iOS and Automation (or, a solution in search of a problem)

I wrote yesterday about an app called drafts. I was showing it to a friend today and it made me realise that actually, whilst I do look out for these kind of automation app they rarely, if ever, do what I need them to do or end up being part of any wider automation solution that I’m looking for. So, why bother? Well, that’s a good question, and one that I find myself asking quite a lot.

I looked at Drafts yesterday, which seems to have some quite good features in it, like the ability to include additional actions using javaScript. Apparently you can use JavaScript if it’s interpreted by Apple’s built in JavaScript engine. I didn’t know that, but it makes a lot of sense now. Anyway, using this, Drafts can load new ‘actions’ that allow it to integrate with other apps and get them to do some simple things, but, that’s the problem. All they do is simple things.

Another app that showed some promise was (is) Launch Center Pro. The idea of this app was to be able to launch apps with specific criteria. However, it suffers the from the same limitations as Drafts. What it is able to do is limited to simple app launches and actions like, ‘launch app X and search for Y criteria’.

The last one is called triggers. Triggers is a different beast altogether. It’s more about creating physical parameters and when those are met it triggers a response. Quite interesting really, but again limited. The app doesn’t work in the background, which means that it can’t track it’s physical activities when it isn’t on. So, not much use.

So iOS is in many ways a good deal behind the likes of Android when it comes to automation. Nothing like Tasker (Android app) exists for iOS. If it did, if Apple allowed it, that would be amazing.

Here’s a quick list of the apps I mentioned:

Drafts

Launch Center Pro

Triggers