Apple confirms no current plans to bring Siri to older devices
Apple's engineering unit has reportedly confirmed that the company currently has "no plans" to support its Siri personal assistant feature on older devices, according to a person familiar with the matter.
AppleInsider obtained on Tuesday an email, allegedly from Apple in response to a bug report, with the company stating its plans to keep Siri and iPhone 4S exclusive for the time being.
"Engineering has provided the following feedback regarding this issue: Siri only works with iPhone 4S and we currently have no plans to support older devices," the email read.
Apple unveiled Siri last month at its iPhone 4S event. The voice recognition personal assistant is based off technology the company acquired in 2010. The feature quickly made waves because of its advanced natural language processing abilities.
But, the service is currently in beta, a fact that users were reminded of last week when it experienced widespread outages.
Some analysts view Siri as the main selling point of Apple's latest handset and unlikely to come to older devices during the first few months of iPhone 4S sales.
Undeterred by Apple's refusal to officially support Siri on other devices, jailbreak hackers have taken the matter into their own hands. Last week, they succeeded in porting a working version of Siri onto an iPhone 4 and a fourth-generation iPod touch.
Siri has even been viewed as threat to Google because it may circumvent traditional search engine queries, thereby cutting into Google's bread-and-butter ad business. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt even admitted that Siri could pose a "competitive threat" to the company, though it was in his own interests to do so, as he was writing to the U.S. Senate's anti-trust subcommittee.
AppleInsider obtained on Tuesday an email, allegedly from Apple in response to a bug report, with the company stating its plans to keep Siri and iPhone 4S exclusive for the time being.
"Engineering has provided the following feedback regarding this issue: Siri only works with iPhone 4S and we currently have no plans to support older devices," the email read.
Apple unveiled Siri last month at its iPhone 4S event. The voice recognition personal assistant is based off technology the company acquired in 2010. The feature quickly made waves because of its advanced natural language processing abilities.
But, the service is currently in beta, a fact that users were reminded of last week when it experienced widespread outages.
Some analysts view Siri as the main selling point of Apple's latest handset and unlikely to come to older devices during the first few months of iPhone 4S sales.
Undeterred by Apple's refusal to officially support Siri on other devices, jailbreak hackers have taken the matter into their own hands. Last week, they succeeded in porting a working version of Siri onto an iPhone 4 and a fourth-generation iPod touch.
Siri has even been viewed as threat to Google because it may circumvent traditional search engine queries, thereby cutting into Google's bread-and-butter ad business. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt even admitted that Siri could pose a "competitive threat" to the company, though it was in his own interests to do so, as he was writing to the U.S. Senate's anti-trust subcommittee.
Comments
Even though I don't have one, the iPad 2 should get Siri and is more than perfectly capable of running it. I think this is a pretty pig headed move by Apple. I understand keeping it as an iPhone4S exclusive in the phone category to differentiate it from the others, but bringing it to iPad doesn't hurt iPhone sales, in fact it will only help sell more iPad 2's.
You make a pretty good point...it would be nice to have Siri on my wife's iPad 2. Maybe on the next iPad this spring????
Even though I don't have one, the iPad 2 should get Siri and is more than perfectly capable of running it. I think this is a pretty pig headed move by Apple. I understand keeping it as an iPhone4S exclusive in the phone category to differentiate it from the others, but bringing it to iPad doesn't hurt iPhone sales, in fact it will only help sell more iPad 2's.
Siri is a gimmick IMO. Although I shouldn't judge it as a beta... It just doesn't work all the time. And I can text way faster than it can "think".
Siri is a gimmick IMO. Although I shouldn't judge it as a beta... It just doesn't work all the time. And I can text way faster than it can "think".
Once storage is cheap enough to store the files for parsing TTS/STT on the device and once chips get fast enough to do the computations on the user-end, I imagine Siri will become even more indispensable than it already is for some people.
Maybe the A6? Is that thinking too wishful?
