Windows Central released a detailed report about the long-speculated new Windows 10 feature, Home Hub. If confirmed, it will give Microsoft’s Cortana a major boost in the competition with Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home devices.
What is Home Hub?
In contrast to Amazon Echo and Google Home, Home Hub is a part of software infrastructure, not a separate device. It’s supposed to roll-out in several phases with new Windows 10 updates. Some of Home Hub’s features, like accessing Cortana from the lockscreen, were released with the Anniversary Update. It’s designed mainly for Windows 10 PCs, but should be compatible with any device working on this operating system. However, it should work best on touch-screen devices. This is what makes Home Hub truly stand out from its competitors, limited to voice interaction only.
Upgrading Family Desktops
One of the main areas that Home Hub could improve is the use of family Windows desktops. Currently, the standard setup consists of individual user accounts with an extra guest account. Microsoft sees a lot of room for improvement here and wants to change the way families utilize a shared PC. Home Hub will feature a welcome screen with family-shared content, such as calendar, tasks lists, and commonly used apps. Each user will still have access to their personal accounts, the welcome screen is supposed to serve as a digital analogy of a fridge door. What’s more, it’s suggested that Cortana will be able to tell the difference between the family and personal content and interact with the users accordingly.
Home Hub Makes Homes Smarter
With Home Hub, Microsoft will offer a way of bringing all of your smart devices together. As a part of the package, Microsoft is developing an app called Connected Home. It’s supposed to work with most of the smart devices on the market and let you customize your home like never before. Whether it’s TV, fridge, lights or doors, you’ll be able to control them through the interaction with Cortana. As a result, Windows 10 and Cortana will become the very center of your home.
Although none of this is official as yet, it’s likely we will see some of these features with the incoming Creators Update scheduled for early 2017. We’ll keep you posted. If you’re not familiar with Cortana yet, check what she can do for you in the video below:
