Apple: Siri Only Works On iPhone 4S, We Have No Plans To Support Older Devices | Hacker News Reader

Apple: Siri Only Works On iPhone 4S, We Have No Plans To Support Older Devices

techcrunch.com

43 pointsllambda64 comments

There's no technical limitation here: Siri works with rooted phones. iirc it was also in the App Store for older devices before Apple bought the company.

As the article says, it's all about model differentiation. The 4S is a fine upgrade, but it would be far less interesting to current iPhone 4 owners if Siri wasn't a 4S exclusive.

Apple can plaster a lot of environment-blah blah on their website, but they (but also most Android vendors) are the anti-thesis of sustainability. Encouraging people to upgrade frequently, and quickly deprecating old models. E.g. my girlfriend's 3G is in a fine state hardware-wise, will probably function well for a few more years, but there are no more security updates.

(A mostly happy iPhone 4 user.)

Note that the 3G is almost 3.5 years old now and few people still use it.

But this is exactly his point. Only in mobile devices is 3 years considered old to the point of irrelevance, and Android is far worse, closer to 3 months.

It can be justified on technological or economic grounds, but either way, environmental sustainability considerations clearly don't enter into the equation.

3 months for an Android phone be irrelevant is absolutely not true. My girlfriend has a Galaxy S (released June 2010) that runs every single game in the Android Market perfectly and was updated to Gingerbread (and maybe will be updated to ICS). It is not the best device out there but is still very relevant and she doesn't see a single reason to buy a new device.

My 4 was stolen and I got a used 3G off eBay for $100. Reasonable price, but it is frustratingly slow with iOS 4.2.1. The Facebook app is unusable.

The 3G is definitely obsolete by now.

Downgrade it to 3.1.3. My 3G feels as snappy as when I first got it. (Though, of course, you can't run some apps that require iOS4, e.g. Twitter.)

Definitely do this, unless you have an extremely critical must-have application that requires iOS 4.

The perf "gains" from going back to 3.1.3 make the phone non-irritating again.

I don't believe you can downgrade to 3.1.3 any more. When you restore an OS image, iTunes checks whether it is a valid image with Apple's servers. After a major version has been out for a while, Apple stop approving installs of older versions.

I might go the jailbreak route if it enables me to do that.

Wow, thank you for the suggestion! I'll definitely be trying it. I can survive with webapp Twitter until my next upgrade (or even next year for the new iPhone if it's bearable enough).

Here in Canada where the oligopoly of telcos locks you into 3 year contracts many people in my family still use their 3GS. In fact everyone in my immediate family with an iPhone has the 3GS (as did I until May when mine broke). Also worth noting that the 3GS has been sold up until this very day.

Some Canadians have been upgrading from the iPhone 3G this fall as well, which was sold up until summer 2010. My coworker just got a 4S and gave his 3G to his mom who now loves it.

I have no idea what it's like in SF and other similar places but there's a big world outside of California.

> Here in Canada where the oligopoly of telcos locks you into 3 year contracts many people in my family still use their 3GS.

Yep, can't stress this point enough and I don't know if its specific to Canada or not.

I just got off my contract with a 3G iPhone in September of this year. That phone was really starting to show it's age.

You're looking at only the launch date, whereas there are still people who are locked into carrier contracts after having bought it. AT&T stopped selling it only in June 2010 which is not even a year and half back.

http://www.bgr.com/2010/06/04/att-officially-stops-selling-i...

My wife still uses the original iphone. Still works great, but can no longer be upgraded.

Yes, that's why I wrote that "There's no technical limitation here"...

He didn't sound like he disagree. His comment sounded more like a second paragraph you didn't write.

Very good comment. Why then doesn't Apple make Siri an expensive app to compensate? My iPhone4 batteries will be dead in one year anyway, so I'll have to get a new one. In the meantime, I'd like to get Siri for even 50$ or more. And on my iPad 2 also.

Apple needs to be more sustainable. That may mean increase their prices, fine, but that would be better for the environment.

So when iPhone 5 comes out, and it has its own new features to sell itself, do you think they'll enable siri on everything they can?

No.

The differentiation is between the various models available (3GS, 4 and 4S, all on sale), not the latest one and everything else.

If they stick with the current pattern the line up when the 5 launches will likely be 4, 4S and 5. Apple will want clear reasons why you'd choose each one over the model below it. Putting Siri on everything would undermine that - you still want a reason for people to spend a little more on the 4S rather than settling for the 4.

