Siri Protocol Cracked

First time accepted submitter jisom writes with something that will probably not be working come morning. Quoting the source: "Today, we managed to crack open Siri's protocol. As a result, we are able to use Siri's recognition engine from any device. Yes, that means anyone could now write an Android app that uses the real Siri! Or use Siri on an iPad! And we're going to share this know-how with you." Basically, Siri sends the data to the processing server using non-standard HTTP extensions. Of note is that the audio is encoded using Ogg Speex.

Comments

You still need iPhone 4S

[CmdrPony]

While you could write an Android app or anything else, the protocol sends an unique ID with the request. That ID is unique to every iPhone 4S. End result being, you can probably use your own for your personal use, but if you try to sell an App for Android and include your ID with it, Apple will just blacklist it. So you will still need your own iPhone 4S.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[jollyreaper]

How long until they crack the unique ID generator and create viable clones of existing phones?

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[ghn]

Who said the ID needed to be valid? TFA does not mention if they tried random ID's.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[ackthpt]

How long until they crack the unique ID generator and create viable clones of existing phones?

You can probably already buy them on the streets in Shanghai.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[CmdrPony]

Never, unless they manage to hack into Apple's servers. The ID check is server side.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[iluvcapra]

How long until they figure out how to clone a phone? They already can do this :)

Besides, why would an Android user want to goto the trouble? I'm informed (rabidly and often) that Android phones already have superior features and that Siri is merely a clone with fancy marketing.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[CmdrPony]

They say this:

The iPhone 4S sends identifiers everywhere. So if you want to use Siri on another device, you still need the identfier of at least one iPhone 4S. Of course Apple could blacklist an identifier, but as long as youâ(TM)re keeping it for personal use, that should be allright!

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Odin_Zifer]

If some one where to gather a couple dozen unique ID's they could use those to setup a Siri relay service.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[hydrofix]

If it is correctly implemented, that's easier said than done. It is not necessarily a key-value pair that are cryptographically verified (i.e. there exists a purely arithmetic function f(x,y) that returns true iff (x, y) is a valid pair, and client is allowed access if it supplies correct (x,y) ) This kind of system would be crackable; just find another arithmetic function f' that returns y for some x (one usually exists).

However, if Apple knew what they were doing (and they usually do), it's a GUID database stored on Apple's server. Say, they generate a 128-bit random access code for each manufactured iPhone, and the only way you can use Siri is to supply a valid GUID. Such system is virtually uncrackable, because even for a 128-bit GUID and 200 million iPhone 4S manufactured, it would take a staggering 17 million trillion trillion guesses (i.e. HTTP requests to Apple servers) to guess right ONE correct GUID. If one request took a mere 100 bytes with its TCP/IP headers, you would have to transfer 170 million yottabytes (170 million trillion terabytes) of data to find one valid access key.

Good luck explaining this to your ISP! :)

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[sunderland56]

So you will still need your own iPhone 4S.

You don't need your own, you just need a unique ID.

I'm sure that there must be someone you don't like who owns an iPhone? Just borrow it for a sec to "make a quick call"...

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[inflex]

Genuine question... couldn't you just get the GUIDs of existing valid iPhones?

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[hydrofix]

Sure. But then you'd have to buy an iPhone.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[The MAZZTer]

Then Apple just blacklists them from Siri for violating their ToS (I'm sure reverse engineering protocols are covered somewhere in there).

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides, why would an Android user want to goto the trouble? I'm informed (rabidly and often) that Android phones already have superior features and that Siri is merely a clone with fancy marketing.

LOL those whacky fans of that big ad network Google.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[inflex]

I guess the subsequent point will be - what does Apple do when they find themselves blacklisting legitimate phone owners that simply have had the GUID lifted by a 3rd party ?

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[CmdrPony]

Maybe that's a good reason not to root your phone and download unverified stuff from warez places?

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[demonlapin]

(rabidly and often)

No doubt. Those users are the worst thing about having an Android phone.

I like my Android phone. It does what I need, it does it fairly smoothly. It's not as slick as my iOS devices, but I'm used to the downsides of Android and for the moment I'd rather deal with them than deal with the downsides of iOS. But the fanbois are just awful.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[sangreal66]

Not trying to suggest that this would be a viable approach, but you only seem to have considered the worst case. You would not have to transfer 170 million yottabytes if your first guess was correct.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Anonymous Coward]

Or use an open WiFi access point. I'd point out the iThingies send their UUID in a lot of requests to Apple servers over ordinary HTTP. I know this because I block it in Privoxy.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[mug funky]

sounds like a fun prank to play on apple's servers :)

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Jeremi]

Sure. But then you'd have to buy an iPhone.

... or eavesdrop on somebody else's iPhone.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps Android could run IOS in A VM

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[jamesh]

Sure. But then you'd have to buy an iPhone.

Or write an app that 'leaks' that information to a server you control. I'm sure Apple would have no hesitation in blacklisting a few thousand ID's that were leaked, but what if it was a few million?

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea behind the GUID is that the odds of the same GUID being randomly generated twice is so low that you shouldn't even consider it to be possible.

