
Microsoft’s Cortana Gets Baked into Cyanogen’s Forked Version of Android - digital_ins
http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/05/cortana-cyanogen/
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runjake
To clarify a lot of the misinformation in the comments:

* To my knowledge, Microsoft doesn't own Cyanogen.

* The genesis of this is old (public) news: [https://cyngn.com/press/cyanogen-announces-strategic-partner...](https://cyngn.com/press/cyanogen-announces-strategic-partnership-with-microsoft)

* Cyanogen OS != Cyanogenmod. Cyanogen OS is a commercial OS. Cyanogenmod is an open source, community-driven OS.

~~~
throwaway7767
Thank you for that clarification. The article didn't explain the difference
between CyanogenOS and CyanogenMod, after reading it I thought they were
talking about the latter.

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RyanZAG
Hang on, wasn't the whole point of Cyanogen about removing bloatware in
standard Android distributions and adding more privacy measures?

How can adding a large app that sends data to Microsoft help with bloatware or
security..? I've used Cyanogen a little before on certain Android devices that
had tons of built in bloat and themes to slim it down a bit. I definitely
wouldn't want to swap one type of bloat for another.

Time to use a different slim rom from XDA I guess?

~~~
gvurrdon
IIRC this only affects Cyanogen OS and not CyanogenMod.

[http://www.androidcentral.com/difference-between-cyanogen-
os...](http://www.androidcentral.com/difference-between-cyanogen-os-and-
cyanogenmod)

So, you should be able to avoid Cortana by using CyanogenMod instead.

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devit
This is for Cyanogen OS, not CyanogenMod.

CyanogenMod is the "canonical" generic Android distribution, while Cyanogen OS
is a derivative created for monetization purposes and installed by default on
some devices.

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jeremy7600
Uhm, why does techcrunch not mention that Cortana's deep integration in
Android sounds a lot like Google Now's deep integration into Android? And I
agree with others, how can adding a large app that sends data to MS help with
bloat or security?

~~~
jeremy7600
I had a good laugh reading the article about how Cyanogen is trying to steal
Android from Google, as well. Too funny!

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JustSomeNobody
How can anyone steal an open source OS?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
While Android is 'technically' open source, from a practical sense, it is not.
It's primarily controlled by the Google MADA agreement, which is how Google
dictates terms to OEMs. OEMs have very little ability to negotiate this
agreement, and they have almost no alternative to accepting it.

If Microsoft was able to present a viable alternative, such that manufacturers
could choose to use Microsoft's flavor of Android over Google's, it'd
effectively wrestle control of Android away from Google, because Google would
no longer be able to impose such strong terms over access to things like the
Play Store.

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sirkneeland
This is correct, although this isn't likely. Replicating the end-user cloud
services Google provides is hard enough, but replicating the app store could
be much harder since so many Android apps are written to call Google Play
Services APIs. Microsoft would have to spend considerable resources getting
developers to rewrite (and even harder, maintain!) their Android apps to
target Microsoft equivalents for Play Services. Perhaps an easier sell to
developers than "hey, learn C# and build your app from scratch for Windows
Phone", but easier than impossible does not necessarily mean possible.

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digital_ins
I've used Cortana and apart from a little minor anthromorphic work to give her
a 'personality' (like Siri), I wouldn't say that it's too far ahead of Google
Now in terms of features and functionality. Baking Cortana into Cyanogen OS
seems a little like overkill in terms of deviating from Google's version of
Android

~~~
eitally
I agree completely. I don't see any justification for doing this, and it just
further confuses and adds complexity to the user experience. MS/Cortana will
never be able to offer as deep integrations across Android as Google does with
Now, and that gap's only going to continue to grow as more 3rd party devs
create Now cards and Now intents within their apps. I don't see that happening
at all with Cortana.

~~~
s73v3r
Why not? Remember, this is Cyannogen's distribution, so they could change it
up so that the things that would be answered by Now are answered by Cortana.
Now cards might not carry over, but that shouldn't be a big deal. And
Cyannogen should be able to make Cortana respond to the Now intents.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Indeed, Cortana's integration with Windows Phones is quite similar to Google
Now's with Android. At least as far as the APIs which are open components of
Android, rather than proprietary Play services, Cortana should be able to pick
up the same intents and all.

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roflchoppa
It's cool to see that Cortana (feels weird to say that because avid Halo
player) would have the capability to access and work with 3rd party
applications. It's something that I really wish iOS had, Oh well they need
something as part of their n-Amount of "new" features for iOS X.

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azevedomarti
I think this kind of intelligent personal assistant is quite useless.
Especially for people who are non-native English speaker. The voice
recognition is bad and always requires internet connection. This kind of
software consumes computing & storing resources.

I don't think it is a good idea for any company to integrate it in the OS.

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symlinkk
It's hilarious how many people are confused about the proprietary Cyanogen OS
vs. the open source Cyanogenmod. Really makes you wonder what they were
thinking when they named it the same thing.

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dreen
What is currently an alternative to Cyanogen, that would be relatively easy to
install and provide a fairly minimal but comfortable environment?

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herbst
AOKP, if that is what you want AOKP was always the actually right choice.

