Siri

Information from Wikipedia is used in a variety of places throughout the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and it powers a lot of the data that is fed through the Siri virtual assistant. Currently, there is no financial relationship in place between Wikipedia and Apple for this information, but that could soon change.

As Jeff Benjamin noted in 9to5Mac’s video coverage, iOS 14.5 will use Siri intelligence to select music services based on listening behaviors. While the feature falls short of actually allowing you to set a default music service, it will open Siri to easier music control for more services without having to specify which service to use. Apple has now described in more detail how it intends the new behavior to work.

One of the new features introduced with the iOS 14.5 beta was the ability to change the default music player used for Siri commands, similar to what’s already available to HomePod users. For some unknown reason, this option was removed from iOS 14.5 beta 2, but Apple has re-enabled it with today’s release of iOS 14.5 beta 3.

Apple is investigating ways to enhance its Siri voice assistant for users with atypical speech patterns, the company confirms to the Wall Street Journal. According to the report, Apple is leveraging its podcast library for speech samples that could train Siri to adapt to users who speak with a stutter.

Apple has finally offered the ability to set Spotify as your default music player for Siri commands. This was previously only available on HomePods, and was a feature we asked for back in 2019.

The new behavior appears in the beta of iOS 14.5. The first time you ask Siri to play something, it lists all the streaming services you have installed on your device and ask you which of them you want to use. Once you have done so, Siri then defaults to that service for subsequent requests …

Apple claims it has enhanced Siri with 20 times more facts for answers in general with iOS 14, and now the company’s virtual assistant is about to learn a few more tricks. You’ll soon be able to ask Siri to play sounds of animals, vehicles, instruments, and more.

Roku has poached a senior Siri manager from Apple, as first reported by Bloomberg. Brian Pinkerton joined Roku this month as the company’s senior vice president of advanced development after spending nearly three years as a Siri chief architect at Apple.

Speculation about plans for an Apple search engine to compete with Google has been around for many years now, ever since the company was first seen to be using its own web crawler back in 2014. Apple confirmed the existence of the Applebot crawler in 2015.

A report in the Financial Times claims that Apple is now ‘stepping up’ efforts to create its own search engine as its lucrative deal with Google comes under threat …

One of the big improvements in iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 is that Siri no longer takes over the whole screen. However, in the early betas you couldn’t interact with Siri and apps at the same time – doing anything with an app, even scrolling, would dismiss Siri.

A Redditor noticed that this is no longer the case on the iPad as of iPadOS 14 beta 5 …

Apple takes great pride in its Accessibility features, promotes them heavily, and has won awards for them. For someone living with a disability, the right technology can literally be life-changing. Apple’s technology helps many people live a more independent life.

There is, though, still room for improvement. To better understand the differences Apple technology makes, and the gaps that still exist, I interviewed Colin Hughes, a 55-year-old Brit who has severe muscular dystrophy – a muscle-wasting disease which leaves him effectively quadriplegic, unable to use either arms or legs …

A Chinese company that has accused Apple of patent infringement wants to ban Siri in China until the case is finally decided. It is asking the court for an injunction of the sale of all products which include Siri – which is almost everything Apple makes.

The application follows an earlier court victory in which Xiao-i (whose full name is Shanghai Zhizhen Network Technology Co) was awarded a Chinese patent for a virtual intelligent assistant …

EU competition regulators are in the early stages of investigating voice assistants including Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, according to a new report from Reuters. This comes as Apple faces a probe into App Store In-App Purchase rules and Apple Pay in Europe, as well.

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A head-to-head test of voice dictation on iPhone and Pixel shows that the Google smartphone is significantly faster than Siri at transcribing the speech into text.

The Pixel kept up with fairly rapid speech, while the iPhone lagged notably behind, as seen in the video below…

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The Siri grading whistleblower who revealed that private conversations were overheard by contractors working on improving Apple’s intelligent assistant has today revealed his identity.

He has done so in a letter to the European Union, calling for Apple to face the consequences of its privacy failure …

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Earlier this year, I was given an advanced look at beta firmware with the Neato D7. Inside this beta firmware was support for Siri Shortcuts. You might be asking yourself: why do I need a vacuum cleaner with Siri support? Since I’ve never used this robot without Siri support, I’ll explain some of the ways I am using it.
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Apple has updated Siri to provide new responses to questions about COVID-19. As first reported by CNBC, the virtual assistant now includes answers from the CDC and other sources when asked about the virus.

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