I was writing an email early this morning and made a mistake.  In the middle of typing a word I accidentally struck the Command+. keys (Apple+Period).  To my surprise, Apple Mail displayed a drop down list of possible completions for the word I had half entered.

At first I thought the feature was a novel idea.  But the more I considered it, the more I gained a genuine respect for what the feature represented.  For someone in some way keyboard challenged, this could represent a very efficient way to enter text (at least the larger and more complicated words).  For someone spelling impaired, the feature could be a powerful way to reference possible spellings without waiting for the spellcheck to call their bluff.


I’m actually not sure if this is a new feature in Mail 3.0, or if it was present in 2.0.  Either way, I found it by mistake and thought it a feature worthy of sharing.  Predictive text has revolutionized the way we send SMS message via cell phones.  I doubt it will make such a big splash in the desktop space, but after toying with the feature for a few minutes I think it could be a welcome feature to many word processing applications.

If you’ve already installed Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), give it a shot.  If you’ve still got 10.4 running, post comment and let me know if the feature existed in Mail 2.0.

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Steve

UPDATE: 11/8/07 8:07am
It looks like TextEdit 1.5 has the same functionality.

--
Steve

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