Why Siri Ports are not ready for distribution

November 22, 2011 • iOS • by

To get right into it, right now piracy is still the main issue. Without a 4S jailbreak there is no way to obtain the necessary files without an actual iPhone 4S and a developer certificate. Distributing these copyrighted files would be illegal.

The second reason is that it really isn’t practical for every day use. The validation data required to authenticate with Apple’s server expires every 24 hours. So every 24 hours you need to have your friend help you get the refreshed data. Also, it’s not like your getting your “own” Siri. Your device and the device you go the data from cannot use Siri at the same time. If you do, you’ll both just get the spinning purple light around the microphone. And in my testing, Siri on my device randomly reverted to calling me by the name of the person whose data I’m using.

While a Siri port will not come from me or the other people who have gotten it working this past week, I am certain that we will see it from @chpwn and @stroughtonsmith most likely once the 4S jailbreak becomes public.

Siri Working on iPod touch

November 20, 2011 • iOS • by

Well, I’ve managed to get Siri working 100% on my iPod touch (and theoretically any other iOS device that supports iOS 5). I’m still working on a workaround for the validation key expiration issue. Even if I do figure that out, I probably won’t release it because it still requires piracy to distribute. The only way around that is an iPhone 4S jailbreak so you can get the vfdecrypt keys and dump the necessary Siri files yourself. Anyway, here’s a video showing it working on my iPod touch.

Siri Protocol Cracked

November 16, 2011 • iOS • by
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Just a few days ago mobile app development firm applidium managed to crack the Siri protocol. While this does not mean anything for Siri on older iOS devices, it’s still quite interesting. What they’ve done allows virtually any device to interact with Siri’s servers. Unfortunately, to accomplish this you’ll need some data from a real iPhone 4S. Applidium’s tutorial for doing this is not very in-depth, so I thought I’d post a slightly more in-depth guide to getting the necessary data from an iPhone 4S. This guide assumes that you’ll be running Mac OS X 10.7.2, but in theory any UNIX operating system should work with a few simple tweaks.

Addendum: 

I’ve decided that it would be for the best if I were to remove this tutorial. When I initially wrote this, it was meant to be used for fun and experimentation, not for porting Siri to a non-4S device. I am certain that in the future if a full port of Siri is released to the public, the methods shown in this tutorial will be irrelevant. A Siri port cannot be distributed using the authentication ID’s from one iPhone 4S (you can read more about this here). If a full Siri port is ever released, it will undoubtedly be because someone figured out how to generate valid authentication keys on a non-4S device. Until then, all we can do is wait.

Goodbye Steve

October 5, 2011 • Mac OS X • by

Steve,

You were a true visionary. Your products and ideals revolutionized the world that we live in. As a developer, I will do my best to uphold your standards of perfection in my own creations. You will be missed.

Evan

MenuWeather 4 Submitted

August 2, 2011 • Mac OS X • by

Well, after 3 long months of work, MenuWeather 4 has finally been submitted to the Mac App Store. A few things about the MenuWeather family are going to change once it is approved. First of all, MenuWeather’s price will be lowered to its new permanent price of $1.99. Secondly, MenuWeather Lite will be discontinued. It will remain on the App Store for a month or two (maybe even longer), but there will be no more updates to it and it will be unsupported. It is highly recommended that you purchase the full version if you’d like to continue using MenuWeather. More details will come in the future.

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