Blake Patterson
1 HN recommender · recommended in 4 months, 2011–2024
12:47 · 304K views · Apr 13, 2011
Apple's late-1980s Knowledge Navigator concept video, produced under John Sculley, showing a professor using a tablet-like device with a conversational software agent. It envisions hypertext, touchscreens and voice assistants.
HN cites it as an early vision of personal software agents and AI assistants, and as a fun retro look at predicted computing.
4 comments from Hacker News
These are always fun to watch. Here's one of Apple's versions if you're curious: this video Microsoft still maintains its "home of the future". I think they update it every 3-5 years or so. Here's a newer one I found on youtube: [LINK] . It's pretty funny to see how the set, from what I can tell, is basically identical. And here's another Microsoft video about the "future of productivity" made back in 2011: [LINK]
Are you sure you're not thinking of Apple's Knowledge Navigator concept? this video This video is allegedly from 1987. Edit: I changed the link to an expanded video from the early 90s(?) which contains the original video + some other mockup usage examples for OpenDoc
This. Exactly this. A personal software agent will make a lot of "smart" devices and many apps irrelevant. See Apple's vision from early ’90s: this video
it's so funny he still talks about the worst most embarrassing apple ad of all time. this video it's so bad it's awesome.