A friend of mine jailbroke his iPhone 4 for the first time yesterday. Being the curious person he is, he started watching YouTube videos about jailbreak tweaks to see what he wanted to install. Not surprisingly, he came across a video detailing a Siri port. He asked me if it would work, and having heard plenty of horror stories about instability and security issues, I advised him to steer clear of any Siri ports. Instead, I started looking for Siri alternatives for him and came across NowNow. NowNow is a very simple jailbreak tweak that lets you assign an Activator function to invoke Google Now, Google’s answer to Siri.
Granted, you aren’t going to get the same sort of personal interaction with Google Now that you get with Siri, but I have found that it is better at detecting what you are saying and it works great if you need a quick answer to a question, directions, unit conversion, sports scores, etc. Upon initial launch, it will take a second or two before it comes up, but if you leave it running in the background, it will come up pretty quickly.
NowNow is a free jailbreak tweak available in the default repos. You must firs have the Google Search app installed through the App Store. After installing the app and tweak, there will be a NowNow section in your Settings app, simply go there and choose an activation method and give it a go!
How do you think Google Now compares to Siri? Let us know below!
