We have no doubts at Cult of Mac that iPhone 4S sales this week-end are going to be a blow out and the first thing people will probably try to do after obtaining their iPhone 4S is to converse with Siri.  Well it looks like this morning with way too many people to talk to Siri has gone offline or maybe its just out on a coffee break.

I had a late day yesterday and I’m only now getting around to playing around with and testing Siri. I think the rest of you might have worn it out since it isn’t as snappy as it was yesterday when I tried  a few preliminary requests.

Apple released iOS 5 and iCloud this week and iOS 5 is the version of iOS designed to set your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch free with the help of iCloud. By free I mean that along with iCloud you no longer need to tie any of these devices to a computer. Now with the introduction of the free AirPort Utility app for iOS you could buy one of the three devices above and an Airport Extreme (or other Apple network appliance) to setup your own local area network to use with these devices.

Apple’s release of iOS5 caused “the highest ever traffic” over the UK broadband network, BT has confirmed.

We reported yesterday that demand for iOS5 caused “unprecendented” broadband traffic for some UK internet service providers – but today, BT (which manages the entire national broadband network as well as running its own ISP business, BT Retail) sent the following statement to Cult of Mac:

Over the last two nights, BT has experienced the highest ever traffic levels over the UK broadband network.

Apple and Samsung have been trading punches in courts around the globe, with Cupertino claiming that Samsung has ripped off almost every conceivable aspect of their iPhone and iPad intellectual property. Apple has made a strong case, even getting a sales injunction against the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia, but it may be Samsung’s own lawyers who just delivered the K.O… to their own jaw.

How? Reuters is reporting that Samsung’s own lawyers told a US District judge that they couldn’t tell the difference between an iPad and a Galaxy Tab 10.1.

One of the most appealing things about Apple’s new iPhone 4S, in addition to that dual-core A5 processor and 8-megapixel camera, is the incredibly impressive Siri assistant. It makes its debut on the new iPhone, and isn’t available on any other device right now. In Apple’s promotional videos, Siri is incredibly impressive and it’s amazed us all, but if you’re outside the United States, Siri may be a disappointment to you.

We’ve all had the experience of a computer being a lemon, one problem after another. Here’s one story of a MacBook Pro from hell that has a happy ending thanks to a sympathetic support rep at Apple:

I have a MBP 2.4ghz – the logic board failed 6 months ago and was replaced and worked fine. Last week the battery overheated and “swelled” ruining it. It was removed and run on AC adaptor only after that. The adaptor cable was tripped on and disconnected from the magsafe. The unit would not boot on after that point. After letting it cool completely down, it started up normally. I shut it down and it would not reboot.

The past few weeks have seen the passing of a number of computing giants. The world learned this week that Dennis Ritchie, the computer scientist who helped create the UNIX operating system and C programming language, passed away at the age of 70. This software was the progenitor of much of modern computing, including Mac OS X and iOS, and was born (ironically) out of the need to play computer games!

Siri has a problem with broad, comical foreign accents.

Not that the guy in the video has one, you understand. He’s just a non-native speaker.

Our fearless Cult head Leander, on the other hand, speaks exclusively in Cockney rhyming slang, and he’s always going on about how he wants to have a butcher’s down at Tottenham Court Road to stick his hampton in some Berkeley Hunt. How’s Siri going to deal with that, I wonder?

In light of that, something tells me Leander’s iPhone 4S review (coming later today!) isn’t exactly going to be glowing.

Still, Siri’s a work in progress, and Apple’s not going to rest until it can talk to everyone.

[via 9to5Mac]

Matt Warman and Shane Richmond from British broadsheet The Telegraph have put Apple’s new Siri assistant up against Google’s voice control featured in its Android rivals. As you can see from the video above, Siri seems to be significantly more intelligent than its Android rival when it comes to answering questions, sourcing information, and completing tasks. Here’s the video.

Cloud storage services like Box.net aren’t taking iCloud lightly since on Wednesday they announced a new promotion, which you might find hard to resist considering that Apple’s newly released iCloud only offers users 5GB of free storage.  Box.net is offering 50GB of free online storage for anyone that has a free Box Personal account on any iOS device. Read that again — 10 times the amount of storage that iCloud offers and it is free!