
Daring Fireball: The iPhone 4S - mcobrien
http://daringfireball.net/2011/10/iphone_4s
======
AlexMuir
I don't think we (tech people) appreciate just how magical the public is going
to find Siri.

Most people have never used voice recognition beyond shouting "Call Dave
Jobs[1] Mobile" in the car. This is going to be perceived as magic, in the
same way as the accelerometer in the Wii or the original finger touch
interface. Anyone with a 4S is going to be showing this off to their friends,
and I can't wait to try it.

There are parallels with people saying 'Touch has been around for years, but
people prefer buttons' when the iPhone came out. True - until someone did it
right. And now everyone wants touch.

And yes, I know it's been around on Android. But Apple make you WANT to use
it. No-one's ever been bursting with excitement to show me their Android voice
recognition stuff, and nor have I been wetting myself to try it out.

On the downside for Apple - improvements to the iPhone for the foreseeable
future look to be on the software/web server side. They are vulnerable here.
Limiting features to new models is going to piss people off, and fighting
patent battles on software is much, much harder.

[1] Funny typo - I meant to type Dave Jones. Only noticed this on rereading
the post.

~~~
doomlaser
Siri has been out since 2010 on the app store. Is there any reason (other than
Apple's push with building it into the operating system) that users will take
more notice of it now than they have in the last (nearly) two years?

~~~
robryan
Simply getting it in front of more users might make the difference. It's also
a lot more tightly integrated I would assume.

~~~
cstuder
A lot, yes. Apparently you can just hold the phone to your ear in order to
activate it.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
From the videos I've seen it looks like it launches via holding down the home
key and at least for some command separation you need to hit the "talk" button
with the Siri application.

~~~
masklinn
There are two options to activate Siri: use the Home button, or just put it to
your ear, as if you were talking _on_ your phone rather than _to_. The second
option can be disabled, but it's there and enabled by default.

~~~
jmreid
That'll make me use it in public more. Genius move.

I'm just too shy to walk down the street and talk to my phone without it
looking like I'm talking to someone.

~~~
protomyth
The no button option will rock for my Mom, no button - less problems.

------
mcobrien
Me: “Set an alarm for 9 AM.”

Siri: “It’s set for 9 AM.”

Me: “Change that to 10 AM.”

Siri: “I changed your alarm to 10 AM tomorrow.”

Me: “Cancel that alarm.”

Siri: “I deleted your 10 AM alarm.”

Me: “Thank you, Siri.”

Siri: “Your wish is my command.”

It seems this thing is really fun to use. I can't wait to try it out.

~~~
alecperkins
I can't wait to try stuff like this: “Remind me to fix Amy’s glasses when I
get home.”

Does its understanding of location extend to more than just home is the
address I entered for myself? Exploring its capabilities will be really
interesting.

Siri's understanding of context is what makes it so useful. Pair it with
Watson and it'd be unstoppable. (Wait, no! We've seen how that movie ends.)

~~~
ajanuary
It works based on geofencing, which allows you to specify and label regions.

~~~
unlogic
And that just means keeping your GPS turned on the whole day. Sure, I always
dreamed about losing all my battery charge to such an insanely great feature.

~~~
alphakappa
You may want to wait and see how this feature really works.

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iand
Even though Siri seems to be amazing I wonder whether people will use it much
in practice. Voice is intrusive in the environment and annoying to people who
aren't part of the conversation. Sitting next to someone conversing on the
phone in a public space can be irritating but imagine how jarring it will be
if the person next to you barks commands out loud at random intervals.

Him: "Remind me to pick up my dry cleaning."

You: "Huh? You talking to me? No..."

Later: "After picking up my dry cleaning, I want you to book me a flight to
Tucson"

You: "I'm finding another seat..."

~~~
sambeau
This was what it was like at the beginning of mobile phones and then again at
the start of bluetooth headsets.

People get used to it pretty quickly (but will always hate it on trains and
planes).

~~~
officemonkey
My rule of bluetooth headsets: the more often you wear it (when you're not on
a call), the more likely you are a douchebag.

It's held up fairly well, even as bluetooth adoption has increased.

------
pieter
I wonder how they'll handle different grammar constructions in different
languages.

For example, in English, "Text my girlfriend that I'm coming home later" would
send a message with "I'm coming home later".

However, in Dutch, saying the same thing "SMS mijn vriendin dat ik later
thuiskom" should result in a text with the content "Ik kom later thuis",
requiring labeling all parts of the sentence.

~~~
dextorious
It might not even work in Dutch. From the webpage:

"Siri may not be available in all languages or in all areas, and features may
vary by area".

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po
How to determine which of the several 3rd party API's to use seems pretty
straight-forward to me:

Me: Search for Japanese food.

Siri: I found these 5 results on Yelp nearby.

Me: Search for Japanese food on Foursquare.

Siri: I found these 8 results on on Foursquare nearby.

If you explicitly request a certain service often enough, then Siri should
start to default to it. That's exactly what a real world personal assistant
would do. In fact, Apple doesn't have to be that creative. Just do what a real
personal assistant would do in any given situation and you should be good.

Also, I would really like some reviewer mention if the iPhone 4S has less of a
rolling-shutter issue as the previous iPhones do.

