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.
The Flaming Lips are huge Apple fans. Heck,
I’m not a huge fan of The Big Bang Theory, but this clip from the latest episode is too good not to post.
What if Siri wasn’t just Wolfram Alpha stapled onto a smart text-to-speech program, but instead an actual woman, working a call center, and just as slinky and sexually promiscuous as any bro showing off in front of his drunken friends by asking for a blow job could ever hope?
That’s probably not many people’s fantasies, but it is the hilarious chimera of Big Bang’s Raj, who is as cripplingly shy as he is addicted to his new iPhone 4S.
The hope of a new Apple product on the horizon tends to make tech blogs a little fanciful, sometimes even delusional, so it’s hard to fault Techno Buffalo too much for their “exclusive” report that an Apple-made OLED HDTV with Siri functionalities — the much talked about iTV — is coming out “this April, or possibly May at the latest.” Hey, we all get carried away from time to time.
That said, TechnoBuffalo’s report isn’t too be trusted. In fact, it’s total bullshit. Here’s why.
Since the Absinthe jailbreak tool was released for Apple’s A5-powered devices last week, we’ve seen all sorts of tweaks that maximize Siri functionality on the iPhone 4S. The latest is one of the most impressive. It’s called Lingual, and it provides quick and easy voice translation to over 30 languages, using Microsoft Bing Translate API.
A new jailbreak tweak by the name of Sireet has surfaced in Cydia. Developed by Tyler Nettleton, Sireet lets jailbroken iPhone 4S users tweet natively with Siri.
Sick of the boring old gray linen background on your Siri? If you’ve got a jailbroken iPhone 4S, why not try the new Custom Siri Background Cydia tweak, which allows you to apply a picture from your Camera Roll as Siri’s background wallpaper.
Meet one-eyed Evi, a one-dollar alternative to Siri which works on older (non-4S) iPhones.
She’s had a bit of a rough introduction to life, thanks to a much-hyped launch followed by 24 hours or so of struggling to keep up with demand.
As part of its annual promotion to get more Americans to cram nacho cheese-flavored asbestos triangles down their gob during halftime, Doritos throws a Crash The Super Bowl contest where they invite fans to make their own commercials. Win the contest and your winning ad gets aired during the Super Bowl.
I don’t usually pay attention to stuff like this, but this entry for the contest is just wonderful. It portrays Siri (or a Siri-like) as a magical genie in a smartphone capable of automatically beaming bags full of Doritos, a festive sombrero or even three hot, bikini-clad girls into a bro’s apartment at just a long press of the home button, no questions asked.
The only problem? In Dorito’s land, Siri’s speech-to-text transcription abilities have a couple of small auditory processing kinks to work out. The result? A guy’s request for hot wild girls leads to him being torn apart by… well, you’ve got to see it for yourself. Brilliant.
[via iDownload Blog]
A Cydia package by the name of SiriToggles brings functionality to Siri that Apple should have included from day one. With the free SiriToggles tweak on your jailbroken iPhone 4S, you can launch any app, change your system settings, and even turn your iPhone off with your voice.
While Apple has restricted Siri to a limited set of capabilities by default, SiriToggles liberates the virtual assistant for jailbreakers.
Siri has a new competitor, and her name is Evi. Developed by True Knowledge and powered by the same Nuance-based backend as Apple’s virtual assistant, Evi is available for all iPhones in the App Store. There’s also a beta app available for Android handsets.
While Evi doesn’t have the integrated advantage that Siri wields, she is perhaps the first clone that’s just as smart, if not smarter, than Siri.
Thanks to the newly-released Absinthe untethered jailbreak for the iPhone 4S and iPad 2, you can finally get Siri up and running on Apple’s latest tablet. The process isn’t an easy one, as you will need to set up your own SiriProxy server and edit your iPad’s filesystem.
If you have the time and stamina to get Siri up and running on the iPad 2, you’ll be able to take advantage of all the voice assistant goodness that’s available on the iPhone 4S. You’ll also be able to install other jailbreak tweaks to enhance Siri’s functionality.
Purple Siri is soo boring. Why not change it up a bit? If you’ve jailbroken your iPhone 4S, then you can take advantage of a fun tweak called Siri Mic Colors. Once installed for free in Cydia, this simple package spices up your iPhone’s digital assistant with some rainbow flair.
While the feature is currently still in beta, Apple is yet to extend Siri support to apps that aren’t already baked into the iOS operating system. But did you know that the company’s own Find My Friends app, which debuted alongside iOS 5 last summer, does include Siri support, allowing you to locate your pals using only your voice?
Here’s you to find your friends using Siri.
Since Apple launched Siri on the iPhone 4S back in October last year, hackers have been working their socks off to port the intelligent assistant to other iOS devices. But it seems all their hard work may have been wasted, because one guy claims he got Siri on his new iPod touch simply by restoring from an iPhone 4S backup.
Apple is expected to revolutionize television with a set of its own later this year, and while we’re all expecting the device to feature Siri, there’s very little else we know about it. But according to a relatively new Apple patent, credited to Steve Jobs, it may also feature digital video recording capabilities that allow you to save your favorite shows for viewing at a later date.
We’re only about two or three months away from the iPad 3 dropping and blowing our socks off. Right now, we can tell you a lot about what the iPad 3 will probably be like. It’ll feature Apple’s new, quad-core A6 CPU. It’ll feature a 2048 x 1536 resolution Retina Display. It may — but probably won’t — be the first iOS device to ship with LTE support.
But what about Siri, Apple’s amazing new voice control technology prominently featured in the iPhone 4S? Surely, that’s a lock for all future Apple devices starting with the iPad 3, right?
Well, hold on. Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.