Siri

With rumors ramping up of a Siri-controlled Apple television coming from Apple, Todd Treece was able to beat them to the punch and get Siri to fully control his television set using an Arduino IR remote setup and SiriProxy.

We've seen Siri do amazing things like start your car and control your home thermostat using SiriProxy as well, but this setup actually shows the power of having Siri used as a remote control for your TV.

Why was Siri, the iPhone 4S intelligent assistant, launched as a beta, something very unusual for Apple? Benoit Maison published a blog post which might just explain the reason.

Apple has posted a couple of job postings for iOS software engineers, and they describe work needed on UI elements for Siri, along with additional language support and a new API that could indicate Apple may be opening up the feature to 3rd party app developers.

This is a broad-ranging task - we take every application that Siri interacts with, distill it down to fundamentals, and implement that application's UI in a theme fitting with Siri. Consider it an entire miniature OS within the OS, and you get a good idea of the scope!

A new jailbreak mod by the name of H1Siri claims to allow a fully working port of Siri on the iPhone 4, but this one comes with a number of questionable aspects.

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Rene, Georgia, and Seth talk iOS 5.1, Siri hacking, iPhone 5 rumors, Infinity Blade II and iTether, and pick our favorite accessories and apps for 2011, gift guide style! This is iPhone Live!

Rene's picks

• mophie juice pack plus for iPhone
• Air Video for iPhone, iPad
• Apple TV

Georgia's picks

• Case-Mate Monsta Case
• SeigeCraft for iPhone or iPad
• AppSpeed iOS Controlled Truck

Seth's picks

• DODOCase BOOKBack for iPhone
• 1Password Pro for iPhone and iPad
• IRIS 9000 voice control module for iPhone & Siri

"It's got all the convenience of talking to a woman without paying that annoying $2.99/minute."

Nice.

Source: Colbert Nation

ChangeWave has come out with a new survey polling customer satisfaction among new iPhone 4S owners, showing an overwhelming 96% satisfaction rating and propelling the iPhone 4S into "nosebleed territory".

Overall satisfaction with the iPhone 4S showed 77% of users being Very Satisfied and 19% being Somewhat Satisfied, compared to 72% and 21% respectively for the iPhone 4 that launched in 2010.

TUAW's Chris Rawson did the inconceivable -- actually looking into claims that Apple's virtual assistant, Siri might have been programmed with a "pro-life bias" before posting them. And surprise, surprise, he found them to not even be worth the link-bait pixels they were posted with.

Rather than just throwing up a quick "#BREAKSCLUSIVE: Cluzee brings Siri to Android!" post, Android Central's Phil Nickinson actually took the time to test it out, and while it shows potential, it turns out it doesn't yet show anywhere near Siri's polish on the iPhone 4S.

• It's not quick to launch
• It's crash prone
• It's still struggling to parse voice
• It's not quick to respond

Apple's had more than their share of downtime even in Siri's current, carefully caveated "beta" state, but inarguably they've gotten the basics right.