Posted on 03/02/2020 9:32:53 PM PST by dayglored
Unloved assistant to smarten up its act in Microsoft 365. US only, naturally
Microsoft has jammed yet another knife into the consumer incarnation of its unloved electronic assistant, Cortana.
As the release of Windows 10 20H1 (or 2004) looms, the company snuck out a blog late on Friday letting the dozen or so customers still using the thing know that "consumer skills including music, connected home and third-party skills will no longer be available in the updated Cortana experience in Windows 10."
Cortana services in the Microsoft Launcher on Android will also be axed as a sad-faced engineer resets the "Days since a consumer product got killed off" counter back to zero.
Last year, a Microsoft staffer told The Register that the original concept of Cortana as a consumer tool pretty much died at the same time as the company's mobile dreams, and the gradual unpicking of Cortana from Windows 10 is testament to that. All pretence of a consumer play with the assistant has been stripped as Cortana settles down in the subscription world of Microsoft 365.
And a wonderful world it will be too. Customers will be able to either blather at their PCs (or use the keyboard) to retrieve upcoming appointments, set reminders or fiddle with settings. The emphasis, according to Microsoft, will be on "productivity."
Handy, because the consumer take on the tech – the Harman Kardon Invoke speaker – appears to be quietly being scrubbed from history, judging by the company's website. Still, the few who actually use the things should hopefully see good service from them as slightly dumber speakers – Cortana aside, they actually sounded pretty good.
As is so often the case with Microsoft, it'll be US (or rather those running in US English) customers who get to play with the Microsoft 365 integration first. The rest of us will get "answers from Bing and the ability to chat with Cortana" and the promise of "more productivity-based capabilities in the future". Lucky us.
In the meantime, please join us in a final farewell as another bit of Microsoft consumer tech heads into the dusty drawer of abandoned dreams, alongside the Band, the Kin, Media Center, Zune, Home Server, Windows Phone... ®
That’s why I won’t get rid of Win 7. I’m “happy” with it in that I built my PC and don’t have to worry about gigabytes worth of garbage slowing it down (which isn’t even Microsoft related). I also use Brave so I don’t worry about being bombarded with dozens of ads and trackers.
For TOUCH screens. Not PCs. They are to different interacting experiences. If you have a mouse the tile TOUCH feature is ridiculous.
Just a fancier version of Clippy!
Clippy got a new artist.
I can’t tell you exactly but I do know indirectly who made the decision. Credit (or blame) should go to Craig Mundie.
It was about 1997 (or so) and I was working as a contractor for Mundie @ Microsoft’s Advanced Prototyping Team. This group was a think tank of sorts - visualizing future trends for the company. Mundie had come to form the team by way of the Consumer Platform division. His penchant was small devices like PDA’s, netbooks, and phones.
I remember a meeting where Craig announced a new project for the team, and eventually all of Microsoft. They wanted to standardize the Windows experience across all platforms. So if you moved from a desktop or tablet to a phone or even an embedded device in your refrigerator it would all look and function the same.
You can immediately imagine the limitations that small form-factor devices like phones would have - most phones could only offer a limited tab from hotspot to hotspot for navigation. Thus, everything needed to be organized into tiles for easier access. They actually forced the OS to accommodate the least versatile device at the expense of the most versatile.
As a result, navigating the menu system for accessing programs took a giant step backwards. We all suffered through it with Windows 8 and they relented to the overwhelming criticism of their customers and brought back the Start button (although compromised with a continued reliance on tiles) with Windows 10.
Indeed!
Cue the George Costanza "Was that wrong? Should I have not done that?" meme...
Same here. The only times I talk to my computer is when I'm threatening to throw it out the freakin' window.
Ooooh, kinky!
That’s what kind of crap software you get since Microsoft absolutely refuses to hire qualified American software engineers, preferring unqualified lying and cheating Indian and Communist Chinese H1Bs.
I truly hope that the coronavirus decimates the Microsoft campus in Redmond. Bellevue and other King County locations.
I use this.
http://www.classicshell.net/
Don’t use voice control until they come up with one that doesn’t give out any information.
Never used Cortana. Disabled Gibson or Bosley, or whatever the heck “assistant” Samsung has on my Galaxy phone. The Alexa button on the Firestick remote is collecting dust.
Download and install Classic Shell. I love it.
You’re doing it wrong then.
Are you ignorant to the fact that many laptops that are in production today have touchscreen? Or do you think that only Apple and android devices have touchscreen?
Pearls before swine, Brotha.
I still wear a Band and use a Windows 8.1 phone. My phone is phenomenal, and I bought 10 Bands after they stopped making them (pennies on the dollar).
Not a fan boy, but fan of those products.
Microsoft believes primary colored tiles are better than reading from a menu. Tiles are a dumb-down feature.
Yes, but only Microsoft would be so inept as to break a good PC UI trying to provide a good UI to mobile device users.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.