The Elgato device sounds like a solution looking for a problem to solve. What are the real world use cases for this device that apps like Shortcuts or IFTTT cannot accomplish?
The El Gato Stream Deck devices are basically keyboards from the future. Did you ever hear of the crowdfunded keyboards with OLEDs for keytops (that AFAIK never delivered)? That’s what the Stream Decks are… pads of buttons each of which has a real-time customizable keycap.
So it’s more a keyboard interface to automation, than automation itself, but they allow to simplify a complex UX with dynamic keytops (a la a menu system) for easy(-er) navigation of choices, options, and selections.
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Remember that this is a device made to enable live streamers to quickly perform commands on their Mac. It’s designed as a professional piece of hardware with a fairly niche market.
The fact that some of us are so into automation that this device is worth the cost for its always-there qualities (and other things perhaps) is quite unintended I think.
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I don’t feel any need to convince someone of the usefulness of something they aren’t interested in.
You don’t need keyboard shortcuts, you can just use the mouse.
You don’t need Hazel, you can just move the files yourself.
You don’t need launchd you can just run things yourself.
And so on… Anything that makes something easier for one person can be dismissed as unnecessary by someone who doesn’t need it, or who sees the old way as sufficient.
I’ve had it for 48 hours and have already come up with a half-dozen ways to use it. Are these things I can’t do another way? Of course I can do them another way. But this makes it easier. And for something that I’m going to use daily, that’s what I want. Make things easier.
Update
I just now discovered that you can send output from a Keyboard Maestro macro to a specific button. Looks like you can get 5 lines with 10 characters per line.
You can also set the image of a button.
And set a temporary alarm image.
What can I use that for? Don’t know yet. But I look forward to figuring it out.
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I think perhaps you may be missing the point.
Automation is not something anyone uses because we NEED it, but depending on how often a certain task or sequence of tasks is repeated, it can save time and increase both productivity and accuracy.
Sure, we could all still do it manually…and if you don’t have repetitive tasks to automate, these applications are really unnecessary. However for someone repeating the same task multiple times, they can save a lot of time that can be more productively used doing other things.
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Yeah of course. At some point time saving does becomes a need of course. Lots could be said about that, we could, for instance, add up columns of numbers by hand as we used to say. Nobody can afford to do that now. Nobody. Time saved is just filed up with something else too often though…
On the other hand I find about 60% of my automation is just aesthetic I might say and saves a kind of irritation very often. Click here then click there…
I hardly save any time, in some cases none if you count setting the macro or expansion. Lose time even! I do, overall save a lot of time because I am not irritated at the machine. Launchbar achieves that for me, rather than raw time saved. I think the clip board history saves me real solid blocks of time and that was totally unintended. Ironic eh?
I just have a thing about the mouse too. In the olden days I ran a windows computer without a mouse at all fixed to it. It was a big break on other people in the region using it too. It was officially ‘shared’. I would often take more time using the keyboard than I would have done using a mouse. However I had another aim in mind, just keeping baby pic emailers off the machine and frankly I was quicker than anybody else on several tasks anyway, even though ‘slower’ re the mouse.