Some of the biggest companies that have created their own AI-powered virtual assistants haven’t kept them exclusive to their own platforms. They’ve released iterations of their assistants for other platforms as well. That’s precisely what Microsoft did when it released the revamped version of Cortana for iOS in March last year. It continues to improve the assistant’s performance on iOS. Microsoft says that Cortana now launches 20 percent faster on iOS than before.
Cortana doesn’t quite have the same deep integration on iOS with the system that it does on a Windows machine but that’s to be expected. Microsoft owns the Windows platform so it can decide how deeply it wants to integrate Cortana. On the other hand, it has to adhere to Apple’s limitations for integration of third-party services on iOS.
Cortana users on iOS will now find that the app launches faster than before. Microsoft has updated the Cortana app for iOS and the changelog mentions that the app launches 20 percent faster now. The app update also brings the usual slew of bug fixes and performance improvements.
The perception of speed can be relative, though, and the real impact of these improvements will vary by device. It’s a significant improvement in the app launch time nonetheless, so Cortana users on iOS are bound to notice it.