~~~
epistasis
The challenge is specifying which subsets of queries should be directed to the
service. Foursquare won't be able to handle appointment requests, but it does
handle restaurant requests. How does the Foursquare part of Siri specify this?

Perhaps you're suggesting that all services answer all queries, and then
there's some sort of ranking on the results from each service to decide which
one responds. Foursquare would give a low score answer to appointment queries,
so the calendar app would get preference. This would be the best suggestion
I've heard, but requires processing every request against every agent, which
may be OK for Apple, but only some independent developers would be able to
provide their own hardware. They may have to provide software to run on Apple
servers...

~~~
po
Any company that wants to provide "Siri-compatible" services registers on the
apple developer website. Apple defines a set of services that it believes
customers will be asking for (appointments, location-based recommendations,
product-recommendations, weather, stock data, general search, etc...) and each
provider can register their API endpoint and the query types they support. It
seems that they already do this categorization to determine what to use (the
built-in stock app for example) for a given query. Siri-compatable devices
will regularly ping apple for a list of supported API endpoints and report
back to Apple on how well these endpoints are performing on query speed and
user adoption/satisfaction.

That's all just my guess of course...

------
kenver
Does anyone know how well Siri performs if your accent is from outside of the
States?

~~~
hellweaver666
I have a friend from Scotland who has just ordered a 4s and is really excited
about Siri. I'll be interested to see how it gets on with his thick Dundee
accent (especially since I can barely understand him half the time!).

~~~
kenver
Yea this is the problem I'm not sure that they've solved. There are loads of
regional accents in the UK, and only one setting in the language options
called 'British English'

~~~
smackay
Well everyone from the UK sings with an American accent (except the
Proclaimers, of course) so I don't think must adjustment will be needed.

~~~
ajanuary
You need to start listening to some better UK bands.

------
ranebo
As a keen cyclist I'm really looking forward to trying Siri, but after reading
the footnote I can now actually see myself using it anytime:

"You might wonder, Hey, don’t you feel like a jerk walking around the city
talking to your phone? But here’s the thing: Siri, by default, kicks in when
you hold the iPhone up to your ear, so you can talk to it and it looks like
you’re on a phone call."

------
6ren
Siri paves the way for the _display-less phone_ † - smaller, lower energy use

Context switching could be done like short-cuts: when you open an app it
captures (most) shortcuts; and you can reallocate short-cut bindings. These
are easy improvements. Just think of both voice and touch interfaces as having
grammars.

Wolfram|Alpha's natural language interface is endlessly annoying for me - I
think Siri would also get into trouble with more complex requests (but there's
plenty of value in it before that limitation comes into play)

†this neologism could well go the way of the _horse-less carriage_

------
elithrar
The humor in some of the responses is a really nice touch; perhaps something I
didn't expect from Apple, who is fairly straight-down-the-line with their
dialogs and software.

Saying that, it's actually appreciated, and does a great job at attempting to
establish an emotional tie with the user.

~~~
teyc
The humour is classic Jobs. When he introduced the original Macintosh, it
began with a speech synthesizer telling a joke.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B-XwPjn9YY&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B-XwPjn9YY&feature=related)
forward to 3:20

~~~
ajanuary
That was actually written by Steve Hayden
([http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...](http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Intro_Demo.txt&topic=The%20Launch&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium))

------
ajanuary
"The most profound difference between the 4S and 4 cameras has nothing to do
with image quality. It’s that you don’t have to wait nearly as long. [...]
Even better, image quality is better, too."

Jeez Gruber, make up your mind :P

~~~
watmough
Maybe I'm not running enough apps, but my iPhone 4 has always seemed pretty
damn fast getting to 'ready to take picture'.

That said, I'm really looking forward to the additional speed in the 4S and
Siri.

------
frankiewarren
Does anyone know if there are cues that remind the end user to use Siri? (eg.
"you haven't used Siri in a week," or something of that nature). This feature,
since it is primarily hidden behind the home button, might be forgotten by the
average user.

As Mr. Gruber stated, once he got it into his workflow, he missed it when it
was gone. However, I think one of the biggest hurdles to mass adoption will be
getting it into the workflow of the average user.

Anyone have ideas of how to address this problem? Or do you think the product
video is enough?

~~~
ajanuary
Given they have similar situations with finder, multitasking, folders,
deleting apps etc. I suspect they're just going to rely on people remembering
the feature's there.

~~~
frankiewarren
I think those are a bit different. For all of the actions you mentioned, there
is only one way to complete the task (eg deleting an app). With Siri, you can
also accomplish any of its functionality using the traditional UI. Therefore
the user has to remember to use Siri.

