Microsoft Is Planning To Turn Windows 10 PCs Into Amazon Echo Competitors (theverge.com)

Speaking of Amazon's Echo devices, it appears Microsoft also wants a slice of this nascent market. The Verge's Tom Warren claims that Microsoft has been working on a feature for Windows 10 that would allow it "to better compete with devices like Amazon's Echo." Dubbed HomeHub, the feature is designed to create "a family environment for a PC with shared access to calendars, apps, and even a new welcome screen." He adds: Microsoft is even planning to support smart home devices like Philips' Hue lights, to enable Windows 10 to act as a hub to control and manage smart home hardware. While we've heard about HomeHub before, The Verge has obtained internal concepts of exactly how Microsoft is imagining HomeHub will work. The major addition is a new welcome screen that includes an "always on" digital corkboard to let families use to-do lists, calendars, and notes. The welcome screen is really designed for kitchen PCs and new smaller hardware with screens that will support Cortana voice commands from across the room.

Comments

Nobody asked for this

[Frederic54]

as the Amazon Echo with a 7" screen and a 5MP camera, nobody asked for his PC to become a HomeHub spying on you on everything!

Maybe I'm an old fart but I wil never have something like this in my house, if I want connected thermostat and remote electric blinds, I will do it myself with Arduino.

Re:Nobody asked for this

[XxtraLarGe]

Maybe I'm an old fart but I wil never have something like this in my house, if I want connected thermostat and remote electric blinds, I will do it myself with Arduino.

My boss at my previous job asked me what the "Internet of Things" was. I explained to her "It means your appliances can be connected to the internet, so if you want to preheat your oven or turn up the thermostat before you get home, you can do it from your computer or phone. It also means that a hacker can set your oven to clean and burn your house down, or turn off your thermostat when you're on vacation in Mexico this winter so your pipes freeze." Of course, the second scenario can happen if Nest decided to patch your thermostat software during the winter....

Re:Nobody asked for this

[Rick Schumann]

It has nothing to do with being old, it has to do with having a brain that actually works properly, can think critically about things, and not needing everything to be SHINY and toy-like. You buy and use things that serve a useful purpose, and you don't need your hand held every single waking moment because you're perfectly capable of doing things yourself; you can spend the whole extra 5 seconds it takes to sit down at the keyboard to seach for something, you don't need a device of dubious purpose listening to you 24/7/365. Walking over to the thermostat to adjust it is not a hassle for you, you don't need a cloud-connected internet-of-things thermostat that lets you be supremely indolent and send a command to nudge it up by 1 degree over 10,000 miles of cabling. Your TV is just a TV, because there's no real reason for it to be anything other than a TV, it doesn't need to be some hackneyed substitute for a real computer. You may not even have a smartphone (and I applaud you, sir, if that's true) not because you don't 'understand' it, and you know very well how to use a smartphone, but you just don't see the need for something that large, that expensive to purchase, and that expensive to operate every month, when all you really want or need is just a phone that's good at being a phone. You'd probably also rather have your legs cut off than ever set foot into a 'self driving car', because not only do you not trust the technology with your personal safety (which is being rushed to market, what could possibly go wrong?) but you're a good driver, having been taught properly back in the day, so why do you need some half-assed machine to do it for you, while you sit there terrified it's going to get you killed?. These sensibilities are completely lost on the 2 current generations because they've been spoon-fed the idea that they're supposed to need these things, but for some reason they don't stop to think why they need these things -- and there is no real reason, they're just SHINY -- and they make money for corporations that serve little other purpose than to make money.

I'm no Luddite (I work for tech companies, for effs' sake), neither are you, we're just from a time when you were more practical about your choices, and when people actually valued knowledge and skills, instead of expecting machines to do everything for you, while there's a growing vacuum between your ears because there's not much of anything you do to fill that vacuum. Honestly, I fear for the next generation, that they're not going to really learn or retain much of anything, because there will be more and more SHINY things around to do everything for them (and do them half-assed, more than likely, compared to a skilled human being) so why should they learn anything at all?

Un, seriously, Microsoft?

[__aaclcg7560]

Time to break out the soldering iron and start burning out the built-in microphones. I don't want my PC waking up every time I take fart.

The ultimate eavesdropping machine

[Shompol]

an "always on" ... voice commands from across the room.

The KGB's wet dream since 1930s

Re:More and more useless features

[Alain Williams]

It has ever been thus. You gain more market share by having features, even if they are hard to use or broken. If your competitors have better sounding features than you do then customers will go there. There is little point in having a perfect system if no one uses it. So if MS has developer hours they are best spent adding new stuff than fixing things that don't quite work properly.

The difference in mindset is: geek vs marketing.

Re: Linux can't do this.

[Ken_g6]

Like everything in Linux, I expect Linux tools that can do this, requiring more configuration, but allowing greater control as well. Browsing Wikipedia, I found this: http://jasperproject.github.io...

Re:Designed for kitchen PCs

[freeze128]

I once repaired a PC that was used in a bakery. When I opened the case, it was full of flour and bits of dough.

Re:Designed for kitchen PCs

[Oswald McWeany]

I don't have a PC in the kitchen, and I don't have a PC that is always on. Part of the Alexa selling point is at any time you can say "Alexa Turn On Hall Light".

  If your PC is turned off, and you tell Cortana to do the same, you're going to be stepping on little Timmy's lego bricks barefoot in the dark because Cortana isn't going to hear you.

Re:What % of /. does Microsoft own?

[Oswald McWeany]

Not really, it's just Microsoft has had a disproportionate number of stupid ideas recently that need mocking.

Re:Not what people want

[Oswald McWeany]

Microsoft would fail as a new company these days.

If they weren't everywhere with Windows they wouldn't be able to succeed with anything. They are always late to the party and instead of bringing wine to dinner they bring a dead skunk.

Re:Designed for kitchen PCs

[Waffle Iron]

The first "personal computer" ever offered for sale was specifically marketed for kitchens. (Although this particular product didn't move the answer any closer to "yes".)

Computers used to be tools for difficult tasks...

[ffkom]

that would be hard to do without a computer. Now more and more computers become a tool that trades in minimal help on trivial tasks against all your data, freedom and privacy.

Pity the people who fall for such.

Always On = Always Vulnerable

[bobdehnhardt]

I sincerely hope both the HomeHub and "Always On" Welcome screen are disabled by default on non-Home version of Windows 10. If not, some idiot will say "Hey, Cortana, upload all files to dropbox" every time they enter an office.

Come on, Microsoft, the Lock screen (proper name for the Welcome screen) is there to help prevent abuse of the system. Allowing functionality in spite of the system being locked invites abuse.