Enterprise

Microsoft CEO thinks there's one BIG reason you'll love Windows 10: Cortana

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Halo Cortana
Cortana is a disembodied voice on WP8 based on the Halo character  YouTube/calloftreyarch

"We are focused on making Windows 10 the most loved version of Windows ever," Satya Nadella told financial analysts on Thursday, something he's said many times before.

And there's one thing he thinks is really going to do it for people: Microsoft's virtual assistant, Cortana.

Cortana will be a feature of the operating system, helping you perform tasks on your PC (search for documents, keep track of your calendar), and in Microsoft's new browser, Spartan, helping you perform tasks on the Internet (book travel, annotate web pages.)

And all you have to do is talk to it.

Nadella said:

Cortana, that’s perhaps the thing that’s going to change personal productivity even most and especially with Windows 10 and how Cortana comes to Windows, both to the browser as well as to the Start [menu]. I think it completely changes what personal productivity software means from a day-to-day experience.

And, by the way, Microsoft is reportedly working on bringing a version of Cortana to iPhone and Android. So you won't have to buy a Windows phone (or even a Windows computer) in order to use it.

We expect to hear a lot more about this next week at Microsoft Build, the company's big developer conference being held in San Francisco.

If you haven't had a chance to see Cortana in Windows 10, here's a short video to give you a taste.

 

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Julie Bort was Business Insider's Editor at Large for the Tech team. She loves investigating stories and shedding light on the tech industry's most amazing people.Here's a small sample of some of Julie's work.Former Pinterest employees describe a traumatic workplace where managers humiliate employees until they cry, Black people feel alienated, and the toxic culture 'eats away at your soul'Sex, tequila, and a tiger: Employees inside Adam Neumann's WeWork talk about the nonstop party to attain a $100 billion dream and the messy reality that tanked itInsiders say WeWork's IT is a patchwork of cheap devices and Band-Aid fixes that will take millions to fixWeWork's toxic phone booths were created in-house by its Powered by We business70-hour weeks and 'WTF' emails: 42 employees reveal the frenzy of working at Tesla under the 'cult' of Elon MuskElon Musk works so many hours at Tesla, employees are constantly finding him asleep under tables and desksHow this woman went from a Pizza Hut employee to a founder of a $4 billion startupAn Oracle insider explains how some salespeople gamed the system to sell more cloudTHE TAKEDOWN OF TRAVIS KALANICK: The untold story of Uber's infighting, backstabbing, and multimillion-dollar exit packagesMicrosoft is in talks to buy GitHub, a startup at the center of the software world last valued at $2 billionThe alarming inside story of a failed Google acquisition, and an employee who was hospitalizedInside Facebook's plan to eat another $350 billion IT marketHow a registered sex offender wound up living in an Airbnb hosting unsuspecting guestsA controversial ex-banker is the person who really runs Twitter — and he's gambling the company's future on one risky betSecret passages and skipped meals: Oracle's CEO gave us a rare peek at what it really takes to run a $37 billion companyHP told some employees to choose between becoming contractors with no benefits or being fired without severance'I felt like we were being extorted': Customer says Oracle tried to strong-arm him into a cloud saleHow the queen of Silicon Valley is helping Google go after Amazon's most profitable businessAirbnb host: A guest is squatting in my condo and I can't get him to leaveLIES, BOOZE, AND BILLIONS: How one of the fastest-growing startups in Silicon Valley history raised $580 million then spiraled out of controlGitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart — and we have the full inside storyWhen she's not writing for Business Insider, Julie can usually be found on the trails, on my mountain bike, or on my skis, if you know where to look.