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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 interesti

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 Harman Kardon in early 2021 will still be able to continue listening...on their Invoke via Bluetooth. If I'm reading this correctly, they're basically saying "very few people really use this as a 'smart' speaker, so we'll just turn it into a normal Bluetooth speaker and move on." I'm not sure whether that says more about Cortana or about the smart speaker market, but it seems like an...ok compromise? Certainly better than just bricking the thing.

mrweasel 6y ago
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.
- dan1234 6y ago
  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.
  - BuckRogers 6y ago
    Same here. And Alexa (Amazon Cube) is really relegated to muting my TV, lowering/raising the volume, and turning TVs off. If I install some outdoor cameras I might use it to check the front door, back yard or (if I had a child) the baby room. As a Windows user I never found a use for Cortana. Alexa is the only one that turned out remotely useful for me.
  - aasasd 6y ago
    I'd like to use the assistant on Android exactly for this, and probably a few other automation tasks. I love me some fiddling with semi-automated workflows. If only I wasn't averse to putting my voiceprint on Google's servers.
  - Sharlin 6y ago
    Agreed, although I’ve found force touch on the Control Center icon a nice shortcut as well.
    - vladvasiliu 6y ago
      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.
  - implements 6y ago
    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.
  - chris_wot 6y ago
    I use Siri to ask it to use Waze for directions to locations I want to drive to. Works incredibly well.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  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.
  - probably_wrong 6y ago
    When I still had a Windows Phone, I couldn't use Cortana because my phone was set in an unsupported language and it wouldn't let me use Cortana in English - if I wanted to use it, I had to switch the entire interface to English. I would have spoken to it in a foreign language if they had let me. Instead, I have no idea to this day what Cortana sounds like.
  - boring_twenties 6y ago
    I mean, it's not to make the device happy. It's to make the device do what you want, without you having to get up. Respect though.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      That only re-inforces the cycle of not providing Portuguese support. Instead of paying for half working stuff and then complaying like many do here, I rather not give any money at all.
  - mrweasel 6y ago
    European Portuguese? Does that mean they support Brazilian Portuguese better that actual Portuguese?
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      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 the little detail that one does need to learn the differences as well.
- SirHound 6y ago
  It'd be useful in more if they were noticeably better today than when they were introduced. I wonder how much is down to intrinsic shortcomings with voice assistance and how much is just no one's made a good one.
  - jdmichal 6y ago
    IMO it's intrinsic shortcomings. These started coming out once the language processing got good enough to be reliable. And that part has continued advancing. But after you have that parsed instruction, what do you do with it? That's the part that's basically "AI hard" and is the real limiting factor. The "skills" approach routes around the problem by having exact keywords passed off to particular specialized handlers. But that means it can only ever do what it's been explicitly taught to do, and with explicit keywords.
m463 6y ago
> Certainly better than just bricking the thing. I think we've seen a lot of backlash where companies treat their (disposable) products as disposable, and this is a good thing to see. Also, companies like Harman Kardon have lifetime relationships with their customers.
bartread 6y ago
> f I'm reading this correctly, they're basically saying "very few people really use this as a 'smart' speaker, so we'll just turn it into a normal Bluetooth speaker and move on." I'm not sure whether that says more about Cortana or about the smart speaker market, but it seems like an...ok compromise? Certainly better than just bricking the thing. I tend to agree: I think switching it to a simple Bluetooth speaker is a reasonable way forward under the circumstances. As a related aside this, along with a raft of other support withdrawals recently (the most recent that comes to mind is those smart glasses), I do feel somewhat vindicated in my policy to keep things as dumb as possible: speakers are just speakers, lightbulbs are just lightbulbs, my kettle is just a kettle, and - if I do need any smarts - I attach a general purpose computing device to provide them. E.g, it's just incredibly easy to connect my laptop or phone to my hi-fi via a DAC or audio interface to stream music over Spotify. The point of this is that it means most of my household devices and appliances remain brick-proof, and I shouldn't have to keep replacing them every 3 - 5 years just because manufacturers stop supporting them.
- culturestate 6y ago
  > I do feel somewhat vindicated in my policy to keep things as dumb as possible I have a similar but marginally more lax policy: I'm fine with smart devices as long as they don't have to phone home to operate and they have on-device controls. For obviously Internet of Shit-worthy appliances (Cory Doctorow's smart toaster or whatever) I'll always choose the dumb version, and I make sure that I only use home automation stuff that's as widely interoperable as possible, but otherwise I don't particularly fuss about it as long as it meets all of my other requirements. I think modularity is really key here. As long as you can replace or update each component individually without impacting the rest of it, you should be good.
  - bartread 6y ago
    > I think modularity is really key here. As long as you can replace or update each component individually without impacting the rest of it, you should be good. That's exactly it: the ability to easily swap out components, and then high levels of interoperability. I think I perhaps didn't express myself so well because I'm broadly in agreement with you. It's the phone home aspect that often makes smart devices a problem.
sp332 6y ago
> 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?
- culturestate 6y ago
  They're adding it to the Teams and Outlook apps and pushing Cortana toward businesses.
- jdmichal 6y ago
  You mean your phone that has its own built-in, unswappable assistant? Since Windows Phone died[0], I can't blame them for getting out of a business where they are immediately outleveraged by the competition. [0] I say this with lament, because it was IMO a legitimately good phone OS. My Lumia 920 is still my backup phone, 8 years later, because the ones I got after that died before replacement. But the death was certainly not a surprise. Once they started adding more features to Android apps than existed in the Windows Phone versions, the writing was on the wall about where the money was going.

