Cortana Humiliates Siri in a New Commercial
Microsoft today launched a new commercial flaunting the power of their new virtual assistant Cortana by pitching it against Apple’s renowned Siri. The commercial cleverly demonstrates Cortana’s functionality while taking advantage of Siri’s shortcomings.
Titled ‘Happy Anniversary’, it shows a narrator giving certain commands to a Nokia 635 (with Windows Phone 8.1) running Cortana, and an Apple iPhone 5S running Siri. The narrator first asks the phones to remind him to wish his wife a happy anniversary the next time she calls, for which Cortana schedules an event-based reminder. He then asks both virtual assistants to remind him to buy roses the next time he comes near a flower shop, for which Cortana again schedules a reminder. Siri is unable to complete either of these tasks, as event-based reminders are still not part of Siri’s vast feature list.
Cortana’s voice interations are better than Siri and Google Now
Lastly, Cortana automatically provides the narrator with a traffic update, prompting him to leave if he wants to reach his destination on time. Again, Siri lacks this kind of functionality.
Siri ends the video by saying “Now that’s a real smartphone”. Ouch.
Microsoft will be introducing Cortana along with their Windows Phone 8.1 update. While it has been years since Apple and Google introduced their Siri and Google Now offerings respectively, Microsoft believes Cortana has some major advantages over the two. Microsoft also said this when they were releasing the Zune, hopefully Cortana would help Microsoft correct that error.
Microsoft says it has designed Cortana to feel more human-like than Google Now or Siri. It is currently the only virtual assistant that allows you to set reminders based on phone calls. A real human like interaction is possible with Cortana and Microsoft believes it is their biggest advantage over the two rivals.
Microsoft is clearly doing a good job building hype around the release of their latest Windows Phone 8.1 update. But is Cortana really better than Siri? Well, you be the judge of that.
By Pranav Arora
