![]() But among the no-shows I pined after were Flipboard, Secret, Facebook’s Paper and Dropbox’s brand-new Carousel.īottom line: We still live in a world in which only iPhone users can be reasonably confident that they’ll get versions of hot new apps at least as early as anyone else. The situation is nowhere near as dire as it once was: I was relieved, for instance, to discover that both of the banks I do business with offer wares in the Windows Store. Other than those, all the big holes in the Windows Phone story involve third-party apps. The calendar has some tweaks, including a new weekly view, and Xbox Video, Xbox Music and podcasts have been broken up into more powerful, stand-alone apps.(Friends who also also have Windows 8.1 phones, that is.) A super-clever feature called Wi-Fi Sense lets you give friends you specify access to your home wireless network–automatically, and without revealing the password to them.Internet Explorer now sports several features seen in other mobile browsers, including a private browsing mode, a password manager, a de-cluttered reading mode and the ability to get to open browser tabs across all your copies of IE.Microsoft’s version gets no points for creativity, but it’s a very credible implementation it set a Guinness record for input speed. ![]() Word Flow, a new feature in the on-screen keyboard, lets you blast through text input by gliding your fingertip around without lifting it from the display–a concept that originated with Swype and is now standard functionality everywhere except on the iPhone.You can choose a wallpaper to display behind the Live Tiles on your home screen - although it shows through only with certain tiles that are transparent, resulting in a pretty darn subtle effect.Replicating features already in Android and iOS, it provides one-tap access to settings such as Airplane Mode and, for the first time in Windows Phone, a way to review notifications from apps if you didn’t happen to be looking at your phone when they arrived. Action Center appears when you swipe down from the top of the screen.Here’s a non-comprehensive list of highlights: Overall, Cortana doesn’t set a new standard for the category, but it’s already impressive in multiple respects–and a solid platform for future invention on Microsoft’s part.īeyond Cortana, Windows Phone 8.1 sports lots of other little improvements. (Of course, all three of these assistants are capable of being eerily helpful one moment, and hopeless the next: For instance, none of them gave me a direct answer when I asked “What time is Mad Men on tonight?”) The service is also less clever than Siri and Google Now in some cases when it comes to keeping track of the subject of your queries: All three services understand “How old is Barack Obama?”, but only Siri and Google Now get the follow-up question “How tall is he?” (Then again, if you use Cortana to pull up a list of sushi restaurants, it understands “Call the third one,” which Siri and Google Now do not.)Ĭortana is personified on-screen as a simple pulsating animated circle, but it doesn’t want to be thought of as mere software: Like Siri, it calls you by name and provides jokey responses to questions such as “Will you marry me?” and “Which is better, Windows Phone or iPhone?” I’m at least as happy with Google Now’s less aggressively ingratiating approach, especially since its on-screen interface–with swipeable little cards displaying tidbits of information–is the most fully evolved of the bunch. I can’t imagine these issues will linger for long. Nor could I figure out a way to use it to send e-mail neither “Email Marie” nor “Send an email to Marie” worked. I tossed what I thought were some softball questions its way-such as “What time is it?”-which stumped it. ![]() But there are at least a few where it’s surprisingly shallow. ![]() Cortana matches Siri and Google Now in a bunch of areas, and surges ahead in some. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |