Xbox One Summer Update Adds Cortana, Music and More (mashable.com) 40
The Xbox One is finally getting the anticipated Summer update. The update brings Cortana voice assistant to all Xbox One systems in the United States and UK. "With Cortana, gamers can expect more from voice commands on Xbox," the company wrote in a blog post. In addition, the update is also adding the ability to play background music while you're playing a game. Also, users will be able to set whatever language they want, no matter what country they are in. Mashable reports: Other summer update changes tweak the usability of the console's dashboard and sharing features. There are also a number of invisible changes that prepare the console for the Windows 10 Anniversary update. Launching on Aug. 2, the Anniversary Update carries a number of benefits for gamers, chief among them the launch of Microsoft's Xbox Play Anywhere program. Play Anywhere is Microsoft's version of cross-play, allowing Xbox One users to download and play the PC version of supported games on Windows 10 machines. The list of initially supported games is rather small and it only works if you bought the game digitally, but it's a significant step toward Microsoft's goal of joining the Xbox and Windows platforms under one development umbrella.
Play Anywhere? (Score:2)
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I think last time it was called "Plays for Sure", wasn't it?
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Sounds like a failure in UI design.
Seems voice controls are only catching on in places where the alternative user interface methods are atrocious, i.e. touchscreens.
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Sends all your voice home (Score:2, Troll)
So now you'll have a box that analyzes and sends home (for "personalization" and "quality" purposes) everything you say, is always on ("just so you can activate it by voice") and is hooked to your telescreen. Yay!
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So dont turn it on. I dont understand what your issue is.
The problem is that only a colossal idiot would believe that they can turn it off.
Re:Sends all your voice home (Score:4, Insightful)
Except you can. In fact, you can't even use the feature without explicitly consenting for this information to be collected and sent to Microsoft, and even if you do this you can later disable it at any point, and then on top of that once it's disabled you can actually delete all collected data to date.
Of course, you could (and probably will) theorise they do it anyway, but given the amount of times they explicitly give the users choice and require consent they'd be slaughtered by the likes of the EU if they did that because they'd be explicitly lying to customers and breaking data protection law as a result. It just isn't worth billions of dollars of fines.
So yeah, unfortunately this isn't a good story to throw out the old Microsoft hatred in, because they've actually done a pretty good honest job of data collection in terms of this feature. If anything this is an example of good practice, requiring explicit opt-in, allowing any-time opt-out, and allowing subsequent deletion of stored data to date.
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So now you'll have a box that analyzes and sends home (for "personalization" and "quality" purposes) everything you say, is always on ("just so you can activate it by voice") and is hooked to your telescreen. Yay!
My xbone didn't even come with a Kinect. The only way it has audio input is if I plug a headset in, which I won't be doing very often.
Happiness (Score:3)
I'll never be happy until the XBox One lets you install Steam.
I know it won't happen so I plan on a life of unhappiness :(...
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I'll never be happy until my toaster lets me make milkshakes.
Why not just buy the right device for the job instead?
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Because a separate device for each job is e-wasteful.
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And what does the Xbone do that steam can't?
I count three differences that some may perceive as advantages for Xbox One:
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For the same cost of an Xbox One, I can get a PC that performs just as well as an Xbox One.
Games that aren't ported to X11/Linux and don't work in Wine require a Windows license, which costs $119. After Microsoft's price cut [theverge.com], this leaves you with $130 for the hardware. I'd be interested to read your $130 build.
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You can also shoplift an Xbox One, but I wouldn't recommend it.
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Copyright infringement is not theft in the sense that, say, money laundering is not assault and battery. They're not the same thing, but they're both illegal.
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Why would they bother? What would be the motivation, when you can just assume that the user has an internet connection? While they're at it, why not program it in case the user doesn't have a monitor?
It goes the other way too, with text to speech (Score:2)
While they're at it, why not program it in case the user doesn't have a monitor?
Bad example, as screen readers (such as JAWS, Window-Eyes, and NVDA) do just that. In fact, Windows 10 is still available without charge for licensed users of Windows 7 or 8.1 who use assistive technologies [slashdot.org] such as text-to-speech.
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Update Naming Conventions (Score:2)
Back on the helpline, that was always fun to walk people through. Whatever happened to Service