I’ve watched the entire WWDC Keynote and checked out all the videos demoing the new Leopard enhancements. I’ll definitely get Leopard as soon as it comes out. It looks like there are some really cool features (Time Machine, Quick Look) that will help me get work done and others that are just fun (the new DVD player, Cover Flow in the Finder).

However, after more contemplation, the keynote was somewhat of a let down, as it was for others:

• Baron VC thinks the bar is raised quite high for Apple.
• WinExtra thinks nothing really cool was announced and has a good variety of links to other mixed opinions.
• Valleywag thinks something happened but doesn’t know what it was.

Frankly, I think it’s because the entire desktop metaphor is presently rather unimpressive. Nothing is going to impress the most jaded of us if it’s just variations on the same old way of accessing our gigabytes of crap on our bloated drives. I’m talking about folders, icons, applications, files and Windows.

When the iPhone was announced it had everyone drooling, mostly because it showed a way out of current desktop ennui. Basically, chuck the desktop and just have widgets, email, and a browser. Frankly, that’s more than enough for most people’s needs.

Feeling down, I watched this video by Aza Raskin (the son of Jef Raskin, originator of the Mac). Here’s a contrary viewpoint. But they both agree that whether you’re a content creator, someone who just wants to surf the web, or manipulate and organize all your digital media (or all three), the desktop metaphor is long in the tooth.

As evidence, today, the primary reason for having a computer is to access the Internet. I’m sure we’ve all had that feeling when the network is down and you look at an empty desktop and think, what now? With many applications from email to word processing and now socializing happening online, the desktop / Windows metaphor is increasingly moving to the web.

Windows as a metaphor is thirty years old. I distinctly recall what a paradigm shift it was to go from the Apple IIe to the Macintosh. I was only a kid at the time, but my parents showed me a Mac at a family friend’s house, and the mouse seemed inefficient and strange. Even at that point, I remember the inexactness of the mouse was confusing in comparison to the pixel exactness of huge blocks and the cursor keys. All of us had to learn that the mouse and windows were an improvement over the old.

I want that kind of paradigm shift today.

Raskin says the desktop is only needed to organize files and move them from one application to another. He suggests having excellent desktop search, but in order to have that, I think an understanding of syntax is needed by the computer.

Instead of typing an exact file name, I want to be able to type “Get that project I was working on in December of 2006 that had something to do with birds” and have the computer make educated guesses. I don’t remember the file type, the exact date, the application I used, what folder it’s in, or exactly what it was about. A list of recent files isn’t enough to take the next leap ahead. I’d like to communicate with a computer via natural language.

Right now, computers are still largely only for “smart” people – folks who have figured out how to think like a computer and conform to its manner of operation. When do we get a computer that is so simple to use that it’s no more complex than a television set? When will the computer do most of the conforming for us?

There is the glimmer of the future in the iPhone. If Apple has any brains, they’re working on bringing this multi-touch technology to the Mac. I think that’s the real reason I was somewhat bummed at the WWDC Keynote – I wanted Apple to go further. But it’s probably just too soon.

I just hope they’re working on something really revolutionary. Is there anything going on at some research facility that Apple can shamelessly appropriate, as it did with Xerox PARC for the Macintosh GUI?

I rewatched the Knowledge Navigator movie an early nineties artifact, that predicted the Macintosh of today. While we have the graphics, hardware size, and communications aspects licked, all the stuff about having a virtual butler, voice processing, and artificial intelligence to send the computer tasks for you is nowhere to be seen.

Here’s a short list of stuff that would make me run out and buy a new Mac:

• Graphically rich ways of visualizing my data (all that Tufte stuff).
• Really tiny, portable hardware.
• Motion detection.
• Eliminate the application / file model.
• Written language comprehension.
• Pattern recognition. Realize I’m doing a task repeatedly and create a scheduled task. Basically, a computer that learns.
• Image recognition. Can’t the computer realize half of my photos are of the same cat and label the rest based on a couple of initial tags?
• Voice recognition.
• Programming for anybody.

What I’m getting at, is frankly, artificial intelligence. A large part of my frustration is that humans are fuzzy while computers require specificity. Computers are best when they take on our repetitive work so we can be move on to better things.

Not 3D, not better graphics for the same metaphors, not bigger, faster, or more. None of those things would be drivers of sales as much as a computer that actually behaved in a prescient manner and not just a glorified card catalog or screwdriver.

There’s still a heck of a lot of work to do. I want a computer that can understand my information in addition to storing it. I want to use a keyboard, a mouse, a track pad, a touch screen, handwriting, typed language or voice, and have the data presented to me in an infinite variety of visual metaphors in a variety of manners of my choosing.

Many of us refer to Tom Cruise in Minority Report or Jeff Han videos as a future we’d like to see. That film predicted the future of 2054. That’s a good number of decades to get something cool going on with our computers.

How about a future Mac with a mode mode that is just Front Row, Spotlight, and Cover Flow (basically Apple TV). You wave your hands at the iSight (like a Wii) to get around your files and apps. Apple could integrate all their iLife programs into OS X as services. These moves alone would be an awesome start.

For more thoughts: AskTog, Edward Tufte, Mother of All Demos

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