Siri is now only available on the iPhone 4S
Until Tuesday evening, Siri.com was the home page for the company which Apple already owned, and you could download a free app which would work on older iPhones (back to the 3GS: here's a review) and offer you much of the Siri functionality. Now it's been withdrawn – and its servers turned off for old versions of the app – and Siri's pages redirect to Apple's site.
If you think about it, this means that Apple's taking software that did run on old hardware and limiting it to new hardware. For a company that makes its money out of selling hardware, this might not be surprising. For those who had the free app, that's probably annoying. As far as we presently know there's nothing 4S-specific about Siri (although possibly the voice recognition depends on the A5 chip).
Siri really works, and it's quite clever
I got some time to test it hands-on, in a booth in a fairly busy room of journalists. "What's the weather like outside?" I asked. It came back with the weather in London (where I was). "What's my father's email address?" It came back with two email addresses for the person designated in the address book as "father". Not what you'd call a comprehensive test, but it shows that it's location-aware, context-aware, and works without training. (By contrast, I just tried "Siri app" on voice search on my Google Nexus S running Gingerbread: it took me to the web page for Syria.)
Siri is integrated through the whole phone
You press the home button and the interface comes up. Then ask it anything. It's very neat. It uses Siri's servers, so you'll need a working connection.
Siri will search Google, but Apple gets to see searches now too
You can ask it to "search the web", but note that Apple is now an intermediate, which can see what searches are being done. That's useful to Apple. Add in location data (which it doesn't have to pass on to Google...) and it's prising Google's fingers off mobile search, at least if done via Siri.
The iPhone 4S really does look and feel exactly like the iPhone 4
There's no difference at all, externally. Apparently the iPhone 4S is very slightly heavier – 139g (4.9oz) v 136g (4.8oz) – but you'd need a very sensitive hand to detect it.
Taking pictures on the 4S is much quicker, and taking extra pictures is too
I tried the camera on taking pictures, and the setup is really fast. It takes more pictures quickly too – almost like firing the motordrive on an SLR camera. Apple says it takes 1.1 second to get to the "click" part – faster than any in a list it provided – and that it's then just 0.5 second to take another one. It's impressive: camera setup delay is one of the niggles of modern life (especially smartphone life) that has crept up on us without anyone doing very much.
The claims on battery life and antenna response are remarkable, but we'll have to see
Claims about improvements in battery life and antenna "intelligence" make it sound like this will actually improve the user experience a lot. Phil Schiller didn't refer to any "problems" with the iPhone 4 antenna, but of course the idea of improvements includes the suggestion that things weren't perfect before.
iCloud is going to be good…
Just as with the iOS4/iPhone 4 release, Apple is releasing the next version of iOS two days ahead of the iPhone 4S so that its servers won't conk out. (My interpretation.) The ability to have your pictures and documents and apps synchronised without the tedious plugging and unplugging of wires is going to be a great relief to millions – and iCloud is applicable for phones back to the iPhone 3GS from 2009, and iPod Touches released after that period too. Ian Fogg, a mobile analyst, reckons there are about 200m applicable iOS devices (iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads) in use. That's a very big platform.
We don't know precisely how quickly syncing over Wi-Fi and especially 3G will work (especially with larger photos from the newer iPhone 4S). This makes it feature-competitive with Google+'s photo syncing on Android.
…but hurry up and wait for music sync
The record labels don't seem to have quite got this tied up over here: we want to be able to synchronise our purchased music (at least – and all our music, actually) across phones. Every time you have to plug your phone in to shift some music across, say a little curse to the record labels. (Unless you work for one, obviously.) Apple UK isn't offering any timing, even though our sources were indicating imminent agreement on Tuesday.
Notifications is more comprehensive than Android's offering
Notifications on the old iOS have always looked clunky ever since Android's elegant "something's changed" icons in its top menu bar came along. But on iOS 5 (available across those 200m devices, remember) you just swipe downwards from the menu bar and you get a view on everything that's changed, with granular detail including what emails have come in (so you can go to them individually) or what events there are to deal with and so on. It's going to be a more effective shortcut to stuff that needs doing, and leapfrogs Android.
iMessage is being stealthily positioned as a BlackBerry killer
If you watch the video (link below) you'll see that in talking about the iPod Touch, Schiller makes a great deal of its potential appeal for "kids". Among the things he points out are that it doesn't need a phone contract (hooray!) but that it has all the app functionality - for games etc - of an iPhone (er, hooray?). And iMessage will work (over Wi-Fi) without needing a phone contract. He was positioning it as a way for kids to keep in touch with parents without having to spend money on a phone contract, because it will work on the iPod Touch too.
That's platform thinking: 200m devices far outnumbers RIM's 70 million subscribers worldwide for BlackBerry Messenger. Make your own estimate of how many of each of those are in the hands of teenagers, but it's clear that Apple wants to get BBM to be replaced by iM. RIM though has the advantage that its devices can get phone contracts. At the (3GS) low end, it could turn into a scrap for customers. What would be interesting to know if the overlap between iPod Touch owners and BBM users.
You know what? Apple has left a gap in its numbering scheme
It could release an iPhone 5 next year along with the iPad 3. Just saying.
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