Apple Acquires Workflow ⇥ techcrunch.com

Well, here’s a weird piece of news. Matthew Panzarino, TechCrunch:

Apple has finalized a deal to acquire Workflow today — a tool that lets you hook together apps and functions within apps in strings of commands to automate tasks. We’ve been tracking this one for a while but were able to confirm just now that the ink on the deal is drying as we speak.

[…]

Workflow the app is being acquired, along with the team of Weinstein, Conrad Kramer and Nick Frey. In a somewhat uncommon move for Apple, the app will continue to be made available on the App Store and will be made free later today.

Back in November, Apple eliminated Sal Soghoian’s position as Product Manager of Automation Technologies — he now works for the Omni Group on automation. At the time, Craig Federighi promised in an email that they have “every intention to continue [their] support for the great automation technologies in MacOS”. This acquisition makes me think that they’d like to extend automation support to iOS in a more comprehensive way, too, and is the first indication I’ve seen that Apple is continuing to take automation seriously after such a worrying November. What shape that will take, I have no idea.