kids would do that with Shortcuts.
macOS exposes a lot of affordances to code/xrpc/services/etc that Shortcuts (and previously automator) used. They let you do basically anything you'd want on macOS programmatically, without going through accessibility frameworks, code signing and sand-boxing issues. iOS as well to some extent.
Presumably if OpenAI is dog-walked/locked out of these by Apple at some point, they would be stuck in the Chrome/Chromebook feature jail. My guess is this gives OpenAI a team to put in charge to give them a chance to wedge themselves into the OS before Apple changes their mind or puts scare-box dialogs everywhere.
Either that or there's nothing so complicated and OpenAI just wants to re-build this stack inside ChatGPT as quickly and well as they can.
I'm not an IOS guy so I'm trying to track this - from the thread I'm to gather this allows robotic process automation on IOS which I guess isn't easy to do? I could see the use case if you're trying to build an agent that can navigate and use apps on IOS.
Here's the question - why is this difficult on IOS? What "magic" does Sky bring to the table to make this happen?
Congrats to the Sky app developers, so OpenAI believes that the future is in computer assistants?
I don't buy this, it doesn't make sense to me that tools and interfaces made for human comfort and consumption is the right place to plug the AI to automate our lives.
IMHO the computing is ripe for a re-do with everything already being enshitified and putting another lay to cover all the shit we are in isn't going to help anybody.
btw: Don't know what they think their competitive advantage is going to be with this. Either apple will just clone it, or more likely and quicker (and probably already done) there will be a better open-source version of this that let's you freely choose your local/cloud LLM model provider.
Apple's AI adoption and execution has been atrocious. Siri still makes so many mistakes, Homepod can't answer anything substantial without "I've sent a link to your iPhone". If they simply let Claude back Siri, they'd be light years ahead of where they are now.
There is precedence for Apple waiting for technologies to mature before using them (last mover advantage), and then dominating by being the platform owner.
Sometimes, it seems that this just makes parts of their offering seem aged though, while they (presumably) sit around being discontent with the currently available alternatives. Especially now with LLMs which age faster than anything.
We're still where we were for the past 2 years: by far the best voice assistant available on the market is... Home Assistant wired to a SOTA LLM via API key.
I wanted to look up Japanese vocab easily with my voice while running. Wouldn’t let me do it (it could show me dictionary pages but wouldn’t speak the translation into my AirPods). However, I could look up English words just fine.
So I had to set my Siri language to Japanese, and now I can look up English translations of Japanese words…though I do have to speak Japanese.
My entirely unsubstantiated theory is that Apple is a company that would not want to release a product it can't control 100%. You can't control an LLM 100%, so here we are.
"Hey Apple, why was Steve Jobs considered to be such a jerk?" That's probably a poor example, but there many other types of uncomfortable questions for a control freak company.
Yeah, I think you nailed it better than I did, just the lack of predictability is likely enough.
I should also point out that I use an iPhone, partially because Apple being a control freak can lead to great products. That was not meant as an insult to them.
Amreicans want to make the economy looks good, so they have to fake AI growth. To do that, they have to give OpenAIs a lot of money.
OpenAIs have so much money they have to make bets.
The best ways to make bets are: (a) do what others do: social video, app store, online shopping... (b) buy out other small promising companies so investors have no where else to look.
I've been thinking more recently, do you think that an OpenAi-Apple merger will happen this cycle as it did with AOL-TimeWarner in the past? The thought being that an aging gatekeeper attempts to merge with an up-and-coming company when they feel it's too late to be relevant only for there to be another paradigm shift that obsoletes that decision. Though that is very much speculation.
I wonder how that would even work with OpenAI's weird 'non profit' shenanigans.
MS was sizing them up a short time ago, I would imagine it'd be something strange like laying everyone off then hiring them again, or moving the IP to a child corporation Firefox-style
I've personally known Ari, the guy behind Sky, since the mid 2000s when he was a frequent visitor to the forum insanelymac.com, back when OSx86 was a big deal. Even back then, he really stood out and I'm glad he's continuing to make waves.
Interesting! The folks who built this made what became Shortcuts on iOS. They are great hackers.
There are a few other comments like yours but it it doesn't mean anything to someone who doesn't use iOS. I had to look it up and it lets you create automated tasks using different iOS apps.
Shortcuts is the strangest programming "language" that I make useful things in.
My favorite is an automation that triggers when I turn on my motorcycle helmet's bluetooth module, it checks the time of day and starts playing my favorite type of music for riding at that time - hard rock at daytime, EDM/synthy music at night.
Yes.
Some more interesting background:
The founders originally built Shortcuts as a separate startup. From memory I think both were under 20 at the time. They were acquired by Apple, and turned their startup into a default application that people actually like.
One of my younger teammates got into programming thanks to their app.
That makes me so happy to hear! I programmed my dad's old TI-82 to stay entertained in high school math, and I always wondered if kids would do that with Shortcuts.
you can see where it all started back in 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49JJnJ2i4oc
Thanks for sharing, absolutely amazing
macOS exposes a lot of affordances to code/xrpc/services/etc that Shortcuts (and previously automator) used. They let you do basically anything you'd want on macOS programmatically, without going through accessibility frameworks, code signing and sand-boxing issues. iOS as well to some extent.
