Where are Microsoft's Continuity and Hand-off feature?

[aerosidinc]

Did I miss it or MS actually didn't show off anything similar to Apple's hand-off and continuity features?

 

[naeem151287]

I am pretty certain MS hasn't shown all features of Windows 10. Expect to see more at BUILD in April.

 

[bsbharath1987]

They did mention that they expected people to seamlessly continue working on whatever they were doing, even if they switch devices. This sounds more like Apple's HandOff feature - continuing on an email on the desktop, which was started on the phone, etc.

 

[Jaredallister]

They did mention that they expected people to seamlessly continue working on whatever they were doing, even if they switch devices. This sounds more like Apple's HandOff feature - continuing on an email on the desktop, which was started on the phone, etc.

HandOff isn't just continuing emails from your iPhone to your iPad or Mac. It continuing any app that take advantage of the api on both the iOS and Mac OS X. Game, documents, and most recently, Google Chrome.

 

[Onager1286]

They did mention that they expected people to seamlessly continue working on whatever they were doing, even if they switch devices. This sounds more like Apple's HandOff feature - continuing on an email on the desktop, which was started on the phone, etc.

Yeah as soon as I heard that I thought, here we go, can't wait for Windows version of Continuity! Then they didn't say anything regarding that. But the way it was worded made me think it might still be in the cards.

 

[rhapdog]

It certainly sounded like it was implied, but Microsoft was not making the event about, "Look what Apple's been doing, and we can do it now, too!" The event was more like, "Okay, we're doing all this now, and look at all this cool stuff that takes it light years further."

Yeah, going from working on the Surface Hub, to tablet, to phone, just by picking it up and going is exactly what was implied. It did show at one point an Excel spreadsheet in progress on one device, that device closed, a phone picked up and there it was ready for editing where it had left off. So yeah, I think it was implied that this will be part of it and part of the "one experience across all devices."

The reason MS didn't compare it, also, is because they don't want people to compare it to the way Apple does it, because Apple does it in a much more limited way. MS wants to make it more natural and automatic without having to think about it, and they want you to think of one device as an extension of another device (like the tablet streaming the Xbox One scenario).

No one else has come close to this type of unity. Other tech companies have done pieces of much of it, but to bring it all together seamlessly into a single OS across all devices is nothing short of astounding.

 

[aerosidinc]

I hope so.

 

[Chris_Kez]

I just want seamless telephony and messaging across desktop/laptop, tablet and phone. That right there WOULD be a great example of "best on Windows", and a legit reason to choose Windows phone over iOS or Android. As it is, most Microsoft services and third party Windows store apps are already available on iOS and Android. Microsoft makes a somewhat compelling case by having consistent Mail, People, Calendar, Office, Skype, Settings, etc. across devices, but really you can very comfortably get by with any phone.

 

[Chris_Kez]

The fact that they did not mention this during that long discussion about cross-device experiences is a clear indication that they don't have it, at least not yet.