Siri - page 43

Siri is a tremendous addition to Apple’s latest iPhone. But if you’ve already had the pleasure of making it your own virtual assistant, you may have noticed that without a data connection, Siri goes quiet. That’s because the feature connects to Apple’s servers every time you make a request in order to retrieve your answers, or perform the task you have requested.

If you’re a regular Siri user, then, you may be worried about the dent it’s making in your monthly data allowance. But there’s no need to worry, because it’s hardly anything.

So you get a shiny new iPhone 4S, and you want to make Siri do something cool. Cooler than Shit That Siri Says, anyway.

What do you do? You get Siri to pour you a beer, of course. And you call it Beeri. Hic.

Over the weekend, we showed off Siri running on a jailbroken iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4G thanks to the tireless efforts of iPhone hackers chpwn and Steve Troughton.

Clearly, Siri works just fine on lesser devices like the iPhone 4 and iPod touch, but despite this, chpwn and Troughton warned that we wouldn’t see an authorized release anytime soon. Now chpwn is clarifying why, and it’s just as the Dev Team warned us: Siri on non-iPhone 4S devices require piracy.

Over the weekend, Apple launched three new iPhone 4S ads: one for the iPhone 4S’s incredible new 8MP camera and iOS 5’s Photo Editing abilities, one for iCloud and one for Siri. They all really speak for themselves, but even so, this is Apple advertising at its finest.

You can find the other two ads embedded below.

Up until now, Apple’s Siri voice-recognition system has been shown in a humorous light. However, what if Siri could save your life? People remaking next-generation 911 services see Siri as the voice of emergency victims, not just a locator of the nearest sushi joint.

This could be fake, but it certainly looks real to us: iPhone hackers chpwn and Steve Troughton say they’ve gotten Siri working on the iPhone 4 and fourth-gen iPod touch, and they’ve got video to prove it. So it is possible. Sadly, though, both hackers say that whatever method they used for exploit is not for public release any time soon, so the rest of us poor suckers will just have to keep twiddling our thumbs.

According to the iPhone 4S Siri Operating Manual, “Siri is a learning computer that adapts to your environment and personality, answering your requests as it identifies your wants and needs.”

But what happens when Siri makes an evolutionary leap in intelligence while you and your drunken buddies are goofing off with her? As this hysterical video from LaughPong makes clear, it can lead to a moment of extreme awkwardness.

Seriously, if there’s one Siri humor video you watch, watch this one. I think it’s the funniest Siri gag yet.

(Thanks, Brittany!)

While this illustration may be taking the point a little too far, it does have a point.  Siri may have an attitude now, but at least it’s not self-aware.

Yet.

We thought we’d put this Apple television business to rest as a pipe-dream, but then Steve Jobs’s biography came out, where he claimed he had finally “cracked” the TV problem. Now the rumor mill has started itself up again with renewed vigor, and the latest report from Nick Bilton over at The New York Times: his sources tell him that Jobs thought that the “industry was totally broken” a real Apple-branded television set “isn’t a matter of if, but when,” a “guaranteed product.”

Fancy a break from the constant tintinnabulation of your iPhone? Here’s a great Siri tip spotted by the guys over at OS X Daily: just press down the hold button and tell Siri to “turn off all alarms.”

Once you’ve been able to catch your breath, turning your alarms all on again is as easy as saying “turn on all alarms.”

One thing that many seem to forget about Apple’s new voice recognition assistant is that it’s still in beta. Although Siri is available to iPhone 4S users in Australia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, you can’t expect a seamless experience.

While many have still been impressed with the feature since its release, others are too quick to criticize it. A report from British tabloid The Daily Mail today brands Siri a frustration that has left Scottish users “bamboozled” because it cannot understand their accent.

A few weeks ago, we posted the video below to show how Apple saw Siri and the iPad coming back in 1987. We didn’t tell the story behind the video though, which is equally fascinating.

Carbon weave has got to be the Miracle Whip of gadgets — it makes anything taste better. We reviewed Sound ID’s 510 Bluetooth headset in a BT headset head-to-head (try saying that fast) a few months back; and while it sounded great and was pretty much our pick of the week, it wasn’t the coolest looking kid on the block — and you couldn’t order it to do stuff, like you could some other headsets. Sound ID’s new Six fixes all that, and adds a trick for Siri too.

