Apple is looking into banning a Siri rival called Evi, because it's too similar to the virtual assistant and may confuse users, it was reported today.
Evi, which is created by True Knowledge, a Cambridge, U.K. company, isn't as integrated into the IPhone as Siri, but does provide voice recognition and has a more U.K-based search function.
The voice recognition on Evi also helps those with thick and differing British accents, something that Siri's hasn't been good at recognizing, the Guardian (U.K) wrote.
Unlike the US-centric Siri – can look up British businesses and maps, and which the makers say is better at handling regional accents, which can befuddle Apple's speech analysis system.
A look at iTunes shows that Evi is still available for 99 cents, although it has some seriously bad reviews -- mainly that it doesn't find things very well in, you guessed it, the United States. For those who don't use the iOS, Evi is free on the Android Market.
While it's true that Apple commonly uses its legal team to intimidate smaller companies to kowtow to its wishes, we're not sure that this app is actually a big enough threat for Apple to call the legal hounds. True Knowledge has parlayed this "controversy" into some decent press, and we wouldn't be surprised to find out that Evi stays put in the App Store.
