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Upcoming changes to Cortana

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Re: Upcoming changes to Cortana

#41

Post by implements »

dan1234 wrote: post #7
mrweasel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think very few use the voice feature, but those who do will hate losing it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that only a few percent of iPhone users uses Siri. The hype surrounding digital voice assistants have died out. It’s still useful in a few situations, but not having one isn’t as huge a defeat as it would have been 5 years ago. Microsoft could drop Cortana completely and be fine.

The only thing I regularly use Siri for is timers, where it’s genuinely quicker to say “15 minute timer” than it is to open the app.

In case you’re not aware you can use the Shortcuts app to automate Clock for a timer and put it on the home screen as an icon. Works for Safari and Open Links if you want a home web bookmark, too.

Re: Upcoming changes to Cortana

#42

Post by thatguy0900 »

aasasd wrote: post #14

Love current PR lingo. Just shove self-praise into every piece of communication. > Cortana is continuing to redefine the nature of a digital assistant, ... accelerating productivity to help save you time and focus on the things that matter most > The first change is to end support for all third-party Cortana skills > Cortana in Surface Headphones will continue pivoting toward its mission to help customers with produc…

>Also in 2021, Cortana in Surface Headphones will continue pivoting toward its mission to help customers with productivity throughout their day.

... By shutting it down? Maybe they found out people were only using it to slack off

Re: Upcoming changes to Cortana

#43

Post by zenexer »

aasasd wrote: post #14

Love current PR lingo. Just shove self-praise into every piece of communication. > Cortana is continuing to redefine the nature of a digital assistant, ... accelerating productivity to help save you time and focus on the things that matter most > The first change is to end support for all third-party Cortana skills > Cortana in Surface Headphones will continue pivoting toward its mission to help customers with produc…

My favorite:

> As we make this shift toward a transformational AI-powered assistant experience in Microsoft 365...

While I’m sure there’s a world of difference, I couldn’t help but chuckle at the thought of Clippy making a comeback. “transformational AI-powered assistant experience in Microsoft 365” certainly sounds like a PR-enhanced description of Clippy.

Re: Upcoming changes to Cortana

#45

Post by viraptor »

pjmlp wrote: post #27
mrweasel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European Portuguese? Does that mean they support Brazilian Portuguese better that actual Portuguese?

Probably, if they support Portuguese at all. That is a pet peeve that we have back home, because of market size, many US companies rather support Brazilian Portuguese than any of other variants. European Portuguese gets left out due to market size, while African and Asian Portuguese get left out due to buying capabilites. Thing is, having to speak to a device, in another language variant just feels weird, leaving out…

TIL about Luso-Asians and Luso-Indians https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luso-Asians

Re: Upcoming changes to Cortana

#46

Post by vladvasiliu »

Sharlin wrote: post #35
dan1234 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing I regularly use Siri for is timers, where it’s genuinely quicker to say “15 minute timer” than it is to open the app.

Agreed, although I’ve found force touch on the Control Center icon a nice shortcut as well.

Nice, I've learned something today...

However, when busy, it still feels faster to say "set timer for x minutes" with just a long press on the home button.

Re: Upcoming changes to Cortana

#47

Post by danielbarla »

frereubu wrote: post #32
pjmlp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never bother with such devices, because they hardly ever support European Portuguese properly and I am not going to speak foreign languages at home just to make a device happy.

I'm a British English speaker, and about 15 years ago I spent an afternoon experimenting with the basic voice recognition on OSX. I found that I had to mimic a US or Australian accent to get it to work, and I wondered what my next-door neighbours were thinking when they heard me cycle repeatedly through "Give me the phone number for Firstname Lastname" with British, US and Australian accents.

It has gotten better, I think; as a joke, I recently asked it "what is weather tomorrow" in the most horribly broken fake accent I could muster, and to my surprise, it correctly annotated the question and responded.

Re: Upcoming changes to Cortana

#48

Post by sradman »

m0zg wrote: post #31

Other than for setting timers and turning the lights on and off, all of this "voice assisted" stuff doesn't really work. So providers should either make it work or abandon it if they can't (and yes, they can't), leaving only the scenarios that do work operational. Kudos to Microsoft - they're admitting what was obvious to everyone for quite a while. This is especially egregious with Siri, which Apple repeatedly tries…

Yes, other than timers, reminders, delivery notifications, home automation, weather, music/podcast playback, Bluetooth speaker, unit conversion, and grocery items (e.g. OurGroceries), voice assistants are useless.

Re: Upcoming changes to Cortana

#49

Post by carlob »

mrweasel wrote: post #22
pjmlp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never bother with such devices, because they hardly ever support European Portuguese properly and I am not going to speak foreign languages at home just to make a device happy.

European Portuguese? Does that mean they support Brazilian Portuguese better that actual Portuguese?

> actual Portuguese

would you consider British English the only actual English?

Not only Brazil has 20 times the population of Portugal, but there are considerations to be made about how languages evolve in the periphery, which might not apply to Portuguese, but certainly apply to Canadian French vs French French.

Re: Upcoming changes to Cortana

#50

Post by sp332 »

culturestate wrote: post #3

To clarify, they aren't shutting down Cortana completely - they're ending support for the standalone Cortana apps, which makes sense. What I find more interesting is how they're handling their smart speaker partnership: > ...we’ve worked closely with Harman Kardon to create a Bluetooth-enabled device transition plan that we hope will help ease the impact of this change. Customers who receive a firmware update from Ha…

> they're ending support for the standalone Cortana apps, which makes sense

This is actually the hardest part for me to understand. They want me to drag a Win10 laptop everywhere to use the assistant instead of just using my phone?

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