~~~
eckza
And what phone can I put it on without irreversibly voiding my warranty?

I tried Android a few years ago on an LG G2. Rooting to install CyanogenMod
was an EXTREMELY STRESSFUL EXPERIENCE; and flashing back to stock to return
the fucking thing every time it broke (every other month) was even more
stressful.

I'm on an iPhone now because it works well and doesn't shit out every 5
minutes like my G2 did, but I'm becoming increasingly aware of the myriad ways
that my personal privacy is being violated by the apps and services that I
use, and I'm considering jumping ship again.

But I can't handle the constant stress of hardware breaking and having to
frantically scramble around, downloading random zips off of weird mirrors from
the XDA forums and wiping my phone back to stock so I can return it and go
through the same thing again, a week later.

~~~
herbst
I see your issue, its the choice of phone actually. Also if a lot of people
don't want to hear that, but if you plan to actually use your phone there are
not that many android devices to actually choose from.

I have a G3 currently and it also sucks, before that i always had Nexus phones
and with them everything worked perfectly without any issues all the time. Non
locked, easy to root, many tutorials and many helping tools.

You need to make sure the manifacturer has a open bootloader. I think only
Sony does this most of the time, LG promised to but failed it with the G3, not
sure about the G4.

No idea about the warranty tho, in my country i can do whatever i want (terms
of software) with the hardware i bought, they cant take my warranty for
software changes. But again nexus does not care for example.

Also don't use any crazy roms. Use common ones like Cyanogen or AOKP, no forks
from one man teams or shit like that. AOKP is more stable and smooth than
Vanilla Android in my experience.

~~~
eckza
When I went to buy a Nexus, they weren't available on Verizon, so I went for
the LG G2.

They are available on Verizon now though, it seems. It might be worth a look.

Thanks for the info.

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_asdf_asdf
And so...

Now it becomes clear...

Now we know who was truly behind the mammoth effort to produce Cyanogen all
along.

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chinathrow
What is happening on your smartphone screen is the next battleground for even
more data points. Those who will be able to get access to, are only a few
(Apple, Google, MS) and mostly only one of them at once.

\- Google Now can screen scrap your current screen and use it how they wish as
processing is done on the server side.

\- Siri is well embedded within the iOS ecosystem since a couple of years

\- Since MS' investment in Cyanogen, the try to push Cortana into more
devices. Same as with Windows 10.

I really don't like it. As long as we can still turn such features off, I'm
fine.

~~~
zanny
The irony and joke is that this is just another wave of standardsless spyware.
For example, there is no way to do "voice commands" on desktop Linux because
all these systems are proprietary and rely on huge processing networks owned
by big tech to implement, and they use them as "features" to sell their
particular flavor of vendor lock-in.

Mycroft is literally the only attempt to remedy this but of course you face
brick walls to trying to get any interoperatbility between these cloud
networks.

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xlayn
Cyanogen user on n4 for a long time because I don't want g' bits and bytes on
my cellphone I find this unsettling. I see the following points on it (I would
refrain from calling them plus or cons).

-The reason I did the change is avoid G using MY device as their personal Wifi scanning station, the switch meant battery 2-3x more, I hope Microsoft doesn't mess with Android that way.

-If they roll it for all devices I hope they keep a version without it, or an extra package to install like g apps.

-Nice to see Microsoft being so flexible and going on so many fronts, the more they diversify the better, if this makes Android better; Android users win.

-Could this be the start of Microsoft Android?.

-Does "deep integration" offer any kind of advantage?.

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Namidairo
Last time I checked you could turn off the wifi scanning, easily.

As for the "deep integration", I believe that just means they configured the
screen-off hotword (which uses the Qualcomm hexagon adsp).

