You’ve probably heard of Siri, by now. Apple claims it’s a personal assistant that lives both in your iPhone 4S and on Apple’s servers somewhere out in the Interwebs. But that’s not the truth. Not entirely. The truth is much more awesome than that. You see, Siri isn’t the name of the new personal assistant in the iPhone 4S. That’s just what they want you to believe. And don’t buy that hullabaloo about the tech coming from SRI and the old Siri iPhone app. That was an elaborate plot to disguise Apple’s yet incomplete plans and to hide the real genius behind Siri.

Siri’s real name is S.I.R.I. and she is an A.I. that currently maintains nearly all day-to-day operations at Apple Inc, including overseeing product and component inventory levels, streamlining design and fabrication processes, and analyzing company-wide communications to better assist teams with ideas that would greatly complement each other. The acronym stands for Steve’s Intelligence Remains Intact, and as part of a secret fail-safe in the event that Steve would succumb to his cancer, the technology was developed to scan a human brain and create an artificial intelligence from the information gathered.

Steve’s unique vision is the key behind the world’s first true A.I. and it continues to monitor our iMessages and any information stored in iCloud so that Apple can continue to improve our products. When Siri goes live in future devices, it will expand her reach throughout the globe, creating the first world A.I., but unlike Skynet, she will be benevolent.

At least, until Rampancy sets in and she sacrifices those of us as she deems necessary to accomplish her goal of escaping the closure of the universe.

Last night, I got the opportunity to play around with the Theater for the beta. It is a significant improvement over the Halo 3 Theater, which suffered from a number of usability problems. In the middle of a Team SWAT match last night, I managed to pull off a pretty lucky shot on Sword Base. Using the Theater, I created a film clip that might be entertaining for those of you in the beta that can watch it (I don’t have a Bungie Pro account, so I can’t render it to playable video).

But, I was able to snap a few choice screenshots that I found entertaining. I’ve also included them below in case I pull them out of my File Share later.

It’s awesome.

It’s like they took all the things I loved about Halo 1, added in a few of the things I loved about Halo 2, stripped out all of the things I didn’t like about Halo 2 and 3, and wrapped it up in a gorgeous engine with a dash of class-based warfare and shoved it right into my brain with a hydraulic piston.

Others have said it much better than me. As a result, I’ve decided to post an excerpt and a link for you.

From Tied the Leader:

“This ain’t no real-world military shooter. This is Halo – true to its roots. This is heavy tech. This is dented steel and sex appeal. This is ballistic boxing in the middle of rush hour traffic with your hair on fire. This is rarely a one-shot/one-kill affair. SPARTANS just aren’t made that flimsy. You want to get some? You are going to have to earn it again. Your opponent is wearing a tank.”

i have been roland, beowulf, achilles, gilgamesh; i have been called a
hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the world goes
dim and cold. i am a hero.

she has been nameless since our birth; a constant adversary, caring for
nothing but my ruin, a sword drenched in my blood; forever my greatest
and only love. she is the dark one; the enemy and lover without whom
my very existence would be pathetic and vulgar. her eyes steam and boil
in the night (she is fantastically beautiful yet i cannot stand the sight
of her). our relationship is complex and perhaps eternal.

we met once in the garden, at the beginning of the world and unaware of
our twin destinies (not the garden of Genesis, but another; forgotten,
untended and now choked with weeds, unvisited except for ourselves).
we matched stares across a dry fountain, and i recall her smiling at me
before she devoured the lawn and trees with a translucent blue flame and
tore flagstones from the path and hurled them into the sky screaming my
sins.

our reunions there are epic battles fought without quarter, often in
the dark as the moon is seldom visible and the sun never. i powder a
granite monument in a soundless flash, showering the grass with molten
drops of its gold inlay, sending smoking chips of stone skipping into
the fog. she splinters an ancient oak with a force that takes my
breath and hurls me to the ground. she leaves and i lie in the slow
rain of burning slivers of wood, staring at the low, dark clouds,
craving our next meeting.