Google Now

Google brought its Google Assistant to iOS this week, finally giving iPhone fans a taste of the best virtual assistant on the planet. But those on Android are in for so much more, with major improvements on the way, including impressive Google Lens integration.

The changes make it harder than ever for Siri to catch up. Despite the improvements Apple made with iOS 10, it still feels like Siri is well behind its rivals. Is that gap now too big, or can Apple catch up? Will Siri ever be as good as the Google Assistant?

Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight as we wage war over virtual assistants.

Apple has taken big strides to make Siri even greater in recent years, like bringing it to Apple TV and macOS, and opening it up to third-party developers. In that time, Apple’s virtual assistant has also gotten more accurate and more reliable.

But some might say third-party alternatives — particularly those from Google — are still a step ahead, with greater features and more flexibility. So, is Apple doing enough to make Siri just as stellar as Google Now and the new Google Assistant?

Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight as we go head-to-head over virtual assistants.

A firmware update to Ultimate Ears’ Bluetooth speakers lets you use simple voice commands to make song requests.

After you install the over-the-air update, just tap the Bluetooth button on the top of your paired Boom 2 or Megaboom speaker, then say something like, “Play ‘Iron Man’ by Black Sabbath.” Soon the track will play as if by magic.

We’re all stoked for our first previews of iOS 10 and macOS from WWDC, but according to sources familiar with Apple’s plans, it’s going to be Siri that steals the show.

The virtual assistant is expected to make the leap to the Mac for the first time, and could also open up to third-party apps and services — allowing users to check in for flights, book Uber rides, and do more using only their voice.

Google’s official iOS app is getting a massive speed boost. Its latest update cuts down loading times significantly using new Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) technology, and adds sports highlights that are baked into Google Now cards.

We could all use a personal assistant who’s there to make life that little bit easier, and thanks to Cola, the world’s first smart messaging OS, we can all have one.

Cola is designed to take care of all the small but important things you have to do throughout your day, like arranging meetings and managing to-do lists. And for the first time, it’s opening up to third-party services to become even more powerful.

Misunderstandings and repeated requests are among the hurdles that everyone who uses Siri — or any digital assistant, for that matter — have to deal with to run things with their voice, but some groups have it even harder than others.

If I want to make the smartbulb in my bedroom lamp turn white, for example, Siri always interprets “Make the Bedroom white” as “Make the Bedroom light,” and I can’t even imagine why I would be saying that. I can say, “Make the Bedroom green” or any other color, and it will work. But in order to get that direct-sunlight jam happening, I have to be more specific, like, “Make the bedroom light white.” And that’s not the worst problem to have with miraculous future-tech, but it is kind of hard to say.

But it could be worse; I could belong to one of the groups that have difficulty having even the most basic of interactions with Siri. And their problems don’t stem the program’s occasional deafness but rather its inherent incompatibility with how they speak.

We’re talking about Texans, y’all.

Google Calendar is bringing your appointments and to-do list together with a new update that adds support for reminders. Calendar will display your tasks and to-dos alongside meetings and events so they’re harder to forget, and sync them across Inbox, Gmail, Google Keep, and Google Now.

Siri can be silently put to work against you, thanks to a new hack discovered by French security researchers that allows attackers to transmit orders to the digital assistant via a radio.

The hack also works on Google Now and utilizes the headphone cord as an antenna to convert electromagnetic waves into signals that register in iOS and Android as audio coming from the microphone. José Lopes Esteves and Chaouki Kasmie — the two French researchers that discovered the hack — wrote in their paper that hackers could use the attack to get Siri and Google Now to send the phone’s browser to a malware site, or send spam and phishing messages to friends.

“The sky is the limit here,” says Vincent Strubel, the director of their research group at ANSSI. “Everything you can do through the voice interface you can do remotely and discreetly through electromagnetic waves.”

Every mobile platform now ships with its very own virtual assistant, and while they all offer a similar set of basic features, Google Now and Siri are way ahead of their rivals. Google Now knows what you want and when you want it, but Siri has sass and personality, and is about to get a whole lot better with the help of Proactive.

If you were to pit the two against each other in a virtual ring, which one would come out wearing the belt? Join us as we find out in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac!

Apple has Siri, Google has Google Now, Microsoft has Cortana, and soon Facebook may have the James Bond-inspired Moneypenny.

According to a new report, Facebook will introduce the assistant as part of its Facebook Messenger app, letting Facebook users set appointments, check the weather, or purchase products.

While that sounds relatively similar to the likes of Google Now and Siri, where Moneypenny will apparently differ is in the fact that it will connect users with real people to help with certain aspects of the research process.

Google I/O and WWDC have been and gone, and Google and Apple have laid out the plans for their next major platform updates — Android M and iOS 9.

Now that we’ve had a chance to let those announcements sink in, it’s time for Cult of Android and Cult of Mac to battle over which is best in another Friday Night Fight. Let us help you decide which one will reign supreme when they roll out to the public this fall.

