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Cortana available on iOS and Android

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Cortana available on iOS and Android

#131

Post by BinaryIdiot »

mikeash wrote: post #123
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It baffles me that there are still so many services that try to 'automagically' intuit which language someone wants to have a service in, instead of just simply .. asking. Well, because they should and rightfully so. You shouldn't have to select a language every time you start an app. Instead it should use whatever language was set on your system. Anything else just isn't intuitive and would add more friction befor…

Localization is all about edge cases, though. If you ignore edge cases, you'll ignore most world languages, after all. By all means, make a guess at what language to use, but always allow the user to choose in case you guess wrong.

> Localization is all about edge cases, though. If you ignore edge cases, you'll ignore most world languages, after all.

The edge case of someone setting their device to a different language than the one they want to use in a specific application is not one of localization but of usability.

> By all means, make a guess at what language to use, but always allow the user to choose in case you guess wrong.

While I agree I wouldn't call it a guess as it's a setting a user set when setting up their device.

Re: Cortana available on iOS and Android

#132

Post by KirinDave »

fweespeech wrote: post #111
KirinDave wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can disable all its callback features. All that's left is the interface to windows search. 9)% of what Cortana is is just a new cross-entity search framework for your stuff. But you can turn it all off by unpairing it (or just using an local Win10 Account). Or you can keep squatting on Windows 7 until it EOLs and use a desktop OS that manages to be even more dated than Mac OS X.

> You can disable all its callback features. The fact I have to write a host file to do that makes it rather irritating but, yes, with a local account and the appropriate host file and all the features turned off it sorta-works. The concern is Windows Update will turn it back on as it has with other things in the past.

Which OS do you use? OSX does the as-you-type requests too. Last time I looked wasn't Ubuntu doing it as well?

Re: Cortana available on iOS and Android

#133

Post by Livven »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #131
mikeash wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Localization is all about edge cases, though. If you ignore edge cases, you'll ignore most world languages, after all. By all means, make a guess at what language to use, but always allow the user to choose in case you guess wrong.

> Localization is all about edge cases, though. If you ignore edge cases, you'll ignore most world languages, after all. The edge case of someone setting their device to a different language than the one they want to use in a specific application is not one of localization but of usability. > By all means, make a guess at what language to use, but always allow the user to choose in case you guess wrong. While I agree…

You make the problem sound more obscure than it actually is, which to be fair is very understandable (and I guess common) if you're from an English-speaking country.

Many people outside of those know English well enough that they'd rather have a feature in English than not at all.

Also, many if not most applications and services that aren't billion-dollar businesses or otherwise have had insane amounts of resources poured into them have terrible localization. And even if the localization is good, it can be beneficial to use the English version.

English is the international language, it is taught to children all over the world, it is used in business, academia and so on, all over the world. You know that, everyone knows that, but sadly, to all-English dev teams, it is all too often an afterthought.

And that doesn't even take expats, travelers etc. into account, who might want to use their native language system-wide but need certain applications to use the local language, or vice versa.

Re: Cortana available on iOS and Android

#134

Post by thirdsun »

probably_wrong wrote: post #10

I want to like Cortana, I really do. Unfortunately, it's linked to my phone's default language. So even though I could speak English, Cortana will not talk to me because my phone's interface is in Spanish. That is something I can understand - maybe there are development reasons why second language voice recognition is not possible. However, every time I update my OS, Cortana is added to my main screen again, perhaps…

That reminds me of telling Siri to play [any english band/artist name] when you're using anything but english as default language - she won't recognize anything in that case which renders most of the music related commands useless on iOS.

Re: Cortana available on iOS and Android

#137

Post by mikeash »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #131
mikeash wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Localization is all about edge cases, though. If you ignore edge cases, you'll ignore most world languages, after all. By all means, make a guess at what language to use, but always allow the user to choose in case you guess wrong.

> Localization is all about edge cases, though. If you ignore edge cases, you'll ignore most world languages, after all. The edge case of someone setting their device to a different language than the one they want to use in a specific application is not one of localization but of usability. > By all means, make a guess at what language to use, but always allow the user to choose in case you guess wrong. While I agree…

I would say that UI language and speech input language are different enough that taking them to be the same would qualify as a good guess, not simply obeying a setting.

Apple takes this approach with Siri, for example.

Re: Cortana available on iOS and Android

#138

Post by s73v3r »

danpeddle wrote: post #25
probably_wrong wrote: post #10

I want to like Cortana, I really do. Unfortunately, it's linked to my phone's default language. So even though I could speak English, Cortana will not talk to me because my phone's interface is in Spanish. That is something I can understand - maybe there are development reasons why second language voice recognition is not possible. However, every time I update my OS, Cortana is added to my main screen again, perhaps…

Sigh, that's sad. It baffles me that there are still so many services that try to 'automagically' intuit which language someone wants to have a service in, instead of just simply .. asking. Google play is a prime culprit, for example, showing a mixture of language content on the play store. See also subtitles, dubbed content, books.. Another one - Sony's Playstation store, where if you choose a country, then the lang…

Honestly, at least when it comes to Android development, it's far, far easier to "intuit" (use the phone's default language) than it is to let you choose on a per app basis. The system will automatically select the proper resources, meaning I don't have to write special code to load a Spanish string instead of the English one.

Re: Cortana available on iOS and Android

#139

Post by s73v3r »

simonh wrote: post #56
jbigelow76 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It baffles me that there are still so many services that try to 'automagically' intuit which language someone wants to have a service in, instead of just simply .. asking. They are damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they don't automatically intuit users will call them lazy or declare it bad UX for not using the same language the phone is set to.

If only it was possible to automatically determine sensible defaults, but override default settings in applications.

Except, at least for Android, it's not easy to override the language settings just for an app.

Re: Cortana available on iOS and Android

#140

Post by herbig »

The Android app is really choppy and slow, I couldn't get the voice search to work, and uses Android design themes/elements from four years ago.

I also had to create a Microsoft account in order to check it out for the 5 minutes I did so before it was summarily uninstalled.

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