Monday, July 23, 2012

Best Siri Theme – Siri AudioBars








Tired of the boring old purple Siri mic? Well now you can absolutely pimp out your Siri with Siri AudioBars, a theme available from the BigBoss Repo for $1.50. This sweet theme makes your Siri mic look like it’s bumping the bass every time you talk to it. It has a very nice looking color scheme on top of being just as responsive as the original Siri mic.


Apple rolls out Movies in The Cloud to more than 30 new countries



Apple sure has been busy today. Hot on the heels of this morning’s iTunes Match expansion, it appears that the company has added movies to its iTunes in the Cloud feature for users in 30+ new countries.
Folks from the UK, Ireland, Brazil and other areas are reporting that they are now able to stream previously-purchased films to their iOS devices, using iCloud. Keep reading to see if your country made the list…
MacRumors has used its extensive readership to compile a list of all of the countries that are reportedly seeing the new feature:
  • UK
  • Canada
  • Australia
  • New Zealand
  • Ireland
  • Argentina
  • Bolivia
  • Brazil
  • Chile
  • Costa Rica
  • Dominican Republic
  • Ecuador
  • El Salvador
  • Guatemala
  • Honduras
  • Mexico
  • Nicaragua
  • Panama
  • Paraguay
  • Peru
  • Venezuela
  • Hong Kong
  • Singapore
  • Taiwan
  • Brunei
  • Cambodia
  • Laos
  • Macau
  • Malaysia
  • Philippines
  • Thailand
  • Sri Lanka
  • Vietnam
Movies for iTunes in the Cloud works just like apps and music do. Essentially, any movies you’ve previously purchased through iTunes (although it looks like there are some exceptions) should be re-downloadable on your iPhone, iPad or Apple TV.
So if you live in one of the aforementioned areas, and have purchased movies in iTunes before, try re-downloading them. And be sure to let us know if it’s working for you down in the comments.

Carriers reportedly testing Nano SIM cards in partnership with Apple



We told you earlier in the week that European wireless carriers were stockpiling Nano SIM cards in the hope that the next iPhone will incorporate the newly ratified technology which enables thinner devices due to a 40 percent smaller footprint versus the Micro SIM standard.
As you know, Apple’s Nano SIM proposal was chosen last month by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute as the industry standard, following weeks of bickering between Apple on one side and Nokia, Motorola and Research In Motion on the other.
A new report from this morning has it that Apple is supplying its carrier partners with Nano SIM adapters so they could test Nano SIMs on existing devices before the next iPhone arrives in October…
Boy Genius Report editor Jonathan Geller has the story:
Multiple carrier sources have exclusively told BGR that Apple is supplying nano SIM adapters so its carrier partners can test how nano SIMs work on their networks in standard test devices before they are widely deployed when the new iPhone is introduced.
This includes AT&T.
Geller also confirmed in a separate story that the next iPhone will feature NFC, 4G LTE and a new application processor with 1GB of RAM.
BGR has a mixed track record with Apple rumors (remember this and this?), but pundits have sure been keeping their fingers crossed for Apple adopting Nano SIM with the iPhone 5.
However, neither an alleged iPhone 5 schematics nor the video of a purported backplate have conclusively proved that the phone will sport the smaller SIM card.

From left to right: Nano SIM, Micro SIM and regular SIM. Image: Giesecke & Devrient
Another thing to consider: the regular Micro SIM standard took a whopping five years since ratification to appear in the iPhone 4. SIM card maker Giesecke & Devrient thinks Nano SIM won’t be held back by bureaucracy, noting recently that “adoption is being driven by a supplier” in an obvious nod at Apple.
The company also thinks “we’ll see a product very soon after ratification”, giving hope that the smaller SIM will after all debut on the next iPhone.
If this pans out, Apple’s iPhone will be the first consumer device to adopt the Nano SIM standard, just as the iPhone 4 popularized the Micro SIM card.
What do you think, will the next iPhone will feature Micro SIM or Nano SIM?

Homescreen.me lets you share your iOS device setup with the world



The stock Home screen in iOS looks pretty boring. Luckily, jailbreaking can change that. It opens the door to a whole world of customization, including tweaks, icon packages and tons of other theming possibilities.
And if you like customizing your device, and want to share your iPad or iPhone setup with the world, there’s a new service that lets you do that. Homescreen.me finally came out of private beta this week…
Homescreen.me is a simple service that allows you to show off screenshots of your iOS Home screens. It’s been around for about two years now, but only just became available to the public.
The service is free, and enables you to upload one screenshot for both your iPhone and iPad. There’s also a spot on your landing page to explain your setups — what tweaks, themes you’re using — and there’s a nice Explore feature that allows you to browse through other people’s devices.
That’s pretty much it for Homescreen.me, there’s not much to it. And while the simplicity is nice from a design standpoint, it’s clearly missing some features. Social network integration, for example, would be a handy addition.
Nevertheless, it’s a cool idea. And we encourage you to setup an account. In fact, feel free send us links to your Homescreen.me profiles on Twitter. We’ll retweet the best ones.
Have you setup your Homescreen.me profile yet?