Siri as an exclusive for 4S and 5 owners will still incentivize users of previous models to upgrade.

Apple customers are responsible for environment at least as much as Apple or more. If you don't like how Apple treats environment, you don't buy their products. If you think it's not good for environment to upgrade every year or two, don't buy new phone. Apple's care of environment does not matter if you decide to buy another device. They can only minimize the damage customers will cause.

Humans tend to have opinions even for things that they do not buy. And their opinions can be of more interest/use when they have to do with massively popular products.

There's no technical limitation here: Siri works with rooted phones.

Works just as well? I wonder if there are subtle hardware differences (e.g. in the microphone) that make a difference.

I believe you were downvoted, but you are actually correct. There's no technical "limitation" here, but there's subtle things that make siri work a little better - the cpu is one, the second microphone near the headphone jack that they use to cancel environment noise is too.

Is it enough difference? Not really, no. Siri can still run perfectly fine on the iPhone 4. But they're using it to differentiate the models, and there's little we can do about it. Some people are going to be bummed, yes, but that's business.

Certainly. There is also nothing wrong with only bringing new features to new devices. I really honestly don’t understand why this is the slightest bit controversial.

I hope that tomorrow Apple will release a new operating system that is a game changer, but you'll not able to install it in your macbook air that is two months old.

But your friends with a new MBA that has an improved webcam will be able to run it. Even if the features have nothing to do with the webcam.

Then you probably will understand that there is something unfair about it.

No, not really. Siri is not central to the experience. It’s an add-on. It doesn’t make the old iOS devices obsolete (like, say, not supporting iCloud would).

That's your opinion, for other people often using handsfree systems or alike Siri can be one of the most valuable features of the phone.

If it’s so valuable to them they can buy the new phone. It’s quite simple, actually.

simple modulo the 670 euros to spend for the base model, plus the fact you already spent the same amount of money a few months ago. I hope you have a lot of apple stocks at least.

If it’s not worth the 670€ you don’t have to buy it. That’s how it works. You evaluate. Apple has no monopoly on voice control so you can also easily switch to – for example – Android.

The old iOS devices work just as well as they ever have. If you want Siri you have to buy the new phone. Apple has taken away nothing whatsoever from you.

This all seems completely fair to me. Can we please stop pretending that consumers are mindless zombies and companies are accordingly treating them unfairly when they don’t give them everything they want?

(Edit: I would appreciate if someone could tell me what is wrong – to the degree that it deserves to be downvoted – with what I said.)

As I understand it, strictly speaking the old iOS devices did have something taken away from them when Apple pulled the Siri app from the App Store.

Really? That’s how you are going to spin it? Talk about entitlement.

There is no guarantee that all free apps on the App Store will be free forever. It seems absurd to me to believe that. I treat free apps like presents: I don’t expect anything from them. (I guess that’s why I prefer to pay for apps.)

I haven't got a horse in this race, I'm just pointing out a technicality. A formerly available application is no longer available and its servers have been disabled, so the application will no longer function even if you downloaded it previously. Your initial claim was "Apple has taken away nothing whatsoever from you" and you're now pulling a no true scotsman.

It was available for older devices in the past. I had it for awhile, but since it was really was only good for searches like "where is the nearest...?" and lacked iOS integration, I don't recall using it much after the novelty factor wore off.

The only technical limitation I can think of is the one which exists server-side. Siri has been having troubles from time-to-time with just iPhone 4S owners polling it. Imagine if all iPhone 4 (and even 3GS) owners were trying to use it too.

Do you care about that when you use Twitter or Gmail? Instead for Apple, after paying a shitload of money, you are super interested in how hard is scaling for them?!

There is no limit to my shock at how people are mentally gamed by Apple.

I have to believe that Apple has the engineering talent to scale something like this up. It's a pretty straight forward problem, and it's not like they don't have enough cash to double their server farm.

A few points:

First, I agree with a point that others have raised regarding Siri "working" on rooted phones. Sure, it will run, but does it run well? Does it slow the phone down signficantly when in heavy use? Until we know for sure, I'm not going to get worked up about it.

Second, it is very possible that the technical limitation is server-side. Apple has a pretty spotty history with web services and limiting Siri to the iPhone 4S may just be a way to slowly scale the backend.