Friends sometimes tell me I have a hollow leg, but they don’t really mean it: they just mean that my rampant alcoholism is frequently imperceptible. If it were literally true that I had a hollow leg, I’d probably be tempted to do something crazy with it… like, say, run an Apple Dock Connector up through it and turn my upper calf into an easily accessible iPhone dock.

That’s why I’m so green with envy reading this Telegraph story about Trevor Prideaux, a British man born without a left arm who modified his prosthetic to be a smartphone dock. The only problem? He crammed a Nokia in there, not an iPhone!

In Apple’s own soothing Siri commercial, dozens of beautiful people living in utopian cityscapes and country vistas effortlessly interact with their iPhone 4Ses as if they were confabbing with the most soliciting of manservants.

In real life, though, things aren’t quite so pretty, as TBS’s Conan O’Brien is quick to point out in this hysterical parody video in which Apple’s original ad is intercut with two disheveled grossies asking Siri to direct them towards the fastest way to Diarrheatown, or compute the circumference of their manhoods.

It is, I’m sorry to say, a perhaps accurate depiction of at least my iPhone 4S post-launch Saturday night.

Siri co-founder Dag Kittlaus has reportedly left Apple just days after his sophisticated voice-recognition technology made its debut on the iPhone 4S. It was an ‘amicable’ departure, according to sources, that will allow Kittlaus to focus on “new entrepreneurial ideas.”

Andy Rubin, Google’s senior vice president of mobile, doesn’t particularly care for Siri and the idea that the iPhone 4S could be your personal assistant. Rubin says it’s just a little weird for people to be talking to their phone. Those words he’s going to eat.

Not many of us expected Apple to introduce LTE or 4G capabilities to its fifth-generation iPhone, but according to one Swedish carrier, the Cupertino company would be killing its iPhone 5 if it doesn’t adopt LTE technology by then.

Siri is one of the iPhone 4S’ biggest selling points, and I think anyone who’s had chance to try out the feature would agree that’s it’s pretty exceptional. For the time being, it’s exclusive to Apple’s latest iPhone, but one hacker claims to have it running on any device running iOS 5, and says a jailbroken device is not necessary.

Let’s just say it: any smartphone that recognizes my lineage by calling me a queen is right as rain in my book. (Namely because it saves those tiring discussions about “You don’t know who you’re dealing with!” etc.)

The learning curve with Apple’s new iPhone 4S voice activated personal assistant Siri may or may not be steep – depending on your point of view – but a  Twitter feed launched Oct. 15 compiling the more unusual responses is exceedingly droll. 

The BBC’s technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones wanted to find out which smartphone was the best listener, so he conducted a quick test of his own.

He spoke the same text into a Siri-equipped iPhone 4S and a Samsung Galaxy Tab, and compared the transcribed results.

One of the most obvious features Siri lacks on the iPhone 4S is social network integration. Although Twitter is integrated into iOS 5, you still can’t tweet or update your Facebook account from Siri.

There’s actually an easy workaround to update Twitter and Facebook with Siri on your iPhone 4S.

I’ve been using the iPhone 4S for a whole weekend now, and I have to say, this device is a magnificent beast. That dual-core A5 processor makes everything super speedy and incredibly seamless, while the 8-megapixel camera takes terrific photos, and the Siri assistant — although in the U.K. — is just plain awesome.

Externally, however, the iPhone 4S is just as fragile as its predecessor, and nowhere near as robust as its biggest rival, the Samsung Galaxy S II.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-OnZCywaII

The same developer that originally ported Siri to the iPhone 4 has created another video showing more progress. Developer Steven Troughton-Smith has been working to port Apple’s new Siri technology to older iOS devices.

In the first video, Siri was unresponsive and sluggish on the iPhone 4, mainly due to the fact that the phone’s GPU was disabled. Now the Siri port has been improved to run smoother and more fluidly on the iPhone 4.

Siri is the intelligent assistant that comes with the iPhone 4S. You simply hold the iPhone’s Home button and speak your question or command — Siri does the rest.

While the obvious benefit of Siri is the handsfree aspect of voice technology, you can actually edit your Siri conversations the good old fashioned way with your keyboard.