

The Original Siri App Gets Pulled From The App Store, Servers Killed - tilt
http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/04/the-original-siri-app-gets-pulled-from-the-app-store-servers-killed/

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droithomme
Ok so people purchased this product and were using it. Apple then bought the
company, and made the product (which until today worked perfectly fine on
current hardware) an exclusive on their new hardware, requiring significant
cost of upgrading, and then they dismantled the old product and prevented
their legitimate owners from using them any more, all in order to force the
customers to do an expensive hardware upgrade if they wanted to keep using
their product.

It's pretty amazing that this sort of thuggish strongarm tactic is a legal
business practice. It's comparable to car manufacturers using OnStar to
disable the brakes on 2011 models as soon as the 2012 ones come out.

~~~
Bud
This is inaccurate (and hyperbolic). My copy of Siri is working just fine, on
my iPhone 4.

~~~
droithomme
OK, so then the article is inaccurate, correct? I am commenting on the claims
made in the article, which if true, are disturbing. If they are not true, then
there's nothing to see here and all is fine.

~~~
Bud
Yeah, not your fault. TechCrunch jumped the gun on this story. There was a
blip when they updated the servers, but Siri has been working fine since then.
However, it is true that if you did not get Siri BEFORE today's announcement,
you have to wait for the 4S, because they have pulled Siri from the App Store,
which makes sense.

Here's the update that TechCrunch posted recently:

Update: After a brief downtime, the servers came back up.. with a message of
their impending demise: “I’ve been replaced! The new Siri is even smarter and
better looking than me, and waiting for you on the iPhone 4S. I’ll be leaving
for home Oct 15th. Until then…how can I help you?”

~~~
jkincaid
That message sounds to me like the servers will be taken down on October 15
(not just the app, but the actual service). Am I misreading it?

~~~
hartror

       I’ll be leaving for home Oct 15th. Until then…how can I help you?”
    

That is exactly how I read that which of course doesn't make sense given that
they will be running servers for the new version :/

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Splines
What MSFT absolutely nails in this arena is the experience in the XBL
marketplace. If you buy something, it's yours forever (well, longer than in
the app store, anyway). Many many games have been pulled, usually because the
owner of the game has gone out of business, but if you've bought that game you
can go and download it again at any time. Device licensing is also
straightforward, whereas if I sync apps purchased under different apple ids to
my iPhone I can get really bizarre behavior with on-phone updates and app-
purchasing (sometimes it changes who it thinks I am, depending on some
combination of who's app I synced/updated last, or something).

It's something that I wish I could to in the App Store. I need to keep tabs on
my IPAs in case there's an app that I bought that is no longer available. In
this day and age I shouldn't need to do that.

Apple's implementation of this category of stuff feels really rough.

~~~
martingordon
> It's something that I wish I could to in the App Store. I need to keep tabs
> on my IPAs in case there's an app that I bought that is no longer available.
> In this day and age I shouldn't need to do that.

With the new iCloud stuff, you can go into the Purchased page on the iTunes
Store and download any app you've ever downloaded, including those that are no
longer available in the store.

~~~
itsnotvalid
In Siri's case you can't even download the app right now. Of course
downloading would mean nothing, because the server for that app is closing on
Oct 15.

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ck2
Doesn't voice processing go "through the cloud" ?

Doesn't Google do this for free on Android via their servers?

<http://www.google.com/mobile/voice-actions/>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGbYVvU0Z5s>

~~~
koopajah
Voice processing through the cloud is one way to do it. It allows to perform
the CPU consuming part of Voice Recognition on remote powerful servers but to
do so you must be connected to internet, it's harder to include your "local"
info (own contacts, own music, etc) With a chip powerful enough you can do the
voice recognition directly with your phone as it is done in a lot of devices
embedded currently in cars for contact/music recognition.

~~~
ConstantineXVI
Not necessarily, all the remote servers have to do is churn voice into text.
Your phone can handle the sorting through your local data just fine once the
voice is processed.