Third, I think it's pretty absurd to call out Apple's lack of support for old devices. The level of support still available for the 2.5-year-old iPhone 3GS is outstanding compared to other smart phones. Most people who _really_ care about having the newest tech are probably upgrading their phones every two years anyway. And, really, who can blame Apple for wanting to differentiate their products? I don't mind if that is the reason, but I would prefer an honest answer if that is the only reason.

While I tend to agree with everything - we should expect Apple to support the 3GS currently - they're still selling it! How much support will it get 6 months after it's not currently sold anymore?

If the 3G is anything to go by, zero support. It'll be dropped like a stone.

On the iPhone 3GS, it works better than Voice Controls ever did and does not noticeably affect battery or memory use. When running, it's speex encoder uses very little CPU.

Recognition on the iPhone 3GS is not as accurate due to the lack of a noise-cancelling secondary mic, but that's a component the iPhone 4 shares with the iPhone 4S.

I agree on your second two points.

> The level of support still available for the 2.5-year-old iPhone 3GS is outstanding

They are selling the 3GS brand new today. I don't think they deserve kudos for supporting a current product. It should go without saying.

But it doesn't -- there are many Android headsets that were obsolete when released (OS-wise) and then never updated. The situation with Android devices (at the high end) is getting better but it's too early to see what the situation will be like in 3 years.

That doesn't change the fact that people who bought a 3GS 2.5 years ago are still getting significant updates to the hardware. Really, what better way is there to support a product than continue selling it?

If you want to look at the other options out there, Android is doing a terrible job. A number of Android phones don't even ship with the most recent version of the OS and some never see updates at all. It's getting better, but it's far from great.

Applogia

Apple sells hardware. Microsoft sells software. IBM sells services. Google and Facebook sell advertising. Amazon sells everything.

Apple sells hardware and software for their hardware. Microsoft sells software and hardware (XBOX, keyboards, mice, etc). Google sells services. Facebook sells private lives.

What services does Google sell? To me, it looks like they sell user eyeballs to advertisers.

I was thinking of Google Apps.

Apple does not sell "hardware". Apple sells complete products that vertically integrate hardware, software and (more recently) services.

It's been analyzed before here — their margins come from hardware.

But their "value proposition" comes from selling a complete product, in large part to people that don't care a whit about the difference between hardware and software.

Yes but their hardware always comes preloaded with software and services. Since they don't sell "naked" hardware, there's really no way to parse the value proposition. For what it's worth, Steve Jobs said multiple times at the D conference that in his mind, most of the value comes from the software...the hardware enables it and is the "pretty box".

I do think Apple will stick to this, but on the other hand an engineer's comment on a bug report is not much to go on--they may not know Apple's real plans, and Apple could go back on its stated plans anyway.

What do you mean by "works"? :)

Snark aside, I'd say that Siri doesn't seem to work at least 50% of the time.

First, it tends not to be able to connect to the network. Whether with full 3G or even over wifi a large percentage of the time you'll end up with "I'm having trouble connecting to the network" after asking your question. There shouldn't be any excuses here - paid for the phone which the service was a feature, one should be able to use it whenever they need.

Second, the speech to text is severely lacking. Sure it does a fairly good job of sentence translation but anything outside of phonetic names is just garbage. You'll get 'Red Robin' but not 'QDoba'. You'll get the last name of 'Anderson' or 'Jones' but any ethnic name (I'm of German descent - no match, I can't imagine being Indian, Korean, Hispanic, etc.) isn't going to match unless you say it phonetically.

Third, it just tends to be a glorified search widget. Other than reminders or asking about the weather you'll most likely just be prompted to search for what you are asking. And at that point you are back to the phonetic requirements to get what you are searching for.

I'm not saying Siri is bad, it has it's place, but this isn't the revolution it's hyped up to be.

If you don't pay for the product, you aren't the customer. Just a more literal interpretation of the phrase with Apple.

I don't exactly see how this is relevant to the decision not to bring a feature to an older phone.

The carrier paid for it. They want you to sign up for a contract extension to get the shiny new phone. They have no interest in supporting your old phone.

And this may be why our society is getting screwed.

I bought an unlocked iPhone. What does that make me?

And who paid the carrier? I pay AT&T upwards of $3000/year, and when I upgrade, they still charge me $100-$200 for the phones I want. I'm pretty sure I'm paying them for that.

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