Jefferson Graham

USA TODAY

LOS ANGELES — Cortana won't make her public debut until this summer, but USA TODAY got some hands-on time with the new Windows Phone digital assistant.

The verdict: Based on what we saw, Apple's Siri has a lot of work ahead of her.

To try and out-do the iPhone's Siri and Android's Google Now, Microsoft interviewed real personal assistants about their jobs, and tried to replicate everything they do. What sort of requests they got from their bosses, and how they handled them.

From there, engineers created what they feel is the first real digital assistant. Siri was just a prelude.

So, when Lucas Westcoat, a senior Microsoft product manager showed off what Cortana (named after a character in the Halo video game) could do, the first task was asking her for a reminder to congratulate the wife on a great new job the next time we spoke. That would kick in, he said, when the next phone call, text or e-mail from her was generated.

We tried to replicate it with Siri, but the best we got was just the reminder. We tried on Android too, and had to do several steps to get to the same point as the one voice command with Cortana.

Westcoat was in town on Tuesday, the same day Microsoft cut off security support for its 12-year-old XP operating system, in a huge Microsoft bus that was driving around Los Angeles showing off the latest and greatest Microsoft products.

With Cortana, Westcoat instructed her to find him a good local restaurant — something Siri and Android could do as well. And they all tap into the same Yelp listings. The twist that was with the selection, Westcoat continued the conversation, asking for traffic and directions to "restaurant number two."

What Cortana didn't know was that for all the 4-star Yelp listings, she had just instructed him to go to Carney's, a local hamburger joint.

Over time, he said, Cortana would get to know him better, and offer perhaps healthier fare.

The new assistant is part of the Windows 8.1 phone update that is promised "by summer," most likely June, and available for most recent Windows Lumia phones from the last 2 years.

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