Part of the power of a personal assistant comes from being available on the go, on the device you carry with you everywhere. And for people who don’t have the benefit of a Windows phone, we want to extend the advantage of Cortana in Windows 10. How will this work? Today, we’re announcing a Cortana application for Android phones and for iPhones which works as a companion to Cortana on your Windows 10 PC. The ‘Phone Companion’ app on the PC will help you install the Cortana app from the Google Play or Apple App Store onto your phone so you’ll be able to take the intelligence of Cortana with you, wherever you go.
I’ve never seen anyone use Siri, save for the occasional parlour trick and the odd one out using it to set alarms. I’m not sure these anthropomorphised ones and zeros are really as a big a deal as these companies want us to believe.
For me, Google Now is the only useful one and it’s precisely because it is not trying to act like a person. It’s just verbal Google search with additional commands, and it comes right up with the information I asked for and nothing more.
Edited 2015-05-27 00:10 UTC
+1
I use Google Now a lot in the car, or for setting timers (while cooking) or for entering most of the information in a calendar appointment. Just like you, I like the balance that Google Now strikes. It doesn’t try to be a human, but it does have very handy hands-free commands.
Cortana is more like the Google one than Siri IMO but with a side of humour added, it’s like it ‘knows’ it’s an AI (which it doesn’t and it isn’t). I use it all the time for these same tasks and it works really well.
Edited 2015-05-27 21:18 UTC
I know exactly one person who uses Siri on a regular basis and he is a Siri addict. Nobody else. Out of all the hundreds of people I work with, only one person uses Siri on a regular basis.
You’ve asked each one of the “hundreds” of people you work with whether or not they use Siri?
You weirdo.
I bet setting alarm on my Jolla takes less time then pronouncing it.
Anyway, voice recognition for Russian is still too faulty to be useful in my experience. I tried using it with Google’s voice search, but I almost always ended up pronouncing the same query several times, it took less time to type everything in.
That said, these services may indeed end up being a big deal – once they become smarter and more reliable, they will likely end up being easiest way of interacting with devices for less technically literate folks.
Siri is useful when driving.
“Take me to <person name>”
“Call my wife”
Otherwise I barely use it. Maybe to set the occasional alarm.
All cars after 2010 have this “feature” built in. Don’t see why you need this on the phone.
They can even pin point your location on the map and send you location to where you want to go.
Future is not in Siri or Cortana ..
That’s exactly my point, isn’t it? Useful while driving. Whether its running on the phone, on the car, or on the phone via the car – the driver doesn’t care.
How very useful for those who don’t have such new cars.
Not everybody is driving cars that new, and my friends who are generally do not want to pay for the expensive tech “packages” that are dated before you buy them. Not to mention that you then have to add all your contacts, info, etc to the car. Then you have to try to keep it all in sync. Why would I bother with that when I have everything right in my pocket, and I upgrade that device every couple years. Bluetooth helps, but even that isn’t required.
I for one am glad the smart phone companies are competing on this front and making the tech better and better. Google Now is awesome, if you do not care about privacy. Siri is pretty much useless, at least whenever we have tried to use it on my wife’s phone. I look forward to trying out Cortana.
No. No they do not. Both cars I have were built after 2010, and neither have it. Nor did I particularly want them to have it, because I’m pretty sure my phone will continue to get better. My phone knows me and my habits regardless of which car or mode of transportation I take.
My experience with car based navigation hasn’t been the best. Old outdated maps. Expensive map upgrades. Bad GPS.
I don’t drive.
And my newest bicycle is from 1994.
But today I used the Moto Voice app: I asked what time the branch of the county library in my town closes. It didn’t say what closing time was but it did bring up a search result with a link to the page that listed today’s hours and told me that it had done so.
The search result with the link in it showed that the library was currently open. But I had to tap it to see the full hours of operation.
I can’t say if there is a car in my future. And I didn’t ask my phone.
You’ve got this exactly backwards. Tech built into cars that is out of date before it is released is the past. The future is your smartphone integrating into your car and providing all the smarts (aka android and apple auto integration that already exists). The built in systems will be even more neglected than they already are.
