Microsoft Bringing Cortana To iOS, Android 65
An anonymous reader writes: While many big tech companies have their own personal assistant software these days, few of them are available on a broad variety of devices. Microsoft has now announced that it's becoming one of those few: Cortana will be available for iOS and Android devices later this year. It's part of an initiative by the company to ensure Windows 10 plays well with all sorts of devices, even phones made by the other major manufacturers. Microsoft said, "Regardless of the operating systems you choose across your devices – everything important to you should roam across the products you already own – including your phone." This led them to develop a "Phone Companion app," built into Windows 10, that's designed to help sync a user's PC with his phone.
It's actually surprising... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's actually surprising... (Score:5, Insightful)
With the amount of potential information mining that could be done with these apps, I'm surprised they aren't all cross-platform.
NSA is cross-platform and very easy to use. You don't even need to sign up for it. Come free with every phone call.
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cloud back up system...
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I thought it was over Texas and Oklahoma. The Cloud is just downloading some info there.
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They'd just spend the money on black chicks. Wait, no... They would spend it on black projects. Not Black Projects in the Hood. (Hard to type this without seeming racist. I suppose I could be racist but, well, I am a quarter black, a quarter native, and half white. I am not sure what race I would have to pick if I wanted to be racist.)
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There is a lot of race in the above comment. Achievement unlocked: race race...
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Whichever encourages the most self-loathing.
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With the amount of potential information mining that could be done with these apps, I'm surprised they aren't all cross-platform.
NSA is cross-platform and very easy to use. You don't even need to sign up for it. Come free with every phone call.
It does not come free with every phone call; we're playing for it.
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It does not come free with every phone call; we're playing for it.
Only if you pay your taxes in the US. I haven't paid anything and I am not sure if I am not being tracked by the NSA.
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I confess, that would be awesome and I would take one of the shits I give about the NSA back just for having a cool op like that working for them. I wonder if you need to be in a phone call or will a dial-tone work for landlines?
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Re:It's actually surprising... (Score:4, Interesting)
No, this seems to be evolving into "Embrace... or die."
The world is a very different place for Redmond, and if they want to hang on to any piece of the consumer market, they need to get their software on to all the major platforms.
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But, honestly ... if people wanted the Microsoft stuff, they'd have bought a Microsoft phone.
I find myself thinking ... why the hell would I want Microsoft anything on an Android or iOS device?
Is there a market of people tripping over themselves for this? Unless it was a corporate device and I had no choice, I see zero value in this for anybody who didn't buy a Microsoft product to begin with.
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But, honestly ... if people wanted the Microsoft stuff, they'd have bought a Microsoft phone.
I find myself thinking ... why the hell would I want Microsoft anything on an Android or iOS device?
Is there a market of people tripping over themselves for this? Unless it was a corporate device and I had no choice, I see zero value in this for anybody who didn't buy a Microsoft product to begin with.
I use Cyanogen-Mod and have chosen not to have Google Now. If I ever want some kind of personal assistant, my best option will be Cortana.
However, on a second thought, what I've said does not counter your argument.
Re:It's actually surprising... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure that logic plays through. Frankly, for Microsoft, the real problem is that damned few people really even consider Microsoft mobile products at all. They're a niche player, competing with BlackBerry for who will end up pushed right out of the market.
Imagine you're Microsoft, you're faced with the possibility that you will never, even if you heavily subsidized a mobile Windows product line, be able to make any significant headway into the iOS-Android hegemony. What would you do? If it was me, I'd quietly admit that I'm never going to be able to dominate mobile platforms the way I do desktops and portable computers, and I'd leverage what I had by opening up my software to more platforms.
This isn't even a revolutionary idea for Microsoft. They once owned their own *nix platform; Xenix. Windows NT itself was designed a hardware abstraction layer so it could be ported to multiple hardware platforms. But somewhere along the line Microsoft and the x86 computer manufacturers welded themselves together. I can't say it was a bad decision, as it made Microsoft and Intel absolute shitloads of money for a quarter century, but at the same time it seems to have frozen Microsoft in place. It became a one-trick pony, only able to envision itself in a world of Backoffice apps and OEM licensing. Now it's got to be nimble again, and as it has already effectively ceded a large portion of the computing products out there to Apple and Google, it's got to make the best it can with what it has.
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The "trouble" is that Microsoft has a lot of money still. They can stay in the phone game at a loss (it is only a partial loss) for many many many years. They can market lots of things at a loss and stay financially solvent for a very long time.
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There are two parts to M$. The recognised M$ part and of course MSN. MSN wasn't all that bad as portals go, M$ styled management did it a lot of harm by strangling the chicken when it came to selling advertising dominating worthwhile content as far as the end user is concerned and management principles that crippled creativity in favour of dog eat dog staff competition, creativity thrives on cooperation not competition. It is a shame to watch MSN slowly but surely die as a result of mismanagement and a lac
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There are two parts to M$. The recognised M$ part... go, M$ styled management...
