Apple Has Eliminated Sal Soghoian’s Position ⇥ macosxautomation.com

First broken by Andy Ihnatko on Twitter, Sal Soghoian himself has confirmed the news today:

Q. I hear you no longer work for Apple; is that true?

A. Correct. I joined Apple in January of 1997, almost twenty years ago, because of my profound belief that ‘the power of the computer should reside in the hands of the one using it.’ That credo remains my truth to this day. Recently, I was informed that my position as Product Manager of Automation Technologies was eliminated for business reasons. Consequently, I am no longer employed by Apple Inc. But, I still believe my credo to be as true today as ever.

There’s very little that defines the Mac’s support for power users better than its automation capabilities: Automator for beginners, AppleScript and JavaScript for more advanced users, and Services to tie it all together. A great deal of that is directly attributable to Soghoian.

I get that businesses move forward, and I get that power users are a vanishingly small part of Apple’s sales, but this is concerning. I use a bunch of Services and AppleScripts every single day; I would be markedly less productive if I didn’t have these automations in place. This news makes me worried that, one day, I’ll need to learn to live without them.