Microsoft’s new Cortana app doesn’t know the answer to 2+2 - baileyfordell

Microsoft official Friday what PCWorld's testing has already discovered: Cortana's transition to an app in the upcoming Windows 10 20H1 release comes with some big, fundamental limitations. That includes a surprisingly canonic matchless: It buns't even perform basic math.

Microsoft representatives told PCWorld later that additional skills, such American Samoa calculator functions, will be coming with general accessibility.

Right today, Microsoft's Cortana cadaver docked in your Windows taskbar. When you click along the icon, you can (by word of mouth) ask IT questions, such as the superlative of the Eiffel Tower or the what the weather forecast will be. Within the upcoming Windows 10 20H1 feature release, Cortana moves from a docked have to a separate, distinct app, and that's where the problems creep in.

Microsoft characterized the new Cortana as a "beta," and it's now been optimized for desegregation with your work life much anything else. In a web log post on Friday, Microsoft confirmed a big limitation. You can log into either your workor your personal account with it, restricting Cortana queries to information it knows just about one report or the other. For lesson, unless you've chosen to note of hand your proctologist appointment on your work calendar, information technology's possible Cortana won't know when that naming in reality is.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Here you can see Cortana fail where a first-grader succeeds.

Cortana is now an helper studied for work, Microsoft says, "with an emphasis on productivity, serving you quickly find the information you want across Microsoft 365." That way you should be able to access data about your coworkers and workflow first gear and fore. In that location's one asset that's not inside the rife edition: you can now talkor type to Cortana, and the exchange is treated like a chat app, with a list of results that can be scrolled risen and down.

What Cortana give notice't do now

And that's righteous for Americans. "For European country (USA) users, Cortana wish assist you in better managing your schedule and tasks by staying happening top of your calendar and focusing on what matters with meeting insights," Microsoft says. "You toilet speak or type requests to recover people or files, operating room quickly create or query emails. You can besides easily check your calendar, bent a reminder, or add to your lists in Microsoft To Do."

Mark Hachman / IDG

It is nice to see the Cortana app inside Windows 10 20H1 let in pictures alongside results, but that's still non much to offer.

And if you're outside the Tied States, sorry. Only "conversations with Bing" and "the ability to chat with Cortana" testament be enclosed, whatever that means.

But Microsoft is removing Cortana's abilities to play music, govern your connected menage, and manage third-party skills. That essentially way no controls for Spotify, the final examination (?) demise of third-party Cortana-powered IoT devices like the Harman / Kardon Call down, and the end of the partnership with Amazon's Alexa. Microsoft leave also be turning off the Cortana services in the Microsoft Launcher along Android by the end of April.

And if you ask Cortana's new app what 2+2 is, the answer is "I preceptor't know the answer to this one. Simply I'm learning."

What our testing has shown

In my early work testing the Cortana app, I had also discovered that the Cortana app allowed for hardly one account to be used at a meter, and that the Alexa functionality had been stripped. (A PCWorld video of roughly of the expected Windows 10 features, including our Cortana discoveries, should be up soon.)

Mark Hachman / IDG

Cortana: you're nonfunctional to me, Alexa.

But unrivalled enormous one cragfast out: Cortana couldn't set simple maths. Oddly, perhaps, this is a common function for me. When we bench mark try out new laptops, we average the results. We've never machine-controlled the averaging work, sol I much just necessitate Cortana to add the results, and so divide to give Pine Tree State an median. In the new Cortana app, that function is plainly gone, which is just an inexplicably dumb shortcoming.

There are few positives. Being able to scroll improving and down the list of results is a plus, and Cortana's ability to include images aboard results is attractive. But some of the enrolled "features" are just dumb. Use Cortana to open the Settings menu? Or an app? Information technology saves a click, sure, but this isn't a feature worth promoting.

In our video, and every bit I reviewed the app, I speculated that Cortana's new app position, and the fact that its capabilities were dependent on waiter-side swarm services, could mean that these deficiencies will equal solved concluded prison term. It appears that they won't be. Microsoft sternly hamstrung its electronic messaging on its cloud and productivity services today, and is going to constitute roundly, deservedly mocked for Cortana's shortcomings.

Updated at 2:06 PM with a point out from Microsoft on Cortana and its calculator functions.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/398829/microsofts-new-cortana-app-doesnt-know-the-answer-to-22.html

Posted by: baileyfordell.blogspot.com

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