Apple: Siri Not Coming to Older Devices 7th Nov 2011
Cult of Mac blogger Michael Steeber filed a bug report with Apple suggesting that it bring Siri to older iOS devices. Apple emailed the following reply:
Engineering has provided the following feedback regarding this issue:
Siri only works on iPhone 4S and we currently have no plans to support older devices.
Now, Steve Jobs was famous for his public u-turns (claiming that nobody wants to watch video on a small screen, or that Americans don’t read anything, for example), but this sounds sincere. After all, why give away one of the biggest reasons to upgrade to the iPhone 4S?
But what of Steeber’s bug report? Take a look — it’s a doozy:
iPhone 4 Users and iPod touch 4th generation users pay a fee of 19.99 to upgrade to a ‘special’ build of iOS 5.0.1 with Siri Final in it, (To avoid hackers hacking Siri onto non 4S devices illegally) **Many iPhone 4 Users and iPod touch 4th generation Users will pay for this special iOS build (5.0.1) which will enable Siri for a fee of $19.99 US dollars
Hmm. Maintaining separate operating systems, and forking the feature set of its flagship product? That sounds just like Apple.