~~~
koopajah
Of course, you can do Speech to text and THEN analyzes the text to find the
"intent", but on embedded devices it is easier to "plan" what is the
vocabulary that you want to support and then perform recognition based on this
vocabulary. At least on low CPU/RAM embedded devices.

~~~
adambyrtek
Only when the space is limited and enumerable, like on legacy GPS devices that
keep a complete routing database. Android voice actions are much more
powerful, allowing you to search for any phrase, get directions to a given
place, send arbitrary text messages etc. The possibilities are effectively
infinite.

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erickhill
For many iPhone 4 early adopters who can't live without Siri but want the
experience, this means either 1) waiting until mid-November and doing a "free"
upgrade via ATT's 20-month allowance or 2) waiting 6 months and finally
jumping ship to Verizon once the current contract expires.

Disappointed this is an "exclusive" app, but I want to live in a Star Trek
world, too.

Might as well go all-in and give ATT the bird on the way out, even if just on
principle.

~~~
Bud
Not true at all. I've been using Siri since June or so, on my iPhone 4. It's
been on the App Store at least that long. If you are really an early adopter
and really wanted this app so badly, you could have downloaded it, and could
be using it right now.

~~~
spinchange
...Until 10/15 after which you'll have to buy a completely new phone to
continue using it. They are taking away existing functionality that has been
available to users for almost 2 years and relaunching it as the primary
'exclusive' feature on new, more expensive hardware.

It's also still throwing the same error as shown in the TC post for many
users, myself included.

~~~
dextorious
Any reason why you believe the Siri app sold previously is the EXACT same
functionality as that inside iPhone 4S?

For one, I believe the iPhone 4S version works offline too.

If so, the "relaunching" part is not accurate, as you imply that what got
relaunch is the SAME exact thing that was previously available.

~~~
spinchange
I didn't say the original app had all the "EXACT" same functionality as what
is in the iPhone 4S.

It has a lot of the same basic functionality that I have used and would
continue to use on my 3GS, except that I can't because Apple turning it off on
all iPhone models except for the new 4S. (It already appears to be offline for
me.)

I don't disagree that the new implementation looks to be far more polished,
tightly integrated, and probably just plain better than what I had.

What I object to, is them taking it away and forcing an upgrade of hardware if
I still want to use the same features I already have been.

The "SAME," "EXACT" semantics are yours, not mine. I don't think I implied
that either. They took an existing app away and the features are now only
available on brand new hardware. That is a business and marketing decision,
not a limitation of existing hardware.

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salman89
I would guess that Apple will now use the phone to handle most of the Siri
computations, and that in this old Siri app it was being done server side.
This is why 4S is required.

Having the app out there for a while likely gave Siri great users to test out
their system with and improve upon it before launching mass integrated with
the OS.

~~~
Kylekramer
From <http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/siri.html>:

 _Siri is available in Beta only on iPhone 4S and requires Internet access._

Systemic obsolescence, plain and simple.

~~~
salman89
Right, processing the Siri commands locally instead of on a server might
require more CPU horsepower that the iPhone 4 cannot handle. Just my best
guess as a non-iPhone4S upsell reason for it being iPhone 4S only. The fact
that it requires an internet connection may not mean anything. You don't
necessarily know why it needs an internet connection. Things like search or
feeding back use data can be non computational reasons for requiring an
internet connection.

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atmz
The article makes no mention of the fact that the Siri app was free. What
possible obligation does Apple have to continue to provide a service to
"customers", when these users have not bought any product or service, and
Apple itself didn't even own the app when the service began.

Lots of people seem to think that we have a right to continued access to free
web apps/services just because once something is given it can't be taken away;
this obviously isn't true. This particular case is just Apple being a business
and isn't even particularly egregious.

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mal1031
I am now getting "Sorry, a problem occurred receiving response from the
server." I guess that the server for this version has been shut down. :(

