Microsoft is taking its ongoing offensive against iPhone's voice assistant Siri into a somewhat higher realm of satire, with a new "Let the healing begin" video spot set to launch on YouTube next week.
The video spot is obviously timed to run around the time of Apple's big Tuesday event where one or possibly two bigger iPhones are expected to be launched.
The latest spot features a small therapy group seated in a circle and talking about problems using Siri. It is titled, "Let the healing begin."
In the video, a group therapy participant named Clay says, "I guess i was expecting too much. I'm a spontaneous guy and it seems like when I'm ready to go out, she [Siri] just can't keep up." Microsoft emailed the teaser to Computerworld.
<p>The teaser alone doesn't reveal much about the entire ad, or how much Microsoft plans to promote its Lumia line of smartphones based on the Windows Phone OS. In describing the spot, Microsoft said it is about how "Siri sends iPhone users to therapy."</p>
Microsoft also launched a satirical video in July that shows its Cortana virtual assistant beating Siri in various tasks, and another more recent video made similar comparisons. In the latest teaser, Microsoft seems to be introducing a slightly heightened satirical tweak of Siri.
When Cortana first became official in April, Microsoft officials described Cortana in beta as superior to Siri and others. Introduced as part of Windows Phone 8.1, Cortana got some high marks from reviewers of recent Lumia devices and the HTC One (M8) for Windows.
In one comparison of an HTC One (M8) for Windows against an iPhone, Computerworld blogger Preston Gralla found Cortana better than Siri. For instance, when he asked Cortana, "What's wrong with the Red Sox this year?" links to relevant articles were presented. Siri, when asked the same question, only gave the time for the Red Sox game that night.
In a deep-dive review of the low-cost Lumia 635 smartphone that this reporter wrote for Computerworld, Cortana was one of its strongest features because its ability to link maps and Web information to specific voice requests.