Even though I don't have one, the iPad 2 should get Siri and is more than perfectly capable of running it. I think this is a pretty pig headed move by Apple. I understand keeping it as an iPhone4S exclusive in the phone category to differentiate it from the others, but bringing it to iPad doesn't hurt iPhone sales, in fact it will only help sell more iPad 2's.
And if Siri can run on all iDevices should Apple add Siri to them all immediately? What about Siri's backend being able to support a couple hundred million iDevices? I find Siri's can't access the network too often as it is that I don't want any all devices accessing Siri. A couple hacked older model iPhones isn't going to hurt the system but adding all of them will. Now that I'm part of the 1% I simply don't the rest of you plebs ruining my experience in any way.
And if Siri can run on all iDevices should Apple add Siri to them all immediately? What about Siri's backend being able to support a couple hundred million iDevices? I find Siri's can't access the network too often as it is that I don't want any all devices accessing Siri. A couple hacked older model iPhones isn't going to hurt the system but adding all of them will. Now that I'm part of the 1% I simply don't the rest of the plebs ruining my experience in any way.
I agree with you......too many times now Siri can't connect to the network. I guess we can speculate that new devices going forward will have Siri? The next iPad maybe?
And if Siri can run on all iDevices should Apple add Siri to them all immediately? What about Siri's backend being able to support a couple hundred million iDevices? I find Siri's can't access the network too often as it is that I don't want any all devices accessing Siri. A couple hacked older model iPhones isn't going to hurt the system but adding all of them will. Now that I'm part of the 1% I simply don't the rest of the plebs ruining my experience in any way.
Occupy the Ansible is coming your way soli.
Yea keep Siri on 4s till all the kinks are worked out. In a year it will be a $99 device for us 99 percenters and we will all be asking Siri what we did before she came around.
Apple's engineering unit has reportedly confirmed that the company currently has "no plans" to support its Siri personal assistant feature on older devices, according to a person familiar with the matter.
This means no publicly announced plans. A bug report is not going to tell you what Tim Cook and the other Apple executives are thinking. We saw a previous report that Apple has tested Siri on older devices, and the comments there were, "Isn't it great that they've decided to put this on older devices?"
Whatever they have in mind, they would probably start with Siri only on the newest devices while they road test it. This bug report response doesn't tell us anything about what they have in mind for the longer run.
Personally, I think they may have to restrict Siri to newer devices simply because they didn't factor the cost of providing this service into the price of older devices.
Even though I don't have one, the iPad 2 should get Siri and is more than perfectly capable of running it. I think this is a pretty pig headed move by Apple. I understand keeping it as an iPhone4S exclusive in the phone category to differentiate it from the others, but bringing it to iPad doesn't hurt iPhone sales, in fact it will only help sell more iPad 2's.
iPad 2 probably will not get it because it lacks background noise cancellation technology. As for the other devices, Apple may not want to support them based on future plans for Siri in the pipeline. Siri may be a bit heavier weight when they start releasing support for third party apps. It is also beta, so they may have decided to limit release to the 4S.
We all know Apple brought planned obsolescence into the 21st century.
If you want to see planned obsolescence, this graphic tells you all you need to know:
Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support
If I was releasing a potentially game-changing technology and didn't want too many failures to mar its reputation, I'd attempt to control the release and testing as much as possible. Apple has thus far limited it to its flagship product which was designed with Siri in mind; doesn't it make sense to limit a beta to the 4S for the time being?
Siri is in its infancy. Be patient. It's the same reason Apple limited Siri to only certain features, and handicapped it from doing more. Baby steps.
It's a beta, folks. An incredibly ambitious beta.
If I was releasing a potentially game-changing technology and didn't want too many failures to mar its reputation, I'd attempt to control the release and testing as much as possible. Apple has thus far limited it to its flagship product which was designed with Siri in mind; doesn't it make sense to limit a beta to the 4S for the time being?
