It's because it doesn't require any obvious, new HW for this SW service to run locally that it's expected. For this reason these people feel victimized by Apple over this positional good.
This thinking is absolutely wrong. Siri does require specific new hardware to run... but that hardware is in scores or hundreds of racks in Apple data centers instead of customers' pockets. Maybe the iPhone 4S hardware spec bump is more impressive than it gets credit for. After all, with the nearly double the CPU speed and quadruple GPU speed (as compared to the iPhone 4), you get untold back-end processing power and bandwidth in Apple's data centers.
This thinking is absolutely wrong. Siri does require specific new hardware to run... but that hardware is in scores or hundreds of racks in Apple data centers instead of customers' pockets. Maybe the iPhone 4S hardware spec bump is more impressive than it gets credit for. After all, with the nearly double the CPU speed and quadruple GPU speed (as compared to the iPhone 4), you get untold back-end processing power and bandwidth in Apple's data centers.
I qualified my statement with "run locally". That doesn't change some customer's feelings on the matter superseding logic.
In all fairness, it's not like Apple invented "planned obsolescence" (though we may discover that they've been first to take out a patent on it <g>).
Based on the comments from the regulars here, it seems a good many Apple customers prefer that the company be as profitable as possible. With a new phone that otherwise has few compelling features, arbitrarily withholding Siri from other models to drive sales of the 4S is no doubt welcomed by most Apple customers.
You've made four post filled with FUD this morning. It's only Wednesday so you might want to pace yourself or you could accidentally find yourself complimenting Apple by the end of the week.
I qualified my statement with "run locally". That doesn't change some customer's feelings on the matter superseding logic.
I noticed that... I wasn't critiquing your reply but the general thinking of those complaining. Certainly, Apple has a history of jerking around customers with arbitrary software feature availability in the past, but I just don't see this as a repeat since it doesn't run locally and would cost Apple money to roll out and support on an ongoing basis.
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".
I disagree. With Siri, I can work with my calendar, schedule reminders, read and reply to text messages... all hand-free while DRIVING. Most all of that would be illegal in most states without Siri. (Technically speaking, it might still be, depending on how laws are worded, but at least with Siri it is safe.)
And even when I'm not driving, it's certainly a lot faster to say "remind me to go to the cleaners when I leave work" than it is to schedule such a reminder by hand.
I use Siri all the time for stuff like that. It's very accurate and very useful. I wouldn't upgrade from a 4 to a 4S just for Siri, but I'm sure glad I was on a 3GS and ready to upgrade.
... With Siri, I can work with my calendar, schedule reminders, read and reply to text messages... all hand-free while DRIVING. ...
Off topic, but Siri really makes me hate my (new) car's bluetooth system. Get out of my way, car! I'd like to talk to my phone, not your crappy 1990-quality voice interface.
I noticed that... I wasn't critiquing your reply but the general thinking of those complaining. Certainly, Apple has a history of jerking around customers with arbitrary software feature availability in the past, but I just don't see this as a repeat since it doesn't run locally and would cost Apple money to roll out and support on an ongoing basis.
Ah. Mea culpa.
Quote:
Originally Posted by StigsHero
Off topic, but Siri really makes me hate my (new) car's bluetooth system. Get out of my way, car! I'd like to talk to my phone, not your crappy 1990-quality voice interface.
You might find yourself wanting a BMW in the future.
Get over it -- Siri really isn't all that novel. It's just a big gimmick, with its #1 purpose being to sell more iPhone 4S devices. Anyway, the most technologically challenging aspect of Siri - language model-based speech recognition - isn't event being performed by Apple. Nuance should really get the credit here.
Siri is more about how it's packaged and presented to us everyday consumers that makes it great. Marketing is definitely one of Apple's expertise. I'm not saying it's the best thing out there. I'm sure there are voice command devices/apps that trumps Siri. Personally, I don't even use it that much. I still find it awkward to talk to Siri in public. Afraid that she might not understand what I am trying to say and that I have to repeat myself. I use it for tiny bits of things here and there. "What's the population of this country" or "Set timer for however long" etc.
Back to the topic - It's probably better that Siri's not making it into older devices seeing how it's in Beta phase. Besides, the screenshot did mention they do not "currently" have plans. What's to say that they won't change their minds at a later date?
Topic aside - did you guys know what Siri translates to in Japanese?
Get over it -- Siri really isn't all that novel. It's just a big gimmick, with its #1 purpose being to sell more iPhone 4S devices. Anyway, the most technologically challenging aspect of Siri - language model-based speech recognition - isn't event being performed by Apple. Nuance should really get the credit here.
