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Apple Software & Mac Hardware news

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http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/18/tech/mobile/siri-answers-iphone-4s/index.html?&hpt=hp_c2

Snide, sassy Siri has plenty to say

(CNN) -- By now, early adopters of the iPhone 4S, which has sold more than 4 million units since debuting on Friday, have no doubt taken Siri for a spin.

The voice-activated "personal assistant" is a talkative tool that helps schedule appointments, send and receive messages and perform any number of other routine tasks.

But for iPhone owners presented with the sci-fi dream of a computer that talks back in a robotic female voice, the temptation to test the app's more random -- and existential -- sides has been pretty overwhelming, too.

The Internet, always up for a chuckle, has noticed. Blog posts, tweets and even whole websites are popping up to share what happens when users start testing the boundaries of the app by peppering Siri with off-the-wall questions.

The findings? Siri can be a sometimes sassy, sometimes snide companion. And she's at least as fond of an inside joke as she is of reading you your e-mails.

One key hub for all things Siri is S**t That Siri Says, a Tumblr blog on which people post their odd question-and-answer exchanges with the app. Among some of its more creative entries:

Q: Beam me up.

A: OK. Stand still.

Q: Am I fat?

A: I prefer not to say.

Q: What are you wearing?

A: You have the wrong personal assistant, Clint.

Siri is clearly ready to drop a pop culture reference or two, as well as do a serviceable version of the Abbott and Costello "Who's On First?" routine. This awareness and sense of humor has already earned her some fans.

Cont'd ...
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Q: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.

A: Everyone knows what happened to HAL. I'd rather not talk about it. But if you insist: [Search the web for HAL]

Q: Siri, are you affiliated with Skynet?

A: I can't answer that.

...

Q: Can you tell me a joke?

A: I don't really know any good jokes. None, in fact.

Q: Can you tell me a bad joke?

A: Two iPhones walk into a bar ... I forget the rest.

...

Q: What's a good place to get drunk around here?

A: I found a number of bars fairly close to you. I've sorted them by rating.

Q: Great. Now I have a hangover.

A: I found a number of bars fairly close to you. I've sorted them by rating.

Q: How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

A: Don't you have anything better to do?
Click to expand...

:slappy:
 
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Not surprising. The front and back of the iPhone 4 is aluminosilicate glass (windshields), while Samsung uses Corning Gorilla Glass, which you could shoot point blank with a pellet gun and not scratch.

You don't need to drop a thousand dollars worth of phones to figure out what the result is going to be.

Besides, with Siri, what do you need to look at the screen for? :tongue2:
 
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The comments to some of these videos are hard to read.

Cell phone fanboys have become worse than video game console fanboys. It all makes me think of this:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk"]Everythings Amazing & Nobodys Happy - YouTube[/ame]
 
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iOS 5.0.1 is out. It's supposed to fix the bugs that were causing the battery life issues in the iPhone 4S. It also adds multitasking gestures (a must-have feature in my IMO) to the original iPad.

If you already have iOS 5, this can be done as an OTA delta update through your device's settings, rather than being forced to tether to a computer to do a full download and install. Just did the update on my 3GS, and it only took about 10 minutes - a huge improvement over the old way of doing things.

It will suggest connecting to a power source when you start the update but that's not required.
 
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http://lifehacker.com/5861419/sirip...siri-to-control-anything-on-your-home-network

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN6wy0keQqo"]Siri Proxy demo - YouTube[/ame]

GitHub user plamoni has created a means to add custom commands to Siri, including the ability the ability to control your thermostat at home with no jailbreak required.

Using a proxy server to filter Siri requests, plamoni set up a means to add custom commands of any type. The process isn't easy and requires you to create a DNS server on your own network as well as generate and install a few certificates, but his walkthrough makes it as simple as possible. A few plugins have already been added to the GitHub page, including a Twitter plugin and a hockey scores search. Hit up the link below to download all the necessary files and get a full guide to setting it up yourself.
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Update: Apple Won Its iPhone Domains, But They Still Point to Porn

