Microsoft Doesn't Get It, Episode 65,536: TellMe versus Siri

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Microsoft Doesn't Get It, Episode 65,536: TellMe versus Siri

As with all new technologies developed by or associated with Apple, competitors are stumbling over one another to dismiss Siri. Google has already played the "yawn" card, and now Microsoft's Craig Mundie has joined the fray during an interview with Forbes. Here are Mundie's remarks when asked about Siri, proving for the 65,536th time that Microsoft Doesn't Get It:

"TellMe facility's been in the Windows 7 Phone (sic) for more than a year! I just think that people are infatuated with Apple announcing it... it's good marketing. At least as a technological capability, you could argue that Microsoft has had a similar capability in Windows phones for more than a year. You could take these Windows phones and pick them up and say, 'Text Eric,' and it'll say, 'What do you want to say?' and it transcribes it... You can query anything through Bing by just saying the words. I mean, all that's already there. Completely functional, been there for a year."

Can you really just pick up one of these Windows phones and use it right out of the box in the way Mundie claims? Not if the results of a video comparing TellMe versus Siri are any indication. Using Siri and TellMe simultaneously, an Australian user tries to create a meeting, send a text, check the time in Perth, and play songs by a certain artist. Siri doesn't miss a beat, while TellMe fails every time, often with hilarious results.

Let's issue some apologetics for TellMe: maybe it's tripping over the Aussie accent. Maybe it needs to "learn" the speaker's voice over time to deliver better results. Maybe the handset's microphone wasn't picking up his voice well enough to decipher his commands accurately. But the side-by-side comparison doesn't lie; Siri kicked TellMe's butt up and down the block.

The comparison video even handicapped Siri by using the sort of stilted, standardized voice commands that Android and Windows Phone 7 have indeed "alr...