What the fuck does a basic string variable have to do with anything?
You are so absolutely stupid, it's a wonder you can even get out of bed. How many times do you bang into the wall before figuring out it's the wrong side?
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But, honestly ... if people wanted the Microsoft stuff, they'd have bought a Microsoft phone.
I find myself thinking ... why the hell would I want Microsoft anything on an Android or iOS device?
Is there a market of people tripping over themselves for this? Unless it was a corporate device and I had no choice, I see zero value in this for anybody who didn't buy a Microsoft product to begin with.
I think you are looking at this wrong. they are not doing this because the consumers are demanding it. They are trying to make developing on the Windows platform more desirable to programmers. Ideally, write once, run everywhere. Then they let the programmers worry about making stuff that the consumers want.
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Siri and Apple (Score:2)
I'm surprised they aren't all cross-platform.
Well, Apple is still mostly a company selling hardware. So keeping Siri restricted to iOS makes sense, it's an extra bullet-point to sell of their hardware (from which their profit).
Opening Siri to Android would reduce the perceived advantage of iDevices and bring less money to Apple.
Microsoft - in the phone arena at least - is currently selling *OS* and *software*. Keeping Cortana restricted to Windows would have been a selling point for Windows (and thus selling more license to Windows-based phone makers)
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You'd be surprised how little malware is truly cross-platform.
Today in euphemisms... (Score:4, Funny)
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Also, please be sure and use a single password across all your systems for ease of use, good customer! Better yet, do not lock your devices at all! This shows you are not hiding anything from the "good corporations" that have taken over our government. A password implies that you are up to no good. This is a fact. #hashtag
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Re:Competition (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, considering that they also have Google's voice search on iOS, they'd have a hard time claiming that Microsoft's wasn't allowed.
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Cortuna, when my wife calls... (Score:2)
be sure and put her on permanent hold and then we'll say I was being romantic and shit. Also, erase all my browser history and my login to FarmerMadison.com where I routinely cheat on my cow with someone else's cow. After that you can just erase yourself, Cortuna. I already have talky-G-searchy and if I get sick of her I have Siri, so donotwant you.
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That domain name is available... Yes it is...
How is this a bad thing? (Score:1)
If the different agents were all cross platform and had to compete on merit instead of device lock-in, and you can pick the one you like the best, how is this bad? At least if it's an app you can not use it at all, or try it out and uninstall it if it sucks.
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It's not bad, just not needed. For Android and iOS devices, there is no need for a 3rd party Chrome/Firefox downloader application because you use their respective stores to download/install applications.
Microsoft Android © (Score:1)
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, I don't want to have any Microsoft trash in my phone, much less when it is delivered with a name fit for a cheap stripper.
Um... Cortana is a cheap stripper?
Of the 3 personal assistants -- Apple has the cheap stripper name with Siri. Siri is a Scandinavian girls name.
Siri (Score:2)
No, she's American.
http://www.boobpedia.com/boobs... [boobpedia.com]
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No, she's American.
http://www.boobpedia.com/boobs... [boobpedia.com]
Good heavens. Those things should be registered weapons.
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, I don't want to have any Microsoft trash in my phone, much less when it is delivered with a name fit for a cheap stripper.
Um... Cortana is a cheap stripper?
Of the 3 personal assistants -- Apple has the cheap stripper name with Siri. Siri is a Scandinavian girls name.
Duckdukgo search "Cortana" Allblue colored woman wearning very little. Stripper? mebbe.
DuckDuckGo search "Siri" only one photo of a pleasant looking Indian woman in a sari. So I suspect a typo Otherwise a slew of Apple's microphone icon.
I call him right - I think you gotta own this one.
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See the sibling response to your post. I think I win. ;)
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Umm... +5 for effort maybe?
Murderer assistant (Score:1)
All I want to know is does Cortana give better advice than Siri for hiding dead bodies?
http://mashable.com/2014/08/13... [mashable.com]
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"...charged with killing his friend..." You know, I am sick of that. If you killed them they were NOT your friend.
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Free alternative (Score:1)
Can't we have our own free Siri, Cortana or Google Now? Is there already a F/OSS alternative?
Actually, we could have different "skins" like Maria (Spanish accent), Fifi (French), Tanya (Russian), etc. (think Jar-Jar).
It's a great way to do technical evangelism:
-- Fifi, please find me a word document converter?
-- Why not install Libreoffice, mon cheri? (*)
(*) I know it has an accent but /. removes accents at random.
Could start with Jasper (was: Re:Free alternative) (Score:2)
You could, presumably, start with Jasper [github.io]... graft on a bunch of Python for DBpedia [dbpedia.org], and then a heads-up interface for your powered exoskeleton.