Last week, as you’re probably aware, news vastly spread about how Siri on the iPhone 4S not-so-secretly recommended the Nokia Lumia 900 as the best phone using data from Wolfram Alpha. As of yesterday, it appears Siri has flip flopped worse than presidential candidates at GOP debates and now informs users upon request that the best smartphone is the iPhone.
Well Nokia isn’t very happy that Apple modified Siri to its own advantage. Think about it though. A company modifying its own product to its advantage? I, for one, am astounded!
“Apple positions Siri as the intelligent system that’s there to help, but clearly if they don’t like the answer, they override the software,” said Nokia spokeswoman Tracy Postill. Another spokesman later remarked that Postill’s quote might have been “taken a bit too seriously” by the media.
Siri originally told askers of the question “What’s the best phone?” the Nokia Lumia 900 because it gathers data for certain questions from third-party resources like Wolfram Alpha and Yelp. For this query, Wolfram Alpha used overall ratings from Best Buy to determine the answer. The Nokia Lumia 900 has a perfect 5-star average rating from 4 reviewers while the iPhone 4S has an average rating of 4.7, but from 86 reviewers. That’s how the mixup occurred.
Can we really blame Apple for getting rid of free Nokia promotion? There’s not a single doubt in my mind that any other company to accidentally recommend a competitor’s product would attempt to reverse the action too. Nothing personal — it’s just business.
Since we’re on the topic, I might as well start a war about it: iPhone 4S vs. Nokia Lumia 900. Fight in the comments below!
[via CNET]