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Jen Taylor, voice of Microsoft Windows Cortana, prefers to use Apple's iPhone

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Actress Jen Taylor, who voiced the the Cortana AI character in Halo games as well as providing the voice of Microsoft's identically named Siri-like assistant for Windows Mobile, actually uses an iPhone.

On Twitter, Taylor recently shared a photo captioned "oh my geez Seattle is beautiful," sent via iOS, as noted by reader @supertino.

iPhone remains more "super useful"

Apple released Siri in 2011, and the feature immediately became a "major force in selling iPhone 4S" as analyst Shaw Wu of Sterne Agee observed.

Google and Microsoft initially mocked Apple's voice assistant. Andy Rubin, then the head of Android development at Google, insisted that he doesn't "believe that your phone should be an assistant" like Siri, while Microsoft's Andy Lees of Windows Phone development was quick to say he didn't think Apple's new Siri was "super useful," indicating his company would avoid having its users speak commands to their phones in public.

Both companies quickly dropped their objections and copied Apple. Google unveiled its Google Now voice assistant the following summer as a feature in 2012's Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, while Microsoft scrambled to release its own Cortana voice assistant for Windows Phone 8.1, which shipped in beta form in April 2014.

Microsoft sought to tie its Xbox Halo "Cortana" character into its long ignored Windows Phone business to garner interest among gamers. In Halo, Cortana is represented as a voluptuously naked female sexual object painted with blue electrical circuits.

In reality, Taylor is an accomplished actress of 41 who has played a series of roles in video games (including the voice of Nintendo's Princess Peach) and on stage, including a portrayal of Eliza Doolittle in a 2012 production of Pygmalion.

Twitter outs iPhone celebrities

Twitter has regularly caught Samsung's paid endorsements with an iPhone instead, from sports celebrities who tweet out its scripted advertisements from their iPhones to occasions where personalities such as Ellen DeGeneres and David Beckham return to using their own iPhone after being paid to pose with an Android product.

David Ferrer
David Beckham iPhone
LeBron Samsung

In March, Samsung sponsor LeBron James tweeted out a different sort of message when he complained from his Galaxy Note, "My phone just erased everything it had in it and rebooted. One of the sickest feelings I've ever had in my life!!!"



45 Comments

MacPro 18 Years · 19845 comments

That is pretty funny. Yet again, just like so many Scamsung celebrity endorsements, they use iPhones. Apple really should start running ads highlighting this. What a gift!

apple ][ 13 Years · 9225 comments

That's hilarious, and also, not all that surprising!

 

It seems that practically anybody of any importance uses iOS. 

 

The only people and celebrities who claim to use something else are people who are getting paid by other companies to lie, like Samsung, but in real life, after their fake endorsement is over, they put down their crappy phones that they are paid to promote, and then they pick up their iPhones after the job is done.

 

How many people and celebrities have gotten busted again for tweeting about how great other phones are, but sending those tweets from their iPhone?  

gtr 13 Years · 3231 comments

Is this a side-effect from having gone mad and getting killed in her last game?

suddenly newton 14 Years · 13819 comments

If Microsoft commercials are accurate, Siri admires Cortana because she can remind you to buy flowers for your wife the next time you're near a flower shop, even if the next time you're near a flower shop is two months after you forgot to get your wife flowers for her anniversary.

thataveragejoe 13 Years · 832 comments

One Saturday this past May strolling through the mall I caught an Apple retail employee waiting in line at the food court on a Galaxy S4. 

My brother works at one of the 3 major banks yet still keeps his accounts at another. My neighbor works for Volvo NA yet there's a BMW and Toyota in his driveway. One of my good friends runs an AT&T authorized reseller store...he uses Verizon.

 

...so what? Heaven forbid people kept their day job in the office and personal life personal I suppose. Jen's a voice actress, not a Microsoft Engineer. Does getting a paycheck mean we all need to be corporate stewards 24/7 for those that provide us one? I hope not.