I thoroughly understand Apple’s stand on this issue from a marketing perspective.  Still, I am disappointed.

I don’t.  I mean, I’d pay $20 for the feature on my iPhone 4 that is about 6 months old (with me).  So the feature can be more broadly accepted, virally, with iPhone 4, even iPhone 3GS users, or it won’t.  And few will hack it onto a jailbroken version of the iPhone.  If it works, as technologists outside Apple have shown, why can’t Apple demonstrate that inside Apple, and support expanding it’s use?  Reading the SJ biography answers a lot of my own questions but now that SJ is gone, is Apple engineering reverting back to the Sculley/Spindler(who)/Amelio types?

My understanding is that Siri needs memory that the iPhone 4 does not have. It’s predecessor did not, but the current version does, and Apple isn’t going to release something to provide a substandard experience and end up having to field all the negative reaction. The majority of people don’t understand memory and other things on their phone; they just would know it doesn’t work and gripe about it—even if they were warned ahead of time. Tons of companies get support calls on software for computers that don’t meet the minimum specs, and ten get yelled at when they inform the person the minimum specs are listed and his or her computer doesn’t meet them. Better to just not deal with it.

If it is running on a hacked/jailbroken iPhone 4, I’d be interested to know if the fact it has half the memory available affects performance or function. Also, Siri is officially beta, and Apple may want to get it working fully before handing it to an iPhone with less memory. Also also, Apple has said absolutely positively no before, and ended up at a yes later, so I take statements from Apple with a grain of salt when it comes to products and product release.

My understanding is that Siri needs memory that the iPhone 4 does not have. It’s predecessor did not, but the current version does, and Apple isn’t going to release something to provide a substandard experience and end up having to field all the negative reaction. The majority of people don’t understand memory and other things on their phone; they just would know it doesn’t work and gripe about it—even if they were warned ahead of time. Tons of companies get support calls on software for computers that don’t meet the minimum specs, and ten get yelled at when they inform the person the minimum specs are listed and his or her computer doesn’t meet them. Better to just not deal with it.

Ok so if your going to go and just random things, next time, DONT. The iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S have the SAME amount of RAM. Traditionally apple has doubled the RAM on each new iPhone as compared to its predecessor, but that was not the case with the iPhone 4S. Siri is also not dependent on the iPhone’s processor, memory, or any other hardware on the phone. All of the processing is done remotely on apple’s servers and the information is just sent back to the phone. So basically the processing and workload is done remotely. From a marketing standpoint i can understand apple not wanting to just give away the iPhone’s biggest selling feature, but Siri is fully capable of working on the older devices.