Siri is in its infancy. Be patient. It's the same reason Apple limited Siri to only certain features, and handicapped it from doing more. Baby steps.
Exactly.
If you'd like to look at it as an analogy, equate the Siri beta on the iPhone 4S to the iCloud beta released to developers only. They're virtually the same idea.
Give iCloud to the developers to iron out the bugs in a much smaller subset of our full market so that when the time comes to give it to everyone, there are as few hitches as possible.
And, really, there were. Compared to MobileMe, it was a stupendous launch. Of course, compared to MobileMe, the Zune had a stupendous launch?
When the time comes for Siri to leave beta, Apple will have gained the knowledge from its beta pool of iPhone 4S users to make a full Siri rollout (to other iDevices and? OS X, maybe?) as smooth and seamless as possible.
You know, here's something to consider: when I bought my older, pre-Siri iOS devices Apple didn't say one day I would be able to have this wonderous thing called Siri on my phone. While I might expect support for future OS upgrades, I didn't expect to receive any specific future features. IOW, Apple made no promises regarding any specific future features, and my buying decision at the time was based on the features that were available at that time. No promises made, no promises broken. Apple delivered what it promised when I bought that device. Being retroactively disappointed in your past purchases because Apple decided not to give you some new feature later on seems like crying over spilled milk.
Agreed. And we should consider ourselves lucky too compared to Android and Windows Mobile customers who don't get any updates at all.
? compared to Android and Windows Mobile customers who don't get any updates at all.
Compared to some. There are a fair number of models that can and do receive updates (without the users needing to patch together a new OS themselves, I mean).
Siri is a gimmick IMO. Although I shouldn't judge it as a beta... It just doesn't work all the time. And I can text way faster than it can "think".
You haven't used Siri.
I agree with you......too many times now Siri can't connect to the network. I guess we can speculate that new devices going forward will have Siri? The next iPad maybe?
I certainly expect the next iPad to have it.
Occupy the Ansible is coming your way soli.
Yea keep Siri on 4s till all the kinks are worked out. In a year it will be a $99 device for us 99 percenters and we will all be asking Siri what we did before she came around.
I guess I can see how some might conclude that Apple is trying to force you to but the next iPhone, but if that was the case why update the phones for 3 generations and why update them alongside the other iPhones. It's not the competition has anything remotely comparable in terms of update cycles.
Plus, there is a good reason for Apple to eventually add SIri to older devices if the backend can handle the load: more data-mining.
It's a beta, folks. An incredibly ambitious beta.
If I was releasing a potentially game-changing technology and didn't want too many failures to mar its reputation, I'd attempt to control the release and testing as much as possible. Apple has thus far limited it to its flagship product which was designed with Siri in mind; doesn't it make sense to limit a beta to the 4S for the time being?
Siri is in its infancy. Be patient. It's the same reason Apple limited Siri to only certain features, and handicapped it from doing more. Baby steps.
You got it. Siri is the next killer app that lives in the iCloud, which is the 2nd killer app that iOS has out there, and both apps will reach maturity together, a game-changing event.
Further, Apple probably has sold around 20 million iPhone 4S phones. Users have admitted network problems. Apple's Siri servers took a hit for several hours. Image if Apple also allowed 100 million iPhone 4 phones, as well as the millions of iPads. Apple's servers probably couldn't take the hit. The press would be bad.
I suspect Apple will not allow previous phones or iPads. Apple will support the service on new devices, like the rumored iPad 3. That likely will come with a better microphone, and Apple can slowly work out kinks with the servers and ramp up capacity as needed.
Even though I don't have one, the iPad 2 should get Siri and is more than perfectly capable of running it. I think this is a pretty pig headed move by Apple. I understand keeping it as an iPhone4S exclusive in the phone category to differentiate it from the others, but bringing it to iPad doesn't hurt iPhone sales, in fact it will only help sell more iPad 2's.