Jailbreakers enjoy all kinds of cool Siri add-ons, and a tweak called BatteryLevelAE lets you use Apple’s digital assistant to give you helpful information about your iPhone’s battery life. In a world where we’re always on the go, keeping track of your iPhone’s battery can sometimes be the last thing on our minds. That’s why BatterLevelAE makes it easy for you — just ask Siri.
Before Apple released its iOS 5.1 update to the public earlier this month, clicking on a Yelp link after performing a search with Siri did absolutely nothing. Now, however, it’ll take you straight to Yelp’s iOS app — or the App Store if you don’t already have it installed.
With all the recent protests outside Apple stores, you might think this placard-carrying duo was taking the Cupertino company to task about labor in China.
Nope: it’s a publicity stunt for a play called Robot the Rock Opera. Members of the merry troupe of the Planet X Players descended on the Cherry Creek Mall store in Denver to promote the upcoming play.
Despite the fact that it was the day of the new iPad launch, they were allowed in and given the boot (albeit cordially) by Apple employees after handing out a few flyers about liberating Apple’s robot voice assistant Siri from “slavery.”
Cult of Mac talked to writer/director Seth Iniguez Bertoni about how services like Siri are leading to “digital servitude,” whether Siri considers the work fair labor and how the actors got that mesmerizing silver sheen.
One of the feature on the new iPad is its dictation capabilities, a feature also available on the iPhone 4S (which also boasts Apple’s Siri virtual assistant feature). There are quite a few ways that high quality dictation and other speech to text capabilities could useful to professionals in many fields.
The problem is that in order to get that high quality dictation functionality, the new iPad and the iPhone 4S rely on Apple’s servers to do much of the work in turning your speech into text. More importantly, it isn’t just snippets of voice recordings that get sent to Apple. Personal data from your iPad or iPhone 4S gets uploaded as well and much of it remains associated with you and your device. That’s a general concern for most of us, but for professionals in regulated industries like healthcare or fields that require confidentiality like finance and legal professions, it becomes a critical privacy concern and may even break the law.
Siri is arguably, the best digital personal assistant in the world. She can tell you if you need an umbrella. Wake you up when your late. Remind you that you forgot to buy your girlfriend a birthday present, and so many other tasks that sure are nifty. She’s better than having a personal assistant because she doesn’t get all pissed off when you tell her to go get you a coffee, or call in sick so she can go hangout at the beach with her friends.
Did you know Siri can sing too? Yeah, she totally can, and it’s like having J.Lo in your back pocket at all times, without the obtrusive lady lumps. Need proof? Here’s Siri singing a tear jerking robotic rendition of Stairway To Heaven.
You have to hand it to the people that file lawsuits these days; they sure can be creative. A New Yorker by the name of Frank M. Fazio has sued Apple because Siri on his iPhone 4S is, “at best, a work-in-progress.” Fazio has accused Apple of false advertising in the Siri TV commercials it airs demonstrating making calls, finding directions, sending texts, etc. with the digital assistant.
The commercials convey a “misleading and deceptive message,” according to Fazio. He thinks Siri sucks in real life.
Apple included a list of new features in the release notes for iOS 5.1, which became available on Wednesday alongside the announcement of the new iPad. It seems that Apple included some unannounced features as well – some of which enable more iOS device security and management when paired with a mobile device management (MDM) suite or with Apple’s new Apple Configurator tool for iOS.
The new management features seem to be primarily related to Siri on the iPhone 4S and they include the ability to prevent any use of Siri while an iPhone 4S is locked as well as the ability to filter out profanity. Additionally, as noted by the Intrepidus Group, a security consulting firm, is the ability to block location services on any iOS device.
Before Apple unveiled the new iPad on Wednesday, no one was quite positive what Apple would announce. It seemed pretty sure that the iPad 3 (as it was being called then) would have a Retina Display, but would it have an A5X processor or an A6 processor? 3G or LTE? 512MB of RAM or 1GB of RAM. Would it be thinner or thicker? And what would it be called: the iPad 3 or iPad HD? (Everyone got the name wrong: it’s just called the “new iPad” now.)
One thing few people had any doubt about was that Siri would be making her way to iPad this year… which is why Siri’s absence on the new iPad counted as probably the biggest disappointment of the entire event.
Why would Apple leave Siri out of the new iPad?
I’ve always wanted my own butler that I can order around and have him go fetch me a delicious Chipotle burrito whenever I want. Problem is, I don’t have half a billion dollars to pay for one, so I’ll never be cool like Batman and have a elderly british fellow named Alfred to satisfy my every need. Siri is the closest I’ll ever come to having a true personal assistant, except she doesn’t come equipment with Michael Caine’s impeccable British accent. But is Siri better than Alfred?
Does the idea of an Apple TV with Siri functionality make the insides of your toes tingle with excitement? We’re there with you, and we totally want to know what it would be like to have Siri in our living room whispering us sweet nothings. Apple didn’t announce a new iTV with Siri functionality yesterday, so we’ll have to wait a little while longer to see what the future holds, but to hold us over till that day comes, Tripp and Tyler made a new video to show us what a Siri TV would be like.
It is absolutely breathtaking.
Apple has released iOS 5.1 to the public. The update is available for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad owners running iOS 5. Check Software Update in your Settings app to download.
This update includes Japanese support for Siri, an always-visible camera shortcut on the lock screen, a redesigned Camera app for iPad, and the ability to finally delete individual photos from Photo Stream.
Apple has just announced that iOS 5.1 is coming to everyone today, after months of speculation.
