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Even Microsoft Notepad is getting AI text editing now

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Re: Even Microsoft Notepad is getting AI text editing now

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for people that aren't already familiar with navigating things like GIMP, KDE, Open/LibreOffice, it's not especially welcoming. This is true for all complex software, though. People who have never used Apple's software also struggle with it until they become more familiar.

Is VLC really "complex software" if you just want to use it as a media player? Double click your media file, it plays. Play, pause, volume controls are where you'd guess they are. There's plenty of complexity underneath, but the happy path is simple. By contrast, "open this image and draw a single red circle in it" in GIMP is as challenging to a newbie as quitting vi. Even for an intermediate user - I use GIMP a hand…

I've used VLC forever and I had no idea there is anything more to it than playing media. It always seems to have the most recent codecs, so it doesn't seem crusty to me.

Re: Even Microsoft Notepad is getting AI text editing now

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just having AI in your product description makes people hate your product They compare "AI" to "New Technology", and there was a mild preference for the phrase "New Technology". Casting that as "hating" it is a bit of a misrepresentation. Further "AI" as a general term is mysterious and unknown. One of their examples was an "AI-Powered TV"...like, what does that even mean? Or an "AI-powered financial service". They…

It's a 15% reduction on intention to buy (on the TV case, 20% on the car) just by putting AI there on the name is a really big deal. That's about half of the deviation on the data. The ugly is that it's a self-reported poll, but it's a well run self-reported poll, with a large effect, and good statistical relevance. The actual article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19368623.2024.2...

Ooof, boy is Apple in for a disaster with their iPhone and Mac products! Has someone told them? Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon, and all of the other big companies as well! They're doomed!

Putting an amorphous "AI-powered" on an imaginary product is nonsensical, and doesn't carry over to the conclusion that "people hate AI". Yes, I would be wary of a "AI-powered coffee maker" or an "AI-powered toothbrush" because that just sounds like nonsense. But there are a lot of places where people already understand the value proposition, and the more people experience it, the more they demand it and it becomes entry stakes.

Just the most trivial example: one of my children has a habit of sending thoughts as a long series of texts. One thought split over a dozen texts. The "AI-powered" summarization of notifications in iOS 18.2 is absolutely brilliant for those times I can only glance, looking at it in detail when the situation avails. Thus far it has been 100% accurate and profoundly useful. That's the most tosser, simplistic example of many, many ways AI has added to my life.

Re: Even Microsoft Notepad is getting AI text editing now

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disable flag? No no, the choices are "Enable" and "Maybe later"

I think it would be much easier and faster to just give the users one option. That way, they don't need to think about what they want and can focus on their work. (satire)

Some people thrive with more options. For those a [Ok] [Hell Yeah!] [Definitively!!!!1!!] set is the perfect fit.

Re: Even Microsoft Notepad is getting AI text editing now

#304
post #90
post #69

Why do writing tools have to be a feature of every app instead of an operating-system wide tool like Apple Intelligence? Makes no sense whatsoever to just "sprinkle AI everywhere" except for specialized use cases.

You mean it should be integrated into the text box control, and/or the keyboard? That does make a lot of sense to me. Though some applications also benefit from app-specific integration on top of that.

Maybe it is implemented in the text box control, but it's normally turned off (?)

Re: Even Microsoft Notepad is getting AI text editing now

#305
post #112

Microsoft's neglect of Notepad paved the way for Notepad++. Now they're uplifting Notepad. Perhaps this will create room for a Notepad--.

Genuinely agree! Can't my computer just refrain from sending everything I do to the Internet??

Maybe we'll see more people moving to Linux.

Re: Even Microsoft Notepad is getting AI text editing now

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people want tabs anyway? It's kind of clunky compared to just having smaller individual file explorer windows. Like you can't _really_ drag and drop files between tabs without the added time overhead of waiting for the tab to change. I assume most users are just full screen, list view-ing it though instead of the large icon view.

I don't think this is a good reason but tabs give you the ability to keep a bunch of files open and accessible without cluttering your main taskbar since there is only 1 Notes window.

You don't need tabs to do that. You can enable grouping on the taskbar.

I personally don't find tabs useful at all, but I don't really hate them. Well, I wouldn't hate them if more applications would avoid showing the tab bar if there was only one tab showing. I get annoyed by the waste of space that provides to those of us who will never use the tabs.

Re: Even Microsoft Notepad is getting AI text editing now

#307
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is VLC really "complex software" if you just want to use it as a media player? Double click your media file, it plays. Play, pause, volume controls are where you'd guess they are. There's plenty of complexity underneath, but the happy path is simple. By contrast, "open this image and draw a single red circle in it" in GIMP is as challenging to a newbie as quitting vi. Even for an intermediate user - I use GIMP a hand…

> Is VLC really "complex software" The moment you criticize an app, someone on the Internet will jump in to tut-tut and insist to you that it's "complex software" and you can't possibly understand how complex it is. Case in point: Just a few years ago the Windows Terminal team chastised[^1] users by claiming that fast font rendering would literally require several PhDs of research and can't be solved otherwise[^0]. A…

You missed the updates to the text rendering story. The guy who requested the feature then went ahead and implemented the feature in a weekend.

Something like a year later, Microsoft did actually improve the behavior and never credited the guy who proved it was possible.

Re: Even Microsoft Notepad is getting AI text editing now

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a 15% reduction on intention to buy (on the TV case, 20% on the car) just by putting AI there on the name is a really big deal. That's about half of the deviation on the data. The ugly is that it's a self-reported poll, but it's a well run self-reported poll, with a large effect, and good statistical relevance. The actual article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19368623.2024.2...

Ooof, boy is Apple in for a disaster with their iPhone and Mac products! Has someone told them? Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon, and all of the other big companies as well! They're doomed! Putting an amorphous "AI-powered" on an imaginary product is nonsensical, and doesn't carry over to the conclusion that "people hate AI". Yes, I would be wary of a "AI-powered coffee maker" or an "AI-powered toothbrush" because t…

Funny, people are talking about how Apple is having issues with their newest models. I didn't bother to find the data, though.

Re: Even Microsoft Notepad is getting AI text editing now

#309
post #272

Et tu, Notepad? Seriously, no one writes with Notepad. It's just for quick copy-paste text manipulation. That's it. No need for gen-AI. I used Notepad to make simple HTML pages back in 1995 - maybe, two dozen lines of " " and " ". That's the most text I've ever written in Notepad.

I write with Notepad. No distractions, no temptation to add anything but text. I write musings, short stories, song lyrics, etc. and keep an archive of all these text files to reflect on later. Sometimes I write notes and letters to my future self. All notepad.

[deleted]

Re: Even Microsoft Notepad is getting AI text editing now

#310

This seems to be a common trend everywhere. Instead of improving core functionality they add the latest buzzword tech, no matter it make sense or not. I am user of GaiaGPS to plan outdoors trips. Same there: the app is good but has some problems. Instead of fixing the problems they added social functionality which nobody really wants.

Hang on - notepad is the perfect place for a "rewrite my text" feature. And clearly its a useful too in a writing app that users would like. I get your complaint in general, but it does not seem like this is a good example of throwing random unrelated stuff in.

Couldn't disagree more. Notepad is a place to dump snippets of unformatted text, for a temporary duration unless I explicity save the file. I already didn't like that they added the tabs feature and autosave recently.

If I want to do writing I'll use one of the 6 tools on my PC more suited to that task.

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