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Cortana is really bad

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Re: Cortana is really bad

#221

Post by j_s »

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 remember one time Everything was mentioned someone also mentioned Wox but a reply said the combo launcher+Everything is not as good as separate tools.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13738309

Re: Cortana is really bad

#222

Post by abrowne »

smnrchrds wrote: post #115
mwambua wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What DE do you use? Back when I used Unity in Ubuntu I found their search widget really hard to use. It was laggy and mixed in results from the web, their 'appstore', and my files. Now I use dmenu in i3wm and I couldn't be happier. All I need is something that searches my path for applications... and that's what it does.

KRunner on Kubuntu os a joy to use.

Krunner is the reason why I'm looking forward to the KDE Plasma phone.

Re: Cortana is really bad

#223

Post by trynumber9 »

I've been very disappointed with Cortana. On numerous occasions it has been faster to grab my Macbook out of my backpack. Why is Spotlight able to find a file on my Windows desktop's network share that Cortana would not find?

And to top it off Spotlight shows me accurate previews of Excel and Word documents. But Cortana, another Microsoft product, does not. Perhaps that's a compliment to the team that makes Office for Mac.

Re: Cortana is really bad

#224

Post by 8ytecoder »

setpatchaddress wrote: post #199
8ytecoder wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Shift select files I don't get this one. Do you not like that it's different from Windows; do you not know that the feature exists; something else? " rel="nofollow">http://osxdaily.com/2013/09/16/select-multiple-files-mac-os-...

Not shift click but rather shift + arrow keys. Shift + click requires moving to the mouse. The other option is using the list view - which I don't prefer. (May be I've something messed up? I can't seem to shift + arrow to select more than a few files.

Re: Cortana is really bad

#225

Post by nerflad »

Taniwha wrote: post #208
staz wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have the same problem all the time, one time it was too much and I just uninstalled Libreoffice (of course in the end I just had to reinstall it)

surely that's a reason to turn off the stupid microsoft search, not to get rid of libreoffice

We're talking about searching in the Activities view of GNOME 3. I don't think it can be turned off (usually it's great if there isn't a name collision)

Re: Cortana is really bad

#226

Post by lostgame »

trynumber9 wrote: post #223

I've been very disappointed with Cortana. On numerous occasions it has been faster to grab my Macbook out of my backpack. Why is Spotlight able to find a file on my Windows desktop's network share that Cortana would not find? And to top it off Spotlight shows me accurate previews of Excel and Word documents. But Cortana, another Microsoft product, does not. Perhaps that's a compliment to the team that makes Office fo…

Actually, AFAIK, Apple uses the Pages rendering system for that? I know Quick Look and Preview are also able to view, but not edit, .doc and .docx files.

Re: Cortana is really bad

#227

Post by WillPostForFood »

8ytecoder wrote: post #111
eitland wrote: post #100

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…

Some examples - Cut, Paste files

You can press Command+C to copy files, then press Command+Option+V to move them.

Re: Cortana is really bad

#228

Post by hedora »

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…

> How did it even get launched in this state?

I have no idea, but I hit the exact same behavior in Mac OS’s command-space menu and iOS’s “two finger drag down on the home screen” search bar. (Sample queries: “calc”, “calculator”)

For me, the real question is: How did this behavior get cloned by multiple vendors?

Implementing something this bad is non-trivial. How did it make it into multiple operating systems? How can more than one person on earth think it’s a good idea?

How did these 2+ people hire engineers competent enough to implement it? Who told accounting to approve this project?

What is it like to work in this office? Do they keep the toner in the coffee machine, and the cream in the xerox machine, but only on Tuesdays? Do they drive like they design products (are they the reason my 9 mile freeway commute is creeping up to over an hour)?

The more I think about it, the more questions I have.

Re: Cortana is really bad

#229

Post by [deleted] »

lostgame wrote: post #226
trynumber9 wrote: post #223

I've been very disappointed with Cortana. On numerous occasions it has been faster to grab my Macbook out of my backpack. Why is Spotlight able to find a file on my Windows desktop's network share that Cortana would not find? And to top it off Spotlight shows me accurate previews of Excel and Word documents. But Cortana, another Microsoft product, does not. Perhaps that's a compliment to the team that makes Office fo…

Actually, AFAIK, Apple uses the Pages rendering system for that? I know Quick Look and Preview are also able to view, but not edit, .doc and .docx files.

[deleted]

Re: Cortana is really bad

#230

Post by jessriedel »

leggomylibro wrote: post #139
jessriedel wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Okay, now try typing on a smartphone keyboard that animates an enlarged bubble for every key the user taps. The user thinks 'type, "hello"' and the muscle memory flits between 'h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o' with way less space between each letter than the user's reaction time. If they mistype a letter and want to correct it, they'll probably continue for one or two strokes and either navigate back or tap backspace several t…

I had "except in cases where the user can plausibly predict the change" originally in my comment before deleting it for being verbose. Yes, of course this UI guideline is not a hardware rule. (Also, in the case of typing it's actually not an issue. The visual of the button is revealed but yo could never click the bubbles so the functionality of the button didn't change. A better example is a moving target in a video game.)
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