And no surprise: as rumored, Siri is coming to Japan!
We’ll have download links available for iOS 5.1 as soon as it becomes available. Stay tuned.
[image via Engadget]
Apple has officially confirmed that an iPad event is set to take place today, Wednesday, March 7th, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, California. “We have something you really want to see. And touch,” teases the press invitation.
Months and months of rampant speculation and conspiracy stories have built up to next week’s event, and no one really knows what Apple has planned, other than a new iPad. The Retina display is widely expected to make its way to Apple’s tablet. Will it even be called the iPad 3? Will it be offered at a new price point? Let’s take a look at the rumors and examine what we think we know.
It doesn’t take a genius to guess or soothsayer to divine that Apple’s been holding back the iOS 5.1 update to debut it alongside the iPad 3, and so it appears, with reports now indicating that iOS 5.1 has just gone Gold Master.
As one of the most beloved features in the iPhone 4S, Siri gets plenty of attention from the media on a daily basis. The digital assistant is spunky, clever and sometimes surprising. Have you ever wondered what Siri would look like as a 3D face protruding from the front of your iPhone?
We haven’t either. But the designers at SaGa Design apparently have, as they’ve come up with some iRobot-esque renderings of Siri as a 3D head emerging from an iPhone case.
BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — In Russia, if you want to come up with a mascot for your company or a character for your app, there’s no focus groups or testing: it all comes from the top down.
That’s why when Russian app development and publishing company iFree wanted to release a new virtual assistant for Android and iOS to take on Siri, i-Free’s Kirill Petrov dictated the design of i-Free’s latest character. He would be an all white, gremlin-like humanoid with huge flashing teeth and glowing yellow eyes. He would hail from the planet Edelweiss (named after a beer), and he would come to Earth in the time-honored tradition of many alien invaders before him: namely to kidnap our women for his own lascivious pleasure.
Meet Spoony. He’s terrifying. He uses much of the same core technology as Siri, the distant relation he’d eventually like to kill, or at least surplant. Presumably after making out with her first.
While Siri seems to get all the attention when it comes to voice actions, Motorola wants to remind people that Android not only does voice actions, but does them extremely well, if not better. At least that’s the message we’re getting out of Motorola’s latest campaign pitting Android’s voice actions against its top contender Siri. Motorola runs through a slew of voice action challenges using three different Motorola phones and the results are impressive. I’m blown away by how fast both OS’s perform the tasks given and it’s an excellent reminder of the fact that Android has been perfecting voice actions for quite some time. I’m betting there are a lot of you that didn’t even realize your phone could do the things your about to see. Check out the videos after the break.
Remember when we told you about Evi, a Siri clone in the App Store? While the iPhone app mimicked much of the features found in Apple’s digital assistant, there seemed to be enough differences to keep it safe from the watchdogs in Cupertino. For instance, you can ask “Where’s a good place to eat Mexican?” and Evi will use Yelp’s API to provide you results in-app.
According to new reports, Apple has threatened to yank Evi from the App Store. The app has been downloaded over 200,000 times and costs $0.99 in the App Store.
Continuing the trend of luxury cars integrating with luxury smartphones, Mercedes-Benz is set to unveil its new A-Class at the Geneva Motor Show next month. While it’s certainly not the German automaker’s most expensive option (priced at £16,045, or $21,453), the A-Class will be the first to let you use Siri from the comfort of your steering wheel.
The vehicle’s updated COMAND ‘infotainment’ system will revolve around the iPhone 4S and Siri. Wunderbar!
Have you ever wished you could use Siri to control Spotify instead of Apple’s Music app on your iPhone? How about using Siri to get directions with your favorite GPS app?
A really cool jailbreak tweak called AssistantLove was released today in Cydia that lets you do those things and more.
A jailbreak developer who goes by the name of “iPhoneKillerStyle” has thought up a unique Siri mod that replaces the mic icon with Steve Jobs’ silhouette. As you can tell, the mod is pretty detailed. It even allows for multiple Siri mic colors.
It took hard work to create this mod, and you’ll hopefully be seeing it soon in Cydia. If you recognize the image of Steve’s silhouette, it’s probably because you’ve seen it other familiar places before.
Screens is one of many VNC apps available for the iPad and iPhone. Screens 2.0, which was released today, takes the concept of remote controlling a Mac or PC to another level. The update offers some very nifty features to the two year old app including integration with iCloud Siri, and AirPlay.
Screens isn’t one of the cheapest VNC solutions for iOS – it has a price tag of $19.99. The software backs up its somewhat steep cost by delivering a great user experience.
We’re huge fans of the MyAssistant tweak here at Cult of Mac, so much so that it recently featured in our guide to supercharging Siri on your iPhone. And its latest update makes it even more of a must-have for jailbreakers. In addition to some handy bug fixes, it also gets new features like ability to download content, open apps, turn on your flash, and more using Siri.
If you’ve jailbroken your iPhone 4S, you have access to some great tweaks for adding functionality to Apple’s digital assistant, Siri. You can turn Siri into your personal translator, launch apps and toggle system settings, tweet, and and even change the look of the Siri UI.
We’ve collected the best tweaks in Cydia to help you supercharge Siri on your jailbroken iPhone 4S.
While registered developers have already been testing iOS 5.1 betas for some time, it seems the firmware holds several new features that Apple is yet to release to developers. A leaked “pre-GM” build has reportedly been obtained by a Brazilian iPhone blog, which reveals a new camera slider for the lock screen, and support for the Japanese language within Siri.