Okay Geek Farm
Apple confirms Siri won't be ported to older iDevices
Daniel Carey
Apple has recently confirmed to a developer of its iOS platform that it has “no plans” to bring Siri, the highly intuitive voice controlled personal assistant software available on its most recent iPhone (the iPhone 4S), to any older devices. Unfortunately it doesn’t come as much of a shock, sources close to the company originally reported that a port of Siri was slim at best, yet those of us with an iPhone 4 or iPad 2 were still hoping for an optimistic outcome. Alas that optimism has been quashed.
Michael Steeber, whom most would know from Cult Of Mac, originally posted Apple’s claims after being contacted by an iOS developer. After contacting Apple with a bug report, the developer in question suggested to the Cupertino company that:
“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.”
In kind Apple responded:
“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.”
Interestingly enough, in lieu of Apple’s stance on an official port of Siri, some cunning consumers have been able to access the software on their older iDevices. Using legitimate authentication tokens commandeered from the real iPhone 4S, Siri has been ported to both the venerable iPhone 4 and 3GS. However, unlike previous software ports, moving Siri to an older iDevice isn’t as simple as say, changing television stations - in fact, it’s actually quite complicated. Copying Siri’s local application data can be considered the ‘easy part,’ the trouble starts when the application itself attempts to communicate with Apple’s servers. Thus far, hackers have been able to circumvent this issue by deceiving Apple’s servers into thinking the application is indeed situated on a legitimate iPhone 4S, but as with most things software related, it is only a matter of time until compatibility is broken.
