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Cortana is really bad

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Re: Cortana is really bad

#151

Post by cabaalis »

coldtea wrote: post #66
enraged_camel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> People who perform poorly at their jobs should either be transferred to another position or terminated. Why is this a controversial position? First, because some random idiot on a blog post does not know whether the person "performed poorly at their job" in general. He just has a specific gripe. The other person might have done miracles in other parts of Cortana. There are such things as shipping priorities, and th…

The "some random idiot" is correct in his blog post. Cortana could be the greatest compilation of code ever written, but here it's directly advertising a feature to the user, asking them to take time from their day to use this feature, which does absolutely nothing for the user.

Maybe not enough to call for a firing of some likely very talented people, but also not enough for you to label the complainer an idiot.

Re: Cortana is really bad

#152

Post by kelnos »

coldtea wrote: post #66
enraged_camel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> People who perform poorly at their jobs should either be transferred to another position or terminated. Why is this a controversial position? First, because some random idiot on a blog post does not know whether the person "performed poorly at their job" in general. He just has a specific gripe. The other person might have done miracles in other parts of Cortana. There are such things as shipping priorities, and th…

> some random idiot on a blog post

So you're not ok with holding employees responsible for their work product failures, but you're ok with calling people with strong opinions about said failures "random idiots"? Hooray hypocrisy.

> That's why companies don't base their decisions on random posts or comments.

So companies shouldn't take customer feedback into account when making product decisions? That seem like a pretty bad plan.

Re: Cortana is really bad

#153

Post by morganvachon »

CydeWeys wrote: post #38

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 can't speak for Cortana on desktop Windows 10 as I don't use it there, but when I had a Windows phone it was by far the best of the big three for hands-free communication while driving. It understood every command, every word, and was able to flawlessly send texts by voice and read responses back.

I have an iPhone now, but Siri is so hit-or-miss that I rarely use it for sending, and it doesn't read me received messages at all. With Windows phone when I got a text in the car I immediately heard "You got a text from __________, would you like me to read it, or ignore it?" That's what a digital assistant is made for, and it was amazing. If only Windows Phone hadn't stagnated and died, I'd happily still be on it.

Re: Cortana is really bad

#154

Post by wombatpm »

fpgaminer wrote: post #124
CydeWeys wrote: post #38

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…

Shout out for Wox. https://github.com/Wox-launcher/Wox its what I went to when Launchy stagnated. Its one of the first things I install on new PC's

Re: Cortana is really bad

#155

Post by coldtea »

kelnos wrote: post #152
coldtea wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People who perform poorly at their jobs should either be transferred to another position or terminated. Why is this a controversial position? First, because some random idiot on a blog post does not know whether the person "performed poorly at their job" in general. He just has a specific gripe. The other person might have done miracles in other parts of Cortana. There are such things as shipping priorities, and th…

> some random idiot on a blog post So you're not ok with holding employees responsible for their work product failures, but you're ok with calling people with strong opinions about said failures "random idiots"? Hooray hypocrisy. > That's why companies don't base their decisions on random posts or comments. So companies shouldn't take customer feedback into account when making product decisions? That seem like a pret…

>So you're not ok with holding employees responsible for their work product failures, but you're ok with calling people with strong opinions about said failures "random idiots"? Hooray hypocrisy.

I fail to see the hypocrisy. A mis-implemented feature (which might not even have been considered or prioritized at all) doesn't mean a "product failure" -- whereas someone not only failing to understand that, but also recommending the firing of a person they don't know because some pet feature they were looking for wasn't implemented well, does imply a certain idiocy.

It's like someone asking for a waiter to be fired because they didn't like a particular part of their dining experience, and somebody calling said person an idiot. Even if they're not (which is more probably the case), they're being a jerk, and that's what the second person want to imply.

>*That's why companies don't base their decisions on random posts or comments.

"So companies shouldn't take customer feedback into account when making product decisions? That seem like a pretty bad plan."

It also sounds like a bad deduction from what I've wrote.

Re: Cortana is really bad

#156

Post by enitihas »

vocatus_gate wrote: post #137
fpgaminer wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There IS a magic search tool, I've been using it for years. https://everything.en.softonic.com/ "Everything" is a fantastic lightning-fast system-wide search that's tiny and can run standalone.

I have been using Everything for a long time and would gladly recommend it to anyone trying to search their files on windows. It even supports regex searches. It is one of the very few softwares I miss when using linux. The search part of everything is lighting fast.

Re: Cortana is really bad

#157

Post by [deleted] »

eitland wrote: post #100
ska wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows used to be optimized around user experience. Are you sure that wasn't MacOS ? I can't think of a time in recent memory I would describe windows as focused around user experience, it has always had dark corners.

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:-)

[deleted]

Re: Cortana is really bad

#158

Post by ska »

ska wrote: post #99
CydeWeys wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you might be right about the why. Windows used to be optimized around user experience. The deal was, I pay my $200, and I get a good operating system. Now, I still pay my $200, but what I'm getting is an operating system optimized to generate further revenue from me, at the expense of basic usability. This might be acceptable in a F2P model, but not when I've paid good money for it! Meanwhile, all this stuf…

Windows used to be optimized around user experience. Are you sure that wasn't MacOS ? I can't think of a time in recent memory I would describe windows as focused around user experience, it has always had dark corners.

Update as I can't edit original.

This was not meant as a comment on the preference between MacOS and Windows, or the user experience.

What I am questioning was the assertion that UX was the major engineering driver for MS in building windows. i.e. "optimized for".

While I can buy the argument that apple's engineering was driven by UX (for good or for ill) it doesn't seem to me that this was true for Microsoft. Not that they never think of UX, but it is sometimes trumped by other concerns.

Re: Cortana is really bad

#159

Post by ska »

eitland wrote: post #100
ska wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows used to be optimized around user experience. Are you sure that wasn't MacOS ? I can't think of a time in recent memory I would describe windows as focused around user experience, it has always had dark corners.

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:-)

See my added comment - this had nothing to do with user preference or any judgement on which system was "better".

Re: Cortana is really bad

#160

Post by poopchute »

fpgaminer wrote: post #124
CydeWeys wrote: post #38

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 calc example is the exact reason I uninstalled libre office. Google sheets is good enough for everything I need
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