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.
Wednesday September 2, 2026 12:35 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple has added a new "iPhone Handoff" feature to iOS 27 that will allow you to switch between two iPhones while using the same phone number on each device.
This functionality was briefly mentioned during the WWDC 2026 keynote in June, on a slide that listed hundreds of new features coming in iOS 27 and corresponding software updates, but Apple never shared any further details at the time.
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Bloomberg's Mark Gurman today further outlined what to expect from the Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 set to be unveiled on September 9.
While it was initially rumored that Touch ID may be coming to the Apple Watch this year, Gurman reiterated that he does not expect the Series 12 or Ultra 4 to have any major design changes compared to the current Series 11 and Ultra 3 models.
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Wednesday September 2, 2026 6:31 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple's former hardware engineering chief John Ternus became its CEO on Tuesday, and the company made a controversial decision on his very first day in charge.
As of Tuesday, Apple Maps users in the U.S. see the name "Lake America" instead of Lake Ontario for the Great Lake that straddles the New York—Ontario border.
Apple made this change after the U.S. Geographic Names Information...
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.