Once again, Apple has shown its desire to be your go-to for everything you do in your life.

During its Worldwide Developers Conference keynote this morning, the iPhone maker talked up software updates, services and new functionalities aimed at making several of its competitors’ offerings redundant.

Here are the things Apple’s trying to take out with new stuff at WWDC 2015.

The battle between virtual assistants is about to hot up again as Microsoft Cortana prepares to go cross-platform to take on Siri and Google Now. The intelligent virtual assistant will be arriving on Android and iOS later this year, but you can get a sneak peek in the video below.

Siri’s the O.G. (Original Gangsta) personal assistant, and she doesn’t like it when you confuse her with upstart rivals from Google or Microsoft.

The revelation was discovered by Twitter user and tech writer Danny Sullivan, who found that spurring his Apple Watch into action by saying “OK, Google” garnered the sarcastic response, “Very funny. I mean, not funny ‘ha-ha,’ but funny.”

Microsoft’s virtual assistant Cortana has been pretty vocal about bashing rival services like Apple’s Siri. But she may soon get the chance to put her money where her mouth is.

That’s because, according to a new Reuters report, Cortana is about to bust out of the Windows Phone ghetto and make her way to both Android and iOS.

The version of Cortana set to arrive on non-Windows devices is reportedly a new, improved version, using research from an artificial intelligence project called “Einstein.” This same version will also be available on Windows 10 desktops this fall.

Three-and-a-half years after the debut of Siri, virtual assistants haven’t yet become a user interface element on par with, say, the mouse cursor — but that’s not through any lack of trying.

According to a new study carried out for Venture Beat, Siri not only defeats Microsoft rival Cortana and Google’s Google Now automated assistants in understanding English; it absolutely slays them when it comes to other languages.

¡Viva Siri!

A lot has changed at Apple in the years since Steve Jobs died. While much of it is good (record-breaking iPhone sales, work on the new Apple campus, the stock-split leading to new share price highs), it’s unavoidable that one or two (or, indeed, 7) things would slip through the cracks, which Apple’s notoriously perfectionist late CEO would have hated.

The recent publishing of a patent for an iOS stylus — an accessory Jobs was vocal about opposing — got us thinking about other aspects of Apple, circa 2015, that likely would have rubbed the company’s late CEO the wrong way.

Here’s what we came up with.

Google Now notifications can now be seen in your Mac’s menubar thanks to today’s Chrome update. The feature has been in beta for awhile, and now it’s finally available for all.

We’ve been waiting for Google to bring Google Now to the desktop via Chrome for over a year now, and today the feature finally appeared in a new alpha version of the browser, called Chrome Canary.

Now is baked into Chrome’s new notification center, and functions just like its Android counterpart, providing users with real-time weather updates, sports scores, and travel information. Not all of its Cards are available on the desktop yet, but we expect that to change by the time it is ready for its public release.

We’re not sure why Google just doesn’t change the name of their Google Search app for iOS, as it does pretty much everything Google Now does on Android, but this new update is pretty fantastic, whatever you want to call it.

Google Search is “now” updated to version 3.1.0, with a whole new set of features, including Notifications, Reminders, new Cards, and a Siri-like Handsfree voice. This last bit lets you command your iPhone to do stuff with the phrase, “OK Google.”

How cool is that?

A Google smartwatch powered by Android with built-in Google Now is in the late stages of development, according to people familiar with the matter, who have been speaking to The Wall Street Journal. Google is now in talks with Asian suppliers, which could begin mass producing the device “within months.”

The good people at Motorola will probably clock me in the head with a Droid Maxx battery for saying this, but shouldn’t Google open-source Moto X technology?

The most vocal and active iPhone and Android fans scoff at the notion that Moto X is the new iPhone. But it’s true.

The iPhone used to represent the most elegant, innovative and fun-to-use smartphone for everybody. That status has now been taken by Motorola’s new “Google phone,” the Moto X.

It feels like Apple is falling way behind. But I don’t think that’s true.

I believe Apple puts enormous brain power and good judgement into envisioning the Next Big Thing. It takes them a long time to get it to market. But once it’s there, they iterate to perfect the original vision.

In the year or two after Apple launches an iPhone or an iPad, everybody falsely believes Apple can do nothing wrong.

But then, as we get further away from the last launch and closer to the next one, everybody falsely believes Apple can do nothing right.

Completely separate and unrelated to false perceptions about Apple, Google lately has been on fire. And lately they’ve been kicking butt not only in their traditional role of algorithm-based Internet services, but also in Apple’s sandboxes—namely design and hardware.

Apple has never been the kind of company that copies out of a lack of vision. Nor have they avoided copying.

What’s great about Apple is that they develop an ultra-clear vision about how to maximize the user experience, then they make that experience happen regardless of whether the solutions have to be invented, copied or—most commonly—Apple’s own unique spin on something invented elsewhere.

There are many ways in which Apple should not copy Google. But there are six ways Apple should copy Google and, in doing so, make Apple a better company with better products.