Which is the best digital assistant Siri, Cortana, or Now

Cortana's learning the neighbourhood. Google's digital assistant can't tell a joke. And Siri apparently has a thing for the metric system. Those are just a few of the things I learned after staging a face-off for the three leading digital assistants. Apple's Siri and Google Now — they're not big on personification at Google — are now standard on smartphones; Microsoft recently added its Cortana service to Windows 10, so it works on PCs, too.

Now that just about anyone can talk to their phone or computer, we wanted to see what happens when you try.

Unsurprisingly, none of the assistants is perfect. Surprisingly, they do have distinct personalities, even if they're just deliberate artifacts of their creators. I asked the same 10 questions of each service, using an iPhone with Siri, a Nexus phone with Android's Google Now and a Microsoft Surface Pro tablet with Cortana.

First up: Some basic factual questions. All three did pretty well when asked, “What's it like outside ”

Cortana earned extra points for answering with a spoken weather report. Google and Siri each showed a screen image that listed current conditions and a forecast.

All three supplied President Obama's age. When asked “What's his wife's name ” they all remembered that the question referred to the president, and correctly identified the First Lady: Michelle Obama. Similarly, they all knew the length of the Golden Gate Bridge. But for some reason, Siri answered in meters, while Cortana and Google stuck to feet. Next came more complicated tasks, like finding the nearest pharmacy. Google and Siri listed three within a half-mile (800 meters) of The Associated Press bureau in downtown San Francisco. But neither mentioned the drug store on the ground floor of the building where the bureau is located. Cortana did.

Ever feel like ducking work to catch an afternoon movie (Shhh! Don't tell my editor.) All three assistants had local movie listings at their digital fingertips. But Siri led off with a new release at a theater just half a mile from the AP bureau. With a couple of taps, Siri had opened Fandango, an app that lets you buy tickets online.

Google also connected with Fandango. Cortana had more trouble; Microsoft lags behind Apple and Google in the number of apps that work with its software, and I couldn't get the right Fandango app to load on a Surface tablet. All three services are good on factual questions. Siri's programmers have the best sense of humour. Google stays focused on the task at hand. And Cortana is quickly catching up to both of them.