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Ask HN: is there a technical reason Siri is not available on the iPhone 4?

6 points by nuromancer 15y ago

ralphwroberts 15y ago
It could be that Siri requires the extra processing power of the A5 chip. If this is true, though, I don't understand why Siri isn't available on the iPad 2. It's silly to not give it to iPad users solely to drive 4S sales.
- rbarooah 15y ago
  I don't really understand why so many people expects a billion dollar service to be given away free to customers who didn't even know it was a possibility when they bought their equipment. Why shouldn't all software anyone writes be given away free to anyone who has hardware that can run it? However, from my experience so far, I suspect there are a number of technical reasons: 1. The microphone quality and position of the user relative to the mic. 2. Service Scaling - it is only just keeping up with the current user load. 3. Optimization - it's only just good enough as it is. I'm pretty sure Apple will be working hard to make it more responsive and more capable. More platforms would divide their resources. If SIRI was mature, this wouldn't be such an issue, but it most certainly is for now. 4. Integration - this is related to point 3. Siri is integrated into the phone well enough to be useful. It's good for reminders, notes, and meetings, plus the odd calculation and find my friends request. It works well enough to make a genuine difference to these kinds of task, but it has a long way to go before it is a universal UI. Since more people have phones with them all the time, it makes sense that much more of this kind of assistant functionality will be accessible on the phone platform. Therefore, Apple will be focussing on maximizing it's utility for phone use cases first. See my earlier comment on divided resources.
asto 15y ago
Plenty of users are having problems with a sluggish server. Maybe they just don't have the server resources so accommodate more people.
joshontheweb 15y ago
If I remember correctly John Gruber theorized that the reason for offering siri on the 4S only was just a way to keep the initial number of users down while they are still testing it.
akshaykarthik 15y ago
I was under the assumption that Siri needed the 4S's DSP capabilities on the new processor. It seems that it can be put on iPhone 4 as well (http://venturebeat.com/2011/10/15/siri-iphone-apple/ http://venturebeat.com/2011/10/15/siri-iphone-apple/)

6 points by nuromancer 15y ago

It could be that Siri requires the extra processing power of the A5 chip. If this is true, though, I don't understand why Siri isn't available on the iPad 2. It's silly to not give it to iPad users solely to drive 4S sales.

rbarooah 15y ago
I don't really understand why so many people expects a billion dollar service to be given away free to customers who didn't even know it was a possibility when they bought their equipment. Why shouldn't all software anyone writes be given away free to anyone who has hardware that can run it? However, from my experience so far, I suspect there are a number of technical reasons: 1. The microphone quality and position of the user relative to the mic. 2. Service Scaling - it is only just keeping up with the current user load. 3. Optimization - it's only just good enough as it is. I'm pretty sure Apple will be working hard to make it more responsive and more capable. More platforms would divide their resources. If SIRI was mature, this wouldn't be such an issue, but it most certainly is for now. 4. Integration - this is related to point 3. Siri is integrated into the phone well enough to be useful. It's good for reminders, notes, and meetings, plus the odd calculation and find my friends request. It works well enough to make a genuine difference to these kinds of task, but it has a long way to go before it is a universal UI. Since more people have phones with them all the time, it makes sense that much more of this kind of assistant functionality will be accessible on the phone platform. Therefore, Apple will be focussing on maximizing it's utility for phone use cases first. See my earlier comment on divided resources.

asto 15y ago

Plenty of users are having problems with a sluggish server. Maybe they just don't have the server resources so accommodate more people.

joshontheweb 15y ago

If I remember correctly John Gruber theorized that the reason for offering siri on the 4S only was just a way to keep the initial number of users down while they are still testing it.

akshaykarthik 15y ago

I was under the assumption that Siri needed the 4S's DSP capabilities on the new processor. It seems that it can be put on iPhone 4 as well (http://venturebeat.com/2011/10/15/siri-iphone-apple/ http://venturebeat.com/2011/10/15/siri-iphone-apple/)