Microsoft talks about Siri

In recent interview, head of Microsoft’s research department Craig Mundie comments on Siri, new voice assistant app recently launched by Apple. He claims that Siri is not an original idea at all and that Richmond company already had such an app for Windows Phone 7 called TellMe.

With TellMe you can easily create a text messages to one of your contacts through voice to speech technology. You can also do your web searches on Microsoft’s own search engine Bing, with your voice input only. According to Mundie, TellMe is just as good as Siri and more importantly, it is available for already a year now.

Is this really so? Or is Microsoft misunderstanding the whole story? The thing with Siri is that it isn’t about voice control only. Siri is working in various situations and different relationships which add a certain level of personality to the whole experience. Besides, Siri is made in a artistic way and it feels completely different, not just as a simple voice controlling system like TellMe is. Basically what Apple creates is a totally different experience. If you remember, there were a number of touchscreen devices before Apple launched the first iPhone 2G. But none of those devices offered what iPhone did. That is the reason why Apple is far above Microsoft and the rest of the industry, especially in the areas of usability and user experience.

Here is a Youtube video where Mundi talks about Microsoft’s opinion on Siri.

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