Apple Looking to Hire Writers to Enhance Siri's Witty Personality [iOS Blog]

MIT Technology Review has dug up a job ad posted by Apple on LinkedIn appealing to writers to help make Siri more conversational.

"[S]omeone who combines a love for language, wordplay, and conversation with demonstrated experience in bringing creative content to life within an intense technical environment."

The ad notes that writers who apply will also need "experience in writing character-driven dialog", a good vocabulary and, ideally, knowledge of more than one language. The goal of the hirings would be to "evolve and enrich Siri."

Siri has been known for her wit and personality, with Apple attempting to allow Siri to build emotional ties with users.

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.

After scaling back Siri's original feature set for its initial launch through Apple, the company has been working to expand compatibility to new devices such as the iPad as well as new languages. Apple has also improved Siri in iOS 6 with new movie, sports and restaurant features, and is set to introduce movie ticket purchases through Fandango with the upcoming iOS 6.1.

Change Screen Brightness & Stop the Display Auto-Adjusting on iPhone

The iPhone and iPod touch displays have precise brightness controls, and thanks to a light sensor, they're smart enough to automatically adjust brightness depending on environmental lighting conditions. But it's not always perfect especially if you use it at night, and if you're in frequently changing lighting conditions that behavior can reduce battery life. To put an end to those auto-adjustments and to change the brightness level yourself, you can head to the iOS Settings app:

• Open Settings and tap on "Brightness & Wallpaper"
• Adjust the brightness slider for immediate response
• Flip "Auto-Brightness" to OFF to have the screen stop automatically adjusting brightness

Combining the adjustment with Auto-Brightness OFF means the screen will stay at the exact level that has been set by the slider, it won't change depending on exterior lighting conditions. Similarly, setting the brightness level with the slider and keeping auto enabled makes it function as an upper limit, whereas the screen will not go brighter than what is indicated.

The screen can be extremely bright which makes it possible to easily read in direct sunlight, but for most uses and for a longer battery life you'll find a setting as low as 1/3 or 1/4 is more than adequate for indoor and outdoor situations.,

This is actually a fairly decent way to keep battery life consistent, since maintaining a tolerably lower brightness level can have a significant impact on battery life of the iphone and just about all other mobile devices, and preventing the really bright upward swings will draw less power. You may want to adjust the auto-locking feature as well, which can also dim the screen and turn it off after a specified period of time of inactivity.

iPad and iPhone owners know that adjusting the screen brightness is not a universal process across iOS devices, and on iPad the brightness level is always accessible in the task bar. Why that feature isn't the same on an iPhone or iPod touch as well is a bit of a mystery, but future versions of iOS may correct that.

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Easily Check the Battery Level of Bluetooth Devices Connected to a Mac

Most Bluetooth accessories don't have battery indicators located on the device itself, and that includes the Apple Wireless Keyboard, Magic Mouse, and Magic Trackpad. Rather than waiting for the devices connection to weaken, stop registering movements, clicks, or certain behavior, you can periodically check the battery level of most devices connected to a Mac by looking in OS X.

Checking Device Battery Levels with the Bluetooth Menu

This is by far the easiest method, but you will need to have the Bluetooth menu enabled to be able to do it.

• Pull down the Bluetooth menu bar, locate the accessory under the "Devices" list and open it's submenu to see the battery level

If you don't have the Bluetooth menu visible, you need to enable it through checking the box at System Preferences > Bluetooth > "Show Bluetooth status in the menu bar".

All connected accessories will show a Battery Level here as a percentage, though it won't provide a time estimate like the standard battery indicator for portable Macs would.

Seeing Device Battery Levels with System Preferences

The battery level of connected Bluetooth devices can also be checked in System Preferences, but there's a catch: most devices are going to be found in different places. For example, you'll have to look at "Keyboard" panel to see a Bluetooth keyboards battery level:

And then if you wanted to find another devices, like a trackpad, you'd need to visit the Trackpad system preference panel. If you use multiple Bluetooth devices this isn't preferable, and you'll be better off enabling the Bluetooth menu bar item and using that to check things instead.

Most Bluetooth devices are very power efficient and don't have many demands, though things like headsets will drain faster than a keyboard. Regardless, it's a good idea to have a set of good rechargeable batteries handy that work with whatever accessories you use frequently, because it's never fun to have a device run out on you, and very low battery life can also be a reason why Bluetooth connection strength suffers. If you're trying to figure out if that is an issue, check the battery life and monitor the signal to see if it improves with new batteries in place, oftentimes it will.

Thanks to Tim for the question and tip idea.