„Apple Shortcuts: The Bicycle for the Mind is Back, but it’s Electric”
This is the way I look at the Jobs bicycle analogy: When you build your own tools, you make your mind stronger, and able to go farther the next day.
As I use Shortcuts more and more, I feel myself somewhere between driving a car made of apps built by other people and riding a bicycle of my own creation. I’m creating genuinely useful tools, and I’m pushing myself farther each day I ride. But I’m also just using someone else’s app. I’m not sure if I’m truly living Sal Soghoian’s dream of the power of the computer residing in the hands of the user.
But I know something fundamental has changed in my relationship with my iPhone. It’s now something I can tinker with, in a way Apple hasn’t put their full weight behind for 20 years. The result, for me, is that my phone is less anxiety-inducing. At times, it’s downright inspiring.
So, as I said on Twitter, Shortcuts is like an electric bicycle — maybe you’re not getting quite as much exercise as you should, but it’s better than driving.
Apple should be proud that they’re back in the bicycle business. Maybe, just maybe, the key to keeping our phones from ruining our lives is to put the power to control them back in our hands.
Klickt euch zum Essay für seine tollen Analogien, und bleibt für die Handvoll netter Shortcuts.