Presumably if OpenAI is dog-walked/locked out of these by Apple at some point, they would be stuck in the Chrome/Chromebook feature jail. My guess is this gives OpenAI a team to put in charge to give them a chance to wedge themselves into the OS before Apple changes their mind or puts scare-box dialogs everywhere.
Either that or there's nothing so complicated and OpenAI just wants to re-build this stack inside ChatGPT as quickly and well as they can.
Which afaik is something that has been in Android for ages. What's so special about the iOs implementation?
Does Android have it? Some Googling tells me it has third party apps which enable it but no built-in equivalent.
I'm not an IOS guy so I'm trying to track this - from the thread I'm to gather this allows robotic process automation on IOS which I guess isn't easy to do? I could see the use case if you're trying to build an agent that can navigate and use apps on IOS.
Here's the question - why is this difficult on IOS? What "magic" does Sky bring to the table to make this happen?
Sky is macOS only. It essentially gives an LLM access to various system APIs coupled with a floating user interface that you can access on command.
Seems pretty obvious Sky.app's functionality will land in the macOS ChatGPT app at some point. I wonder how Atlas fits into that story.
> Disclosure: An investment fund associated with Sam Altman held a passive investment in Software Applications Incorporated.
Congrats to the Sky app developers, so OpenAI believes that the future is in computer assistants?
I don't buy this, it doesn't make sense to me that tools and interfaces made for human comfort and consumption is the right place to plug the AI to automate our lives.
IMHO the computing is ripe for a re-do with everything already being enshitified and putting another lay to cover all the shit we are in isn't going to help anybody.
Maybe this is what smart actually useful Siri could become?
To jog people's memory about Sky: yes this is the app created by former Shortcuts/Workflow.app people
"Software Applications Incorporated"... what a very generic company name
Discussed (a bit) here. Others?
Sky, Natural Computing for the Macintosh - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44121891 - May 2025 (4 comments)
btw: Don't know what they think their competitive advantage is going to be with this. Either apple will just clone it, or more likely and quicker (and probably already done) there will be a better open-source version of this that let's you freely choose your local/cloud LLM model provider.
Apple's AI adoption and execution has been atrocious. Siri still makes so many mistakes, Homepod can't answer anything substantial without "I've sent a link to your iPhone". If they simply let Claude back Siri, they'd be light years ahead of where they are now.
There is precedence for Apple waiting for technologies to mature before using them (last mover advantage), and then dominating by being the platform owner.
Sometimes, it seems that this just makes parts of their offering seem aged though, while they (presumably) sit around being discontent with the currently available alternatives. Especially now with LLMs which age faster than anything.
We're still where we were for the past 2 years: by far the best voice assistant available on the market is... Home Assistant wired to a SOTA LLM via API key.
I wanted to look up Japanese vocab easily with my voice while running. Wouldn’t let me do it (it could show me dictionary pages but wouldn’t speak the translation into my AirPods). However, I could look up English words just fine.
So I had to set my Siri language to Japanese, and now I can look up English translations of Japanese words…though I do have to speak Japanese.
My entirely unsubstantiated theory is that Apple is a company that would not want to release a product it can't control 100%. You can't control an LLM 100%, so here we are.
"Hey Apple, why was Steve Jobs considered to be such a jerk?" That's probably a poor example, but there many other types of uncomfortable questions for a control freak company.
Does that sound plausible to anyone else?
This is for sure the case. Apple’s core product DNA (Run like an appliance, simple and reliably) does not jive with the LLM at all.
Now if only they listened to themselves and fixed their keyboard
Yeah, I think you nailed it better than I did, just the lack of predictability is likely enough.
I should also point out that I use an iPhone, partially because Apple being a control freak can lead to great products. That was not meant as an insult to them.
> Apple's AI adoption and execution has been atrocious.
Plenty of us are glad. Look at Microsoft and Google tried to force feed users inmature broken LLM tech no one asked for
Lol, I pay no mind who post stuff like that. They are clueless.
Wow! I was wondering why they were so quiet! Great news
OpenAI is rapidly skating to where Apple should be, and isn't.
> We’ve always wanted computers to be more empowering, customizable, and intuitive.
Agreed
> With LLMs, we can finally put the pieces together.
I think this is true
> That’s why we built Sky, an AI experience that floats over your desktop to help you think and create.
Never mind, hard pass
Next step towards AGI?
Perhaps Artificial General Illusion?
And another consolidation in the space to make the big players even bigger, when actually it's hard time to break up the tech feudalism party.
Amreicans want to make the economy looks good, so they have to fake AI growth. To do that, they have to give OpenAIs a lot of money.
OpenAIs have so much money they have to make bets.
The best ways to make bets are: (a) do what others do: social video, app store, online shopping... (b) buy out other small promising companies so investors have no where else to look.
Were there any revenue numbers for this acquisition?
Sky was never publicly available.
The AI grift must continue.
So it begins, they’ve acquired the first half. Now they just need to buy or fork .Net from Microsoft.
I don’t know how this will help but okay.