Siri Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Siri's upcoming Japanese language abilities leaked - by Siri

by Chris Rawson (Feb 14th, 2012)

We learned not too long ago that Siri is on schedule to speak a few more languages soon, specifically Mandarin Chinese, Russian, and Japanese. Siri herself (itself?) has confirmed that at minimum Japanese support is coming soon, according to 9to5 Mac. I personally verified that asking Siri "What ...

Apps for Valentine's Day

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Feb 13th, 2012)

Image: Shutterstock Today's smartphones are, by their nature, quite versatile. It's impossible to guide every lover on Valentine's Day to the app for their particular needs, because despite the requisite "flowers, chocolate, *something*" expectations, we all do it differently. I tried to round up ...

Two new iPhone 4S ads highlight everyday Siri usage

by Chris Rawson (Feb 10th, 2012)

Apple has released two new iPhone 4S ads on its YouTube channel, "Rock God" and "Road Trip." If they haven't already started airing, they should be popping up as TV commercials soon. "Rock God" follows the adventures of a teenager who uses Siri to find a guitar, learn how to play chords (very cool ...

Siri may speak and understand Chinese, Japanese, and Russian by March

by Chris Rawson (Feb 8th, 2012)

According to Chinese tech site DoNews (sketchy English translation here), Apple plans on bringing support for Mandarin Chinese to Siri as early as March of this year. Other dialects of Chinese, such as Cantonese, will remain unsupported for the time being. Support for Japanese and Russian is ...

A second look (and listen) to Evi voice recognition for iPhone

by Mel Martin (Feb 7th, 2012)

Evi is the sort-of Siri clone. The $0.99 iPhone app is aimed mainly at people who don't have an iPhone 4S and want a Siri-like voice control experience. When I tried Evi some weeks ago it was a complete disaster. In a week of testing I could not connect once because of server issues. The developers ...

Daily Update for February 7, 2012

by Steven Sande (Feb 7th, 2012)

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires ...

Stephen Wolfram on Siri

by Erica Sadun (Feb 7th, 2012)

In a Monday afternoon briefing, Stephen Wolfram spoke about the direction of Siri and Wolfram Alpha integration. He explained that over time, the range of queries that users can ask Siri that are served by Wolfram Alpha continues to get broader. This is apparently a natural byproduct of using a ...

Siri may be iPhone 4S-only because of noise reduction tech

by Chris Rawson (Feb 6th, 2012)

Siri has been in widespread use for four months, but so far Apple's "personal assistant" is still only available on one device, the iPhone 4S. We speculated that there weren't any technical reasons Siri couldn't work on some of Apple's other devices, and the jailbreak community later proved us ...

Dear Aunt TUAW: Why does Siri read smilies as colons?

by Erica Sadun (Feb 6th, 2012)

Dear Aunt TUAW, I love Siri. I'm surprised at how much I actually use it beyond the gimmicky stuff. Texting while driving (through my car's Uconnect system) is so handy. One thing I've noticed is that when I dictate a message, add a smiley face and have her read it back to me, she says, "Have a ...

New Flaming Lips song features Siri on vocals

by Chris Rawson (Jan 30th, 2012)

Siri has been getting around lately. When she's not guest starring on popular sitcoms, she's apparently lending her vocal talents to the music scene. The Flaming Lips have produced an experimental song (embedded below) called "Now I Understand," which features both Siri and Erykah Badu as ...

Siri guest stars on CBS's Big Bang Theory

by Chris Rawson (Jan 30th, 2012)

The most recent episode of CBS's sitcom The Big Bang Theory rather prominently features Siri in its "B" storyline. Astrophysicist Raj, one of the show's main characters, buys an iPhone 4S and spends most of the episode interacting with the voice-activated "personal assistant." As is typical for the ...

Siri VC Morgenthaler weighs in on iPhone 4S bandwidth badmouthing (Updated)

by Michael Rose (Jan 30th, 2012)

Back in early January, wireless optimization firm Arieso released a report on the bandwidth usage profiles of various smartphones and other devices. It noted a surge in download and upload usage for the iPhone 4S, moving the new phone ahead of the iPhone 4 and various Android devices to take over ...

Siri probably isn't the bandwidth hog the WaPo warned you about

by Mel Martin (Jan 27th, 2012)

Update: Former Siri director responds to the Washington Post story. Reuters was the original source of the error around Siri bandwidth usage. "How Siri is ruining your cellphone service." That's the searing headline from the Washington Post in an article by Paul Farhi. Farhi claims that "Siri's ...

Lingual adds Siri language translation to jailbroken iPhones

by Kelly Hodgkins (Jan 26th, 2012)

Now that we can jailbreak the iPhone 4S, jailbreak developers can finally use Siri in their tweaks. One such tweak is Lingual which adds language translation to our favorite voice assistant. The tweak, available from the Big Boss repository in Cydia, lets you say "Siri, What is how are you in ...

Siri clone Evi is off to a very bad start

by Mel Martin (Jan 24th, 2012)

Siri has been a big hit for Apple, but as we all know, it runs only on an iPhone 4S. I've been expecting some Siri knock-offs to appear, and now one has that can be used on any iPhone and even the iPad if you don't mind not seeing it full screen. The app is called Evi by True Knowledge. It's ...