Siri voice assistant technology distinguishes iPhone 4S - Page 5

I'll take that bet! iPhone 4S will be the largest selling mobile device of all time... beating iP4 by noo less that 30%. That means ~ 27 Million/Quarter... possibly 30 mil.

No I'm not joking or high. What amazes me is how shortsighted people are. With the power of the new iP4S, Camera, Siri, iOS5, iCloud... there is just no other phone or system out there that can beat it... other than possibly iP4 or 3GS... save some functionality and speed... but other than that, the absolute best ecosystem money can buy and be a part of (period).

I think the counter argument would be that it would work in any situation where talking on the phone is a viable option. An ambulance driving by will usually interrupt a phone conversation, as will a loud car or bike, to which my response is to say to the person on the other end, "just a sec....okay, what were you saying?" Minor inconvenience. Windy days are the same...sometimes it's just not worth it to attempt a conversation when the wind is blowing hard. On the other hand...I've usually been able to complete those conversations once I get into a car. Point being: I think it will be "limited" by the same issues plaguing talking on the phone in general. When it's windy, I usually stall my conversations until I'm in a car or otherwise indoors. Passing cars...well, I'll just wait a few moments, as I would on a phone call. In a loud bar or restaurant...we'll see, but I'm not usually scheduling calender events or asking for directions in those situations. As with most technology, there are going to be one to five percent of situations where it just isn't feasible to use it, though I don't see these drawbacks as a failure of the technology itself. On the rare occasion it's too loud...well, I have trouble talking to my friend who is right next to me...failure of vocal chords and ears? I like your point, though I think your point is a great example of how extreme conditions will have to be for this NOT to work. Really interested to see where this technology will be in five years. Am pretty excited about it now, though, as most imagined instances of use (for me) would be under ideal conditions.

Here's what I think... Siri will be temporarily exclusive to the iPhone 4S while in beta. Then expanded to the iPhone 4 thereafter with an update.

Could technology be made to avoid this? (Honest question, I have no clue). My non-tech impulse is to think of something similar to what they are doing with their "streaming" music. If a song can be loaded into a temporary area and played from there...could that prevent an interruption? Maybe that's far too cumbersome to be worthwhile. Can't you play music in a mac from itunes while stuff is downloading and processing? Anyway...English major...I'll go back to my classic lit now.

Could it be that it needs a dual core processor and 1 GB of RAM? Like what's in the iPhone 4S but not in the iPhone 4.

Unfortunately, much of the negatives are much of what the same trolls crabbed about after the launch of virtually every product Apple introduces. How anybody can deem anything underwhelming without even seeing it in person is beyond me.

Sounds like much of the rhetoric that appeared after the iPad keynote.

As you, I am very happy with what I have seen today, but also feeling what the future is now so much closer with what Apple conceived back in 1987.* Come the seventh, my order is going in and a week later passing my iPhone 4 to my wife.

Except for controlling the phone (like sending text messages or initiating a call), the Siri app works perfectly well on the current iPhone 4. I just asked it "Do I need an umbrella," and it gave me the weather report.

My question is, when the 4S becomes available, is the current Siri app going to continue to function?

I can just imagine the blogs the day after Apple announce the iPhone 12 can transport you using quantum phase shifting from one place to another instantly.

Jim posts 2. "I want to be able to be facing the opposite way after I land. This is lame."

John posts 1. "I took a fly with me and we didn't change heads, this is crap".

Sammy posts 11. "Microsoft had this twenty years ago"

Kim posts 1. "This is a gimmick"

Applehater posts 100. "I just don' t see any use for this"

I've been enjoying Siri from the day it became available as an app on the iPhone and iPad too. I hope this incarnation that is built into the OS and can control other apps will be available on iPads and soon Lion! As you say it's only the phone integration those other devices don't need or perhaps that can have it by allowing the iPad or Mac to connect to your iPhone for you if it is close by! Multi tasking will reach a new level!

Thanks, I enjoyed that.

Looks like not. Isn't there a report that say Siri App is giving user notice that it will be returning home on the 15th?

It appears to only work on the 4S. Not sure I get that, since it appears to be a software only solution.

