![]() ![]() They represent a new front in CEO Satya Nadella’s battle to sell Microsoft software on any device or platform, rather than trying to force customers to use Windows. Cortana is the name of an artificial intelligence character in the video game series “Halo.” The plan to put Cortana on machines running software from rivals such as Apple and Google, as well as the Einstein project, have not been reported. Horvitz and Microsoft declined comment on any plan to take Cortana beyond Windows. “This kind of technology, which can read and understand email, will play a central role in the next roll out of Cortana, which we are working on now for the fall time frame,” said Eric Horvitz, managing director of Microsoft Research and a part of the Einstein project, in an interview at the company’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters. Later, Cortana will be available as a standalone app, usable on phones and tablets powered by Apple Inc's AAPL.O iOS and Google Inc's GOOG.O Android, people familiar with the project said. Microsoft has been running its "personal assistant" Cortana on its Windows phones for a year, and will put the new version on the desktop with the arrival of Windows 10 this autumn. If you want more positive reviews delivered to the e-mail box of your choice, you can click on that little text bubble at the bottom of the screen.Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at the Future Decoded conference in London November 10, 2014. The app went into great details over the charming cartoon personalities. Although as a lot of everyday tasks are done on a computer, it might be a good idea to start treating it as home. Though unfortunately, Skeuomorphism has become an ugly word in design circles, preferring flat designs and gradients, and as digital literacy increases, this will become less of an issue. While I can see the case from power users why they did not welcome the additions of Microsoft Bob with open arms, it did a lot of work in making a computer a lot more approachable, Innovations that could be still be used today. Some of the applications that came pre-installed rival some apps today! The infamous font, Comic Sans also started life in Microsoft Bob (though unfortunately didn’t make it into the final product) and had a similar legacy of recognition throughout. ![]() Remember Rover? One of the many options for Clippy? He rescued from Bob, and their inclusions cemented them as Microsoft mascots. Though the project was ultimately shelved in the early 2000s (no pun intended), a lot of its good ideas were recycled into future projects. Every app is a product in your home, usually where you’d expect it to be! Considering the target audience’s use cases for computers today, this might have been a prophetic move. Greater care was put into Bob to make it more compatible with the up-and-coming technology, that today we take for granted, focus on E-mail was built into the software for example. The calendar is robust enough to know when International Women’s day is, and a fully formed letter writer helps fill in the gap before Microsoft Office. Graphical User Interface improvements are one thing, but Bob is loaded with other useful programs. You could turn your computer into the Enterprise if you wanted! A far cry from certain operating systems of today. It allowed you total stylistic control over your computer. Making it easy for people not as familiar with the relatively new technology to understand and get on with their programs. You can bind certain applications to everyday objects, like an accountancy application to a chequebook. For family computers, each family member could be given a room, a great tool for application organisation. You had full control over the style of the room to suit your tastes, like a horror-themed crypt, a classic everyday living room, or something more post-modern as storage. I don’t know if I feel comfortable giving this information to a talking dog!ĭesigned for Windows 3.1, Microsoft Bob is skeuomorphism taken to its logical conclusion, with a fully realised virtual home serving as your environment of interaction. That overhaul was given an equally down-to-earth name of Microsoft Bob. In the mid-90s, Microsoft, who rode the advances of the graphical universal interface to the forefront of the market, offered their take on the fad of the time, by mapping practically every computer function to an everyday object. With constant changes, it can be hard for people who don’t live and breathe computers to keep up, and not get lost. Despite many strides in making their operation as simple and pain-free as possible, Computers can be confusing for a novice to use, often beholding to the whims of designers and style trends in their quest for trends. ![]()
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