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Cortana available on iOS and Android
- dharma1 11y agodo Siri, OK Google or Cortana offer any API's for 3rd party apps? So that I could do things like get X app to do Y with voice commands? Either when I've got the app open/focused, or even when the app isn't running?
- arihant 11y agoI think both Siri and Google Now offer third-party hooks, even on the watches. I'm not sure about Cortana.
- MBCook 11y agoSiri does not, at least at the moment. It's widely hoped that it will, but today no.
- mikeash 11y agoA notable exception to this is HomeKit devices. While it's not close to what you'd want for a general third-party API, it does let you integrate some things. I've messed around a bit with using a server to fake being a HomeKit device to get some custom things working with Siri.
- silverlake 11y agoCortana does: https://dev.windows.com/en-us/cortana https://dev.windows.com/en-us/cortana
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Grazester 11y agoOf course Google now has an api that can be used for issuing voice commands for third party apps
- sp332 11y agoAmazon's Echo also has an API https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills-kit https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-sk...
- KirinDave 11y agoYes, someone else linked it. Another interesting point, Cortana is itself a CLIENT of open APIs you can build on as well. https://graph.microsoft.io/ https://graph.microsoft.io/ It's a pretty interesting concept. It means it's really easy to knit together a user. One of the most fascinating concepts is this notion exposed by mbrace of "just in time" and "user specific" clusters. You can use a user's Azure environment to do distributed computation on their behalf (after getting them to agree to charges, of course) without exporting their data to a generalized cloud infrastructure. This has a lot of potential for giving the user the best of both worlds. It's a hell of a lot more approachable than a DIY approach like Sovereign.
- tedks 11y agoWhat is Sovereign? It isn't googleable for me.
- TheLogothete 11y agoNot what you are asking about, but I find it very useful; Microsoft has a product called power BI which is a dashboarding/BI solution and you can create dashboards for Cortana.
- bst287 11y agoIs there any clear benefit to using Cortana over Siri?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jinst8gmi 11y agoNot having to buy an Apple device which is unaffordable for many...
- falcolas 11y agoIn that case, is there a clear benefit to Cortana over Google Now?
- TranquilMarmot 11y agoSearch with Bing instead of Google ;)
- sremani 11y agoIf you are a windows 10 user and use cortana on desktop, and xbox one user which is likely to get cortana, you will have one personal assistant across all your devices. Is it a clear benefit, it entirely depends on your use case. As Windows 10 notebook owner, even though I mostly use Cortana on my phone, she/it has enough context when I use her on my notebook.
- vocatus_gate 11y agoProblem is Microsoft will likely abandon Cortana before very long, like they've done with SO many of their products. Plays4Sure, the original Surface, Silverlight, I could go on. MS has no stomach for long-term commitment to their non-core products, and as such I'm always counting down the days till their latest innovation/copyvation gets the ax.
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- probably_wrong 11y agoI 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 to remind me of the wonderful times we could have together if only I changed my phone's main language. It shouldn't be too hard to add an extra "if" somewhere in the installation process, right?
- reitanqild 11y agoOn PC it refuses even if my user interface is English.
- Maarten88 11y agoIndeed. I think Cortana does not have the knowledge and data it needs as an assistant (such as restaurants, shops, transportation) for many countries even if you set the language to English.
- Joeri 11y agoCortana also does reminders, why can't they offer the locale independent parts of Cortana everywhere?
- crazysaem 11y agoFor me it was the same, but the cause was that the region was set to Germany. So language English, region Germany. After I set the region to the US, I was able to turn on Cortana. //Edit: The reason is probably because of what Maarten88 said.
- kuschku 11y agoWell, interestingly, Bing and Here have better data for Germany than Google does...
- edgyswingset 11y agoJust tried it out on my Nexus 6. Scrolling the "home" list feels sluggish to me, as does the "Notebook" feature. Is this written in something like Cordova? I certainly hope not.
- KirinDave 11y agoMS pushes hard on Xamarin. But yeah that scrolling is hell of chunky.
- geoffpado 11y agoSince I couldn't find the iOS link anywhere (even on their main Cortana page), here it is for everyone else: https://appsto.re/us/hTM2-.i https://appsto.re/us/hTM2-.i
- reggplant 11y agoIt is currently only available in the US and China as far as I can see (UK here).
- garyrichardson 11y agoAlso not available in Canada. Boo-urns.
