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To the shock of no one, Windows 10 users who upgrade to the Anniversary Update (scheduled for release next week), will not be able to disable Cortana using the settings.
If you compare the start menu settings of Cortana of the current version of Windows (version 1511) with those of the Anniversary Update (version 1607) you will notice that Cortana's off switch is no longer available (thanks Ian Paul @PC World for spotting that)
Cortana, the digital assistant that Microsoft touts as one of the major features of Windows 10 supports interaction via touch, typing, ink and voice.
Microsoft integrated Cortana deeply with the native search functionality of Windows 10. While linked to search, Windows 10 users may turn off Cortana currently to use search without it. While you might have to turn off web searches on Windows 10 as well, doing so ensured that you got search functionality that matched those of previous versions of Windows.
Windows users who turned off Cortana had two main reasons for it: either they did not need Cortana functionality, or they did not want it because of privacy implications.
[...] It is still possible to turn off Cortana, but not by using the preferences. The policy to disable Cortana is still available and you may use it to turn off Cortana on the device.
Please note that the Group Policy Editor is only available in professional versions of Windows 10. Most notably, it is not available in Windows 10 Home.
The linked article goes into detail on how to disable Cortana using the Registry in Windows 10 Home, and Group Policy Editor in Windows 10 Pro. However, Microsoft no longer makes disabling Cortana anywhere near as easy as it was.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @09:24AM
Microsoft seem to be well into their 'f*ck it...' stage at this point. They just don't care about the users and they're done pretending otherwise. I give some businesses a pass because there are some software stacks that just aren't viable on alternate platforms. However, if you are a regular user choosing to stay with Windows -- despite the availability of better options -- then you deserve what you get. We've all watched for decades and observed Microsoft's pathetic behavior, yet at every turn the masses were happy to make apologies for their shenanigans and bullying. This could have been stopped years ago... Microsoft have their power because we all gave it to them.
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Wednesday July 27 2016, @03:11PM
Microsoft has been watching their market share dwindle because people are switching to Android/iOS. One of the publicly claimed reasons are voice assistants. So, building one makes sense.
If they think people are turning off the assistant by accident, and cannot turn it back on, and that group outweighs those who want it off, it makes sense to leave it on
Now, I think the second one is not the case. But there is a real reason for removing options. Remember when they let people turn off UAC in Vista, and people started breaking the security model to make things more convenient.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday July 27 2016, @03:19PM
Oh please. MS's market share hasn't changed much at all. Android/iOS do not have any effect on PC marketshare.
MS is just mad that they never hit it big in the smartphone market.
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Wednesday July 27 2016, @04:25PM
Their marketshare of all computing devices is shrinking. Their marketshare of developers is shrinking (it's indirect, but super-important). Their marketshare of appstores is shrinking.
I honestly never understood why MS didn't hit it big in the smartphone market. You would think they would have been able to. If anyone could extend, embrace, extinguish Android, I would imagine it would be MS. And I imagine most Android developers would use an MS written tool to cross publish their apps onto the MS store.
But then again, even Amazon is struggling against the Google store, and they've thrown some money at it as well. They seem to have a better plan though.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday July 27 2016, @09:10PM
Their marketshare of all computing devices is shrinking. Their marketshare of developers is shrinking (it's indirect, but super-important). Their marketshare of appstores is shrinking.
Those are all completely irrelevant. The total number of computing devices is growing many-fold, and the number of developers is growing too as a result of that. The number of appstores has increased because mobile devices all use appstores. None of this affects the PC market in a significant way. No one is using a smartphone to do serious office work, engineering CAD work, graphic design, etc.
The only thing that's relevant is MS's revenues and profits. It doesn't matter if a market is expanding, or new similar markets are growing, as long as your company's revenues and profits stay the same or grow. Marketshare is irrelevant to profit.
I honestly never understood why MS didn't hit it big in the smartphone market.
Then you haven't been paying attention. MS didn't hit it big in the smartphone market because they're incompetent. Their mobile products have always been ugly, hard to use, and not very exciting. The only thing they're good at is maintaining and milking their near-monopoly on desktop PCs and also all their enterprise software that largely goes along with that. If Apple suddenly decided to build reusable rocket engines or nuclear-powered submarines, do you think they'd be successful there too? Probably not. But MS is a special case because they're especially bad at understanding customers and making them happy, they're only good when they're controlling the market, as they largely do with PCs, thanks to their historical advantage. As soon as something really changes in the PC market (especially for business computing, much more so than home computing), they're toast. Who knows when that'll be though.
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Thursday July 28 2016, @06:08AM
I've used Android, iOS and several Windows phones (feel the need to specify that, as, unlike iOS/Android, they're OS's feel very different between major versions.) I understand how they didn't win over iOS users. But the only issue I ever thought Android beat Windows on was the size of the appstore. (The last point was as a consumer. I leave aside any questions of F/OSS, Java v. .NET, or other developer-focused issues.) And they seemed to have a few ideas for jump starting their appstore that make sense.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2016, @02:10AM
I turned it off because it frankly works like shit.
Each version of windows search gets progressively worse.
Want to know the secret to make vista RTM run acceptably? Turn off the search indexer and the prefetcher. It will run as good as win7. That was 4 weeks of diagnosis to find those two little gems. They sorta fixed it in their services packs. Then really fixed it in win7 (you know vista sp2).
The search index for my win10 install? Nearly 8 gig. Type in built in names for things in windows? Does not find them *AT ALL*. I turned cortana off because it kept dumping internet shit into my local searches. If I want internet searches I open a browser. Turned off the mic on all of my laptops? Because cortana was always trying to figure out what was going on (steady 2-3% cpu usage). Now 0% with the mic off. Just incase I *might* say the words 'hey cortana'.
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Thursday July 28 2016, @06:04AM
Android's "Hey Google" probably uses just as much, if not more, resources. It's ironic, because I know MS bought a low-impact text recognition company, that is only about good enough to listen forever for if someone says "Hi Cortana" (Or whatever the phrase is.)
The biggest thing that happened with Vista was the killing of all programs writing to the Program Files directory/assuming they had admin access. Once programs started updating, it got a lot easier (or at least safer) to use.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday July 27 2016, @03:21PM
yet at every turn the masses were happy to make apologies for their shenanigans and bullying
This isn't abnormal. Just look at the US Presidential election: the US public is happy to make apologies for the shenanigans, bullying, and all kinds of other horrible and corrupt behavior by the leading two candidates.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Wednesday July 27 2016, @07:06PM
MS has nothing to lose anymore. Given that most of the major businesses in the world economy use MS OS/sofware MS practically has de facto control of the Western, and much of the Eastern economy. What would happen if MS simply said "No more security updates for you!" to some firm? What could anyone do about it? Force MS to provide updates? How? No mater what you can think of MS can block you somehow. Come to think of it isn't there a clause in the MS EULA that says MS can terminate the license at anytime? And then they could sue any firm that kept using Windows.
They are also such a huge company that they can hold off litigation and government regulatory actions for years. Just look at the legal action the USA took against them over Windows 98. Did anything change after MS was CONVICTED of abusing it's monopoly? No, because MS was able to drag it all out until someone more sympathetic to them got into power. And everything since then, what has come of it? Nothing.
I Expect MS to get much, much worse in the near future.
/mild rant
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."