Re: [NTLK] [OT] New iPhones/iPhone OS 3.0

From: Jon Glass <jonglass_at_usa.net>
Date: Mon Jun 15 2009 - 02:40:05 EDT

On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 1:36 AM, Steven Scotten<splicer@paroxysm.com> wrote:
> I'm still unclear about what is "intelligent" about Assist. It's a
> command-line interface to a very finite number of pre-scripted tasks.
> If you want to do something slightly different than the progression of
> tasks it gives for you, aren't you out of luck?
>
> OTOH, don't take my "command-line interface to pre-scripted tasks" as
> being too damning. Quicksilver on the Mac is quickly becoming one of
> my favorite enhancements, and that's largely what Quicksilver is.
>

Actually, QuickSilver _is_ an intelligent "Assistent" just like the
Newton Assist function. And Assist is not limited to just a few
commands--it is/was extendable. If you have PocketMoney installed, it
adds its own commands, and other apps did as well. And anybody could
write these. But what makes the Assist function is not just the
commands, write in your Notepad, "Lunch with Bob next Tuesday",
hilight it, and tap "Assist". You wil get a slip for an appointment
next Tuesday at noon. Writer "Remember to call Bob tomorrow" and you
get a to-do slip for tomorrow. It takes a simple sentence, parses it,
and gives you back proper results. You also have to realize that when
the Newton did this in 1993, it was revolutionary! Nobody else had
done this before! A few years later, I tried to emulate this in a
Hypercard stack, and it was a _lot_ of work just to get a few things
working. ;-) I still have that set of stacks somewhere. ;-) But the
thing is, Newton was the first for it. Plus, as I also mentioned, the
integration between apps, thanks to the soup structure, was also
"intelligent". The PalmOS has never reached this level of integration
in the built-in apps. And we haven't discussed the system-wide "Find"
structure yet. ;-) If you used consistent naming throughout your
Newton (I always wrote both first and last names in notes, calls,
todos, appointments, etc. You can quickly get a complete history of
any contact. It made my Now Contact and Up to Date databases look lame
in comparison. ;-)

-- 
 -Jon Glass
Krakow, Poland
<jonglass@usa.net>
"I don't believe in philosophies. I believe in fundamentals." --Jack Nicklaus
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Received on Mon Jun 15 02:44:35 2009

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