- Pxtl 11y agoThey just launched Cortana in Canada like last week.
- cwyers 11y agoFor Android users, Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.cortana https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft....
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- fweespeech 11y agoHow about you let me strip it completely out of Windows 10 instead of just turning/disabling it mostly off?
- wrenky 11y agoDo you mean get all the features in windows 10 ported to iOS and android? Cortana integrates pretty deeply into the OS for that to happen.. Apple/Google would have to allow it and THATS not happening :)
- vetinari 11y agoNo, he means having Windows 10 without Cortana. Regarding integration - what is integrating so deeply, that it needs special handling? Google Now runs entirely with public API.
- KirinDave 11y agoYou 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.
- fweespeech 11y ago> 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.
- KirinDave 11y agoWhich OS do you use? OSX does the as-you-type requests too. Last time I looked wasn't Ubuntu doing it as well?
- Zekio 11y agostill not available in a ton of countries in EU like denmark
- HerpDerpLerp 11y agoI am alright thanks.
- melling 11y agoNo way to say "hey Cortana" even if the app is open? Personally, I'm looking for an app where I can say "take a note" then spend the next 15 minutes saying my notes into my device with having to touch the screen.
- arihant 11y agoIt's an hour long project for Android Wear. The default note taking does what you say, but I doubt it would work very well for 15 minutes.
- asyncwords 11y agoThe Android version can use "Hey Cortana"; it's under Settings. No idea about the iOS version, though.
- ajp 11y agoAnyone know if it's possible to install this or the Arrow launcher without installing Google Play Services?
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoapkmirror.com may be able to help you there. It's a pretty reputable source, and isn't run by shady people.
- ajp 11y agoNeat. Thanks.
- untog 11y agoCan anyone that has used Cortana say how it compares to Google Now? The Google Play preview screenshots show a lot of great stuff - flight tracking and so on - that Google Now already has. I'm not wedded to Google by any means (in fact, I like the idea of diversifying the services I use) but I'm not seeing huge pluses to Cortana yet. Irrespective, Microsoft has really been impressive lately. If I were in the market for a new laptop I would be strongly considering a Surface Book - I imagine Cortana on my phone would be a great addition if I had one.
- _wmd 11y agoI've owned a Windows Phone for a year, only got around to trying Cortana on Sunday evening entirely by accident. It worked flawlessly for adding 2 calendar entries, at which point I was impressed enough to try and engage it in conversation, which (thankfully) failed. All the more impressive as I was a case of beer in, slurring my words, and speaking in a thick local accent that would confuse any Englishman. Definitely a convenient feature, though I don't know if it has all the knowledge search stuff Siri has, or any of the random pointless gimmicks that iPhone users seem to mainly coo over.
- sp332 11y agoIt does have a huge collection of bad jokes, which is a draw to silly people like me! You can even ask it for categories like "tell me a science joke".
- Spearchucker 11y agoCortana does have a sense of humour. Try asking her what she's wearing. Her answer, while still funny, will not land you an HR violation.
- BrianEatWorld 11y agoI used it for a solid year when it first came out and have recently switched to Android, so that I can use Project Fi. I found the systems to be pretty comparable. Google Now still creeps me out a bit because it assumes I want it to do many things without asking. This may be a product of me not customizing the options, but the fact that it has pinged me while I was sleeping to tell me I was late for a flight in a different country that a family member was taking was irritating. I didn't have that kind of issue with Cortana because it seemed to only do what I directly requested of it. The voice recognition and speed seemed a little better than Google and Siri at the time too. During lunch, we frequently had faceoffs between digital assistants and Cortana won more than its share. It also seemed to be better at not just showing search results for a question, but actually answering it like a human would. I've even found that it's song recognition works faster than Shazaam, although it has a higher rate of returning no results. From my experience, unless you are in the MS ecosystem, there is probably little reason to switch from your native assistant. The one exception being, if you find the data policies or certain features to be too intrusive in your current assistant.
- Raed667 11y agoCyanogen integration? Will this mean default Cortana install on Chinese phones?
- mikeash 11y agoLooks nice. Too bad I can't try it out without signing in.
- dackbuut 11y agoDoes this mean I can use cortana from my band via my android phone?
