Not only has Apple updated Siri’s default (in the US, at least) female voice to something a bit more natural, a little less arrogant sounding, but it’s also included a new male voice, as well. While a male-gendered voice has been available for a while in other regions, this is the first time Siri’s voice gender has been a choice we can enable on iOS.
Here’s how to switch Siri from a female to a male voice (and back again).
Apple has opened a new office in Boston that is working on beefing up Siri… and probably means that Cupertino wants to move away from relying on Nuance to provide Siri’s voice-recognition technology.
https://youtu.be/wE7AQY5Xk9w
While Microsoft has lost an astonishing $900 million on the Surface RT and dropped the price to $349 to clear out inventory, they’re still bashing the iPad on national TV, this time using Siri to woefully lament her own feature-by-feature inadequacy compared to the Surface RT.
I have to admit, I love this commercial. Sure, the iPad is an infinitely better tablet, but I still think this is a funny and effective attempt by Microsoft to make the Surface RT seem like less of a lame duck. They should really be exerting this effort on the Surface Pro, though, which has gotten a much better reception than the also-ran RT.
Source: YouTube
I asked Siri something yesterday, and s/he – as usual – misheard me. Whatever I actually asked, Siri thought I said “Election Tacos,” and as that didn’t really fit in with Siri’s abilities, he did a web search. Only instead of popping me into Safari, the results were shown right on the lock screen. And that’s not all.
This time on The CultCast: Microsoft disses Siri but becomes her go-to search; Apple TV gets better with new apps; new Airport routers get even better; Anchorman 2 gets classier; we answer your Facebook questions; we pitch our favorite tech and apps on an all new Faves N Raves; and… WHEW! Just press play already.
All that and more on this week’s CultCast! Stream or download new and past episodes on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing now on iTunes, or hit play below and may the shwartz be with you.
Show notes up next.
During today’s WWDC keynote, Apple’s Eddy Cue briefly mentioned Bing integration in iOS 7. While demoing new features in Siri, Cue mentioned that Bing is used to power web searches. Nothing was said about Google, and that shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Apple has been distancing itself from Google for quite some time. For instance, Apple Maps is now on iOS and OS X. Bing integration in Siri, while a more subtle move, is definitely a knife jab at Google. And Microsoft couldn’t be happier.
Siri is also getting an upgrade in iOS 7.
For one thing, there’s a new look to the interface. It’s flatter and cleaner, and now you see a soundwave of your voice as you speak. And the results display much more cleanly.
There’s also a new Siri voice. It sounds more natural, and it comes in both male and female varieties. German and French speakers are also getting more natural voices.
Siri understands more system-level commands, too. Play my last voicemail, increase brightness, turn on my Bluetooth! Siri now understands all of these instructions.
Siri can also answer more questions. Siri now interacts with Twitter, Wikipedia, and it even integrates web search results from Bing! Did they ditch Google?
Siri’s also a big part in iOS’s next feature, called “iOS in the Car.” The idea here is that iOS 7 will interact with in-dash displays. It’s an extension of Siri Hands-Free.
Depending on the way you ask Siri for the date of Father’s Day this year, she might give you two completely different answers. A redditor discovered that when you ask Siri, ‘Is Father’s Day this weekend?’ the personal assistant erroneously replies that “Father’s Day is on Friday, June 14th,” even though it most definitely is not.
To make matters more embarrassing Siri answers the questions correctly if you phrase it as “When’s Father’s Day?” On the bright side of things though, you now have an excuse if you forget to buy dad something in time.
Source: Reddit
Google just released Chrome 27 for iOS. The big update for Google’s third-party browser for iOS should have faster page reloading speeds as well as improved voice search.
Google included voice search in its Google Now app for iOS, but the conversational search tools are now being packed directly into Chrome as well. The update also gives Chrome the ability to speak search results back to you so you pretty much never have to look at your screen again if you don’t want to.
Here are the full release notes:
Siri knows everything (kind of). She even knows when you’re trying to use the Konami Code to cheat your way towards world domination.
In a newly discovered Siri Easter egg, if you try to give Siri the Konami Code (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start), she’ll chide you for your cheating ways.
Here are two other responses you can get in the Easter egg:
While speaking today at the All Things D conference, Nuance CEO Paul Ricci confirmed that Nuance does indeed help power the voice recognition service for Siri.
Since Siri’s launch in 2011, many people assumed that Apple had formed a partnership with Nuance, but neither company has officially confirmed the relationship.
During the his interview, Ricci was asked whether it’s his company’s fault if the iPhone doesn’t understand a user’s voice. Ricci confirmed that Nuance does power the voice part of Siri, but the company is not involved in speech-recognition efforts with Google.
Sometimes when you can’t decide between two things the easiest thing to do is flip a coin. Don’t got a quarter? Well, Siri can now create some random numbers for you via the command “Roll the dice.”
The litter Easter egg might also come in handy if you’re Monopoly board is missing its shiny white dice. But then again, you’ll probably be playing a game on your iPhone by then.
Oh, and if you just want Siri to flip a coin instead, she can do that too:
Microsoft has released a new TV ad that slams the iPad touts Windows 8 on an Asus tablet. This is the most directly targeted attack campaign on Apple in recent memory—even the Samsung Galaxy ads had more tact.
The tagline of the ad is “Less Talking, More Doing,” a.k.a using apps like Powerpoint. Siri is used to mock the iPad, ending in the virtual assistant giving up with, “Should we just play chopsticks?” in Garageband.
