For those who’ve been following the Siri versus Cortana ‘war of words’ on TV, you’re most likely of the inclination that Apple dropped the ball with its iPhone 6 iteration — because, Microsoft has been laughing all the way to the bank with its latest Windows smartphone commercials for the new HTC One®.
Perhaps stirring up the past with a solid dose of payback for all those hilarious Mac vs. PC commercials a few years back, Mr. Gate’s current swipes at Siri positions the voice of iPhone as the slower, dumber, less hipper version of Microsoft’s virtual assistant — even down to the robotic voice versus the more human-sounding dulcet tones of Cortana.
Significant to note that when questioned by Cortana in the last of these three commercials, Windows knocks it out of the park in underscoring just how dated Siri is, in this ever-evolving technological advancements of smartphones.
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Cortana: Siri, what can you remember?
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Siri: I can remember when I was the only phone that talked!
Oh, the humanity! One has to wonder how Steve Jobs would have reacted to this public humiliation. Well, oddly enough, his spirit might still be at work — because tucked away in an unassuming conclave in Cambridge, Massachusetts — hard at work — is a stealth Apple team enhancing the capabilities of our old friend Siri.
“On the eve of its next big product announcement, Apple is expanding its super-secret research office in Kendall Square,” reports BetaBoston. “Several commercial realtors tell me (correspondent Scott Kirsner) that the Cupertino company has leased more than half a floor at One Broadway, an MIT-owned building that also houses Facebook’s small local team, several venture capital firms, and the Cambridge Innovation Center.”
At the heart of this work, the goal appears to be solely focused on improving Apple’s Siri speech recognition technology. And this department seems to have assembled several of the key members who previously worked for Nuance Communications, the Burlington-based tech company that developed some of the software that powered Siri at the onset.
Hitting at that human-voice quality that Cortana seems to have perfected, an Apple Speech R&D; engineer says the role is to work on a “wide variety of speech-related research and development activities, including acoustic modeling, language modeling and tools development. …because (we’ll) be working closely with engineers from a number of other teams at Apple, (where we) need to be a team player who thrives in a fast paced environment with rapidly changing priorities.”
Susan BennettSo, while Atlanta-based voice-over actress Susan Bennett was the original voice of Siri when first introduced to the masses back on October 4, 2011 with Apple’s iPhone 4S, it looks like Siri is about to get herself a major make-over, erhhh voice-over! And she’s gunning for you Cortana!
So continue to bask in glow of your new-found fame, Mr. Gates, Cortana and the Windows team — but beware, it looks like your days may be numbered. It just may be that Apple’s current CEO, Tim Cook, the spirit of Steve Jobs and Siri are not going to take any more verbal abuse. And you know what they say about “he who laughs last!” Now, who’s the prettiest of them all?
