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.
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.
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?”
First of all the app was release free of charge so nobody is out any money. Second, this is a private business. Do you suggest that the government should step in and force a business never to stop offering any of its products?
That "Hello world" website you wrote a few years ago to learn Ruby? Sorry, you must pay hosting costs in perpetuity for that because somebody would be inconvenienced by its disappearance.
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.