It’s been a pretty busy day here at Macworld HQ, what with iTunes Match launching and all, and yet, there’s still plenty more to chat about. iPhone 4S owners have one last chance to pick up AppleCare+; enterprising developers have tapped into Siri’s conversations with Apple’s servers; and those mind-controlled Siri commands? Probably all in your imagination. The remainders for Monday, November 14, 2011 are cloudy, try again later.
Reminder: today is the last day of the grace period on AppleCare+ for the iPhone 4S (9to5 Mac)
If you were one of the lucky folks who pre-ordered your iPhone 4S, today is the very last day you can pick up AppleCare+ for it, if you haven’t already. Those who pre-ordered the phone received a one-month grace period in which to buy the $99 service plan, which extends the device’s warranty to two years and covers two cases of “accidental damage” (i.e. you smashed your phone on the concrete) for an additional $49 each. So, if you’re planning on doing something stupid with your 4S, better do it today (and pick up AppleCare, while you’re at it).
Cracking Siri (Applidium)
Poor Siri’s code has been cracked: Those crafty folks at Applidium have figured out the connection protocol for Apple’s voice-recognition software and broadcast it on their blog, letting anyone (in theory) build an application utilizing it. Since Siri and the iPhone 4S have a rather clingy relationship, though, you’ll still need to spoof a 4S UDID to build anything. And pray that Apple doesn’t flip the software’s kill switch. (No, not the one that turns it off. The one that turns it into a devastating killing machine.)
‘Project Black Mirror’ Siri mind-control hack is likely a hoax (The Verge)
Well, even if Apple decides to turn Siri on us all, at least it won’t be able to access our minds. Nathan Ingraham over at The Verge did a little digging into last week’s mind-controlled Siri experiment and discovered (unsurprisingly) that it’s almost certainly fake. We won’t be 100 percent sure, of course, until we hook the founders of Project Black Mirror up to a mind-reading contraption.