Microsoft (via Hacker News):
Starting in August 2023, we will no longer support Cortana in Windows as a standalone app. However, you can still access powerful productivity features in Windows and Edge, which have increased AI capabilities.
[…]
This change only impacts Cortana in Windows, and your productivity assistant, Cortana, will continue to be available in Outlook mobile, Teams mobile, Microsoft Teams display, and Microsoft Teams rooms.
I guess Windows Copilot has a totally different backend than Cortana, but if it takes text as input I wonder why they don’t do text-to-speech and let you control it by voice.
Filipe Espósito:
According to Windows Latest, Cortana is also expected to be shut down on previous versions of Windows in the coming weeks.
[…]
Seeing what other companies are achieving with generative AI, I do think it’s time for Apple to give up on Siri and focus its efforts on new technologies.
It seems like in this case Microsoft is doing things the Apple way (making a clean break) and Apple is doing things the Microsoft way (improving the old technology).
Sören Nils Kuklau:
Cortana is being shut down because not enough cared about it for Microsoft to find some monetization scheme.
Siri, meanwhile, is used by plenty of people every day, and Apple just subsidizes it through hardware sales.
Previously:
Artificial Intelligence Cortana GitHub Copilot iOS iOS 16 Siri Sunset Windows Windows 11
Julia Buckley (via Hacker News):
When they arrived at Denver after midnight, the bag wasn’t on the belt. United representatives at Denver gave them a case number and told them the bag should arrive on the 8.30 a.m. flight from Chicago in just a few hours. When it didn’t, Shuster called the toll-free number for lost baggage that she’d been given.
“They said, ‘Your bag’s going to come in later today on one of two flights.’ I said ‘OK, great,’ but it never came. So I called later that afternoon and they said ‘Your bag is still in Baltimore,’” says Shuster.
[…]
And the AirTag was showing as being at baggage reclaim at O’Hare.
[…]
Tagged with another passenger’s details, the bag had been sent to the belt, ready for pick up at O’Hare – and when nobody claimed it, staff had moved it to their back office.
Unfortunately, even with the AirTag, due to United’s incompetence she had to fly back and retrieve the bag herself.
Previously:
Airplane AirTag iOS iOS 16
Kagi (Hacker News):
View the top domains that users create personalizations for.
Some of the commenters are raving about the ability to boost and block certain domains. It’s an intersting idea, but at the moment it’s not clear to me how I would use this.
Via Brian Webster:
It’s a subscription service, but Google has gotten so bad that I think it’s become worth it for me at least.
I have been trying Kagi on and off for over a year. Overall, I have not been impressed. The results have been OK. There definitely seems to be less spam at the top of the results, but in general the pages that I wanted haven’t been at the top, either. But today, for the first time, it found a good result for me, at the top of the list, that I hadn’t found at all with Google or Bing. So Kagi is not my default search engine, but I intend to keep it in the rotation. I think we’re firmly back in the pre-Google world where it’s common to need multiple engines to find stuff.
Kagi (in March):
We are launching three new search features today: Summarize Results, Summarize Page, and Ask Question about Document.
All three features are activated on demand as per our AI integration philosophy, and do not incur any cost towards the user unless used. Usage for these features is converted into search usage and is discussed in more detail below.
Previously:
Kagi Search Search Web
The Verge (video):
Sabotage, hired goons, and a landfill in Utah: this is a story about the life, death, and afterlife of Apple’s most pioneering flop, the Lisa computer. How it inspired generations of computers to follow; how Steve Jobs championed it, then turned against it; and how an outsider gave it another chance…before Apple closed the door on the Lisa forever.
See also Sun Remarketing:
Sun Remarketing bought the MacWorks XL emulator from Apple in the 1980s to spur sales of the Lisa computers by making them able to run Macintosh applications. Following the introduction of the Macintosh Plus by Apple with its enhanced 128K ROM, many new Macintosh applications no longer worked under MacWorks XL. To clear its remaining inventory, Sun Remarketing took the bold step of underwriting the development of a new emulator called MacWorks Plus which fully supported the 128K ROM on the Lisa hardware, and packaged it together as the Lisa Professional.
Previously:
Apple History Lisa Mac Steve Jobs
