When Microsoft’s chief strategy and research officer Craig Mundie sat down with Fortune’s Eric Savitz to talk the company’s planned expansion of the new user interface, he did what Microsoft executives typically do when challenged with a cool tech developed outside the Windows maker’s labs: He stuck his foot in his mouth over Apple’s groundbreaking digital secretary exclusive to the iPhone 4S,” Christian Zibreg reports for 9to5Mac.
People are infatuated with Apple announcing it. It’s good marketing, but at least as the technological capability you could argue that Microsoft has had a similar capability in Windows Phones for more than a year, since Windows Phone 7 was introduced.
Zibreg reports, “Windows Phones, seriously? Mundie couldn’t acknowledge Siri as an ace up Apple’s sleeve and barely accepted that Microsoft could learn a lesson or two about “productizing” technology. He then went on to describe how their version of Siri works on Windows Phones.”
You can pick ‘em up and say ‘text Eric’ and say what you wanna say and it transcribes it. You can query anything through Bing by just saying the words. I mean, all that’s already there. Fully functional, been there for a year.
Read more – and watch the video – in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Mundie knows the truth, but he’s got nothing else to offer, so he lies.
The early effect of iPhone 4S and Siri on other companies’ “smartphone” sales must be quite evident internally by now.
The Siri-less are scared shitless, and rightfully so.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Brad” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Apple’s Siri makes Google and Microsoft look foolish; begins to cast shadow over the industry – October 25, 2011
Nervous Google and Microsoft bad-mouth Apple’s revolutionary Siri – October 21, 2011
Android chief not interested in turning Android devices into personal assistants – October 19, 2011
This guy is indicative of the culture at M$ and is either:
1) Trying to “blow smoke”, just like his mentors Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, at the reporter; or
2) Totally incompetent as someone involved with designing or developing software and that he doesn’t realize or acknowledge the difference between the Windows 7 phone’s basic “voice recognition” feature and the sophistication of SIRI.
For those interested one picture speaks a 1000 words
Microsoft is everyones next favorite stock to short
give it another few years it will jump off a cliff
To see a SMALL comparison between Microsoft’s “we’ve-had-it-for-a year” technology that this M$ “smoke-blower” references and SIRI, check out this short YouTube video that a dude in Australia put together that gives a brief comparison between the two: http://goo.gl/TUJah
Truly unbelievable that this guy would even think that these two technologies are even on the same page.