The Nuance front end to Siri is actually the easiest thing to replace which refutes your comments. The harder thing to do is derive meaning and context. A bunch of products have speech recognition but most are heavily slanted towards English speakers and do a horrible job with accents.
By Siri's first birthday it should support roughly 10 or more languages which means the underlaying foundation must understand the differences and peculiarities of each language including local colloquialisms. Not an easy task at all.
Lastly and API needs to be delivered that extends Siri to 3rd party. The show's just getting started!
The Nuance front end to Siri is actually the easiest thing to replace which refutes your comments. The harder thing to do is derive meaning and context. A bunch of products have speech recognition but most are heavily slanted towards English speakers and do a horrible job with accents.
By Siri's first birthday it should support roughly 10 or more languages which means the underlaying foundation must understand the differences and peculiarities of each language including local colloquialisms. Not an easy task at all.
Lastly and API needs to be delivered that extends Siri to 3rd party. The show's just getting started!
1) I just discovered that if tell Siri "It's my birthday" she responds with "Happy birthday! Sorry, I didn't get you anything." (I haven't seen that one anywhere.
2) Hopefully in a year from now Siri will be a lot more powerful with how it interacts with the OS.
I find it odd that someone can't have a dissenting view around here without being accused of being whiny. Nothing in my post is whiny. You might note that I even acknowledged that my point of view is only valid if the source and info is credible. I'm just stating my case that this is unprecedented for Apple and that they have built expectations about these things with their past record of excellent support for their hardware and that it's inexcusable for a premium product like theirs. I'd expect support for new features to fall off the radar in the first year for cheap Android phones, not iOS devices.
That actually makes a lot of sense.
I'm going to go against the grain on this thread and agree with you.
I think the Microphone "issue" (which IMO is really the only issue) is negligible. I use my iPad2 mainly as a Couch-potato device and there's never really a lot of background noise to be had. I use my iPhone4 for on the go.
The rest of the arguments against putting it on the iPad2 are mute. Really, with the exception of the microphone, the iP4s was just apple bringing their flagship device up to par with the iPad2. Granted the camera is way better but i think the camera on the iPad2 is kind of pointless.
I can see not putting it on the iP3Gs, but the iPhone4 and iPad2 should definitely get it. I'm waiting until it no longer becomes Beta to start the real complaining.
Comments
It's because it doesn't require any obvious, new HW for this SW service to run locally that it's expected. For this reason these people feel victimized by Apple over this positional good.
This thinking is absolutely wrong. Siri does require specific new hardware to run... but that hardware is in scores or hundreds of racks in Apple data centers instead of customers' pockets. Maybe the iPhone 4S hardware spec bump is more impressive than it gets credit for. After all, with the nearly double the CPU speed and quadruple GPU speed (as compared to the iPhone 4), you get untold back-end processing power and bandwidth in Apple's data centers.
This thinking is absolutely wrong. Siri does require specific new hardware to run... but that hardware is in scores or hundreds of racks in Apple data centers instead of customers' pockets. Maybe the iPhone 4S hardware spec bump is more impressive than it gets credit for. After all, with the nearly double the CPU speed and quadruple GPU speed (as compared to the iPhone 4), you get untold back-end processing power and bandwidth in Apple's data centers.
I qualified my statement with "run locally". That doesn't change some customer's feelings on the matter superseding logic.
In all fairness, it's not like Apple invented "planned obsolescence" (though we may discover that they've been first to take out a patent on it <g>).
Based on the comments from the regulars here, it seems a good many Apple customers prefer that the company be as profitable as possible. With a new phone that otherwise has few compelling features, arbitrarily withholding Siri from other models to drive sales of the 4S is no doubt welcomed by most Apple customers.
You've made four post filled with FUD this morning. It's only Wednesday so you might want to pace yourself or you could accidentally find yourself complimenting Apple by the end of the week.
I qualified my statement with "run locally". That doesn't change some customer's feelings on the matter superseding logic.
I noticed that... I wasn't critiquing your reply but the general thinking of those complaining. Certainly, Apple has a history of jerking around customers with arbitrary software feature availability in the past, but I just don't see this as a repeat since it doesn't run locally and would cost Apple money to roll out and support on an ongoing basis.
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".
I disagree. With Siri, I can work with my calendar, schedule reminders, read and reply to text messages... all hand-free while DRIVING. Most all of that would be illegal in most states without Siri. (Technically speaking, it might still be, depending on how laws are worded, but at least with Siri it is safe.)
