Opinion
I took in the "secret," invite-only Webinar for the spring release of Deta from Luma yesterday. I’ve been beta testing Deta for a couple of months now, and I don't particularly get it -- how would it be useful to me? I hoped that by watching the Webinar I would get more of a clue.
The Holy Grail
Computing has a decades-long long history of user interfaces, starting with PARC’s Star system in 1981 -- released a full three months before IBM announced its first PC. PARC's desktop design, which we all use now (graphical user interface with overlapping windows and a mouse), was the touchstone that got us through the command-line era that lasted well into the 1990s. We forget now, but Autodesk, for example, still supported the DOS version of AutoCAD right into early 1997.
Sure, Windows won, but along the way, there were honest attempts that failed: DesqView X from Quarterdesk Systems (downloadable from https://archive.org/details/desqview26), GEM from Digital Research, Bob from Microsoft.
GEM from Digital Research was a handsome graphics environment manager that ran on top of text-only DOS
So, yesterday, in 2024, in a Webcast from Paris, we are getting a preview of the newest contender for reimagining what a desktop could work like.
Solving the Problem
The Webinar host from Luma listed the #1 problem with today’s environment: we are locked into what vendors want us to use. He harkened back to the early days of personal computing: "Was the digital world one we couldn't control? No!" With our olden-day computers, we could do whatever we wanted. Today, however, we cannot move all our data out of, say, Twitter, to somewhere else, then a half-year later move data back into X intact.
I don’t think we are quite as locked in today as he might be imagining us to be. We can still hand-build computer systems, write our own code, customize the computing environment -- something I’ve done heavily to my own systems. As for taking data out of Twitter, um, I see no need to do so. Let’s carry on, nevertheless.
Personal computing is no longer a priority for software companies today, we are told. Our world today consists of looking at tabs in browsers, uploading, downloading. Does it have to be this way, Luma asks? "We believe there is a way out of this: personal computing that plays well with the Internet."
So, released yesterday (March 14) were three new products from Deta:
- Horizon
- Oasis
- Magic Field
Let's look at each of them.
Horizon
Horizon is a new computer “surface” that replaces the computer desktop with its limited size or browsers with their tabs. Each area on the Horizon surface is a container, kind of like Tupperware.
Horizon with several rectangular areas holding a variety of documents
To overcome the size limitation of the desktops of Windows, MacOS, and Linux, Horizon instead scrolls horizontally infinitely; as well, more horizons can be created. To open a new "area," stretch-draw a rectangle. By default, new areas display a Web browser, but these areas can contain other elements: pictures, video, documents, and so on.
Text, images, and links can be dragged out of the areas, such as from a Web browser, to their own spots on the Horizon surface, or else sent to other people as messages. Luma says these areas replace tabs, but in my opinion I think tabs are easier to handle than scrolling horizontally.
The <Overview> button shows all opened instances, and lets you search for phrases to isolate instances. For example, search for "cathedral" to bring up text and images of cathedrals saved on your horizon. I noticed that when there are lots of instances, you still end up scrolling through them, horizontally, however.
Overview of many instances in Horizon
Oasis
The second new product is Oasis organizer: it saves any kind of file (including DWG? I dunno) with a search system. It works like this:
Step 1. Drag images, text, screen grabs, or links (such as from YouTube and Twitter) from Horizon into Oasis. Luma gave Horizon a document scanner (OCR, I assume) that allows it to "read" text from incompatible file formats.
Step 2. Create a new document in Horizon, and then grab stuff that you had saved in Oasis.
In the image below, Oasis on the right, Horizon on the left.
Document in Horizon (left) ready to receive images saved in Oasis (right)
Magic Field
The third new product is Magic Field, which summarizes in a card content from long articles -- kind of what LLM-based AI is supposed to be doing today. Here is how to use it:
Step 1. Drag an empty Magic Field close by a document on Horizon.
Step 2. Both glow, indicating the two have connected; Magic Field generates the summary through "AI.”
A glowing Magic Field card (at right) connecting with a glowing Horizon document (left)
The same can be done with videos: use Magic Field to summarize audio speech through transcription; seems to take just a few secs.
To me, this seems to be the killer app, except for this problem: who knows if the summary is correct? The demo team emphasized repeatedly that Magic Field is a replacement for actually reading and watching long, potentially boring, documents and videos.
Magic Field (right) summarizing a video transcript (left)
SpaceOS
Luma says there is more to come. SpaceOS is due to be released in the spring of 2024, with these features:
- Returns to the era of personal computing
- Available on any device (like ChomeOS?)
- Can turn it off at the end of the day
You can beta test these software programs through http://horizon.space.
What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
The first release of Deta desktop did nothing for me. It was a new interface that didn't do well at replacing what I've been using since the mid-1990s.
These new modules from Luma are starting to show that Deta/Horizon might achieve what Microsoft was never able to implement smoothly: effortless inter-app communication. I look forward to seeing what Luma will produce for the rest of this year.
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