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This is something I've wanted for years. My dream app is a "data canvas" where you can write, draw, plan, automate, compute, graph, collaborate, and package int

This is something I've wanted for years. My dream app is a "data canvas" where you can write, draw, plan, automate, compute, graph, collaborate, and package into a user-facing executable. Basically every productivity tool (and I mean every tool) combined into one, with extreme flexibility and interoperability. It's also something extremely hard if not flat-out impossible to do with an intuitive UI. All of that interoperability means extreme complexity, and it's not even possible to infer advanced computations or constraints for an app without specifying them in detail (in which case you're basically just programming). But I like that people are trying, because even though there's no unified data canvas available yet, we really are getting closer with things like high-level languages, low-code solutions, Apple and Microsoft continuity, and of course this.

bckr 4y ago
AI like Copilot is going to be a very important and fun part of that list, I believe.
fonix232 4y ago
I've been saying for ages that our approach to personal computing is wrong. Everything is focused on apps nowadays. You need an app for accessing the camera, you need an app to access Snapchat, et cetera. On the other hand, what if our personal computing - let it be on your phone, on your laptop, or on your NAS - was about DATA POINTS? Everything on your device, including hardware like the camera, GPS, etc., becomes a data point that "apps" attach to. Slap some ML-based contextual recommendations to it, and you've increased productivity a lot. For an average person this means opening the camera loads details like Snapchat, but for a professional photographer, it shows the "Pro" things by default. Open an MP3/WAV/[insert other audio format] file, for an average person, this offers playback options, for a sound engineer, it offers analysis tools, detailed editing/post-processing utilities, filters, you name it. Then you can expand it by customising the launch interfaces. On a smartphone, you'd most likely want easy access to relevant information based on e.g. location (say, at home you'd get smarthome controls on your home screen, at the office you'd get your work email and related services, on the go you'd be getting relevant public transport/traffic information, at an airport, it would automatically pull up your boarding pass, at a Tesco, your ClubCard bar/QR code, and so on). Of course this would require a major paradigm shift in computing, which would have major pushback from people - most people don't like big changes, especially in things they use everyday. Hell, I can't even get my parents to change smartphone brands, because they're used to how things are on their old crappy Chinese phones, and apparently, Samsung's or Apple's "menus are confusing and things aren't in the places they used to be".

bckr 4y ago

AI like Copilot is going to be a very important and fun part of that list, I believe.

fonix232 4y ago

I've been saying for ages that our approach to personal computing is wrong. Everything is focused on apps nowadays. You need an app for accessing the camera, you need an app to access Snapchat, et cetera. On the other hand, what if our personal computing - let it be on your phone, on your laptop, or on your NAS - was about DATA POINTS? Everything on your device, including hardware like the camera, GPS, etc., becomes a data point that "apps" attach to. Slap some ML-based contextual recommendations to it, and you've increased productivity a lot. For an average person this means opening the camera loads details like Snapchat, but for a professional photographer, it shows the "Pro" things by default. Open an MP3/WAV/[insert other audio format] file, for an average person, this offers playback options, for a sound engineer, it offers analysis tools, detailed editing/post-processing utilities, filters, you name it. Then you can expand it by customising the launch interfaces. On a smartphone, you'd most likely want easy access to relevant information based on e.g. location (say, at home you'd get smarthome controls on your home screen, at the office you'd get your work email and related services, on the go you'd be getting relevant public transport/traffic information, at an airport, it would automatically pull up your boarding pass, at a Tesco, your ClubCard bar/QR code, and so on). Of course this would require a major paradigm shift in computing, which would have major pushback from people - most people don't like big changes, especially in things they use everyday. Hell, I can't even get my parents to change smartphone brands, because they're used to how things are on their old crappy Chinese phones, and apparently, Samsung's or Apple's "menus are confusing and things aren't in the places they used to be".