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Microsoft's Digital Assistant Cortana May Be Heading to iOS and Android
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"The virtual assistant, named after an artificial intelligence character who appears in most of the main Halo games, could go so far as to plan out a trip to the airport. She would prep boarding passes, check traffic and flight delays, all from reading emails related to the matter. "
GoogleNow has been able to do all of that for over a year now...
GoogleNow has been able to do all of that for over a year now...
Um
I've never once known Microsoft to offer vapourware to the market by making big promises that it doesn't deliver. Gates promised us a world in which there was "zero spam" and now we have it. They now promise Cortana will proactively monitor our lives and make useful suggestions by autumn. I totally believe Microsoft, 100%.
I've never once known Microsoft to offer vapourware to the market by making big promises that it doesn't deliver. Gates promised us a world in which there was "zero spam" and now we have it. They now promise Cortana will proactively monitor our lives and make useful suggestions by autumn. I totally believe Microsoft, 100%.
Windows Vista wasn't that long ago. It will take more than an Appley commercial to convince people they've changed.
Most times I try siri, it ends with me wanting to chuck the iPhone out my car window.
I hate it.
I hate it.
I will be glad to see it come to iOS. Siri is garbage for me. It fails over half the time and when it goes it just give me links to the internet with no real answer. I finally turned the mess off.
Makes you wonder what the hell Apple has been doing all this time. I've not seen much improvement since last year. Siri works okay but not perfectly especially in the car when she can't hear me due to wind noise from the window. Plus Siri is supposed to do much more these days with advanced voice commands.
I recall Tim bragging about how people would talk about Siri years from now but I don't see the progress in this. Cortana seems to be the AI that Siri was supposed to be.
Siri can't do ****. She's a freaking novelty that was all but useless at launch 3 years ago and has hardly improved at all since.
Nobody is buying an Apple product for Siri.
Nobody is buying an Apple product for Siri.
Me: "Call Wife"
Siri (on screen): "Calling wife..."
Siri (voice): "I see no life among your contacts"
Screen: Links to LifeTime fitness.
[me and Siri, every single day]
Working on OSX/iOS integration, and Apple Watch would be my guess. I have to think they have a major Siri refresh brewing in the labs. This is I choose to believe, anyway.
this. the only thing I use Siri for is to set a timer or stopwatch when I need it. Everything else is a chore and easier to do myself.
I use GoogleNow a lot more when I'm on Android than Siri when I'm on iPhone. At least GoogleNow can understand what I'm saying.
No Reason to Upgrade
I have an 128 GB iPad Air LTE. There's 0 reason for me to upgrade for at least 3 or 4 years.
I have an 128 GB iPad Air LTE. There's 0 reason for me to upgrade for at least 3 or 4 years.
I got the MS Band right when it came out. My experience so far are that I love being able to see text messages/who is calling me and the fitness functions are nice but the fit of the band itself isn't super comfortable. That being said, I didn't even think about Cortana being able to bring deeper integration (which is much needed) to the Band. Hopefully that comes to fruition.
Until Apple (or Android or Microsoft) keep all of voice recognition software on the device itself, any digital personal assistant will be seriously hamstrung by limited data-connectivity. They will remain little more than half-baked gimmicks. I use Siri an average of two or three times a week for finding music, recording a reminder or dictating a text. Right now, Siri gets my requests right maybe 3 in 4 tries. That's better than when it was first released, but far less precise than a human assist for even basic tasks. I hope they keep working at this because it will payoff over time.
Apple gutted Siri when they bought it. Apple just adds new services to it.
So the Siri creators left Apple and created a better AI. It's what Siri was supposed to be.
So the Siri creators left Apple and created a better AI. It's what Siri was supposed to be.
Microsoft, seriously, what's the meaning of bring a strong point to competitors ?
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I think the question was: why Microsoft would do that ?
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Ahem.... how's that related to the topic ?
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I think the question was: why Microsoft would do that ?
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Ahem.... how's that related to the topic ?
can think of a couple reasons:
Data aggregation, with the small market of Windows Phone currently, the data coming in from Cortana can't be very useful, or profitable. Going cross platform might give them a larger installation base.
Another possible option is as a "sampler" for what Microsoft is doing, and maybe if people are happy enough with Cortana, they might be willing to give Win10 phones a try when they come out.
Story of my life. I don't know what situations Apple test Siri in, but even when connected to Wi-Fi on a 156MB/s connection it was offensively slow, or pure useless. When in the car on 3G it's essentially an MP3 player - if you had an MP3 player which played 'I'm sorry, I can't do that right now'.
The fact that NOTHING on Siri is offline drives me up the wall as well. I kid you not, my iPhone 4 is far better: just hold the home button and say 'call <insert name>'. And it works. For commands like 'call <name>', or 'text <name>', it's just obvious that it should be offline.
I'll nip my rant in the bud now, but I hate Siri. Absolutely hate it. It's so, so, so rubbish. So slow, so inaccurate - it's immeasurably worse than it was on iOS 6, I can absolutely guarantee that.