Unfortunately, Microsoft has fallen so far behind that the only reasonable solution is togive up.
But, is Cortana so far behind?
Set Up Was Complicated
When I started with this experiment, I immediately ran into an issue.
I have Alexa devices and Google devices scattered through my home.
But I don’t have Cortana devices so conveniently placed.
I own a Surface Pro 3, a Windows 10 PC, and I put Cortana on my phone.
I’m not adding a bunch of rules by voice
It’s not a perfect one-to-one scenario, but good enough.
Unfortunately, there is no Google Home Mini or Echo dot equivalent, just the Invoke.
So cheaply placing Cortana speakers around the house is out of the question.
I’m not adding a bunch of rules by voice
If you keep an eye out, it’s not uncommon to see them foras little as $30.
When it came to Smart Home integration, I thought I was doing well at first.
Cortana has Wink, Smartthings, and Philips Hue integration.
The experience with most of my smart home devices was on par with Alexa or Google Assistant.
At least it did until I wanted to stop the music.
About half the time, saying “Stop” or “stop the music” didn’t work.
Cortana would tell me she couldn’t do that right now.
If I tried a few more times, it would eventually work.
Calling up playlists was equally problematic.
I found it easier to control the music from the Spotify app than through voice interactions.
More Features are Missing than Present
The problems started with my living room.
The lights in my living room are Magic Home devices, and Cortana has no integration for those.
I had to fall back to Alexa or Google for that.
Sometimes the music I like isn’t on Spotify, in which case I turn to another source.
Unfortunately, the music service selection for Cortana is minimal.
There’s no Pandora for instance, despitetheir promisethat it would come more than a year ago.
And if I wanted an intercom, it was back to Alexa or Google.
I have my email and Calendar integrated through Outlook.com, so these should have been a snap.
And while my email did work well, my calendar left much to be desired.
But I was looking for tomorrow.
So I tried “what’s on my calendar tomorrow” and after two attempts that finally worked.
Unfortunately, the information I received wasn’t helpful because of packages.
Frustratingly, asking Cortana “when is my package arriving” yields no results.
Which means my actual appointment (the sixth item) for tomorrow wasn’t listed.
Calendar appointments also revealed that Cortana doesn’t work consistently across devices.
The event for tomorrow has a reminder set for today.
But nothing happened on the Invoke.
If other devices hadn’t been in the same room, I might have missed the reminder altogether.
The Cortana App Doesn’t Help Much
I make extensive use of routines to automate my home.
Halfway through, an update occurred, and Microsoft introduced features very similar to routines called Scenes and Rules.
Rules make actions happen at certain times — at 9 pm turn on the porch light.
you’ve got the option to onlysetScenes and Rules with your voice.
At that point, I threw up my hands and gave up.
I have too many routines to add by voice.
Alarms and timers are equally a problem.
If I set one on my phone, it went to the clock app.
The simple fact is, Google and Amazon have done a much better job of app integration here.
I can control reminders, alarms, and timers for any of my devices from their respective app.
Since then that number has grown to over a hundred.
But that’s infinitesimal compared to Alexa’s 50,000 skills.
Cortana barely has the basics covered with the likes of Dominoes, Dark Sky, and Wink.
But the worst part is trying to add a skill.
you could find skills you have already installed in the Cortana app.
But there’s no add button, install option, or anything els to suggest how to enable it.
Instead, I called upAlexa through Cortanausing their new integration.
I am pleased to say this worked great.
After my request went through, Alexa would ask if there was anything else.
When I finished, I could either say “stop listening” or say nothing at all.
Eventually, she would time out.
They didn’t always account for multiple speakers, nor did they have multi-room audio.
They lacked refinement in their apps and routines weren’t present in the beginning.
But Amazon and Google have worked to improve their offerings, and to be frank, Microsoft hasn’t.
At least not in a consumer-focused fashion.
Could Microsoft catch up?
Yes probably, but at what cost?
Low adoption means third-party support is lacking, but missing third-party support means low adoption.
No one is interested in developing them.
In the meantime, I’m going back to Alexa and Google.
I’ll keep the Cortana Speaker around for Spotify integration, but likely not much else.
And to be fair, it’s a pretty good-sounding Bluetooth speaker for $50.
Related:Why Doesn’t Microsoft Just Give Up on Cortana?
