OpenAI acquires Sky.app
46 comments
·October 23, 2025stopachka
Interesting! The folks who built this made what became Shortcuts on iOS. They are great hackers.
MisterTea
There are a few other comments like yours but it it doesn't mean anything to someone who doesn't use iOS. I had to look it up and it lets you create automated tasks using different iOS apps.
trenchpilgrim
Shortcuts is the strangest programming "language" that I make useful things in.
My favorite is an automation that triggers when I turn on my motorcycle helmet's bluetooth module, it checks the time of day and starts playing my favorite type of music for riding at that time - hard rock at daytime, EDM/synthy music at night.
stopachka
Yes.
Some more interesting background:
The founders originally built Shortcuts as a separate startup. From memory I think both were under 20 at the time. They were acquired by Apple, and turned their startup into a default application that people actually like.
One of my younger teammates got into programming thanks to their app.
conradev
That makes me so happy to hear! I programmed my dad's old TI-82 to stay entertained in high school math, and I always wondered if kids would do that with Shortcuts.
you can see where it all started back in 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49JJnJ2i4oc
big_toast
macOS exposes a lot of affordances to code/xrpc/services/etc that Shortcuts (and previously automator) used. They let you do basically anything you'd want on macOS programmatically, without going through accessibility frameworks, code signing and sand-boxing issues. iOS as well to some extent.
Presumably if OpenAI is dog-walked/locked out of these by Apple at some point, they would be stuck in the Chrome/Chromebook feature jail. My guess is this gives OpenAI a team to put in charge to give them a chance to wedge themselves into the OS before Apple changes their mind or puts scare-box dialogs everywhere.
Either that or there's nothing so complicated and OpenAI just wants to re-build this stack inside ChatGPT as quickly and well as they can.
bossyTeacher
Which afaik is something that has been in Android for ages. What's so special about the iOs implementation?
jdgoesmarching
Shortcuts is about a decade old and was acquired by Apple 8 years ago. It has hooks into the OS and allows apps to expose their own hooks for automation.
Are you looking for a real answer or is this some weird defensive Android thing in response to someone describing the existence of an Apple feature?
basisword
Does Android have it? Some Googling tells me it has third party apps which enable it but no built-in equivalent.
luma
I'm not an IOS guy so I'm trying to track this - from the thread I'm to gather this allows robotic process automation on IOS which I guess isn't easy to do? I could see the use case if you're trying to build an agent that can navigate and use apps on IOS.
Here's the question - why is this difficult on IOS? What "magic" does Sky bring to the table to make this happen?
technocrat8080
Sky is macOS only. It essentially gives an LLM access to various system APIs coupled with a floating user interface that you can access on command.
an0malous
> Disclosure: An investment fund associated with Sam Altman held a passive investment in Software Applications Incorporated.
technocrat8080
Seems pretty obvious Sky.app's functionality will land in the macOS ChatGPT app at some point. I wonder how Atlas fits into that story.
rpwilcox
To jog people's memory about Sky: yes this is the app created by former Shortcuts/Workflow.app people
WorldPeas
I've been thinking more recently, do you think that an OpenAi-Apple merger will happen this cycle as it did with AOL-TimeWarner in the past? The thought being that an aging gatekeeper attempts to merge with an up-and-coming company when they feel it's too late to be relevant only for there to be another paradigm shift that obsoletes that decision. Though that is very much speculation.
fourseventy
I wonder how that would even work with OpenAI's weird 'non profit' shenanigans.
WorldPeas
MS was sizing them up a short time ago, I would imagine it'd be something strange like laying everyone off then hiring them again, or moving the IP to a child corporation Firefox-style
gigatexal
Maybe this is what smart actually useful Siri could become?
dang
Discussed (a bit) here. Others?
Sky, Natural Computing for the Macintosh - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44121891 - May 2025 (4 comments)
toephu2
"Software Applications Incorporated"... what a very generic company name
mentalgear
btw: Don't know what they think their competitive advantage is going to be with this. Either apple will just clone it, or more likely and quicker (and probably already done) there will be a better open-source version of this that let's you freely choose your local/cloud LLM model provider.
tyre
Apple's AI adoption and execution has been atrocious. Siri still makes so many mistakes, Homepod can't answer anything substantial without "I've sent a link to your iPhone". If they simply let Claude back Siri, they'd be light years ahead of where they are now.
fnordsensei
There is precedence for Apple waiting for technologies to mature before using them (last mover advantage), and then dominating by being the platform owner.
Sometimes, it seems that this just makes parts of their offering seem aged though, while they (presumably) sit around being discontent with the currently available alternatives. Especially now with LLMs which age faster than anything.
TeMPOraL
We're still where we were for the past 2 years: by far the best voice assistant available on the market is... Home Assistant wired to a SOTA LLM via API key.
joomla199
I wanted to look up Japanese vocab easily with my voice while running. Wouldn’t let me do it (it could show me dictionary pages but wouldn’t speak the translation into my AirPods). However, I could look up English words just fine.
So I had to set my Siri language to Japanese, and now I can look up English translations of Japanese words…though I do have to speak Japanese.
consumer451
My entirely unsubstantiated theory is that Apple is a company that would not want to release a product it can't control 100%. You can't control an LLM 100%, so here we are.
"Hey Apple, why was Steve Jobs considered to be such a jerk?" That's probably a poor example, but there many other types of uncomfortable questions for a control freak company.
Does that sound plausible to anyone else?
tsunamifury
This is for sure the case. Apple’s core product DNA (Run like an appliance, simple and reliably) does not jive with the LLM at all.
Now if only they listened to themselves and fixed their keyboard
bossyTeacher
> Apple's AI adoption and execution has been atrocious.
Plenty of us are glad. Look at Microsoft and Google tried to force feed users inmature broken LLM tech no one asked for
rhetocj23
Lol, I pay no mind who post stuff like that. They are clueless.
mrtksn
Congrats to the Sky app developers, so OpenAI believes that the future is in computer assistants?
I don't buy this, it doesn't make sense to me that tools and interfaces made for human comfort and consumption is the right place to plug the AI to automate our lives.
IMHO the computing is ripe for a re-do with everything already being enshitified and putting another lay to cover all the shit we are in isn't going to help anybody.
jsheard
> so OpenAI believes that the future is in computer assistants?
Their acquisitions are all over the place, it's more that they're flinging everything they can think of at the wall to see what sticks. I don't get the impression they have any clear vision of the future beyond one where they are the AI landlords collecting rent on whichever applications end up sticking the landing.
I've personally known Ari, the guy behind Sky, since the mid 2000s when he was a frequent visitor to the forum insanelymac.com, back when OSx86 was a big deal. Even back then, he really stood out and I'm glad he's continuing to make waves.