You have to give it to Microsoft for not pulling any punches. It will be interesting to see if Apple responds. Remember the good ol’ days of Mac vs. PC?
Via: The Verge
Apple began adding the Galaxy S4 to its ongoing patent-infringement case against Samsung last week, and it has now specified five patents which it believes the device is breaching. The Cupertino company has also taken aim at Google Now, which allegedly infringes its unified search patent.
When Siri was updated along with iOS 6, we showed you a bunch of ways to use Apple’s personal digital assistant the right way, like using punctuation and finding out the weather.
Yet time marches ever onward, and we’ve compiled yet another five tips and tricks to help you master Siri, whether you’re looking to create a secure password or just pass the time with a few laughs. Enjoy!
If you’ve tried to use Siri to call or text someone, you know it’s pretty simple. Just say, for example, “Call Joe Smith,” and Siri will call the person named Joe Smith in your Contacts App.
But did you know that Siri can also identify people via their relationship to you? You can say, “Call my brother,” or “Text my daughter,” and Siri will call or text that person, provided you’ve done a little set-up in the Contacts app.
You can also use Siri to define these relationships, so you don’t even have to open Contacts. Here’s how.
There are plenty of funny things to ask Siri. One of my daughter’s favorite things to do with Siri on my iPhone, besides rename me all sorts of ridiculous names, is to ask it questions.
“Siri,” she’ll say, “what is your real name?” Siri will reply with how she really doesn’t like talking about herself. Hilarious, right?
I’m almost afraid to show my daughter this tip, because she’ll now have a ton of funny questions to ask Siri, getting truly cute and laughable responses along the way. I may never get my iPhone back.
Here is a list of some of the best funny things to ask Siri. We’ll leave finding out the answers to you.
As you may know, Siri is backed by the seriously amazing knowledge web site, Wolfram Alpha, which makes dynamic computations about your search terms based on a its own collection of built-in data, special algorithms, and other secret fancy methods. Or, to put it another way: magic.
Anyway, Siri taps into Wolfram Alpha and can come up with some great stuff, like calculating tips for you, for example. Siri’s connection to Wolfram can do even more than that, like generating a secure password for you. Here’s how.
Google Now was already pretty awesome, but now it’s getting even better on both iOS and Android. And it’s coming to the desktop as part of Google’s Knowledge Graph.
Siri’s got a ton of talents. She’s an amateur movie critic. She knows all about robotics. Plus, she’s pretty decent at her main job as a personal assistant.
Siri’s never been a great comedian, and whoever was put in charge of making Siri more witty and conversational is just making her look more dorky. Now whenever you ask Siri to tell you a joke, she replies with, “Get Siri-ous. Ha ha!” The joke is bad enough, but the little “Ha ha!” at the end makes Siri sound like some high school nerd at open mic night. Hopefully Tim Cook and the gang will teach Siri some better jokes before WWDC 2013.
Source: Reddit
Talking to Siri can be either an exercise in frustration, or a miracle of modern technology, depending on your mood and how successful the Apple digital assistant is at interpreting what it is you’re asking. Typically, when you activate Siri with a long press and hold on the Home button, the input is collected via the microphone built into your iPHone or iPad.
If you have a Bluetooth accessory, though, you might not know that Siri can listen through that device as well. Here’s how to get Siri to do just that.
Apple’s got to keep the ever-mounting demands on its Siri servers down somehow, so here’s a new one. If you ask her something too long, Siri will respond with trite quotes upon the power of brevity, such as this one by William Strunk of Strunk & White fame:
A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
Of course, it’s not up to a voice-recognition program to dictate what is an unnnecessary word or sentence, any more than it is up to a pencil which line in a drawing is “unnecessary”, or an engine schematic which part isn’t needed.
But here’s something ironic! Take that exact quote above by Strunk and modify it into a question. “Siri, should a sentence contain any unnecessary words, or a paragraph any unnecessary sentences, for the same reasons that a drawing should not have any unnecessary lines or a machine any unnecessary parts?” And guess what! Siri will accuse Strunk of being long-winded. Take that Elements of Style!
Source: iLounge
Have you ever had one of those Siri moments, where you ask her to search for something, and she interprets your speech incorrectly? I’m guessing all of us have, at one time or another.
One thing Siri doesn’t do very well is provide for “no I meant…” error correction, at least using speech. Next time you use Siri and the result is something you didn’t expect, don’t just press the home button in frustration, but correct Siri using your iPhone or iPad keyboard instead.
Siri’s good at simple things like creating appointments, sending texts, calling people and looking up random bits of information on the Internet, but what I really want Siri to be great at is managing stuff in my house.
One Redditor decided he was tired of turning his Philips Hue bulbs on and off all on his own, so he employed some clever hackery to get Siri to do it for him. In the video above you can see that the results are a little bit clunky, but it makes us drool for Apple to release a Siri API so other smart products can be controlled through Siri.
To complete the Siri Hue Bulbs hack, a jailbroken iPod was hacked to re-route Siri functionality to a Siri proxy. The iPod’s Siri beeps were replaced with WAV files for Iron Man’s Jarvis, which adds a little flair to the project.
Source: YouTube
Via: Reddit
Samsung loves bashing its competitors, and it often does so in advertisements for new Galaxy products. So it’s no surprise that the Korean company has programmed its S Voice assistant to bash the iPhone. Ask it if it’s ever used Apple’s popular smartphone and S Voice delivers a scolding response.