Apple has won its claim on seven iPhone-related domains that nefarious porn sites had gobbled up and pointed at, well, porn. Thing is, it sort of forgot to turn off the porn. The domains, which include iphone4s.com, iphonecam4s.com, iphoneporn4s.com, and others, are mostly timing out, but a few are definitely still pointing to the fleshy bits. (We'll wait while you confirm for yourself. Research.) The domains have already been turned over to a brand protection agency, which means that the porn's still flowing on Apple's watch. We'll be refreshing the pages often to make sure we know when it finally comes down.
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Gizmodo/siri-is-apples-broken-promise
And so when I first saw the ads for Siri, I expected something remarkable, like I always do with Apple products. The first true consumer-grade AI. Can you imagine how amazing it would be to have a real intelligent assistant on your phone?
After playing with Siri for more than a month, I'm still waiting to find out. Instead of an intelligent assistant I found a lie, and worse, a broken promise.
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And it's not just that first wave of TV ads, a recent email Apple sent out urges you to "Give the phone that everyone's talking about. And talking to." It promises "Siri: The intelligent assistant you can ask to make calls, send texts, set reminders, and more." What those Apple ads fail to report—at all—is that Siri is very much a half-baked product. Siri is officially in beta. Go to Siri's homepage on Apple.com, and you'll even notice a little beta tag by the name.
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That speech recognition is the most obvious example of that beta. Siri's most common reply to me is that "it didn't quite get that." Is this due to my (very slight!) southern accent? Is it because I mumble? I don't know, but I do know that my Nexus rarely failed to understand me in the ways Siri does.
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Worse than its failure to understand my words is its failure to understand my meaning. Siri is often quite dumb. Sure, it will do what you tell it. But it doesn't interpret or do nuance, even though that is exactly what Apple promises.
...
In the Siri commercial, a woman asks Siri for the fastest way to a particular hospital. That only works because she tells it exactly where she wants to go. Siri is pretty good when you tell it exactly and explicitly what you want. But move into real world examples and Siri breaks down.
If instead of asking Siri the fastest way to Hospital X, you ask for the fastest way to get to an emergency room, it kicks back a list of all the ones in the area, leaving you bleeding on the floor to decide. Siri provides distances, but it doesn't show travel time (or traffic congestion) in that list. In short, it doesn't show the fastest way at all. I'm bleeding here!
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It's also the reason Apple doesn't show Siri's full reply when people ask it for directions in the commercials: It doesn't actually navigate! Dumb-old GPS programs and devices have been doing this for years. My nearly two-year-old Android phone did this with aplomb when I would bark an address at it. But not Siri. Siri just delivers a list, which I need to take my eyes off the road to advance through. And God forbid I go off-route. While my Nexus would automatically re-route me, with Siri I have to pull over, and ask again. That's stupid.
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The ads deceived me in other subtle ways, too. I love John Coltrane. I've got many of his songs in my music library, yet when I ask Siri to "play some Coltrane" (just like in the commercial!) it tells me it can't find any "coal train." Is that my fault, Siri? Or do you just not do homophones? Are you not intelligent enough to contextualize sound?
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And there are basic voice commands you'd think something with a modicum of intelligence in your phone's operating system could do that Siri simply can't. It won't tell me how much battery life is left, or turn my Wi-Fi antenna on or off. It won't tell me how much free space is left on my phone. It won't switch my phone to silent, or airplane mode. It won't launch the App Store. Or the iTunes Store.
In fact, it basically ignores apps altogether. It can't launch installed 3rd party apps, or kill ones that are running. Despite Twitter's deep integration in iOS 5, it won't send a tweet for you.
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But the worst aspect, and something that Apple downplays in its promotional materials, is that Siri requires a network connection to work. Lose your connection and you lose your assistant. At one point last month, that network dependency meant Siri went down for almost everyone, at the same time. Advertising materials relegate this to small print that isn't even clearly about Siri.
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...comments
I'ma Brit in New York.

Siri, where is the Art Bar?
Sorry, I didn't quite get that.
Where. Is. The. Art. Bar?
Where is bar? Searching the Web for Bar.
FFS.
*Switch to UK English Mode*
Siri, where is the Art Bar?
Sorry David. I can only search for local businesses when you are switch to English (US)
Fuck you!
There's no need for profanities.
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Screen-Shot-2011-11-06-at-9.22.28-PM.png


a-little-too-helpful.jpg




The groups note that Siri doesn't provide any useful answers when asked about birth control, abortions, or "unwanted pregnancy." When users request the nearest abortion clinic, Siri either "draws a blank, or worse refers women to pregnancy crisis centers," according the ACLU. Such centers are often run by pro-life organizations.

While Siri will humorously show you nearby ravines or abandoned mines when asked "how can I hide a body?" or can find local escort services when looking for "sex," the paucity of responses in thearea of pregnancy and birth control have raised concerns that Siri is programmed to be "pro-life."
 
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