Marty,
> For example, you have an old defunct email address in your address
> book. The messages you send to it bounce with a "user unknown". The
> mail program could easily identify that address and then next time it
> could tell you "That address appears to be bad". It could even look
> in the address book for additional address book entries for the email
> address of that user. I see this kind of issue all the time with
> users I support.
That's the spirit! This function would be great. Computers are good
at trawling through data and making inferences if only those writing
the algorithm have the user's needs foremost in their mind. A lot of
the problems that beset us do not require the computer to be any more
'intelligent' than it is now but it does predicate that there is a
problem.
The UI specialist Alan Cooper (http://www.cooper.com/insights/books/)
wonders why computers constantly whine at us that they don't know
what to do when there is enough data to make the decisions (or at
least a good guess) as long as the problem is A. recognised and B.
understood.
The Newton almost always does what I want and expect it to without me
having to spell it out every time or have a whole set of irrelevant
options presented to me. The Mac can't even work out which printer I
want to use when all the clues are blatantly obvious - I just set
Page Setup to print the Epson so why are you bringing up options for
the LaserWriter in the Print dialog? Another one: I always use a
particular printer with a particular document, so why present me with
a different printer or one that is not even connected?
Furthermore, why force me iterate through a print preview having to
cancel the whole thing if one setting is not quite right? The machine
has all the data and all the resources necessary to do the whole
process interactively yet it behaves like a 70s line printer.
Joel.
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Received on Wed May 21 04:57:14 2008
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