Siri does many things, not all of them as well as others. But one thing she’s really great at is reminders: Tell Siri to remind you to call your Mom on her birthday every year, and you’ll never have to worry about it again.
While Siri is great at reminding you to do things, though, one thing she can’t do is remind you to remember things. But there’s no reason she can’t, and it would make an absolutely killer feature.
USA! USA! On this festive 4th-of-July CultCast: Apple prepares to kill-off Aperture and iPhoto; Siri might soon understand us all better; Apple maps stops getting you lost; and did you know Steve Jobs always ate lunch alone like a sad Keanu? We’ll tell you the story. Plus, we reveal our favorite 4th activities, and a weird breakthrough app has us texting Hodor to all our friends! Gods be good.
Grab your sparklers and catch up on this week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the festivities begin.
Our thanks to TextExpander for supporting this episode! TextExpander for Mac saves you time and effort by expanding short abbreviations into frequently-used text, pictures, code blocks, and more, and it’s an application we use every single day. Try it out for free at Smilesoftware.com/cultcast.
For many people, Siri has been more of a nuisance than an empowering personal assistant since debuting on the iPhone 4s in 2011. Sure, she’s received some upgrades and is getting even more in iOS 8, but fancy new features mean nothing if she can’t understand what you’re saying.
Siri’s favoriting line, “Sorry I didn’t get that,” might soon be a thing of the past though as a report from Wired says the time is ripe for Apple to unleash a neural-net-boosted Siri.
Siri. You love her or hate her. For many of us, Siri is a novelty at best, and an inconvenience at worst: the annoying voice who starts asking you what you want from your back pocket when you accidentally sit on your iPhone. But for those who love Siri, she can be a lifesaver … literally. Because Siri may have just helped a 2-year-old save her mother’s life.
Siri’s starting work — or at least something like that. SRI International, the brains behind the Siri standalone app bought by Apple back in 2010, has announced the creation of Kasisto, a business version of Apple’s virtual assistant.
Kasisto will enable companies to integrate their own branded Siri-style assistants within apps, providing a way of letting helping consumers navigate complex tasks through a conversational Artificial Intelligence program. While SRI International has yet to release many details, this means that it should be possible to harness the regular Siri interactions for more specialized tasks within apps, allowing specific businesses to “train” their own version of Siri to become an expert in a variety of areas, from medical advice to, say, movie rentals.
Apple’s Siri feature has been a crown jewel of iOS ever since it launched in 2011, but the company and the tech behind it might fall into the hands of Apple’s number one enemy – Samsung.
Nuance Communications is in discussions with a number of potential suitors looking to buy the company, and Samsung Electronics is at the top of the list, according to Wall Street Journal report that also names a few private-equity firms among the list of possible buyers, but Apple is nowhere to be found.
Hotel booking giant Priceline.com will acquire OpenTable, the online reservation service for restaurants that provides Siri’s table-booking functionality.
Priceline is set to pay a massive $2.6 billion as part of the all-cash deal, which breaks down as $103 per share — or 46 percent above the publicly traded OpenTable’s closing price Thursday.
As Apple has finally announced the long-awaited iOS 8, it’s only natural for users to be curious how it will affect their daily routines. With all new features and enhancements for your iOS device, in today’s video see what’s coming this fall, and what we think about it.
Take a look at the video to see what you think.
Apple added a ton of new features to iOS 8 today and more are surely on the way once new iPhones and iPads are announced. But while Photos, Messaging and Notification Center stole most of the spotlight during the WWDC keynote, there were a bunch of smaller features Apple didn’t cover.
Better camera tools, battery statistics, new Siri tricks and more were also added to today’s beta. Here’s our hands-on preview of five incredible features Apple didn’t mention in today’s keynote.
Instead of dropping a smartwatch or some other hardware bombshell at WWDC 2014, Apple showcased the futuristic tools it will use to extend its rapidly growing empire.
“Apple engineers platforms, devices and services together,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook as he wrapped up the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote Monday in San Francisco. “We do this so we can create a seamless experience for our users that is unparalleled in the industry. This is something only Apple can do.”
Casual observers (and stock analysts) might fret that there was no big wearables reveal, no amazing new Apple TV, not even a spec boost for an existing device during the highly anticipated WWDC kickoff. Yet while there were was absolutely no talk of new hardware, Apple offered an exciting peek at where the world is headed next with iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, both of which are available to developers now and will be released to the public this fall.
“We’re always future-focused,” said Cook, who shared presenting duties with Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, and others. Here’s a look at the shiny, translucent, interconnected future Apple is focusing on.
While Apple’s personal assistant Siri may be irritating to use at times it comes stocked in iOS with thousands of uses. In today’s how-to find out how to usefully use Siri in your life with 5 quick and simple tips.
