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Comment by sebringj | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of those new gadget commercials that show existing issues being super difficult when they really are not. You were probably in a terrible mood when you wrote this which makes it much worse than it is. It could try to parse the tracking id for sure and you probably have never dealt with tracking packages before through an API but they give you not that much info most of the time, just like "arrived at shipping location" or "on route to destination" type messages with some times, totally depends on when the tracking is sent out. This is just a very specific use case that isn't so user friendly anyway but sure they could do it better but the package id won't get you the name of the package in a human readable format so nickname is necessary.

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>but the package id won't get you the name of the package in a human readable format so nickname is necessary.

Google can figure it out. I order something, i get cards in Google Now telling me exactly what i ordered and its shipping status, without any interaction on my part. It just happens.

If microsoft can't figure out how to do this, fine. But if they're going to pop up notifications saying "hey, i can track packages for you", they should be at least sort of on par with the competition.

Right, isn't that because they are integrated? If you are buying from the google store that has all the info, makes sense. Were you buying from a microsoft store as well? Just wondering because I agree if that is the case, otherwise, there is no integration there. But cool that google has it. I was under the impression is was just some random feature to track a package, my bad if so.

Google will track packages based on emails in gmail. I works OK for amazon, so, i.e. the vast majority of all packages shipped (mild exaggeration). It works a little less will but not this terribly for less conventional shipping confirmations.

I don't think I've ever seen it work as well as just going to the delivery services website, however - so it's critical that it's relatively bug free and low-overhead.

No. If I buy a package from Amazon and the tracking information goes to my gmail account, Google Now cards will automatically show my tracking numbers with links to view full tracking information.

And you wouldn't expect Windows to sneakily read your Gmail account emails.

What if you buy a package from Amazon and the tracking info goes to your outlook.com email? That'd be a fair comparison here. (maybe simply forwarding the email from Gmail to the outlook.com email associated with your Windows account would be sufficient?)

He says he’s given Microsoft access to his inbox

cool

Cortana does do this, and there's actually nothing in the article that indicates that it wouldn't have worked perfectly well if he'd just hadn't done anything and let the automatic tracking do its thing. The real WTF here is not so much that it has a bad UX for manually entering tracking numbers (that's obviously not ideal, but IMO semi-reasonable given it's a fallback corner case) but that they pushed/spammed a notification that dumps you into the bad manual UX.

But you get the order's confirmation/shipping email on your Gmail account, do you?

Now what tells you this doesn't work with emails received in your outlook.com mailbox?

Or do you expect Windows to read all your Gmail's email somehow?

the article's author says he has given windows permission to access his inbox.

> This reminds me of those new gadget commercials that show existing issues being super difficult when they really are not.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wheredidthesodago/

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