Realizing the user automation dream

A result from the Describe a Shortcut feature in macOS 27.

Since the very beginning, it’s been clear that computers provide incredible power to those who know how to use them to get work done. The challenge has always been how small the group of “those who know how to use them” has been.

The Apple II included support for BASIC, a simplified programming language that was intended to let new computer users write programs. “In my opinion, the real thing [the Apple II] is doing right now is to teach people how to program the computer,” a young Steve Jobs told the New Yorker in 1977. The first computer programs I wrote were in BASIC.

There was also the Logo language, which helped introduce beginners to programming concepts through the manipulation of a virtual robot called a “turtle.” In the ’80s, HyperCard tried to broaden the programming community through its use of HyperTalk, another language designed to speak to beginners.

The (still!) current examples of this on the Mac are AppleScript, which used a format based on English-language sentence structure; and Automator and Shortcuts, two automation tools designed to create flow-chart-based programs.

The goal is always the same: To give regular people the ability to harness the power of computers. And we’ve never, ever been closer to the goal than we are today.

No, I’m not talking about vibe coding apps, mostly because that requires a level of focus and detail that most “regular people” are not going to want to provide. Show a civilian Xcode and watch how their eyes instantly glaze over.

I’m talking about Shortcuts—specifically, Apple’s Describe a Shortcut feature in the forthcoming macOS 27, iOS 27, and iPadOS 27.

This is as close as we’ve come, across 40 years, to the original dream of putting computer power in the hands of everyone. You can literally tell your device what you want it to do, and when—”every morning show me my to-dos and calendar events for the day”—and it will generate a program to do it and a schedule to run it.

A look inside a shortcut created by Describe a Shortcut.

Yes, there are lots of limitations. Describe a Shortcut doesn’t work with third-party apps, only Apple’s own stuff (at least, for now). It can sometimes get confused, especially with complex queries. And it has an interesting tendency to kick things to the Use Model action—why am I not surprised that an AI model likes to build Shortcuts that themselves use AI models?

But when it works, which is most of the time, it’s magical. And perhaps its best feature is that you can iterate on your Shortcuts. If there’s something it doesn’t do quite right the first time, you can specify changes you’d like to see—”only show me items from my Personal calendar”—and it’ll rewrite the Shortcut to take those changes into account. In that way, it’s emulating the back-and-forth conversations that can make vibe coding so remarkable.

I was also impressed with the fact that Shortcuts created with this method are… just Shortcuts. With one click, you’re looking at the actual Shortcut blocks that the feature has assembled for you. You can edit them as you see fit. They’re not special in any way, other than that they were built with an actual English-language sentence, not a line of code that resembles one superficially.

I’m sure that future developments will make it even easier for us to tell our devices what to do. But this particular advance feels especially big to me, like we’ve crossed some invisible line of demarcation. We are entering the era where the computers program themselves—and, for the most part, are able to understand what we’re asking them to do.