I know you are arguing on principle and I agree with you 100%, but Siri didn't work worth a crap anyway, so no loss. For example if by some chance you did find something you needed and decided to map it, although you could see it on the map you could not click on it for more info, phone, address, nothing - completely useless.

I have dabbled with voice apps since Apple released their first version on the Quadra 840. Voice apps are slowly getting better but still very limited usefulness as many others have commented here. How many times have you been frustrated by voice navigation on phone systems from the world's most sophisticated companies? They fail because they are just not capable of interacting with real people in the real world unless you follow the preprogrammed choices.

The new Siri is definitely not something worth early termination fees and probably not even worth the $200 dollars for the new hardware if you already have iPhone 4.

This. It's extremely unlikely there's a technical reason it wouldn't be able to run it, so I hope they end up releasing that feature on iPad 2. They do still want to sell plenty of iPad 2's, right?

I could understand not on the 3GS. But I find it quite a stretch to believe that Siri needs the second core of a dual core processor to function. The A4 chip is way better than 3GS processor. So why can't Siri run on the iPhone 4? Is anyone seriously going to suggest that Apple can't multi-task Siri properly on the A4?

I do think Siri is pretty awesome. I use Voice Actions on my Nexus One often enough. And I can fully see how this will become useful. Contextual voice commands is a big improvement. I do think it's a bit of a blade though for Apple to leave iPhone 4 owners out in the cold. But then again, if it wasn't for Siri, the 4S wouldn't be much of an update at all. Good thing they bought Siri last year.

Pardon the skepticism, but Siri gained little traction as a free app, with good but imperfect speech-to-text and content that was only as good as its web-based partners. Apple integrating it system-wide is neat, but hardly "promises to change how users interact with mobile devices" unless Apple has found a way to make voice dictation flawless. This historically has been the weak link, not integration or "intelligence". It worked well during a carefully scripted and rehearsed presentation, but real life usage will be the true test.

And since the majority of processing is cloud-based, requiring 4S hardware seems largely like an excuse to justify buying an otherwise underwhelming faster version of last year's phone. As a 4 owner, Siri and 4S seem like two solutions looking for a problem. It reminds me of voice control revolutionizing the iPod Shuffle for one generation until the buttons mysteriously reappeared...

http://9to5mac.com/2011/10/04/bbc-ge...nal-assistant/

Siri is pretty amazing in that it already understands English dialect as well as German and French out of the box. It's easy to be skeptical because what we've got today is nothing more than "Speech to Search" but Siri is much more sophisticated in it's understanding of speech and the ability to keep track of conversations and accept delegation.

I haven't read where Siri does a majority of it's processing yet. Would you have any substantive info on that? I haven't seen it yet.

Best place to learn about Siri is Tom Gruber's video on Vimeo. He neatly explains why Siri is extensible and more than just "Text to Speech" very eloquent guy.

http://tomgruber.org/writing/semtech09.htm

I'm certain it can run on the iPhone 4, and all previous iPhones, but this is Apple. They like to release a feature that works well, not one that technically works but is slow and degrades the user's experience. I have no idea if that is the reason or if it's the conspiracy theory that some have concocted, but I tend not to put my money on the insane, wild accusations right out the gate.

Ahh.... Yes!


Who can forget this lovely demo:

Microsoft Vista Speech Recognition Tested - Perl Scripting

My car's voice recognition can't even understand "Redial" half the time. If Siri can at least get that right, I'll be pleased.

Why do you think that JB will allow you to run Siri on an iP4?

Apple is completely capable of preventing any app from working on a non-supported configuration.

Even if you could make it run on an unsupported device... Siri would use the device hardware to determine only what you want to do -- then in many cases, Siri services are requested from Apple's servers in the cloud. I doubt, that Apple's servers would provide Siri services to an unsupported device.

Why should a phone (or any device) be limited to channeling speech between 2 (or more) people?

What if you are driving, jogging, rock climbing, handicapped... and the person you want to speak with is unavailable?

Wouldn't you want to be able to communicate with that person by sending a text, email, voice mail?

Wouldn't you want to be able to use the power of an intelligent system (hardware/software) to help you accomplish what you want to do?

How is that any different than a singer using a microphone or a firefighter using a bullhorn to amply their voice to help accomplish what they are trying to do?

