Being Windows' slave for a couple of days

Alright, not really a slave. But there are some people I know that are used to call people as "slaves of Google", "slaves of Microsoft", "slaves of Apple", etc just because they somehow rely on or shill at their products. It might be strange but yea, quite logical.

If you don't know about me, I'm the kind of guy that nuked most Windows 10's exclusive features from it from the day I install it. You can't find XBox, Windows Defender, the Photos app, Groove Music, and whatever that might annoy a long-time Windows XP user on my laptop. But since my last reinstall, I decided to just keep it for some moments - not because I decided to give in - but I am just a little too busy to clean them up. Plus, it might be the reason it broke after a Windows Update (you know, Windows is just a huge pile of spaghetti that you will never understand how it works inside, I'm just guessing the cause and I don't even have a clue until now).

Then I had an idea - how about trying to use it the way it is designed to be? Connecting your stuff together and let your workflow be organized.

At least that is what is planned by them. I guess.

Let's see.

*All images below are links (sources of them), click on them for more info.

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Windows' is still kinda designed for computers.

Alright, just saying, but Windows 10 will be awesome if it did not mention all the connection parts and do what it should do correctly. In which it did for most of the parts.

I don't really want to go all in shilling how it did stuff correctly, but I have to say that having the ability to sync with my school calendar (in which everyone in my school gets an Office365 account) is pretty awesome. The mail app also works without much hassle. Of course, I can get it working on any other mail client too, but having to search for instructions every time I forgot how I did it last time is pretty frustrating. Setting it up on the mail app is smooth like spreading butter. Can't really blame it, it's by Microsoft. Probably the best thing Microsoft ever did, except for Ori and the Blind Forest. P/s: Don't even mention their Office suite, thanks.

Cortana on Windows, on the other hand, is just...decent. It's been so long since they launch Cortana, and it is still not available in Malaysia. Probably it's just not on its priority list, but that kinda renders a big part of Windows 10 useless. Cortana is just a huge spotlight - like a mini Friday (if you don't catch what I mean, go find some information on Iron Man) for everyone. It works if you forcefully set the language to something that is supported (such as English US or UK), but functions like Maps will obviously not work. Quite a letdown. Whatever, being able to summon a web search just by hitting Windows + S is pretty fun and is a function done right. If you happen to have Cortana on your desktop and haven't used it yet, feel free to abuse it. I have to say that I had tons of fun searching for word definitions and solving simple calculations with it.

I know, it's not like the usual me. I usually rain bad stuff about Windows here. If you are here for that part, just read on.

Time to take it out of the keyboard's territory.

Windows is already an experienced player in the desktop market, and yes they know how to do things right (with the exception of Windows Vista, Windows 8, and a part of Windows 10, and of course, I didn't forget you, dear nightmare Windows Update, probably Internet Explorer too). But since they are trying to reach their hands out of the desktop territory, might as well play with it to see how they did.

First of all look at that messaging app on the desktop - honestly, I don't have a single clue what it does. Probably it's made for Skype, but who uses Skype in 2018 (inserts a "switch to Discord" meme here). It can't help you to send SMS, can only display certain messages. Pretty pointless I will say.

Then, here comes the important part, linking your phone and computer to let you pick up where you left off. Sounds amazing.

I use an Android phone, so they have something called the Microsoft Launcher. I don't know what's special about it, so I'll just give it a try.

Apparently, it does a little more than just a launcher. It gives a bonus function in your share dialogue of Android to let you continue it on your computer, has Cortana built in, and literally gives what you should have on your desktop here too. Ignoring what typical Android launchers package into themselves (like the weather widget, a search bar, probably a QR code scanner, and probably a built-in wallpaper switcher that I will never use), it nicely integrates itself with your Microsoft account, placing your calendar, recent activities, notes, to-do, and probably more on your home screen. It's quite a large launcher as you can tell from what it offers - about 70MB after setting everything up - but yea it does its stuff quite properly.

It's Google's territory.

It's quite nicely done, I can say. I enjoyed it for a couple of days before deciding to push it away from my phone.

First of all, yes, it does its job of "placing what should be there in their correct places" quite well. The recent activities page is quite interesting. Not very used to it but I'm sure if one is used to it, there's no way back. But indeed, some parts are a letdown.

Cortana is not capable to do most of her job properly due to location issues. Besides that, Cortana cannot respond to you like Google does - you can shout "OK Google" at any screen you want and it will respond (if you trained it to do so). Cortana allows you to do almost the same - but no shouting. You will need to push the home button to trigger the assistant summoning ceremony provided by Android in order to start using it. Not a very big deal but when I am a little too used to the "OK Google" thing it is a little irritating to push the home button. Besides that, Cortana can actually respond if you say "Hey Cortana" on Windows. There were articles saying that it is because Cortana will cause problems on the phone if it mimics what Google does because having two things listening to the microphone at the same time is somewhat problematic.

Besides, it is annoying when I find out that there is no way to sync my Office calendar into the phone's calendar app, and that means there is literally no native way to sync these stuff apart from that little card shown on the home screen. You also cannot add things to your phone calendar using Cortana, not to mention stuff like playing songs. Google relies on Google Play Music for this feature too, so I can easily predict that Cortana can't do the same. When it comes to integrations on Android, Microsoft is still so behind that keeping with Google is still better for now.

Still, I am quite happy that you don't need to use the stupid Microsoft Edge browser on Android for the link sharing to work. I mean, it's just another Chrome skin on Google Play. It's indeed quite easy to make a new browser in the 21st century eh...

The verdict?

It's not really worth it until Microsoft decides to support more locations and probably make Cortana work to her max potential on Android platforms, not to mention deeper integrations with the Android ecosystem. Can't really expect any progress on this when they are busy implementing (probably trash) features into Windows from time to time (see the new task view? It's a nightmare for those that don't plan to use it, and it is indeed not easy to disable it. Microsoft logic).

I'm pretty happy that Microsoft is trying to make good things on Windows, like integrating this and that, pouring some chemicals here and there, improving things that were trash (like Microsoft Edge, it's now my second favourite browser), etc. But there is always room for improvement, and it had not taken enough room to let me appreciate it well enough, at least on the Android part.

Alright, back to nuking features that I don't use on Windows. See you next time.

--Lilacse