Take a look at the video to see what to do.
Oh, you wacky Samsung-ites — will you never learn?
Samsung was somehow recently granted a design trademark for a “display screen with icon” and, wouldn’t you know it, it looks almost exactly like the icon Apple currently uses for Siri.
A new exploit has been discovered in iOS 7.1.1 that lets anyone access your full contacts list and send an email, text or call — just by chatting with Siri.
Egyptian neurosurgeon and part-time hacker Sherif Hashim, apparently the first to discover the security hole, posted a YouTube video detailing the steps of the exploit.
Check out how easy it is for a prankster to hack your phone in the video below:
The Mobile Home is a one-thing-well kind of product. It connects to your iPhone via Bluetooth and lets you trigger Siri remotely. Which brings me to that excellent name – this is literally a mobile home button.
Siri can be hit in and miss in terms of quality, but a recent acquisition by Apple may result in the service being greatly improved.
Taking place last year — although only announced now — Apple acquired UK-based automatic speech recognition company Nouvaris Technologies to work on its virtual assistant tool.
I personally can’t stand audiobooks except under one specific condition. I like them when I drive long distances. There’s something about listening to a book being read to me that puts me to sleep if I’m anywhere else, but for some reason, I’m able to listen in the car.
Now, I purchase a lot of iBooks, but not many audiobooks. One reason is that they’re more expensive, but I mainly avoid them for the reasons above. However, when I next take a cross-country trip in a car, I’m going to use this tip to turn the written iBooks into ones I can listen to off of my iPhone or iPad.
Sure, you can ask Siri to call one of your contacts; it’s one of the ways I make calls handsfree in the car. Simply say, “Call Kim” (or the name of the contact you’d like to call–you may not know Kim), and Siri will place a voice call to that Contact.
Did you know, however, that Siri can handle even more complexity? Yes, yes it can.
Recently Cult of Mac described how among Siri’s Easter eggs is a whole back story — programmed by her creators, and accessible by asking just the right questions.
Beginning life as a five-year DARPA-backed project to build an intelligent virtual assistant, Siri certainly has some stories to tell: if only we could gain access to them.
When I wrote my story a couple of weeks ago, I asked readers to send in any insights they managed to unlock. Dallas-based tech columnist and CoM reader Jim Rossman read the article and sent in some interesting screenshots from his own conversations with Siri — revealing some insights that go beyond her usual “I was designed by Apple in California” spiel.
Siri didn’t become a feature of iOS until the launch of the iPhone 4s in October 2011.
A patent published Tuesday, however, shows how the idea of the “intelligent automated assistant” that would become Siri was being worked on as far back as 2006 — before the first iPhone was even unveiled.
Ever wanted to hear Siri declaim “Luke, I am your father” in 32 different languages?
In a blog post by the developers behind the daily Spanish word app Vocab Ninja, you can click on all of Siri’s different voices — overwhelmingly female-gendered, interestingly enough — in both standard and enhanced audio resolutions.
Ever wonder what’s going on in the skies above you at any given time? If you’re interested in airline flights in the air over your head, you can just ask Siri.
The personal digital assistant will check WolframAlpha for you and drop you a great little chart of the planes in the air overhead.
We all know that Siri has some fun Easter eggs, but according to some Apple’s virtual assistant also has an entire backstory — unlockable by asking just the right questions.
“We developed a backstory for Siri to make sure everything that it said was consistent, and as part of that, we had to answer questions like, is Siri a man or a woman?” says Adam Cheyer, one of the chief engineers for the project. “Is it human, a machine, an alien? Is it an Apple employee? What is its relationship with respect to Apple?”
Seriously, if I have to start over from scratch one more time when I try and use Siri to send a Tweet or book an appointment, I may just give up using Apple’s much-touted personal digital assistant altogether.
As it is, I tend to skip trying to use Siri other than as a glorified app launcher and I use the built-in dictation instead from within the Messages, Twitter, or Calendar apps.
But that was before I found out that you can just tell Siri to change whatever it is she’s not getting.
Apple is working on a smarter version of Siri that can interact more closely with third-party apps and services, according to The Information. Right now, Apple has struck deals with partners like Yelp and OpenTable for Siri, but the goal is for the person assistant to work with just about any app.
The report mentions how Siri can’t do things like call a cab or book a hotel room, both of which are common duties of real, personal assistants.
What Apple is allegedly working on would allow Siri to send a message through an app other than iMessage, or look up weather from a different source than Yahoo. The improvements Apple is making to Siri would also work well alongside the rumored iWatch:
Who doesn’t love jammin’ out in the shower?
Well, The Bluetooth Shower Speaker syncs up with your iPhone, Android device, iPad, or home computer – and can be played up to 10 meters away from your device. And Cult of Mac Deals has it for only $39!