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.
A new jailbreak app called AssistantConnect claims to bring Siri to non-4S iOS devices without needing a proxy. Unlike previous ports, AssistantConnect lets you email your Siri data between jailbroken iOS devices to enable the digital assistant. It’s a much simpler process than having to setup your own network voodoo and rely on a server that may not even work anymore.
Sound too good to be true? There’s one catch…
Rumors of added Siri language support have been swirling for a little while now. As it turns out, the digital assistant herself thinks she can already speak Japanese, despite the fact that the language isn’t officially supported yet.
Jailbreakers have the ability to run a homegrown version of Siri on unsupported iOS devices, and it appears that Apple doesn’t like it. According to mixed reports, a large amount of unsupported Siri users are now unable to use Siri. Has Apple stepped up its game, or is this merely a routine update to the spunky digital assistant?
Apple has aired two new TV commercials for the iPhone 4S called “Road Trip” and “Rock God.” Both ads highlight Siri, the staple feature of the iPhone 4S. In classic Apple fashion, both spots are poignant and touching. The first ad features a couple on a trip, while the second tells the story of a teenager learning how to play guitar. Siri is used to find directions, send text messages, search Wolfram Alpha, and more.
We’ve already shown you jailbreak tweaks like AssistantExtensions that let you tweet using your voice and Siri, and now there’s a way to easily read your Twitter timeline with Apple’s digital assistant. Using a simple keyword, you can have Siri show your recent tweets from within its linen window.
Canada’s two largest telecoms already have Apple’s rumored iTV in their testing labs, according to The Globe and Mail. Rogers and BCE have reportedly been “in talks” with Apple to become launch partners for the upcoming IP-based television.
The iTV will have Siri integration and users will be able to control programming with their voices or through hand gestures, according to the report.
When you ask most iPhone 4 owners why they didn’t get Siri in a software update for their devices when the almost-identical iPhone 4S came out, the common answer is extremely cynical: Siri is the arbitrary, software-only feature that Apple decided to limit to the iPhone 4S simply to differentiate it from the iPhone 4 in marketing,
The truth? Apple may not be as cynical as all that. In fact, according to a new report from a chips analyst, it all comes down to special noise-reduction circuitry unique to the iPhone 4S’s A5 chip.
We’ve seen a number of Siri parodies since the feature made its debut on the iPhone 4S late last year, but this one is most certainly the best one yet. It’s called “Psycho Siri” from AndrewMFilms, and features some terrific special effects. There’s also a great storyline that will leave you terrified of your new iPhone 4S.
A rumored Apple television set has received just as much — if not more — attention than the company’s upcoming iPhone 5 in recent months, but the questions we’ve all been asking about its specifications have been answered… by Best Buy.
The retailer has been issuing surveys to its customers to obtain feedback on potential new products and services, but many were surprised to find details on a 42-inch “Apple HDTV,” which will apparently be available for $1,499.
Laaaaaaaaaaadies and Gentlemen, welcome to Friday Night Fights, a new series of weekly deathmatches between two no-mercy brawlers who will fight to the death — or at least agree to disagree — about which is better: Apple or Google, iOS or Android?
After this week’s topic, someone’s going to be spitting teeth. Our question: Is Siri Really A Revolutionary Feature? Android’s had voice actions and voice recognition for years, so what does Siri really bring to the table that’s new? Is it all just hype?
In one corner, we have the 900 pound gorilla, Cult of Mac; in the opposite corner, wearing the green trunks, we have the plucky upstart, Cult of Android!
Place your bets, gentlemen! This is going be a bloody one.
We’ve seen plenty of jailbreak tweaks for enhancing Siri, but a new one called MyAssistant offers more features than any of its predecessors. Developed by Andrea Oliva and Saltb0x, MyAssistant is available for $0.99 in Cydia. You will need a jailbroken iPhone 4S or Siri-hacked iOS device to run MyAssistant.
With this new tweak you can tell your iPhone to reboot, lock, take a picture, get lyrics for a song, give you its battery percentage, and more. You can also customize the look of the Siri UI and create custom conversations with Apple’s digital assistant.
Did you ever wonder what Siri would look like, if she weren’t just a bunch of 1s and 0s bouncing around inside an Apple data mega-center? The Big Bang Theory’s Raj thinks she’d be a sultry, promiscuous sex line operator, but that’s not the only possibility, which is why the makers of the popular Nomad Brush Stylus have thrown a contest called the Compose Portrait Siri-Ies Challenge, in which they’re giving away a custom engraved Nomad Compose to the person who comes up with the best depiction of what Siri really looks like.
We’re totally digging the entries they’ve gotten so far, which range from beautiful to monstrous, from realistic to abstract. Check out the best faces of Siri below, then go over to Nomad to vote for your favorite.
Last week we told you about Evi, an iPhone app that challenges Apple’s own Siri voice control technology. Powered by the same Nuance backend, Evi and Siri offer similar voice control/assistant features. The main difference between the two is that Evi is available on the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS, while Siri is only available natively for iPhone 4S owners.
Another App Store app has come to our attention, and its name is vokul. As the first and only 100% handsfree voice control app for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, vokul allows users to dictate text messages, make calls, and play music without ever having to lift a finger.
Siri’s notorious inability to understand a thick Scottish brogue is pretty notorious at this point, but perhaps no video makes the point more humorlessly than this mock advertisement for Siri from Apple Scotland. It’s more than a little foul-mouthed, so if you’re at work, put some headphones on.