Cortana, Nokia Z-Launcher and Now pushes Siri to be smarter

Today at Apple’s event, they announced a more proactive Siri. Like your Lumia, Siri can tell you about traffic when you’re leaving for work. I think Siri also looks at your calendar (looks at locations) and also gives info about traffic times.

App wise, a bit like Nokia Z-launcher, iOS will suggest apps based on what you usually do at particular times. A little bit like some of the tasker apps on Android – siri can do an action based on another action, e.g. start music when you plug in headphones. This is a great idea. There are some basic taskers and more complex taskers on Android – the tasker one could have been made so much simpler for everyday users but instead needs you to watch tutorials in order to understand it. It’s a shame because these things can make a phone super smart once it learns what you like to do. e.g. Going home to GPS coordinates or cell tower and knowing to turn wifi on, bluetooth on, connect to home speakers, send a text to SO that you’re home etc, etc.

Apple’s doing all this with a focus on privacy. So all those things Siri learns isn’t connected to your Apple ID. I’m all for privacy but sometimes I do kinda like it when I plug in my user details and everything I’ve done on one device is picked up, including possibly what Siri might ‘learn’.

TheVerge seems to be in awe of GoogleNow and makes no mention of Cortana. It’s a shame since after using Android as my daily driver, I hardly use Google now as much as I used to use Cortana as it just doesn’t fit my needs. Alarms are poor, sending texts are dreadful, it can’t read texts, making calendar reminders (what’s the point), not to mention all the other things Cortana does as a personal assistant. I think that’s where they may differ as GoogleNow isn’t really an assistant. It’s something that picks up data about you and then tells you some other useful data, e.g. your distance from home and how long it will take by car/public transport, items in your Amazon/Ebay purchases and when they’ve been dispatched etc. Those things, I don’t find them as compelling as what Cortana can do.

I’ve been out of the loop due to final exams (passed btw!) but glancing at what Microsoft has been doing (e.g. picture recognition, enhanced AI) there’s a lot more cooler things to come Cortana wise and now it will soon have a huge amount of users to learn from (Windows PC/Tablet, and iOS/Android too). It’s good to see Apple being pushed to improve Siri and perhaps picking up some good things from competitors. I’d like to see everyone pick up something that they’ve found useful from others too.

Category: Windows Phone