However, your point is well taken. Maybe I'm not giving the average user
enough credit.

~~~
ajanuary
True, I hadn't considered that for a lot of those there isn't any other way.

------
sidwyn
Loved the ending. "The one and only disappointment I have with the iPhone 4S
is that the shutdown spinner animation is still low-res. That’s pretty low on
the list of nits to pick."

------
robmcm
Shame it can't read emails, but then I guess there is so much crap in an email
it just wouldn't read well...

~~~
ugh
The voice synthesis is really nothing new, it has been part of iOS as
VoiceOver (Apple's built-in screenreader, an accessibility feature) for a long
time. It certainly wouldn't have any problems reading emails and it seems to
me that emails tend to be less random than text messages.

Maybe they wanted to keep the interaction short to give it more flow? Siri
doesn't really ever seem to read very long stuff to you.

~~~
robmcm
True, I guess the modern language used in text messages could cause problems,
however with the lengh of signitures and message history indentation that I
get in a lot of emails, I could see them being an issue.

------
ankimal
I just hope it can handle accents or at least learn to handle them over time.

------
beej71
So is it legal to hold the phone to your ear and talk to Siri while driving?

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sturadnidge
An even smaller nit to pick is that nits are ordered by size, not count.

------
nirvana
Siri was originally an App, but it took a huge amount of effort to get it to
work. I believe the reason the feature is exclusive to the iPhone 4S is due to
hardware.

Apple said the processor in the iPhone 4S is the A5. This may be the exact
same chip in the iPad 2, or it might be the same _class_ of chip. Apple
doesn't detail the internals of their processors, so they can make device
specific versions and call them the same thing if they want. Thus, this A5
could have co-processors in it that didn't exist in the one for the iPad 2.
Specifically, I remember there begin something about an image co-processor
that the camera uses, and it seems logical that there might be some video
encoding or at least video feature extraction being done in hardware to enable
1080p video. (a big step up from 720p).

There may well be a feature extraction engine in the A5 to turn the audio
recording of your voice into a series of symbols that are much more efficient
to send over the wire to the SIRI service.

But, even if there are no co-processors, voice recognition is a very CPU
intensive process, and the A5 has another CPU in it, as well as a greatly
improved GPU. Either or both may be required for the current version of SIRI
(which is more complete than the original) to work.

Thus it literally may be the case that Siri wouldn't run on the iPhone 4.

~~~
sambeau
There is a signal processor in the iPhone 4 A5. Phil Schiller mentioned it
briefly in the keynote when talking about the camera (64 mins in).

Schiller referred to it as an "Image Signal Processor" so it may be that it is
custom silicone for used only by the camera but it seems more likely that it
is a more general DSP and was badged like this for the presentation.

It is probably a version of ARM's NEON technology:

<http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/neon.php>

    
    
      NEON technology can accelerate multimedia and signal
      processing algorithms such as video encode/decode, 2D/3D
      graphics, gaming, audio and speech processing, image
      processing, telephony, and sound synthesis by at least 
      3x the performance of ARMv5 and at least 2x the 
      performance of ARMv6 SIMD
    

Which directly mentions both image processing _and_ speech processing.

Update: According to wikipedia that's exactly what it is:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A5>

    
    
      The A5 contains a rendition of chip based upon the 
      dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU with NEON SIMD
      accelerator and a dual core PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU.
    

Their source is the reliable AnandTech:

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/4216/apple-ipad-2-gpu-
performa...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/4216/apple-ipad-2-gpu-performance-
explored-powervr-sgx543mp2-benchmarked)

Also, the corresponding A4 page makes no mention of NEON or DSP:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A4>

Interestingly, as this is the iPad A5 being discussed it strengthens the
argument for Siri-on-iPad2 (assuming the signal processor is key to Siri
working efficiently).

~~~
masklinn
> Also, the corresponding A4 page makes no mention of NEON or DSP

NEON is included in the A4's Cortex A8. In fact, NEON was added back in the
3GS: <http://wanderingcoder.net/2010/06/02/intro-neon/>

Only the 2G and the 3G don't have it.

~~~
sambeau
Well, that blows that theory out of the water!

So does the iPhone 4S have a different kind of DSP, too?

~~~
masklinn
I fear I have no idea at all. Sorry.

------
euroclydon
Well, it's Apple's next model since the Grip of Death problem, and no word if
it's fixed.

Talking to my phone is nice, and so is a fast camera, but it's tragic that
this beautiful sleek device has to be wrapped in an ugly rubber band for me to
make a call!

[Edit] Well, this article says it's been fixed with two antennas. I really
don't like how they downplay the problem and act like it only affects ham-
fisted gorillas. When I have just two bars, griping the bare metal with four
fingers is enough to make the signal too weak for communication.

<http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2394178,00.asp>

