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Microsoft Strikes Out Again (3 strikes, no balls. No runs, no hits, countless errors)

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DVDR_Dog

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Jeez at this point I think maybe M/S should appoint me to their board of directors.
How many times must I state: Microsoft needs to stay out of the hardware business. It's one of those "come on now" moments when M/S either snookered or provided capitol for Harmon Kardon to come out with a smart speaker that invoked Cortana (who? :p). I suspect M/S financed the entire project, more on that later.
So anyway yesterday M/S issued this statement:


Pretty much says it all. Read between the lines and here's my take:
Cortana is a flop. (duh). M/S basically paid H/K to produce a smart speaker with better sound quality than Amazon's Echo (1st gen still the best) or Google's Nest Smart Speaker to promote and power Cortana. Cheapest of the three offerings as well.
If you read the release yeah it's a great smart speaker, great for listening to music and that's exactly what H/K owners did with it. Alias Cortana remained the red headed stepchild, no one would talk to her. Things have gotten so bad for Cortana that M/S is shutting down smart speaker support for Cortana. Now here's where it gets interesting. M/S is going to issue $50 usd M/S store credit to H/K Invoke owners because they are going to issue a firmware update that turns the H/K smart speaker into a dumb Bluetooth extension speaker, no Internet access. That will show them. M/S is going to get their way or try to at least in the shareholder's eyes. (I can't wait until the hacks start showing up unless they already have. Hackers tend to get their way as long as they don't steal something tangible or damage stuff.)
Oops!...I Did It Again
Aw shucks! Toss another M/S failed hardware experiment onto the funeral pyre.
Note to Sayta: (I hope like heck he listens this time)
Repeat after me:
I am not Steve Jobs.
Microsoft will never be a "cool" company. We produce commodity software.
I will stop dreaming about hardware projects that are all destined for failure.
I will stop pissing away M/S assets on future hardware experiments.
I will resign from M/S once the world has rejected the entire Microsoft 365 subscription scheme that I devised in an attempt to milk money from M/S customers every way I can think of.

Just to tie this all up here's yet another example of whoever is running M/S these days thinking they have world domination of some sort. Time and time again the consumer has proven them wrong. Stick with Windows, it pays the bills and is a dandy platform for M/S Office. M/S Office is your cash cow and supports your 7 or 8 figure salaries. Don't screw that up. Go past the tipping point and there are competitors out there waiting to pounce and have some deep pockets to finance their promotion. Somebody needs to wake the shareholders up because business seems to have forgotten the fundamentals. Consumers are the only ones paying the bills. Shareholders do nothing but suck money and other capitol from a company. No consumers, no money, no fun. Business 101.
 
my dad is a professional PA sound system guy, not sure what the title would be
he built, with my help, a pair of nice speakers from a very old JBL Lancer box set
new 8" PRV speakers with aluminum dome
8" passive radiator
1" tweeter
tricked them out nice with new front grille, mesh
then gave them to me for my birthday yesterday
really great
also nice old sony amp to power them
like, alexa what? lol
nevermind, haha

the speaker boxes may be older than i am, 50 now
great sound
 
I had some insane setups when I was living in a house on some ground but even then my friend Kevin said you could hear me a block away. No more, I get tossed out of where I live now. I live a quiet life now.
That does sound like an awesome setup. Definitely lease breakers. What are you using to power them?
 
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