The top 10 Siri jailbreak tweaks



Now the the iPhone 4S untethered jailbreak has had some time to marinate, there’s a nice helping of jailbreak tweaks available that are designed specifically with Siri in mind.
In fact, there are now enough that we can create a legitimate top 10 list covering some of the best Siri jailbreak tweaks to date.
If you have a jailbroken iPhone 4S (or an older device running Spire) then you don’t want to miss this…

Neurocube Siri




Neurocube Siri is theme that changes up the entire look of the Siri interface into something futuristic. It’s not as pretty as Neurotech Siri, we’ll talk about that a bit later, but it’s not too hard on the eyes.
Price: $1.00
Repo: ModMyi
Read more about Neurocube Siri.

Lingual

 

 

 


Lingual is not so much a standalone tweak as it is a plugin for AssistantExtensions — a tweak that we’ll talk about a bit later. Lingual allows you to translate words and phrases into a variety of languages using nothing but Siri. From what we can tell it works fairly accurately. As long as Siri can understand what you’re saying, it can translate it.
Price: Free
Repo: BigBoss
Read more about Lingual.

SiriToggles

 

 

 


As its name states, SiriToggles is a tweak that allows you to use SBSettings-like toggles using only your voice. It was one of the very first Siri tweaks shown, and really showed the potential of Siri in a jailbroken environment.
Price: Free
Repo: BigBoss
Read more about SiriToggles.

Hands Free Control

 

 

 


Hands Free Control has been around for a while, in fact, it’s been around longer than the iPhone 4S jailbreak. For that reason, at a time it was regulated to interacting with Siri’s precursor, the dreaded Voice Control. Because of the lack of true Siri interaction, it wasn’t as popular as it initially should have been. Now that the iPhone 4S jailbreak is a reality, it’s been resurrected with new updates and a brand new bunch of fans.
Hands Free Control lets you invoke Siri without so much as looking at the Home button. All you have to do is speak a custom keyword, and Siri will respond to your requests. It works quite well in most circumstances, and it includes many features for getting the most out of your hands free experience.
Price: $2.99
Repo: BigBoss
Read more about Hands Free Control.

Sara

 

 

 


Sara is the Siri alternative for those who can’t get siri on their device for whatever reason. From my experience, it works well, though it’s definitely not better than what a real Siri experience offers. That being said, it’s the next best thing. There’s also optional Sara Dictation support available.
Price: Free
Repo: http://isoftjsc.com
Read more about Sara.

Neurotech Siri

 

 

 

 

 


Like Neurocube Siri, which we discussed above, Neurotech Siri is an animated Siri theme for jailbroken Siri enabled devices.
This is the best looking Siri theme thus far; the attention to detail here is just ridiculous. It features almost 300 frames of animation; seeing it on video really doesn’t do its beauty justice.
Price: $1.00
Repo: ModMyi
Read more about Neurotech Siri.

AssistantExtensions

 

 

 

 


This is when I first realized how much better Siri was in a jailbroken environment. Of all of the Siri tweaks that we have covered, AssistantExtensions is the most promising and features the most room for growth.
AssistantExtensions has the ability to accept add-ons, like YouTube searching by voice and Lingual translation which we covered above. Unfortunately, not as many add-ons have been developed at this point like we imagined they would. We thought we’d see an explosion of custom add-ons that allowed you to do things such as searching Spotify using Siri. Perhaps those add-ons are taking longer to develop than we initially had hoped.
Yet, if developers can start churning out add-ons for AssistantExtensions it will remain one of the top Siri jailbreak tweaks in existence.
Price: Free
Repo: BigBoss
Read more about AssistantExtensions.

AssistantConnect/AssistantConnect 4S

 

 

 

 


This is the first tweak of its kind that allows you to easily send iPhone 4S keys to an iPhone 4 or older device for use with Spire. It’s the simplest way to get Siri running on your non-iPhone 4S device, and it doesn’t require a proxy or any difficult setup. Best of all, it’s completely free. All you need is a generous friend with an iPhone 4S that’s willing to send you his or her keys from their device. AssistantConnect takes all of the leg work out of doing what was previously a strenuous task.
Price: Free
Repo: BigBoss
Read more about AssistantConnect/AssistantConnect 4S.

MyAssistant

 

 

 

 


As far as pure features go, no Siri tweak is more feature packed than MyAssistant. With MyAssistant you can toggle system functions like SiriToggles, perform custom commands, open apps, integrate with Activator Actions, create custom conversations, and even change the Siri background. It’s by far the most robust Siri jailbreak tweak in existence.
Price: $0.99
Repo: BigBoss
Read more about MyAssistant.

Spire

 

 

 

 


Spire is the reason why Siri can legally exist on older iPhone 4S devices. AssistantConnect uses it, and so does virtually every other Siri server.
Simply put, without Spire there would be no legal method for having Siri running on your non-4S device. And it’s free. Need I say more?
Price: Free
Repo: BigBoss
Read more about Spire.
What do you think about our list? Do you agree that these are among the best Siri tweaks in existence, or did we include a tweak, or leave off a tweak when we shouldn’t have? We want to hear your opinion, so let us know what you think in the comments below.