When iOS 5 was launched with the iPhone 4S during the last quarter of 2012; one of the most notable and popular feature was Siri, the virtual digital assistant. Siri was extremely well-received but also spun some arguments as to why Apple only bundled the software on the iPhone 4S and not on older iOS devices. Step forward the jailbreak scene with a number of Siri GUI ports as well as the setting up of proxy servers that allowed older generation devices to connect to Siri.
Research In Motion's BlackBerry OS is clearly struggling to maintain relevance in the current consumer market, but with all three of the major mobile operating systems having taken steps to implement some description of voice-recognition functionality, it appears BlackBerry will also be joining the party, too.
After successfully getting the Galaxy Nexus banned in the USA for infringing upon a unified search patent (that is also known as Apple’s Siri patent), Apple has been sued in China for infringing upon a Siri-like voice assistant from a Chinese company. This could spell big trouble for Apple! Check out the details after the jump.
The evidence that Siri was overhyped considerably in order to persuade consumers to purchase a largely unchanged device continues to...
He may be one of Apple's co-founders alongside Steve Jobs, but Steve Wozniak has never been shy of telling it like it is. He's been known to speak his mind on plenty of Apple's product lines, and not always showing them in the best light.
When Siri was launched back in October along with iOS 5, many iDevice users - myself included - were a tad bemused that Apple had decided to make its exciting new voice assistant a feature exclusive to the then brand-new iPhone 4S. The Cupertino claims of older devices being unable to facilitate the eloquent (albeit often mishearing) voice-activated sidekick were questioned by many, but with the iPhone 4S frenzy having died down, we all expected March to bring a new iPad inclusive of Siri.
When the internet discovered last week that Apple's Siri provided a rather interesting response to the question "what is the best smartphone ever," much hilarity ensued. For those who were asleep for the entire week or somehow managed to miss all the fun, Siri responded to the question by entrusting Wolfram Alpha to do the donkey work. The result, rather unfortunately for Apple, was the Lumia 900 4G.
The build-up to WWDC always sees a plethora of rumors and conjecture, and the 2012 event is no different. As it is often the case, a new version of iOS is very much the hotly anticipated product this year, what may or may not find its way into the first beta being disputed across the internet.
The Apple iPhone 4S has been with us for about seven months now, which means that we have also had the fabulous Siri personal assistant organizing our digital lives for the same amount of time. For those non iPhone 4S owners the lack of official Siri support has been very frustrating, especially considering numerous developers have proved that Apple's assistant performs perfectly fine on older generation devices.
Samsung's announcement of the Galaxy S III today has come after weeks, nay, months of speculation about what the hardware will look like from top to bottom. What size screen will it use, how big will the body be, and what cameras will it pack? Now all those questions have been answered, we are left with something possibly even more interesting than all of that - the software.