I use siri to create make calls, appointments, reminders, alarms, get directions, reply to texts when driving, find movies times, get sports scores, find wiki articles fast and the very occasional internet search.
If you start to really use it, it’s wonderful. Problem is most of you are just used to using the phone.
Same here. Pretty well established that Thom is a bit of a mobile luddite. He uses smartphones only for feature phone activities, and wants smartwatches to be basically a watch.
It doesn’t matter if people use it or not. After their own mobile OS failed, it looks like the current Microsoft strategy for mobile is the same old Embrace, Extend, Extinguish and for it they need a full stack replacement.
How exactly do they plan to “extinguish” the the two major smartphone players again? It’s going to take more than a handful of cross-platform apps for that to happen, given (as you alluded) their own smartphone market share is practically a rounding error.
If you ask me, EEE went out the door with Ballmer. That’s not to say Microsoft isn’t trying to creep into every crevice it can, but putting out apps for Android and iOS is not going to allow them to take over either ecosystem. Their current plan seems to be dabbling in a bit of everything, Google style, and ironically they are becoming more friendly to open source every day as Google steadily closes up and becomes more Apple-like.
For example, if you ship your Android phone with the Microsoft stack instead of the Google stack, then you don’t have to pay for Microsoft patents. I *do* expect something like that to happen.
I still don’t see how that will allow them to “extinguish” the iPhone, and they already have the Android phone makers by the balls with that disgusting patent situation.
No, EEE is the old Microsoft. I think this is more of the same game they’ve been playing this past year or so: A finger in every pie, so they can say “we did that too!”. How that’s going to profit them I don’t know, but I’m not an economist.
iPhone has a market share low enough, there is no need for them to be extinguished. And Apple and Microsoft are very good friends anyway.
You are very optimistic about Microsoft having changed, when all the signs point to the contrary, good example being http://www.osnews.com/story/28416/Windows_10_to_make_the_Secure_Boo…
i usually use Siri when im out and about walking and driving.
It’s handy to have quick things done without having to get my phone out, i also like to dictate messages as i walk as this is usually quicker and safer as i can still watch where im going.
Dont really see the point in Cortana on iOS and Android as many others mentioned i think im the minority in my use case.
I’ve only seen someone use Siri once. It was my mother in law. By accident. When she first got her iphone6, she wanted to show off the finger print reader to show how easy and quick it is for her to unlock her phone. She somehow turned on Siri and then proceeded to argue with it. “why is she talking? I didn’t want you! stop talking to me!”
Was priceless. Unfortunately didn’t have my phone handy to record.
The voice stuff is a red herring — it’s really cute and makes great commercials, but other than setting alarms I don’t get much use out of the voice recognition either.
But Google Now on my Android phone is awesome for pulling handy information based on my location data, calendar, and links from my email:
* upcoming appointments, including reminder of when to leave for something across town
* public transit info based on current location
* package tracking info — delivery day!
* flight and hotel info when traveling
* weather info, both and home and when traveling
Yes, I can get all that stuff separately, but it fits together nicely and is easy to get at (at least on Nexus 5) by swiping left from the home screen.
Cortana allegedly has similar tendrils into your system w/ learning stuff, and is extensible as well. Siri seems limited to whatever Apple hooked it up to and has never struck me as very useful, but I don’t use iOS as my primary mobile OS so may just not be used to it.
however I can envisage SIRI being a bit helpful when I forget my reading glasses…
I asked Siri to send me naked selfies, but she didn’t. I wonder if Cortana is more willing…
Edited 2015-05-27 20:01 UTC
Depending on the details, that sounds pretty good. Auto photo back up, auto music streaming. Its removing some of the hurdles that previously existed in the windows ecosystem. Good on them. However… I’ve been burned more than once by microsoft when it comes to promised services. And… its windows desktop os only. Google’s music manager is desktop cross platform.
But there are good ideas there. Good ideas that google has already had, but Apple hasn’t made work well yet. A good showing, all in all.
Once these are better (more conversational and reliable) they’ll be very useful in scenarios where you don’t want to look at your phone.
Right now they mostly suck, but Google Now has some nice tricks, especially on Moto X with it’s hands free operation, like detecting when you are driving, and switching to voice mode. At least when it works….