Have a look at this... maybe it will expand your perspectives:

Introduction Video to Proloquo2Go

This is an example of people who cannot talk, using a device to help them communicate.

A similar need exists for those who can speak but not use their hands -- the late Christopher Reeve, (the actor who played Superman) for example:

Christopher Reeve talks about his wheelchair.

Back in the early days, we delivered an Apple-furnished Apple ][ to a 12-year-old boy who was a quadriplegic. He used a special mechanism that allowed him to press a key on the keyboard by blowing through a tube. What an experience to see the sense of accomplishment and pride. David could speak -- but there were no devices that could translate his voice into action.

A few years later there was this blind teenage girl who was able to program her Apple ][ using a special Braille tablet device. Voice interaction would have made her life so much easier....

You're judging the version in 4s based on what you saw on the other hardware. That's a perfect example of why Apple would want to shut down the old version.


From what people who have tested it hands on have reported, the voice dictation is pretty much flawless on the 4s - there have been multiple reports saying specifically that they went out of their way to try and trick it but couldn't. If the previous version was "imperfect" (and it has been reported that the devs said the original had to cut corners due to lack of processing power) but the update makes a big improvement on that, isn't that a pretty good case for Apple limiting it to the new hardware and disabling the old version?

But when it's released in a couple weeks we'll all be able to see how it really works instead of jumping to conclusions about something none of us have seen.

If that were the case then you wouldn't have posted this. Perhaps you mean you operate not on a higher, but a different level.

What I would love to see in 5 years time is for this to be fully integrated in all Apple devices. I could see a system where your iPad, AppleTV, etc. are all fully linked and voice activated/accessible. You could wake up in the morning and grab your phone off the nightstand and say "Turn on TV to Fox News, and bring up AppleInsider, calendar, weather and traffic on my computer." If X10 technology would keep up and be affordable you could also finish that off with, "Start the coffee".

For the gamers out there, how about something like, "Login to World of Warcraft as Bloviator".

The combination of Siri and iCloud seems to really lend itself to some truly amazing possibilities. This could also be a serious boon for the home automation industry as it can provide that ultimate interface to controlling the house. Being able to do things like change the thermostat, turn on the hot tub, turn on/off lighting all with natural voice commands is pretty awesome.

One cool thing I thought of yesterday was with the Find my Friends feature being able to do things like "When will my wife be home" if you know that she is on the way. Or where is "little Johnny" at now. Or remind husband to drop off dry cleaning on the way home. Of course, some of this could be used for less than honorable purposes, but...

I have seen speculation that the code for Siri is not going to even be compiled for the non a5 version of the os, so it is possible there will be no way to activate it. With a new processor tied into the Siri introduction it would be easy for them to prevent access on a iphone4.

They talked up some new feature in the A5 during the event and I suppose those features are already in the A5 for the iPad 2, but they did make it seem as though they were new to the iPhone 4S. I suppose looking at the other data on the A5 after the iFixit teardown or the Xray could be helpful, but I'm guessing the iPad 2 won't even get Siri.

If Apple ever planned to create a version of iOS for automobiles I think Siri is an ideal tech to make it a must have feature for an Internet-connected vehicle.

When the last iPhone was released, it had more ram then the iPad at the time. Do you have reason to doubt that this isn't the case again?

I haven't used the previous Siri app, but I'm wondering... to really enjoy the feature on the 4S, won't we need location services enabled all the time?

The battery life improvement might come in handy... or at the very least, a quicker way to toggle LS.

Will Siri toggle it automatically, or have that option?

Of course, I could just wait until Friday to find out...

Well, that didn't take long, did it? Record breaking pre-orders, by a huge margin. Thanks for playing.

I have seen the commercials for the new Siri assistant on the iPhone 4s. It looks interesting but guess I have to wait till next year when my iPhone4 contract is up. At least I can use Dragon Go! on my iPhone 4 and it works pretty well. Best part is that it is free.

Ipod was launched in a low key event and was dismissed by many, yet it led Apple into the new decade. Siri was launched in a low key event and dismissed by many and yet it will lead Apple in this decade. As significant as some think Siri is, it's actually far more significant than you think.

"pick up the reciever, i will make you a believer"