This was prompted most recently, by a conversation that @JoeS and I had in the IOS16 thread, where he discovered a relatively new gesture for app management.
Taking a step back, new feature discovery, or lack thereof, has been a problem IMHO for at least the last decade.
We even face it, in our tiny niche portion of the world, when we update our own apps, where we simplify or streamline a set of commonly performed tasks, but most of our existing customers continue to use the older less efficient methods.
With Windows especially, given the enormous amount of telemetry that MS already allegedly collects already, it would seem trivial to add some code that could detect unused or older methods of performing a task and just pop a notification with a quick tutorial on the new improved option(s).
Now I realize that some might take issue with potential privacy aspects of this, but I think this could actually assuage some of them by showing that the AI is actually being put to good use and thus increase acceptance of them more broadly.
So of course, feel free to assail all the ways I got this wrong, or overlooked some aspects of my argument, but I’m putting it out there regardless as this comes from my continued belief that our devices are still in many ways, more difficult to use than they should be.
EDIT; BTW ideally there should be an opt-out option for those uncomfortable with doing this.
It’s a great idea, but for the folks holding the reins (I’m one of those privacy nuts). It comes to close to being a keyboard logger for my taste, and I have SO MUCH FAITH in Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. using it solely for the good purpose of helping me improve my workflows and NOT using it for nefarious purposes. I can already see those popups from Microsoft directing you to a customized Bing search, or Google running you down another extension rabbit hole…
I just want reasonable scripting/automation options.
Powershell is clunky, and using JavaScript or VBscript for automation pains me, and the number of applications with robust scripting support is quite limited, and scraping screens to interact graphically is just torture.
AppleScript is the best option going — so long as the app(s) one is controlling have a suitable dictionary, but documentation is often lacking, or even understanding by the folks who should be supporting it — I once wrote an AppleScript for InDesign which Adobe’s scripting evangelist declared to be impossible.
If that were the case, this is even worse, because it makes you HAVE to look at the list to get your answer, rather than Siri reading you the best answer…
The A.I. in Microsoft’s Bing search engine has begun arriving for folks who signed up for it — however, if your organization has strict security measures in place (I suspect cross-site scripting being blocked), it may not work for you.
I just got notice that it’s enabled for my account, but it’s not working here at my day job:
