At hand is a moment where real life meets marketing bullet points:
(via: Bigweek.co.)
Last week, Microsoft’s Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie was interviewed by Forbes’ Eric Savitz and disputes Siri as a bunch of marketing hype. Or at least is dismissive towards the feature as “the only thing they [Apple] had to talk about” when Apple launched the iPhone 4S. Pertinent info starts about 1:55:
Two lessons:
1) Senior management of any company needs to use their own products in real life. If they aren’t, the product will suffer.
2) Your product is out for a year and gets trounced in a simple test? Your product wasn’t ready to launch.
Me? I’m loving Siri. The biggest thing for me is scheduling reminders/tasks to myself. I’m using it far more than I thought I would in that regard. The other thing that I’m using Siri for is basic research to answer questions my inquisitive seven-year-old throws at me. Such as:
- How tall is the tallest person in the world?
- How large is the biggest house in the world?
- How short is the shortest person in the world?
Wolfram Alpha integration into Siri is sweet for answering these kinds of questions. If you don’t have a phone that supports Siri, you can get the Wolfram Alpha app in the iTunes App Store. It’s $2.99 but works universally on iPhones and iPads. It’s a great research tool.
In this instance, Apple has released a more polished feature than Microsoft. Is all I’m saying.