6 ms·

The Canon Cat, the forgotten 1987 alternate-reality Mac (2019)

• linschn 2y ago
  The "leap" description makes me think of emacs' avy https://github.com/abo-abo/avy https://github.com/abo-abo/avy The interface should not be too hard to reimplement as an emacs mode. One more project on the "someday" list...
  • tetris11 2y ago
    I interpreted it more as the default reverse string search (C-r "substring")
    • fzzzy 2y ago
      Sure, but i think the innovation was the dedicated leap keys. You hold the key, type to incrementally search, and let go to leap. One key for forward and one for back. Also, leaping was through eveything in the whole os, not just the application.
  • compressedgas 2y ago
    https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/QuasimodeSearch https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/QuasimodeSearch
  • shrubble 2y ago
    Since almost everyone uses USB keyboards, I am surprised that a small addon board with just 2 keycaps that can be placed near the spacebar, hasn't already been made. Could do it with a Teensy or anything else that exposes HID, I think.
    • avhon1 2y ago
      Lots of 2-key keyboards exist, and are even for sale inexpensively. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=2+button+keyboard&t=ftsa&iar=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=2+button+keyboard&t=ftsa&iar=image... Not very convenient for having both buttons near your thumbs, though. I've been trying out the related SwyftCard for Apple //e on the izapple2 emulator. https://github.com/ivanizag/izapple2 https://github.com/ivanizag/izapple2 ./a2sdl -model swyft It actually works really well; it uses the left and right alt keys as the open and solid Apple keys, which the SwyftCard uses as forward and backward leaping. It's quite easy and comfortable to use!
    • lelanthran 2y ago
      > Since almost everyone uses USB keyboards, I am surprised that a small addon board with just 2 keycaps that can be placed near the spacebar, hasn't already been made. Could do it with a Teensy or anything else that exposes HID, I think. I've seen something (on HN in the past, maybe?) similar - someone developed pedals (maybe for Vim?)
• wormius 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface
  • drivers99 2y ago
    One of my takeaways from reading that long ago was that there should be a commandment: treat the user's data as sacred, and do not delete it without permission. (Just ordered a copy of it so I can read it again.)
• dang 2y ago
  Related. Others? Refurb Weekend: Canon Cat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40497171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40497171 - May 2024 (35 comments) The Canon Cat: the little computer that could have changed the world - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34133701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34133701 - Dec 2022 (28 comments) Bitters: A text editor inspired by the Canon Cat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33930276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33930276 - Dec 2022 (1 comment) Design Considerations for an Anthropophilic Computer (1979) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33287858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33287858 - Oct 2022 (3 comments) The Canon Cat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33285665 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33285665 - Oct 2022 (160 comments) Leap Technology (1987) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33137433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33137433 - Oct 2022 (40 comments) The Canon Cat: The Writing Information Appliance (2004) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30836958 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30836958 - March 2022 (42 comments) Demo of the Canon Cat computer released in 1987 with 'leap' feature [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29423545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29423545 - Dec 2021 (1 comment) Canon Cat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26213934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26213934 - Feb 2021 (31 comments) Leap Technology (keyboard vs. mouse on a Canon Cat machine, ca 1987) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22042900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22042900 - Jan 2020 (1 comment) Canon Cat Emulation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18032916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18032916 - Sept 2018 (2 comments) Canon Cat Resources – Jef Raskin's Forth-Powered Word Processing Appliance - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14650365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14650365 - June 2017 (23 comments) The Canon Cat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6978587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6978587 - Dec 2013 (30 comments) Canon Cat Documents Archive - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3394546 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3394546 - Dec 2011 (8 comments) Canon Cat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=595744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=595744 - May 2009 (15 comments)
• dxf 2y ago
  I saw Jef Raskin demo the Canon Cat in the 1980s when I was working at Stanford. One of the more interesting concepts behind the interface was, everything was stored in one "circular" file, with marks for document beginnings and ends. By "circular" I mean that if you leapt forward from file to file, you'd eventually return to your starting point. The idea was, it's hard to remember the names of documents, let alone where in the filesystem you might have saved them. But you can usually remember something about the document -- some piece of text, etc. Using the leap keys you could quickly find the document you were looking for. Modern OSes allow for such searching, but at the time the idea of not worrying about file locations or names seemed very forward thinking. Jef had research to show that "leaping" was superior (or at least, your productivity was faster) when comapred to other computer interfaces -- provided the user was used to using leap keys. Later I saw Andy Hertzfeld give a talk on Multifinder, and I thought the contrast between the two engineers was stark. The Canon Cat gave you one way to interface with the system (which was "the best way"), while Andy's interface gave you multiple ways to do the same task. Andy said something like "different people interact with the system differently" and he wanted to support all they ways they might want to do their work.