mrweasel 6y ago

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.

dan1234 6y ago
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.
- BuckRogers 6y ago
  Same here. And Alexa (Amazon Cube) is really relegated to muting my TV, lowering/raising the volume, and turning TVs off. If I install some outdoor cameras I might use it to check the front door, back yard or (if I had a child) the baby room. As a Windows user I never found a use for Cortana. Alexa is the only one that turned out remotely useful for me.
- aasasd 6y ago
  I'd like to use the assistant on Android exactly for this, and probably a few other automation tasks. I love me some fiddling with semi-automated workflows. If only I wasn't averse to putting my voiceprint on Google's servers.
- Sharlin 6y ago
  Agreed, although I’ve found force touch on the Control Center icon a nice shortcut as well.
  - vladvasiliu 6y ago
    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.
- implements 6y ago
  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.
- chris_wot 6y ago
  I use Siri to ask it to use Waze for directions to locations I want to drive to. Works incredibly well.
pjmlp 6y ago
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.
- probably_wrong 6y ago
  When I still had a Windows Phone, I couldn't use Cortana because my phone was set in an unsupported language and it wouldn't let me use Cortana in English - if I wanted to use it, I had to switch the entire interface to English. I would have spoken to it in a foreign language if they had let me. Instead, I have no idea to this day what Cortana sounds like.
- boring_twenties 6y ago
  I mean, it's not to make the device happy. It's to make the device do what you want, without you having to get up. Respect though.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    That only re-inforces the cycle of not providing Portuguese support. Instead of paying for half working stuff and then complaying like many do here, I rather not give any money at all.
- mrweasel 6y ago
  European Portuguese? Does that mean they support Brazilian Portuguese better that actual Portuguese?
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    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 the little detail that one does need to learn the differences as well.
SirHound 6y ago
It'd be useful in more if they were noticeably better today than when they were introduced. I wonder how much is down to intrinsic shortcomings with voice assistance and how much is just no one's made a good one.
- jdmichal 6y ago
  IMO it's intrinsic shortcomings. These started coming out once the language processing got good enough to be reliable. And that part has continued advancing. But after you have that parsed instruction, what do you do with it? That's the part that's basically "AI hard" and is the real limiting factor. The "skills" approach routes around the problem by having exact keywords passed off to particular specialized handlers. But that means it can only ever do what it's been explicitly taught to do, and with explicit keywords.

m463 6y ago

> Certainly better than just bricking the thing. I think we've seen a lot of backlash where companies treat their (disposable) products as disposable, and this is a good thing to see. Also, companies like Harman Kardon have lifetime relationships with their customers.

bartread 6y ago

> f I'm reading this correctly, they're basically saying "very few people really use this as a 'smart' speaker, so we'll just turn it into a normal Bluetooth speaker and move on." I'm not sure whether that says more about Cortana or about the smart speaker market, but it seems like an...ok compromise? Certainly better than just bricking the thing. I tend to agree: I think switching it to a simple Bluetooth speaker is a reasonable way forward under the circumstances. As a related aside this, along with a raft of other support withdrawals recently (the most recent that comes to mind is those smart glasses), I do feel somewhat vindicated in my policy to keep things as dumb as possible: speakers are just speakers, lightbulbs are just lightbulbs, my kettle is just a kettle, and - if I do need any smarts - I attach a general purpose computing device to provide them. E.g, it's just incredibly easy to connect my laptop or phone to my hi-fi via a DAC or audio interface to stream music over Spotify. The point of this is that it means most of my household devices and appliances remain brick-proof, and I shouldn't have to keep replacing them every 3 - 5 years just because manufacturers stop supporting them.

culturestate 6y ago
> I do feel somewhat vindicated in my policy to keep things as dumb as possible I have a similar but marginally more lax policy: I'm fine with smart devices as long as they don't have to phone home to operate and they have on-device controls. For obviously Internet of Shit-worthy appliances (Cory Doctorow's smart toaster or whatever) I'll always choose the dumb version, and I make sure that I only use home automation stuff that's as widely interoperable as possible, but otherwise I don't particularly fuss about it as long as it meets all of my other requirements. I think modularity is really key here. As long as you can replace or update each component individually without impacting the rest of it, you should be good.
- bartread 6y ago
  > I think modularity is really key here. As long as you can replace or update each component individually without impacting the rest of it, you should be good. That's exactly it: the ability to easily swap out components, and then high levels of interoperability. I think I perhaps didn't express myself so well because I'm broadly in agreement with you. It's the phone home aspect that often makes smart devices a problem.

sp332 6y ago

> 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?

culturestate 6y ago
They're adding it to the Teams and Outlook apps and pushing Cortana toward businesses.
jdmichal 6y ago
You mean your phone that has its own built-in, unswappable assistant? Since Windows Phone died[0], I can't blame them for getting out of a business where they are immediately outleveraged by the competition. [0] I say this with lament, because it was IMO a legitimately good phone OS. My Lumia 920 is still my backup phone, 8 years later, because the ones I got after that died before replacement. But the death was certainly not a surprise. Once they started adding more features to Android apps than existed in the Windows Phone versions, the writing was on the wall about where the money was going.