Will the iPhone 4 support the new Siri integration?
I am aware of the minor new features in the new iPhone 4S, but am wondering if Siri will be in the iPhone 4 when ios 5 comes out next Wednesday.
iPhone 4, iOS 4.2.7, 16GB CDMA Black
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Found a good article:
The Siri backlash threatens Apple’s future magic
Since the iPhone 4S’s launch in early October, I’ve run into an increasing number of Siri users who are disenchanted with Apple’s voice-controlled “intelligent assistant” that’s exclusive to its handset. Their complaints – that it’s inconsistent in its performance and hampered by network outages – mirrors to some extent the experienceI had on launch day.
This frustration is growing enough that you’re starting to see something of a Siri backlash, including this rant by Gizmodo’s Mat Honan. He goes so far as to call Siri “a lie”:
A long time ago, I made a compact with Apple. “You can control my entire technological life, from my computer to my phone to my stereo. I’ll pay premium prices. I’ll dive into your product ecosystem, and buy books and music and movies and apps from you. Even though they won’t work on devices made by anybody else.”
In exchange for surrendering control and submitting to that heftier price tag, I expect Apple products to simply work. That’s all. If you use Apple products, I suspect you made a similar bargain.
And so when I first saw the ads for Siri, I expected something remarkable, like I always do with Apple products. The first true consumer-grade AI. Can you imagine how amazing it would be to have a real intelligent assistant on your phone?
After playing with Siri for more than a month, I’m still waiting to find out. Instead of an intelligent assistant I found a lie, and worse, a broken promise.
While he concedes that, yes, Apple labels Siri as “beta”, he also derides the company for releasing something so obviously unfinished – something Apple never does. And he levels the Apple fanboy’s ultimate insult:
I’m sorry. Beta? Beta is for Google. When Apple does a public beta, it usually keeps it out of the hands of the, you know, public. It typically makes you go get betas. It doesn’t force them on you, much less advertise them. Not that it is an effective disclaimer for the vast buying public. For most people who see Apple’s ads, and buy iPhones, the word beta means nothing at all. It might be a fish, or a college bro.
Even John Gruber, who says he likes Siri for the most part, is puzzled as to why Apple would release such a ragged product:
I like Siri, and use it, at least for text dictation, almost every day. But even for me — for whom Siri’s dictation accuracy is remarkably good — the whole thing still isn’t up to Apple’s usual level of fit and finish, not by a long shot.
Of course, the reason any technology company releases a beta is to watch “real” users hammer on it. In doing so, developers can get a feel for how folks use a product. This gives them a chance to find and fix bugs, fine-tune the interface and, perhaps most importantly, see what users really expect of the product. In this way, real-world usage drives future improvements.
Indeed, Apple seldom does this. Public beta-testing amounts to a kind of giant focus group, which is the very antithesis of Apple’s developmental mindset.
Still, a product like Siri is going to a natural exception to that approach. More usage data for a voice-recognition-based product will improve it far more quickly than if it remained hidden in the lab.
That’s particularly important if Siri is to be used, as many are now speculating, as the primary way to navigate a rumoured Apple-made TV. Siri needs to be a lot better if it’s going to be used as the heart of a television set. You don’t want your customers telling Siri to turn on the Texans game, only to end up playing an archived episode of Grey’s Anatomy. . . .
I think Siri serves two purposes for Apple. It gives the company the chance to hone what could be a hugely disruptive new product – an Apple TV – and it gives the iPhone 4S a real reason to live. 9to5 Mac wrote in mid-October that the iPhone 5 was on Apple’s original road map for this year, but fell off because it just wasn’t ready. The 4S was originally intended as a lower-cost phone, but also as Plan B if the 5 wasn’t finished. Under this scenario, Siri was added to make the iPhone 4S seem like a bigger upgrade than it really was.
The risk Apple runs by doing this, of course, is that Siri’s “rough edges” taint the product to the point that it’s hard to market it as something magical when Apple TV finally hits, supposedly late next year. All it takes is for Siri to become the butt of late-night talk show hosts’ jokes, and suddenly Siri is the new Newton.
Case in point: Stories such as the silly faux controversy over Siri’s apparent inability to locate abortion clinics. You can bet that bit of nonsense will be resurrected by the press should Apple launch a line of TVs.
Apple can stem this backlash by providing updates to Siri that dramatically improve it. In a formal statement addressing the abortion clinic issue, Apple said it will makes fixes Siri in “the coming weeks”. For Siri’s sake, that needs to be sooner rather than later.
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