NewtonTalk.net June 2009 archive: Re: [NTLK] [OT] New iPhones/iP

From: <Reilly001os_at_aol.com>
Date: Sun Jun 14 2009 - 21:18:04 EDT

Steven,
I will agree that the intelligence of assist is limited by its keywords (and their synonyms) and I'll even go farther and agree that assists features are limited by the age it was designed in, but isn't limited better then absent? I've not seen anything like it on palm's backward toys (I had a treo 300 and 600) although the pre has potential as long as palm doesn't go fubar like they did with beating classic palm OS to death. Assist can also be expanded by 3rd party apps to recognize more keywords which seems intelligent to me.
The most intelligent thing about assist to me though is the different ways you can structure your requests using names, number dates, days of the week, etc. As for search functions, yes most devices have them but how usable are they? I never stored enough information on my treos to use their searches as they weren't reliable (the devices) and I had to hard reset often to get out of lockups. My blackberry has a search but it doesn't have a 'search all' option so you have to select all areas manually which doesn't seem very economical or intelligent to me. Iphone OS 3 is supposed to have an overall search so we'll have to wait and see how that plays out. As to the google comparison, that's just a web search with voice recongnition and doesn't come close to the integration that assist has IMHO. The google apps section does make it a little more impressive, but I'd rather not have google knowing all my affairs (no on-star in my car either ;-] big brother bad! ) . When they expand the google app to allow you to
make appointments, setup mail, make calls, search, etc using the built-in apps then it'll be on the level with assist (of course Apple limits a lot of what they can do with the built in apps but that's changing).
And your right it is at its most basic level a (system wide) scripting utility but I haven't seen one of those on palms/iphones/iPod touches/etc either. The closest thing I've seen to assist is vlingo for blackberry which is like a modern assist feature using voice recognition which I forgot about till just now. The first version didn't work very well for me but they've released a few updates so I'll have to give it another try.
Vlingo does seem to be missing some keywords that assist has (like for making appointments) but it adds ones for txting and websearching.

Joe Reilly
Joe Reilly
-----Original Message-----
From: Steven Scotten <splicer@paroxysm.com>

Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2009 11:45:39
To: <newtontalk@newtontalk.net>
Subject: Re: [NTLK] [OT] New iPhones/iPhone OS 3.0

On Jun 13, 2009, at 10:55 AM, Reilly001os@aol.com wrote:

> To me basic features equals a basic electronic organizer not a PDA.
> There's a difference between a paper organizer/planner notebook and
> a live personal assistant just as there's a difference between an
> electronic organizer and a PDA. The difference to me is the newtons
> search and assist functions which modern "PDA"s and smartphones
> mostly still lack. I'm sure there's more intelligent features that
> really make it a PDA and not just an electronic organizer but those
> two are the stand outs for me. I look at my blackberry and iPod
> touch as electronic organizers because they lack some or all of
> these intelligent features for personally assisting me.
> Basic features = electronic organizer
> Intelligent features = PDA
>
> That's my humble view :-)

Can you expand on that? What makes Find or Assist "intelligent" in a
way that isn't also in a Palm device or an iPhone? Find is handy of
course, but Search is handy on the Palm as well. I never found much
intelligence in Assist. I never typed anything in that it could
recognize, with the exception of the eight or so items that it
provided as prefills.

I don't mean to be a hater here or anything (I don't know why I feel
the need to protest that I really am am a Newton lover), and it's
maybe unfair to compare a built-in feature like Assist with a third-
party add-on like Google's iPhone app. On the iPhone I can tap an
icon, hold the darn thing up to my face while walking down the street
and say something like "iphone take a photo" and get taken to
thousands of articles about taking photos with the iPhone. The
"intelligence" might live outside the device, but it's far more of an
intelligent agent than Newton ever was.

We're still a long way from any semblance of intelligent assistance.
I'm waiting for the day my wristwatch pipes up to tell me that my tie
doesn't go with my shirt. =^) In the meantime I'll just have to settle
for the ability to tell my phone "tie a windsor knot" and have it give
me relevant diagrams and youtube videos.

Steve

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