Live data from Hacker News

Cortana is really bad

medium.com

121–130 of 303 posts

Re: Cortana is really bad

#121
post #101

Every single interaction I've ever had with Cortana has been complete garbage. It's worse than the old-school "simple string match on installed applications and files on disk" in every way, yet has somehow supplanted it?! I wish there were some easy way to completely uninstall this frustrating garbage in Windows 10 and go back to the simple interface that just worked. I cannot even begin to count how many times I've…

My favorite thing is when I search for a program, it comes up, I go to click on it or press enter, and then the web search finally comes back with the results and now I'm opening some browser with a random fucking web search. ARGH.

That kind of shit is frustratingly common these days. I sometimes use the search box in the Twitter app to navigate to one of the profiles I follow. So I tap on the magnifying glass, enter the first few letters of the account name, see the account in the search results (immediately, because it has my list of followed accounts cached locally, I guess), and I tap on that account ^W^W the completely irrelevant search result that appeared a fraction of a second before my finger touched the glass.

Re: Cortana is really bad

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not: Many of us far prefer Windows to MacOS. And it's not just old habits: I came to the various linux desktop environments after Windows and i still prefer some of them over both Windows and MacOS. (Spent almost 3 years on Mac. Started as an enthusiastic user. Left really disillusioned. Have later come to the conclusion that it is really great and I'm just incompatible:-)

Yeah, if you have never used another OS, MacOS seems like the best. But when even the simplest pro things don't work, it gets beyond annoying. Some examples - Cut, Paste files; Shift select files; Minimise and how it works with Cmd+Tab; Maximise the way it works now. I need something like BetterTouchTool to even tolerate MacOS. It's the terminal (Ubuntu on Windows is great but still needs more work) and the quality h…

Hell yeah. I had to work with a Macbook for 3 years now, and I long for next week when my new non-Macbook finally arrives in the office.

Re: Cortana is really bad

#123

Every single interaction I've ever had with Cortana has been complete garbage. It's worse than the old-school "simple string match on installed applications and files on disk" in every way, yet has somehow supplanted it?! I wish there were some easy way to completely uninstall this frustrating garbage in Windows 10 and go back to the simple interface that just worked. I cannot even begin to count how many times I've…

Searching with start menu on Windows 7 was lightning quick. On Windows 10 it takes forever to find the simplest thing, and like you said, it's worse than normal string match search, half the time it won't even find what you're looking for because the word you searched for is the second word in the name.

Re: Cortana is really bad

#124

Every single interaction I've ever had with Cortana has been complete garbage. It's worse than the old-school "simple string match on installed applications and files on disk" in every way, yet has somehow supplanted it?! I wish there were some easy way to completely uninstall this frustrating garbage in Windows 10 and go back to the simple interface that just worked. I cannot even begin to count how many times I've…

See, I thought Cortana was Microsoft's name for their voice assistant on Windows 10 or something. Now everything is starting to make sense. I kept having issues using the Windows menu search in Windows 10. I'd type "remov" and it would show the menu item for uninstalling applications. Great. But if I accidentally finished and typed "remove" the result would disappear. I felt like I was going crazy or something. Comforting to know everyone is having similar problems ... though still just as bewildering as to why it's happening in the first place.

It's weird that there are no great "magic search" tools on any desktop environment I've used. Windows 7 is close, but doesn't include any fancy results (can't have it do quick math, etc). Mac's Spotlight gets everything right, except it won't open a new window if I type, say, "firefox". It'll just pull up a window I already have open (no way to change that behavior without weird hacks). Unity's gets confused and breaks too often. Cinnamon's sorts results alphabetically. Gnome's is fairly close to ideal, though it forgets launch history too quickly (if I type "calc" and select LibreOffice's Calc just _once_ it'll start showing that first, instead of Calculator which I want 95% of the time when typing "calc").

Re: Cortana is really bad

#125

Every single interaction I've ever had with Cortana has been complete garbage. It's worse than the old-school "simple string match on installed applications and files on disk" in every way, yet has somehow supplanted it?! I wish there were some easy way to completely uninstall this frustrating garbage in Windows 10 and go back to the simple interface that just worked. I cannot even begin to count how many times I've…

> I wish there were some easy way to completely uninstall this frustrating garbage in Windows 10 and go back to the simple interface that just worked.

Install Classic Shell and disable Cortana. I do it on every Windows machine I set up.

Re: Cortana is really bad

#126
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite thing is when I search for a program, it comes up, I go to click on it or press enter, and then the web search finally comes back with the results and now I'm opening some browser with a random fucking web search. ARGH.

That kind of shit is frustratingly common these days. I sometimes use the search box in the Twitter app to navigate to one of the profiles I follow. So I tap on the magnifying glass, enter the first few letters of the account name, see the account in the search results (immediately, because it has my list of followed accounts cached locally, I guess), and I tap on that account ^W^W the completely irrelevant search re…

I've never understood this. You shouldn't be able to activate a control that appeared, or whose meaning changed, an amount of time ago that's smaller than human reaction time (0.2 sec or whatever).

Re: Cortana is really bad

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be fair: I installed a copy of IntelliJ IDEA on my macOS. It was the trial version. I use Spotlight (and a year back, Alfred) to launch my all applications. However, Spotlight couldn't find the app for it's life, even if it found all the other apps in the same directory. After I upgraded to the paid app, the problem suddenly fixed itself. But I keep having shivers. It shouldn't be Spotlight's business.

Spotlight works by indexing applications and files every once in a while (for speed), so sometimes it doesn't find newly installed apps.

I believe it indexes continuously by watching the filesystem: https://imgur.com/sipDUCD.

Re: Cortana is really bad

#128
post #3

> The Product Manager in charge of this feature should be immediately fired. I hate this kind of writing. It undermines the otherwise good point the author has.

Does it? Why? People who perform poorly at their jobs should either be transferred to another position or terminated. Why is this a controversial position? If you are the product manager in charge of Cortana, you failed big time. Again, this should be incontroversial.

If it's as bad as Microsoft Bob, they should just be told Bill hasn't ruled out polygamy...

Re: Cortana is really bad

#129

Every single interaction I've ever had with Cortana has been complete garbage. It's worse than the old-school "simple string match on installed applications and files on disk" in every way, yet has somehow supplanted it?! I wish there were some easy way to completely uninstall this frustrating garbage in Windows 10 and go back to the simple interface that just worked. I cannot even begin to count how many times I've…

See, I thought Cortana was Microsoft's name for their voice assistant on Windows 10 or something. Now everything is starting to make sense. I kept having issues using the Windows menu search in Windows 10. I'd type "remov" and it would show the menu item for uninstalling applications. Great. But if I accidentally finished and typed "remove" the result would disappear. I felt like I was going crazy or something. Comfo…

That same thing (Calc/Calculator) happens to me every day. haha. I never thought about how that is probably affecting a ton of users.

Re: Cortana is really bad

#130
Well, the Projected Delivery Date is 25th November 2017.

How do I know? Took the number and looked it up at ups.

I think, I'm not sure, but I think, if ups delivers on time. Cortana will give you a message, stating the package will arive tomorrow right on 24th of November. Just one day before.

Maybe John David Back will give us an update, when his package arrived.

BTW delivery times in the US are terrible compared to Germany. Next Day delivery is the state of art. Germany is also much smaller in comparison.

Post reply on HN