Use Siri for Directions in South Africa

Update:
It appears in iOS 7.0.6 that you can ask Siri for directions to any of your contacts(if you've added their address to them) or a specific address. Asking for directions to the closest restaurant still isn't supported.

Update:
As of iOS 7 , this work around sadly no longer works :'(

You all know by now, Siri for iOS (iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad) is a wonderful feature where we can ask her, or him, to do some things for us such as run timers, set reminders, cancel meetings, look for notes, remember who's your daddy, etc. Of course you can also ask her for directions to your friends' place, to a city, some landmark or any address in your contacts. And if you try, you'll probably get something like this:

A big fat NO in your face.
If Apple doesn't support your country with directions for Siri you get nothing.
Although you can manually get directions in Apple Maps and it works okayishly. In South Africa we do have Maps support, meaning we can look for places using Maps through Siri but it wont help you get there automatically, you'd have to do a few taps in the Maps app for that and you will be able to get Voice Guided Navigation which is officially supported by Apple in South Africa.

When looking at iOS Feature Availability you'll see under the Siri section that "Siri Directions" is only available to 14 countries, none of which is named South Africa, Siri just told us when we tried. In contrast Maps Directions is available to about 96 countries and Standard Maps is available to about 181 countries.

So people, we just can't have a mini electronic creature giving us our directions here in good ol' South Africa ...

unless you know how to fool said creature , which is surprisingly easy.

Here I've successfully gotten the darn thing to get me directions to Soweto, as an example of a local area. Why don't you go ahead and try do the same thing if you can, it's quite simple. It's very possible to look for business's listed and get directions to them or even local restaurants, or to your work(if for some reason you don't know how to get there) through Siri.

The trick is not to ask for directions but rather to get a result of the distance between two places.

Such as "What is the distance between 'here' and 'work' ?"

The Trick

And that's all there is to it, you can use this method for restaurants and business's

Directions to a nearby Spur and a specific company

So you ask for the distance between here and where you want to go, Siri will think about it for a bit and suddenly you will start being guided to your destination as Apple intended, indirectly. Go now and good luck playing around with Siri and Directions in South Africa unofficially!!

iPad Tethering on Vodacom

Update:
As of iOS 7 , Personal Hotspot has been enabled by default on MTN and Vodacom.
I can't say for sure if it on Cell C or Telkom Mobile , but it's probably also enabled.

There's been a fair struggle with Vodacom users relative to tethering their New iPad's.
It just doesn't seem to be there no matter how many times you try different settings or reboot the tablet. Why?

Personal Hotspot, the missing setting

The Truth About Tethering ... on Vodacom.

When the iPhone 4 was released in South Africa in 2010 it came with a feature called "Personal Hotspot" , previously on the iPhone 3G and 3GS it was known as "Tethering" where you could share your iPhone's data connection to your computer through a connected USB cable or through Bluetooth or both.
With the iPhone 4 though , you could share the data connection with WIFI as well and this works on Vodacom right now, there may be an issue for some users with the iPhone 4S but I'll come to that later. The iPad( ofcourse only the 3G/Cellular models ) has never had Tethering or Personal Hotspot until the release of the "New iPad", only the New iPad , not iPad 2.  For Tethering or Personal Hotspot to function at all, you first need the correct Access Point Name(APN) to be entered into some settings on the device.

In some countries there is a charge for using Tethering on a mobile device like an iPhone or iPad, lucky for us Vodacom and other ISP's in South Africa don't charge for it and I don't see why they should since using one data connection for multiple devices consumes more data resulting in the need for more data.

Using Vodacom that APN would be "iphone.vodacom.za" . However , this does not work for the New iPad. The reason it's not functioning is actually not a fault by Vodacom, Apple is restricting the iphone.vodacom.za APN and Vodacom needs Apple's blessing in order for their subscribers to use Personal Hotspot on the New iPad regardless if the feature works on the iPhone. Vodacom is currently in negotiations with Apple on a high level to bring Personal Hotspot  to the New iPad on Vodacom and from what I heard from it's going well , we should see the feature enabled on New iPads on Vodacom later on , they couldn't give me an ETA on when this will happen.

For some users the problem with Personal Hotspot on the New iPad is also effecting the iPhone 4S.
Confusing isn't but there you go , works on iPhone 4 but not 4S . I am not certain but this may be an iOS 5/6 difference for the iPhone 4S.

If you do want to use this feature on the New iPad, using 8ta or Cell C works quite fine, might need to reboot your device after editing the APN but it sure does work. I can't say if it works on MTN or Virgin Mobile but i'm guessing it does. The APN for 8ta and Cell C is "internet" , for Virgin Mobile it would be vdata, probably need to chop that Virgin Mobile SIM to fit.