Of Home Hub and Microsoft’s Missed Opportunities

What are we to make of rumors that Microsoft will belatedly move its Cortana-based digital assistant technologies into the living room?

I guess it depends on who you ask.

News of something we're now calling Home Hub first surfaced on Windows Central, which predicted that Microsoft would announce a Cortana-based "smart connected" device at its October Windows 10 event. "According to our sources," the publication noted, "this device is related to a Windows 10 feature called 'HomeHub'."

That never happened, but it's fair to say that many---me, Brad, many others---had been practically begging Microsoft to enter the market for home-based digital assistants for many months. In the wake of that October event, Brad noted that Microsoft was letting this potentially-important market slip away from it.

"I do worry about the future of Cortana," he wrote. "Without a meaningful endpoint, the AI assistant lives, but mostly in a forgotten location. Sure, you can get Cortana everywhere, but that’s only if you are willing to side-step the default AI assistant on the popular mobile platforms and on the PC, you have to convince users to talk to their PC instead of using a mouse and keyboard like we have done for the past three decades."

A week later, the ever-elusive WalkingCat tweeted the following, noting that a coming Windows 10 feature called Family Desktop looked an awful lot like Home Hub. "Apparently Home Hub is a family-oriented feature of Windows 10 PC called 'Family Desktop', basically a shared account," he noted.

A shared account is a far cry from a home-based "smart connected" device, but as Brad wrote that day, "Home Hub allows you and your family to access common tasks without logging in, such as calendars, lists, music and more ... this feature actually sounds like Kids Corner that was in Windows Phone."

That is exactly what it sounds like.

But now Windows Central is claiming that Microsoft will use Home Hub to "crush" Amazon Echo and Google Home.

That's quite a claim. And while anyone familiar with Microsoft's non-stop string of consumer defeats would be wise to question it, let's at least be open to the possibility.

And it boils down to this.

After spending a lot of time re-explaining what WalkingCat already told us---Home Hub is software, not hardware---Windows Central then explains that the central advantage of this solution, the key differentiator with the Echo and Google Home devices, is "a screen."

"Home Hub is designed to run on Windows 10 PCs, mainly All-In-Ones and 2-in-1's with touch screens, but can work on any Windows 10 machine," the publication claims. "Home Hub isn't a dedicated device — it's just the software on your PC, no additional hardware required. Adding a screen to these smart devices makes these things so much more approachable and useful, especially to families."

So let's stop right there. The key advantage of Home Hub, according to this site ... is that it's software. And li...

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