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.
You know that moment when your iPhone slips out of your hands and begins its slow tumble to the ground? Time slows down, as it does in the milliseconds before any horrific accident, and you absolutely freeze with a sort of full-body shudder of anticipation at the shattered glass screen you just know will be the end result of its 32 feet per second per second fall towards the concrete.
In a recent episode of Fred Armise and Carrie Brownstein’s Portlandia, they did a skit that documents the internal monologue of such a reverie. The end’s a bit surreal (and a little weak), but as an iPhone owner myself, I can relate. Looks like it’s time for Brownstein to buy a bumper.
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.
There are less than 16 hours left on our Illustrator CS5 deal. Hurry and get it before it’s gone.
Did you choose to purchase an iPhone over the Android-powered Galaxy S II? Well, congratulations. Like many of us here at Cult of Mac, you’ve been “Samsunged!”
Here’s a cool concept video for page-turning techniques in ebooks, which rather puts the current offerings to shame.
It shows an e-book behaving much more like a paper book, thanks to new ways of recognizing finger taps and swipes.
Apple has a new education page with the video that was shown today in New York City. The 6-minute clip starts off with a group of teachers talking about why they love what they do. Apple exec Eddy Cue then transitions into Apple’s approach to modernizing education.
Roger Rosner, another Apple exec who was rumored to have been involved with the announcement this morning, also talks about how Apple thought about designing iBooks 2 as an interactive learning experience. Cue then explains iBooks Author for Mac. The last part of the video involves two interviews with publishing executives from Pearson and McGraw-Hill. The Superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District also talks about how Apple will have a pivotal role in shaping education.
You can watch Apple’s education video on its website. There are several other pages for exploring iBooks 2, iBooks Author, and iTunes U.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJxZG2Nv4KA
I’m undoubtedly the least musically inclined person I know, which makes me furiously jealous as I watch my guitar playing friends pick up a guitar and serenade girls à la John Mayer. I need to learn how to play guitar, which is why I’m excited about this new iPad guitar accessory we came across at CES. Ion Audio, makers of the iCade iPad arcade machine, unveiled their newest accessory that helps users perfect their guitar shredding chops on the iPad, so that even those of us without musical talent can look cool playing guitar.
I rather like the look of these handmade wooden iPad stands from Woodpad here in the UK.
Rumors have pegged the iPhone 5 as having a larger 4-inch display since summer of last year, but in order to put a 4-inch display into the iPhone, Apple’s going to have to radically change the design of the device.
They have two choices. Apple can either make the entire device physically bigger… or they can lose the iconic home button. But if Apple does, how would anyone control their device?
The entire jailbreaking community has its eyes on Pod2g and his “Dream Team” of fellow hackers right now, anticipating their exploit for Apple’s A5-powered devices. The team recently revealed that the it was just “a matter of days” away from public release, and today we have a video of a jailbroken iPhone 4S in action.
My colleagues here at Cult of Mac, PR reps completely unrelated to Fuji or anything photographic, random showgoers whose snippets of conversation I intercepted — everyone seemed to be talking about it. Even the very air at CES seemed to be pulsating with the word “Fuji.” Of course, they were all talking about the enigmatic, neo-retro Fuji X-Pro1.
Remember that stunning iPhone designed by Antonio De Rosa that we brought you last week? It’s called the iPhone SJ and it’s a tribute to Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs. It looked pretty great in the photos we published, but it looks even more awesome when brought to life in this new video.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 — Our very British Editor Leander and I were invited to sit in with Leo Laporte, Sarah Lane, and Alex Lindsay for Tuesday’s live episode of Macbreak Weekly. We had a hoot ‘n hollerin’ good time playing with new gadgets from the show floor, talking about this year’s trends in tech, and pondering how Microsoft just might be becoming the next Apple.
The full video is almost 80 minutes long, so feel free to skip around to all the good parts where it’s just me talking.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 — I hate having three different cameras to address various situations in life – iPhone for when I’m lazy, DSLR when I want to pretend I know how to take pretty pictures, and a GoPro for when I’m doing something adventurous. Thankfully it looks like I’m going to be able to discard at least one of those cameras from my bag now that the MiVue is in existence.
