You are probably wondering if you can get Siri voice command on your regular iPhone 4 rather than upgrading to an iPhone 4S, especially considering the reality that the 4S has sold out, waiting lists grow, and you were not in the long-line on opening day to get yours.
There was an interesting article in Technorati recently titled "Apple In Trouble: Hackers Successfully Ported Siri to the iPhone 4" by Salman Khan published on October 15, 2011. The article stated:
"Siri is Apple's new innovation and creativity. It's a new application added for iPhone 4s and a new way to control the iPhone with voice commands. Siri takes voice commands, you can ask Siri anything you want. Two Days earlier, the Apple Dev Team announced that porting Siri to the iPhone 4, can't port Siri without stealing some copyrighted files from the iPhone 4s. "The unique selling point of iPhone 4s is Siri and has a processor that's 2X's faster than the iPhone 4. If developers can exploit or hack Siri and place it on the iPhone 4, it could reduce the sale of 4S. "
This tells me that Siri is basically an APP, not a new feature or technological breakthrough, just software, and if it runs on the so-called slower processor, then why does one need a 4S phone for something like that? It appears that Apple may have over-embellished the hype once again, in order to stay on the hyperbolic inflection point turn-off to keep redlining revenues. Apparently, Apple sold 1 million iPhone 4S models on the first day and 4 million over the first weekend.
In fact, there were wide spread outages on the "set-up" servers for those registering their new 4S phones, as no company has ever sold that many handsets in a day or weekend. The Wall Street Journal reported this in an article titled; "Softbank Server Glitch Damps iPhone 4S Launch," published on October 14, 2011 – the day the Apple 4S iPhones became available. MacRumors Online also had an article; "AT&T Activation Servers Overloaded with iPhone 4S Launch," also on October 14, by Arnold Kim.
Okay so, Apple's big announcement coinciding with Steve Jobs death had everyone waiting in line at Apple Stores across the nation for the iPhone 4S with an abundance of fanfare, but when iPhone users discover that they could have merely added an APP and thus, had the Siri features anyway, it will turn off many, even highly-sophisticated brand loyalists.
Now then, the company will most likely tell us that without the iPhone 4S processing speed, the Siri system won't work as well – which may be true since voice software is a processing hog, but will that explanation be enough to satisfy the iPhone 4S upgraders who spent big bucks to stay on the leading edge of Apple's technology, or will they be completely turned off and feel burned?
Well, to answer the question, yes, you can get Siri on your regular iPhone 4 and there should be instructions online on how to do this, which may or may not void your iPhone 4 warranty, and it may not work 100% as good as it might on the iPhone 4S or maybe it will, that remains a question. Still, I ask, why didn't Apple merely allow Siri as an APP or a software upgrade for a small one-time price, rather than using it as a reason to buy a newer model? Does Apple think everyone is stupid, that we are all dumb consumers serving their will? Maybe we are, maybe Apple is right, you decide. Please consider all this.
* In full-disclosure – this author owns NO Apple Products, and is not a brand loyalist of Apple, and believes their products are overpriced, over-hyped, and too trendy.