Sunday, July 1, 2018

Hey Cortana, why do you exist?

Seriously. Why?

Whatever roadmap Microsoft has chosen for Cortana, for now, it's an utterly pointless application that adds zero value to the Windows user experience.

It's journey, from hyped release in 2014 to total stagnation and decay in 2018, has been a miserable road to follow.

I appreciate that this is not a new problem. Cortana has been pointless for at least a year now. But, the reality of how bad it's become was really driven home to me recently, when I was asked to set up a new laptop.

I asked the guy if he'd like me to set up Cortana. He said, "what's that?" I gave him a quick overview and he asked "Is it useful?"

I almost automatically responded with "yes, it's useful" but stopped mid-sentence, because honestly, I couldn't think of a single reason for setting up Cortana on a new laptop.

The whole experience prompted me to go back to my laptop and take a look at my own Cortana user experience.

Over the years I've set up every conceivable Cortana skill. Flights, traffic, stocks and shares, news, weather, sports. You name it, I've used it.

As soon as it became available, I connected my LinkedIn, outlook and office 365 accounts to Cortana.

None of it works. Nothing at all.

I can't quite remember when it stopped working, and frankly, it was never great to begin with.

For example, connecting user accounts like Outlook and LinkedIn was pointless. Cortana has full access to those accounts, but doesn't send me any notifications. Pointless.

In the 4 years I've been using Cortana, I never received a single notification regarding flight or parcel tracking, despite setting it up to do so.

I can't remember the last time I received a weather alert.

I used to be able to see notifications regarding stock prices and news alerts, but this service stopped a while back.

Why is Cortana still around?


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