Preparing for the era of orchestrated apps
It’s going to be years before we can really see the impact of Apple embracing systemwide AI features via Apple Intelligence. Many of the features announced at WWDC 2024 won’t even ship until next year, and the keynote’s Siri segment alone was so full of future-tense descriptions and metaphors about the beginning of a journey that it’s quite clear this is going to take some time.
But let’s try to look out into the future. Let’s consider what the iPhone, in particular, might look like once Siri gets smart and Apple Intelligence takes hold. It’s a future that may dramatically change what we think of as apps—and that holds some serious threats (as well as opportunities) for app developers.
Tuning the orchestra
Over the next few years you’re going to be hearing a lot more about a concept that Apple started to discuss at WWDC this year: orchestration. Broadly, the idea is that the machine-learning models on your Apple devices are going to be able to understand what you want to do, based on your commands and current context, and make it happen by using the combined resources of your device’s system software and third-party apps.
When everything is orchestrated properly, all the capabilities of all your apps are put into a big soup, and the AI system at the heart of your device can choose the right capabilities to do what you need it to do—without you having to specify all the steps it needs to take to get there.
This is, in many ways, the ultimate promise of user automation. For years I’ve been a fan of tools that let users create scripts or automations or workflows that connect up different aspects of their computing lives in order to save time and end busywork. Computers have eliminated countless sorts of drudgery, but if you use a computer every day, you probably still frequently find yourself doing some 21st-century drudgery, pasting this thing over here, clicking that thing over there, often in a mindless, repetitive sequence.
I can automate you out of that with some combination of AppleScript or Shortcuts or Keyboard Maestro or shell script or some other macro language… and I have done so for myself, friends, and family. But the truth is, most people are never going to build even a simple Shortcut for themselves.
But… what if they don’t have to? In a world of properly orchestrated apps, they wouldn’t. They’d just say what they wanted, and their device would do all the work. If they needed to do the same task repeatedly, they could just tell Siri that, and at that point, you’ve basically built an automation workflow in zero steps.
That’s the holy grail of user automation, honestly. Tell your device what to do, and it does it—you don’t need to be involved at all. The drudgery evaporates. How civilized.
Intents and purposes
Okay, so the automation utopia may be upon us soon. But it’s easier said than done, and that’s because the functions in our apps on all our devices aren’t all magically known to Siri and Apple Intelligence. App developers have to specifically mark out the key functionality of their apps and bundle it up in a specific way so that it’s accessible to the broader system.
This is how AppleScript worked back in the day, and in today’s Shortcuts era, it’s enabled by something called App Intents. App Intents aren’t new—as I said, they’re what powers Shortcuts—but as of 2024, they’re much more meaningful than they used to be, because they’re how apps integrate with Apple Intelligence.
What Apple’s asking app developers to do is put in extra work in order to allow their apps to offer up their unique functionality to the system in an organized way. The result will be that the system will know those capabilities exist and will be able to use them as needed, based on whatever the user wants to do. If I’m looking at a photo and say I want to share that with Myke and Stephen in Slack, Apple Intelligence needs to understand what I’m looking at, export that photo in a format that’s reasonable for sharing in Slack, and then use Slack to choose the right venue for me to share with Stephen and Myke. (Oh, and based on context it also needs to intuit that I mean Stephen Hackett and Myke Hurley—two people who are frequently connected—and not people I know separately like Steven Schapansky and Mike Gordon.)
It’s all tricky, but the potential is enormous. Apps are mostly islands unto themselves, and it can be a real effort to get them to work together the way you want them to. I once built a wild system that basically connected my email client to a database1—the apps didn’t know about each other, and they didn’t need to—but by connecting them, I got a huge productivity boost. With Apple Intelligence and App Intents (so many AIs!), the potential is there for your device to connect your apps with one another in all sorts of ways… without you even breaking a sweat.
The potential here is huge. Now, the big question: Will app developers buy in?
App self-esteem
On a device operated by Apple Intelligence and full of apps all tricked out with App Intents, what does “using an app” mean, anyway? I’m dubious that we’re not going to ever want to scroll through lists and tap things and perform other tactile acts on our phones, even if we can drive a lot of work with a voice assistant. But if you’re an app developer, there’s a real risk of feeling like your app is no longer a destination for users but a box of parts that will occasionally be rummaged through by the system while it’s passing through to a different destination. That’s scary.
I do think that if Apple’s idea of an orchestrated future comes into being, the importance of any individual app might be reduced. But there’s also huge potential here for different apps to work together, for them to amplify each other so that they’re far more important for individual users than they could possibly be now.
For some apps, though, the future might be more about supplying great actions and data sources to the big Apple Intelligence soup—presumably for a subscription price. It seems a little bit weird, but the future of iOS apps might be services that just tie into Apple Intelligence, with little to no interface of their own. I don’t know if you could even call them apps.
That’s all years away, but I think it’s already time for app developers to consider what makes their apps unique and useful in a world where a smart machine-learning model is taking user commands and then getting results. If competitors offer the same functionality, they should presumably be motivated to offer App Intents so that the system will use them, and they’ll become crucial, irreplaceable portions of a user’s workflow.
For some apps, that might mean becoming less of a bright, shiny interface in the face of users, and more of a behind-the-scenes workhorse that just makes life better. Developers who are used to having the spotlight may be disquieted by that notion, but it doesn’t mean that their software doesn’t have value—and won’t be able to command an appropriate subscription price.
Existential threats
Apps and the App Store have been very, very good for Apple. I’m sure the company wants that to continue for as close to forever as possible.
But if the future of the devices that keep Apple in business is about to be transformed by AI models that orchestrate our software to do our bidding, there’s a serious risk that it could disrupt Apple’s standing in all of those device categories. That’s why the rise of AI is clearly an existential threat for Apple and why the company spent so much time talking about AI features at WWDC 2024.
It’s worth keeping that fundamental existential threat in mind. While it’s easy to say that apps and the App Store helped make Apple what it is, and therefore, the company will always be inclined to maintain the status quo… the fact is that if Apple thinks the best way for it to survive and flourish is to atomize app functionality into App Intents and drive it all with a user-driven AI assistant, it’ll do that. And it won’t think twice about it, no matter the consequences for app developers.
- Because it was the 90s, it was an AppleScript that connected Eudora and FileMaker Pro. ↩
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