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Cortana voice assistant found in preview of Windows 9

Cortana voice assistant found in preview of Windows 9
Lewis Leong

Lewis Leong

  • Updated:

The detectives over at WinFuture, a German tech blog, uncovered mentions of Cortana in a technical preview of Microsoft’s next Windows operating system. We’ve heard previously from Microsoft that they plan to bring Cortana to the desktop but now we have a clearer vision of what to expect.

WinFuture also uncovered details about the notification center and virtual desktops. We also got a glimpse of the redesigned Start Menu that acts as a hybrid between the Windows 7 and Windows 8 Start Menus.

While there are mentions of Cortana in the preview of the operating system, it’s unclear to what extent the voice assistant will be available in Windows. WinFuture found it could input addresses for home and work to get transit times.

Will Cortana do everything it can already do on Windows Phone? There’s no working model of Cortana in the technical preview, so it’s likely Microsoft will update Windows 9 with Cortana after its release.

In contrast, Apple has not announced any plans to bring Siri to OS X Yosemite, the next version of Apple’s desktop operating system. However, Yosemite will feature a redesigned, smarter search feature which acts sort of like Siri, giving movie times, pulling Wikipedia information and more.

We expect to see more details about Windows 9 at Microsoft’s press conference on September 30th but the final version of the operating system isn’t expect until 2015.

Source: WinFuture (Google Translate)

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Lewis Leong

Lewis Leong

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