Conversational interfaces are a bit of a meme. Every couple of years a shiny new AI development emerges and people in tech go "This is it! The next computing paradigm is here! We'll only use natural language going forward!". But then nothing actually changes and we continue using computers the way w
An interesting/useful article, if only because I was unaware of the Mac equivalence of Launchy (Linear, Superhuman,etc). The biggest problem is that a Conversational interface could excel at certain tasks, but just using it Willy-Nilly is asking for disappointment, plus the voice recognition still needs to get better, especially with context clues, which would require more integration (watching whatever you’re watching, hearing whatever you’re hearing, what page are you looking at, etc. )
But if you’re in front of a keyboard, then directing the computer to do something has got to require less context switching then just bringing up on the keyboard. Even if it’s only 60 words a minute, if all you’re doing is typing in a handful of strokes, then it’s probably faster than coming up with all the keywords necessary to tell the computer to do it.
As a primarily CLI user on Linux I wouldn’t even think of most commands as “words per minute” unless I am composing a complex pipeline or run a command with dozens of parameters at which point typing speed is not my bottleneck limiting the speed of input anyway and a free conversational interface would be totally fucked trying to figure out what I want it to do.
An interesting/useful article, if only because I was unaware of the Mac equivalence of Launchy (Linear, Superhuman,etc). The biggest problem is that a Conversational interface could excel at certain tasks, but just using it Willy-Nilly is asking for disappointment, plus the voice recognition still needs to get better, especially with context clues, which would require more integration (watching whatever you’re watching, hearing whatever you’re hearing, what page are you looking at, etc. )
But if you’re in front of a keyboard, then directing the computer to do something has got to require less context switching then just bringing up on the keyboard. Even if it’s only 60 words a minute, if all you’re doing is typing in a handful of strokes, then it’s probably faster than coming up with all the keywords necessary to tell the computer to do it.
As a primarily CLI user on Linux I wouldn’t even think of most commands as “words per minute” unless I am composing a complex pipeline or run a command with dozens of parameters at which point typing speed is not my bottleneck limiting the speed of input anyway and a free conversational interface would be totally fucked trying to figure out what I want it to do.
Quicksilver for Mac OS X was the original one of these apps AFAIR. And it appears it predates all of those (launchy, etc)
I prefer Alfred these days myself.
You can even do similar with just Spotlight on macOS and the Start Menu in Windows 10+.
i replaced my windows start menu with the offical powertools run. which is pretty much the alfred/spotlight solution now