  • xattt 2y ago
    Reads like a Finder Cover Flow prototype.
    • pavlov 2y ago
      Cover Flow was basically just document thumbnails as OpenGL textures. You’d still have to open the application for the document. Raskin’s “leap” concept worked within the documents themselves. There was no separation between a document editor and a file browser or shell. A leap would take you directly to the content, and leaping enough times would bring you back where you started. But you never switched from “application mode” to “Finder mode”, so to speak.
• II2II 2y ago
  > The Cat even allowed you to include computer code in the middle of a document that could be executed with a button press. I miss the 1980's. If I recall correctly, Raskin conceived the Macintosh as a computer that was easy to use for ordinary people yet also incorporated the means for ordinary people to program the machine. The solution was to make it easier to program. (Something that was added as an afterthought to Jobs' re-envisioned Macintosh with Bill Atkinson's Hypercard.) The general view was that those who used computers should be creators, not just consumers. Contrast that to modern computers. While most can be programmed by the end user, the entry points are rarely obvious. The vast majority of languages that are easy to learn are regarded as learner or toy languages. Many of the professional languages are several orders of magnitude more difficult to use than their equivalents in the 1980's (often for good reasons, but it doesn't help the cause).
  • Nition 2y ago
    Even going back to Windows 95, there's a lot more visible effort made to let basic users become power users than I notice today. For example there's a shortcut to Task Scheduler right in the taskbar, which takes you to a very simple task scheduling interface.
    • GeekyBear 2y ago
      By the time Windows 95 shipped, Mac OS had a system wide user friendly scripting language that integrated functionality exposed by third party applications alongside the functionality of the OS. https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleScript https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleScript To give users an easy onramp, AppleScript would allow you to hit a record button in the script editor and watch you carry out a series of actions in the OS as well as third party applications and convert those actions into editable AppleScript code on the fly.
  • bangonkeyboard 2y ago
    "We're trying to get away from programming. We've got to get away from programming because people don't want to program computers. People want to use computers." — Steve Jobs, 1983
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• m463 2y ago
  I'm sorry, my mind though of the cue cat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat (and the outrage when they were reverse engineered)
  • themadturk 2y ago
    I had exactly the same mind-leap when I first heard of the Cat a year or two ago.
• itomato 2y ago
  There is a MAME core for the Cat, runnable in a browser no less: https://archive.org/details/canoncat https://archive.org/details/canoncat
  • oofoe 2y ago
    I tried this the other day, I wasn't able to "use front" (mapped to CTRL key, which works for some things, but not others). I downloaded MAME for my computer and the Cat ROMS so I could use it without triggering a new browser window (among other problems). When I went to use it in MAME proper, it popped up a big red warning that the port was incomplete and to expect problems. Unfortunately, they weren't kidding. I could type maybe a paragraph before the emulation hung (sometimes with the speaker activated, which was... nice). The "leap" keys worked enough to show that they could be a powerful way to get around a file. So, yes, you can start it up and see the credit screen, but (for me at least) it's not a proper emulation. It would be interesting if some of the "distraction free" writing "appliances" like the upcoming BYOK or Alpha-Smart replacements would do something like this -- they all seem to consider features that can make review/revision pleasant to be outside their "distraction-free" mission.
• totetsu 2y ago
  the linguistic user interface Esno launcher mentioned in there looks like it could be an interesting way to get LLMs to control the desktop. https://gchristensen.github.io/enso-portable/ https://gchristensen.github.io/enso-portable/
• INTPenis 2y ago
  That was a surprising amount of new information to me about the origins of Apple. Good article. Jef seems like the successor to Woz.