Cortana, Microsoft’s Personal assistant for iOS

Image of Cortana
Image of Cortana

Microsoft has created its own personal assistant for iOS, and its name is Cortana. Cortana is a character from the Halo video games that assists the main hero on his quests. She is an AI that works within the main character’s helmet, which is why Microsoft chose to use her name for its personal assistant. Also they chose this because she is one of the coolest video game characters ever. The question we must ask though is if Cortana is accessible for iOS. At the time of this writing the answer is yes. Cortana contains accessible buttons, and images that contain alt text. The microphone image was labeled correctly, and everything worked extremely well with VoiceOver.

Is Cortana useful for iOS?

While Cortana is useful in windows 10 and on the other windows devices, it is not as useful as Siri can be on iOS. While Cortana is new and flashy, it still takes longer with or without voiceover to find information as with Siri. For one you have to be in the app and find the microphone button to speak into Cortana and you also must then flick to find the result you are interested in.

Since Siri is built into iOS you can simply hold the home button to do the same thing instead of having to open an app. I would say that Cortana has the same usefulness as Google Now, but it also depends on if you have used the Microsoft or Google ecosystem before iOS.

Conclusion

Cortana for iOS is the third personal assistant for iOS, but it really does not add any new features that are already offered by Siri and Google Now. This app works really well if you are based mostly in the Microsoft world, but really shows limitations when compared to the other two assistants since Siri is built into the phone, and Google Now contains more options and features than what can be done with Cortana.

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