QuickTime X in OS X includes quite a few hidden gems to make previously tedious tasks simple. One great example is it’s built in ability to rip audio from nearly any video file. In this video, that’s exactly what I’ll show you how to do.
The Looxcie camera is a neat little gadget by itself, able to clip onto an ear and record 30-second video bursts of your life. Now it has a fantastic little streaming app that you can use to stream those clips and even allows two-way voice communication. Hello, ultra-portable broadcast team.
There are few things on Earth as annoying or punchable as a little brother. Sure, deep down in the recesses of his subconscious, your younger brother is just trying to impress you with his antics. From that perspective, his insistence on constantly nudging you while you’re trying to beat your Angry Birds high score on your iPad is in, reality, an act of love and admiration.
Likewise, it must be remembered that an older brother’s responsibility from time immemorial is to firmly take his younger siblings in hand and instruct them upon the ways of the world: the rules, the social decorums, the hidden pitfalls, the unspoken expectations. From that perspective, then, isn’t knocking your younger brother unconscious by hitting him in the face with your iPad also a supreme act of love?
Probably not. But like giving your younger brother an Indian burn, purple nurple or atomic noogie, it is pretty funny.
[via Macgasm]
Launched a few weeks ago, the Pogoplug Series 4 ($100) is Cloud Engines’ latest attempt at making their network-attached storage device as ubiquitous as the microwave oven. Like its predecessors, the S4 allows you to attach a hard drive or flash drive to create your own cloud, which you can use to stream media, share files or create slideshows, all of which can be accessed over the Internet and shared with others. Additionally, it can also be used for remote backup.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwwWqRV2RsI
(Warning: video is NSFW)
All I wanted for Christmas was an iPhone. That’s it. But my parents went off and bought me a stupid Kindle Fire…those dumb bastards. Actually I’d be pretty happy with receiving a new Kindle Fire, and I already have an iPhone 4S with the fancy camera and everything so I don’t need a new one of those, but apparently a lot of people were disappointed on Christmas morning when they didn’t unwrap a shiny new iPhone. Taking the audacity of privileged consumerism to new heights of hilarity, comedy writer Jon Hendren compiled the stream of dejected tweets into a music video to express the world’s ingratidude.
“WTF?! I Wanted An iPhone” is a catchy (but NSFW) tune that captures little treasures of bitterness that bloomed on Christmas morning. The enormous display of ingratitude is a bit shocking. Hey @SamStandsFoSwag we’re sorry mom and dad got you the black iPod Touch instead of the white one, but maybe when you graduate high school and get a job you’ll realize, “Oh dang, spending $200 on a silly music player is not the funnest thing to do in world.”
While there are countless little-known videos on YouTube that are well worth a watch for any Apple fan, this Ghostbusters parody has to be one of the best. The clip was filmed for an International Sales Meeting held in 1984 and it sees a team called the “Blue Busters” free the world from IBM PCs and replace them with the Macintosh.
The iPhone 4S is out for blood this holiday season.
Some people’s affinity for Angry Birds goes way beyond that of normal standards, as well as some people’s love for Christmas lights (Clark Griswold). The person who made this video seems to suffer from both. Introducing the Angry Birds Christmas light game.
Last night, Conan and Team Coco decided to roast (literally) the Kindle Fire for its various customer complaints. We’re not going to comment on the merits of such claims but we can certainly bask in the humor and wit of Team Coco. Watch the video after the break. Enjoy!
It’s been a great week for giveaways on Cult of Mac, but we’re not done quite yet. As our last giveaway of the week, we’ll be selecting 2 winners who will receive a free copy of the HTML and CSS for Beginners Course that we’re currently peddling over at deals.cultofmac.com. If you’ve been wanting to build a website but don’t know how then this is the giveaway you want to win.
This course is a stellar opportunity to learn the fundamentals of HTML and CSS you need in order to whip up that creative, high-quality website you’ve been mulling over for years! Two lucky winners will get the $29 course for free and will receive Mark’s HTML and CSS expertise jam-packed into nearly 4 hours of video instruction that includes highlighted lab exercises, so you can apply the very skills taught from the course. For this giveaway we’re going to do things a little differently and give you a few options for entry.
Here’s how to enter the giveaway: