Time Travel: 2014

According to Lin Hui's original idea, he planned to test the shortcut command software before launching it officially. Now it seems that it won't be so troublesome.

Although Lin Hui was unexpected that Apple planned to acquire Quick Commands so soon, it is reasonable to think about it carefully.

Pingchun paid great attention to the shortcut command software in its previous life, and acquired WORKFLOW, the previous version of the shortcut command software, together with its applications for people and companies.

As for why Apple is interested in shortcut commands, Lin Hui has already analyzed it before. The shortcut command software has unique value to Apple.

The software form of shortcut commands breaks through the limitations of iOS's sandbox, which provides a completely new perspective for Apple's understanding of the system.

On the other hand, if the shortcut command software can be combined with Siri, it will greatly assist Apple’s VOICEOVER work in this area.

Not only does it help VOICEOVER, the combination of shortcut commands and Siri will also greatly improve the human-computer interaction experience.

Of course, this improvement is only relative to the previous stupid Siri on iOS7.

Even if the current Siri is combined with the shortcut commands for ash removal, the interactive effect will be greatly improved.

But the improved interaction effect is incomparable to the human-computer interaction experience that Lin Hui could achieve with Siri+ shortcut commands when he first came through in his previous life.

After all, software and hardware are a game of chess, and if you want to achieve good software performance, you often need hardware support.

Only powerful hardware coupled with powerful software can give users a good interactive experience.

Of course, many advancements involving technology are achieved through comparison so that users can get a better experience.

If there is no comparison, the user experience given by the higher-level technology in the previous life may not be much better.

There should be another consideration why Apple is eager to acquire the Shortcuts software before the 2014 WWDC.

That is to prepare to directly acquire the shortcut command software and launch it as a system application together with the official version of iOS 8 at the WWDC Global Developer Conference.

As for how Lin Hui came to this judgment, Lin Hui remembered that it was different from the drastic application of flat design on iOS7.

iOS8 has not changed much compared to iOS7, although Apple has also added new features such as continuous interoperability in iOS8.

However, this may give users the impression that they are squeezing out toothpaste, and this is indeed the case. Lin Hui remembers that the user update rate of iOS8 did not reach 47% for several months after it came out.

This is more or less a failure for a mobile phone system.

Apple should also know that the new system they created does not have much change compared to iOS7.

In this case, it is difficult for a refreshing application like Shortcuts not to arouse Apple's interest.

And when it comes to shortcut commands, this software can easily interact with Siri.

Judging from the development history of Siri in its previous life, although this thing has never been able to transform from the role of an assistant to a true intelligence.

But when it comes to Siri, Apple takes the trouble and spare no effort to add useless functions to Siri in almost every iOS version.

It’s hard for Apple to say no to software like Shortcuts that can be organically integrated with Siri.

If this is the case, the acquisition cycle is obviously tighter than Lin Hui imagined.

After all, there are only more than ten days until the WWDC Global Developers Conference is held.

However, this is not a big problem for Lin Hui. Developing a shortcut demo version suitable for the official version of iOS8 does not pose any problem for Lin Hui.

For a developer in his previous life, the higher the iOS version, the more proficient he is in software development.

However, the development of early versions of iOS always gave Lin Hui a feeling of renaissance.

If Apple really plans to launch the Quick Commands application in mid-July, it will undoubtedly mean that Lin Hui has the power to raise the price.

It’s not exactly a price hike. Originally, the shortcut command software was a software that was ready to be launched online.

If it is directly acquired by Apple, it will undoubtedly mean that Lin Huishao has made a fortune from the market.

In this case, it seems reasonable for Pingcheng to compensate for the losses.

Lin Hui originally wanted to ask Huang Jing for some more details, but considering that Huang Jing had informed him about this matter before, he had already made an exception.

And it seems that Huang Jing is not aware of the details of such an acquisition, which can easily cost tens of millions of dollars.

It is estimated that the previous so-called US$40 million acquisition was just Huang Jing's inference.

Lin Hui gave up and continued to ask about the purchase price, but Lin Hui was still very curious about why Apple suddenly became interested in the software Lin Hui made?

Could it be that the mechanism he set up for internal testing on the Quick Command software attracted Apple's attention?

In the next few years, the review involving app stores will indeed clearly stipulate:

Software in the app store must not use its own mechanisms to unlock content or functions, such as license keys, augmented reality tags, QR codes, etc. to limit functions.

In the next few years, Lin Hui's previous idea of ​​setting an additional password to unlock all functions in the software will undoubtedly be very similar to adding an additional license key to the program.

Although this thing will be obviously illegal in the next few years, the current app store in this time and space does not impose additional restrictions on license keys.

The app store in this time and space only requires that "software and its metadata in the app store must not contain buttons or external links to guide users to purchase using non-in-app purchase mechanisms." Lin Hui's current approach obviously does not violate this Require.

When it comes to shortcut commands, in addition to the certain non-malicious tricks in its own mechanism, there is nothing fishy about the content of the shortcut command software itself that Lin Hui reproduced.

Whether it's placeholder text, a blank website, or other temporary content that I remove before the app is submitted, these are the kinds of simple mistakes I try to avoid.

In fact, because he had done a lot of development in his previous life, Lin Hui had often unconsciously restrained himself with the stricter review requirements in his previous life.

Although Pingchun had a lot of review requirements in the previous life, the review requirements for Pingchun in 2014 were quite loose.

There aren't many regulations at all involving software content.

But this is not entirely a good thing, so many weird software can be put on the app store.

Later, Apple couldn't bear it and wrote the corresponding requirements directly in the developer instructions.

Of course, these are all things for later.

Lin Hui didn't think it was because he caused bugs in the software that attracted Apple's attention.