Microsoft/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

What kind of digital assistant do you dream of?

One that answers all your questions? One that anticipates your every need? One that makes you coffee, massages your neck and tells you you're the next coming of Travis Kalanick?

Microsoft believes that unless your digital assistant can tell you to leave early because of traffic problems she's no use at all.

Indeed, the company has just released an ad in which its digital assistant, Her Highness Cortana, suggests to Apple's little Siri that all Siri's done since Apple released two iPhone 6s is get bigger.

No woman should say that to another, you might think.

But Cortana believes that if an assistant can't give reminders based on the calls or texts that have come in, then she's not worthy of the name "assistant."

This is merely the latest in a series of ads in which Microsoft has looked down upon Siri like an ugly sister looks down upon Cinderella.

It's a hearty stance. Microsoft, though, is in something of a schizoid position, given that it's beginning to embrace other hardware as it attempts to be the platform for so-called "productivity."

The company featured an iPad in an ad for its Sway app.

Only the other day, Microsoft posted to its own Facebook page an image of, and a link to, a video featuring MacBooks using Skype, while simultaneously insisting this wasn't an ad.

Still, you have to carve out your own claims to excellence one way or another.

In this case, "scratch your eyes out" seems to be the preferred method.