- aliceana 11y agoJolarinaforever
- aliceana 11y agoYbsbbs
- aliceana 11y agoYbsbbs
- aliceana 11y agoJolarinaforever
- LargeCompanies 11y agoIt's on-boarding process needs to consist of entering an email address/password for account creation only and or a social sign in option. After going through a frustrating sign up with many screens and processes I was able to use Cortana. There I realized if it's not built into the phone it's going to be hard to delight users and or compete with each devices' built in assistant. I use Siri daily and she is useful when driving to control what Apple Music plays and other quick requests/actions. I'm looking forward to trying Facebook's assistant .. hopefully it gives Siri a run for it's money and more!
- kylequest 11y agoYou shouldn't even need an account... unless you want to enable advanced features. Access to your location and maybe your address book should be enough. I deleted Cortana on my phone as soon as it asked me to login with a Microsoft account :-)
- KirinDave 11y agoI've been using Cortana a lot because of my Surface Book being my primary dev laptop. I like it. In particular its recording, geofencing, and exposure of reminders is just MUCH more reliable than Google Now, which was previously my go-to for such tasks.
- chris-at 11y agoIt won't let my peek without asking to create an account :(
- mderazon 11y agoWhy are both Cortana and Siri considered females ?
- ehaughee 11y agoThe name Siri came from the original company's name which, in turn, came from the founder's desire to name his daughter after a female Norwegian coworker of the same name [1]. Cortana is a female AI character from the Halo series. Of course in neither case does that mean they had to keep the gender the same for those reasons but it would appear the simplest explanation. [1] http://theweek.com/articles/476851/how-apples-siri-got-name http://theweek.com/articles/476851/how-apples-siri-got-name
- giancarlostoro 11y agoI'm really excited about this, because it gives us another option that isn't constrained by specific platforms. I know there are complaints left and right, but we have to bear in mind it's only just been released, Microsoft is competent enough to fix the warts. Hopefully they're quickly responsive during these crucial moments of the apps release. I'm going to install Cortana and leave it on my phone even if I have to avoid using "her" for a little while. Though I hope that's not the case.
- guelo 11y agoWent to install it on Android until I saw the list of permissions: - Device & app history - Identity - Calendar - Contacts - Location - SMS - Phone - Photos/Media/Files - Microphone - WiFi connection information - Bluetooth connection information - Device ID & call information Wow!
- geuis 11y agoGiving this a shot because I've always liked Windows Phone as a different experience from iOS and Android. I'm on a 5s with iOS 9. Maybe the cortana servers are over loaded, but none of my questions are even being registered. All that happens is the app just keeps showing recommended news articles. Finally got it to recognize a weather question. But I have headphones plugged in and somehow the app plays through the iPhone speakers instead of my headphones. I didn't even think that was possible. Even speaking loudly and succinctly, the voice recognition only catches parts of a sentence or starts searching after only getting a single word like "what" or "who". Gonna pass on this for now.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- arca_vorago 11y ago"They have lost the right to manage software, so we the creators, will manage it for them - on a perpetual plan." I hope we drive creators like this out of business. You don't get to make decisions like that about the user and if you do you should be punished in your wallet and with public denunciation. This is the reason RMS was and is right about GPL. I am increasingly convinced that people need to start open-sourcing their life now before it's too late and they get too locked into and used to the proprietary walled garden ecosystems.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- arca_vorago 11y ago"No, people choose my software over the others, over the free, yet they steal access to it ... because they can." I think if you really took the time to analysis this situation an honest conclusion would be different than this. Personally I think the future model is going to be FOSS with upfront cost and you get source when you pay, or FOSS and service and support when you pay. FOSS is the future either way. I would like to emphasize since you seem to misunderstand some fundamental principles, that the F in FOSS stands for free as in speech, not as in beer. Of course us Americans value free speech more than most so it could also be a cultural difference.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- MitchellKnight 11y agoI purchased Nokia with Windows Phone 7 expecting the same kind of OS updates that I got as an Apple user. My iPad 2 (from 2011) is on the latest iOS version. Instead Microsoft abandoned Windows Phone 7 users. It's mildly annoying that I can get Cortana on my iPad now but not my Windows Phone device.
- aliceana 11y agoCumplicinatora
- aliceana 11y agoCumplicinators
- aliceana 11y agoCumplicinators
- CosmicShadow 11y agoWish it worked on my BlackBerry!
- aliceana 11y agoRightariana
- aliceana 11y agoLaricandy
- herbig 11y agoThe 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.