Many readers are now enjoying some of the quirkier responses coming from Siri, Apple's intelligent assistant built into the iPhone 4S. The Wall Street Journal spoke with one of the co-founders of the original Siri and how they approached instilling Siri with personality:
"There were many conversations within the team about whether it should be gender neutral" or "should have an 'attitude,' " said Mr. Winarsky, who didn't go to Apple, and still works at SRI. The result, before the software was bought by Apple, was "occasionally a light attitude," he said.
According to a different person who actually worked at Apple on the Siri project, Apple focused on keeping Siri's personality "friendly and humble -- but also with an edge". According to their source, they were thinking "How would we want a person to respond?" while developing the software.
The Siri group is said to be one of the largest software teams at Apple and the crafted responses are to try to forge an emotional tie to customers. MacRumors forum readers are posting their favorite responses in this discussion thread.
Siri launched as an exclusive feature for the iPhone 4S and allows users to speak questions and requests directly to their iPhone.
Friday November 6, 2026 3:27 pm PST by Juli Clover
When the iPhone Duo launched, we shared a list of some of the fun apps developers created for the new form factor. Two weeks out, developers are continuing to come up with fresh ideas, so we thought we'd share some of our favorites.
Games
Marbles Unhinged ($2.99) - Marbles Unhinged is a marble maze designed for the Duo. When you fold it, the floor turns into a ramp. If you stand the top...
Thursday November 5, 2026 12:59 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple is launching five new products on Friday, November 6, following pre-orders that opened last week, including its first touchscreen MacBook Pro models.
The following new products will be available from today:
iPad mini with OLED display and A20 Pro chip
iMac with M6 chip
14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 chip
14-inch MacBook Pro with OLED touchscreen
16-inch MacBook Pro with OLED...
Apple plans to merge the iPhone's Action button with the Camera Control starting next year, according to the leaker known as "Instant Digital."
In a new post on Weibo, the leaker claimed that a single press of the combined button would open the camera, while a long press would trigger the function assigned to the Action button. They explicitly clarified that the dedicated Action button would ...
I have been really impressed with Siri. Last night Siri blew me away when I said "Add oatmeal to my groceries note". I felt certain Siri wouldn't have any idea what I meant. A second later Siri says okay and pops up my already existing grocery list in notes and adds Oatmeal on a new line at the end of the list ... I was stunned.
Yes, but it's not what they use to contact the ship. That would be a communicator (TOS) or combadge (TNG). Tricorders are used to scan things.
Yeah, but tricorders don't have "airplane mode" either. It was a joke. If siri said "your communicator is in airplane mode" that would be way too generic a tech term and some people would actually get confused and think siri was actually telling them an error message. When you're making a joke for *extremely* broad audiences in a technical context then you have to make sure that your joke can't possibly be misinterpreted.
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