And even when I'm not driving, it's certainly a lot faster to say "remind me to go to the cleaners when I leave work" than it is to schedule such a reminder by hand.
I use Siri all the time for stuff like that. It's very accurate and very useful. I wouldn't upgrade from a 4 to a 4S just for Siri, but I'm sure glad I was on a 3GS and ready to upgrade.
... With Siri, I can work with my calendar, schedule reminders, read and reply to text messages... all hand-free while DRIVING. ...
Off topic, but Siri really makes me hate my (new) car's bluetooth system. Get out of my way, car! I'd like to talk to my phone, not your crappy 1990-quality voice interface.
I noticed that... I wasn't critiquing your reply but the general thinking of those complaining. Certainly, Apple has a history of jerking around customers with arbitrary software feature availability in the past, but I just don't see this as a repeat since it doesn't run locally and would cost Apple money to roll out and support on an ongoing basis.
Ah. Mea culpa.
Off topic, but Siri really makes me hate my (new) car's bluetooth system. Get out of my way, car! I'd like to talk to my phone, not your crappy 1990-quality voice interface.
You might find yourself wanting a BMW in the future.
Get over it -- Siri really isn't all that novel. It's just a big gimmick
I don't think the integration of some of the best TTS/STT software with intelligent conversation parsing software is necessarily a gimmick.
Back to the topic - It's probably better that Siri's not making it into older devices seeing how it's in Beta phase. Besides, the screenshot did mention they do not "currently" have plans. What's to say that they won't change their minds at a later date?
Topic aside - did you guys know what Siri translates to in Japanese?
http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news...tocks-in-japan
Remember not to say I love Siri in Japan or to someone that speaks Japanese
Get over it -- Siri really isn't all that novel. It's just a big gimmick, with its #1 purpose being to sell more iPhone 4S devices. Anyway, the most technologically challenging aspect of Siri - language model-based speech recognition - isn't event being performed by Apple. Nuance should really get the credit here.
The Nuance front end to Siri is actually the easiest thing to replace which refutes your comments. The harder thing to do is derive meaning and context. A bunch of products have speech recognition but most are heavily slanted towards English speakers and do a horrible job with accents.
By Siri's first birthday it should support roughly 10 or more languages which means the underlaying foundation must understand the differences and peculiarities of each language including local colloquialisms. Not an easy task at all.
Lastly and API needs to be delivered that extends Siri to 3rd party. The show's just getting started!
The Nuance front end to Siri is actually the easiest thing to replace which refutes your comments. The harder thing to do is derive meaning and context. A bunch of products have speech recognition but most are heavily slanted towards English speakers and do a horrible job with accents.
By Siri's first birthday it should support roughly 10 or more languages which means the underlaying foundation must understand the differences and peculiarities of each language including local colloquialisms. Not an easy task at all.
Lastly and API needs to be delivered that extends Siri to 3rd party. The show's just getting started!
1) I just discovered that if tell Siri "It's my birthday" she responds with "Happy birthday! Sorry, I didn't get you anything." (I haven't seen that one anywhere.
2) Hopefully in a year from now Siri will be a lot more powerful with how it interacts with the OS.
1) I just discovered that if tell Siri "It's my birthday" she responds with "Happy birthday! Sorry, I didn't get you anything."
Does it also reset your birthdate in Address Book to the current date?
Because THAT would be impressive.
I find it odd that someone can't have a dissenting view around here without being accused of being whiny. Nothing in my post is whiny. You might note that I even acknowledged that my point of view is only valid if the source and info is credible. I'm just stating my case that this is unprecedented for Apple and that they have built expectations about these things with their past record of excellent support for their hardware and that it's inexcusable for a premium product like theirs. I'd expect support for new features to fall off the radar in the first year for cheap Android phones, not iOS devices.
That actually makes a lot of sense.
I'm going to go against the grain on this thread and agree with you.
I think the Microphone "issue" (which IMO is really the only issue) is negligible. I use my iPad2 mainly as a Couch-potato device and there's never really a lot of background noise to be had. I use my iPhone4 for on the go.
The rest of the arguments against putting it on the iPad2 are mute. Really, with the exception of the microphone, the iP4s was just apple bringing their flagship device up to par with the iPad2. Granted the camera is way better but i think the camera on the iPad2 is kind of pointless.
I can see not putting it on the iP3Gs, but the iPhone4 and iPad2 should definitely get it. I'm waiting until it no longer becomes Beta to start the real complaining.