Of course, computers continue to get faster and you can always throw more computers at the problem, so maybe eventually it is "possible"

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[ghn]

Yes, there is a good chance that they do check that ID.. But the mere fact that the iphone *sends* the ID does not mean that it is actually "checked"... Nothing in the article mention that they tried to send fake ID and got an error.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[jibjibjib]

If you can eavesdrop on SSL connections, you have better things to do than cloning Siri.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[ljaguar]

... or eavesdrop on somebody else's iPhone.

the reason why you can't do this is because Siri communicates in HTTPS, so it is not vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks. hence, you cannot eavesdrop on somebody else's iphone

the reason why they could listen to the traffic in the article is because they had access to the root certificate on the iphone itself. you can do this if you have physical access to the phone, but obviously you can't just do this over the air to other people's phones

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[rednip]

How long until they crack the unique ID generator and create viable clones of existing phones?

You can probably already buy them on the streets in Shanghai.

Sounds like a lot of work for a little utility, but hey if you need an excuse to prowl around the seedy areas of China, it's as good as any I suppose.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[iamhassi]

How long until they crack the unique ID generator and create viable clones of existing phones?

Probably about the same time they fix the problem of simply going with HTTPS to make sure it's valid: "So basically all we had to do was to setup a custom SSL certification authority, add it to our iPhone 4S, and use it to sign our very own certificate for a fake “guzzoni.apple.com”. And it worked : Siri was sending commands to your own HTTPS sever! Seems like someone at Apple missed something!"

Expect to see iOS 5.0.2 by Thanksgiving fixing this Siri "bug"

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[justforgetme]

Well, given a large enough statistical sample and enough processing power they could come up with an algorithm that generates valid keys.
So they could just hack the servers angry birds calls home to and dump their keylist, that would be a start.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[wierd_w]

This presumes that the guid assignments are done from the 128bit guid space using some garanteed form of true random.

Given the number of phones in existence, and that new phones will have to be whitelisted as time passes, (and that random guesses will run the risk of collision) it is more likely that the guid assignment is performed in some sophisticated pseudo random fashion, and as such, identifiable patterns could be detected given a sufficiently large number of known whitelisted guids.

Once you have that information, and perhaps some other information that apple might use in the guid assignment algorithm (serial number, manufacturing site, date of manufacture, etc...) it should be possible to determine which guids should be valid.

This sounds like an opportunity for a naughty idevice app developer, who should already be able to get such a list by having their app phone home, and request the device uuid as part of a purchase validation mecchanism. (A popular app could quickly get several hundred active unique ids to work with, perhaps more.)

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[corbettw]

If you're so lucky that you can get a 128 random number duplicated on the first try you really ought to cash out your 401k and buy some lottery tickets.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[ShakaUVM]

>>If you're so lucky that you can get a 128 random number duplicated on the first try you really ought to cash out your 401k and buy some lottery tickets.

The optimal strategy for playing slots is to hit the jackpot on the first pull. I once explained this to a friend of mine, tossed in a nickle, and hit a $15 jackpot.

He was blown away.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[simoncpu was here]

Genuine question: are the root certificates for each phone unique?

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[flux]

While that may be true, would having the keys of all existing iPhone devices be a sample large enough? Or maybe you could link to research that can successfully predict the keys OpenSSL generates. No, Debian OpenSSL doesn't count..

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[wvmarle]

You mean those phones that look exactly like an iPhone yet cost half price and run Android instead? If you have a good one they may even have tweaked the interface to look just like an iPhone.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[bemymonkey]

There is nothing available on Android that's anywhere near as functional as Siri (seems to be in the ads). Voice recognition is OK (but largely dependent on the quality of your device - if the manufacturer [HTC, cough] used cheap mics, no chance), but unless you want to call someone or search Google, you're going to need to do it the old fashioned way.

And yes, I'm one of the rabid Android fanboys you seem to be encountering so often ;)

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[CharlyFoxtrot]

How long until they crack the unique ID generator and create viable clones of existing phones?

Then Apple can perform an additional check with location services, find the ID's that are accessed from widely differing locations within a relatively short timeframe and block them.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Opportunist]

Don't you tell me what I get to do when I can eavesdrop on SSL connections, puny human!

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[justforgetme]

I was living under the impression that OpenSSL keys were pseudo non-deterministic. Pseudo because no sw random number is truly random in mathematical definition.
Anyway, point is that if the ID generation is deterministic (which it probably is if they want to do offline/offsite auth) the existing amount of iPhones will, or not, be sufficient depending on ratio of used up entries in the generated name space. Truth be told I don't think that the existing number of IDs is enough, the generator probably is designed to give unique ids for any apple product until the heat death of the universe (if you believe recent rumors that people will stop buying apple after that).

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but that is not good enough. If you get the GUID off one phone and ship your (android) app with that number, every person using the app will be sharing that one GUID. Apple can then figure out something is whacky (this one GUID is seeing A LOT of traffic) and just ban the GUID.

On the other hand, if you could generate as many GUIDs as you wanted, Apple will not be able to tell.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[theNAM666]

Done. NeXt?

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Waccoon]

Fire with fire.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[PwnzerDragoon]

Slightly OT, but that post (this thread - really, the whole story) brings to mind this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPqk_eKwVLY

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Anonymous Coward]

More like 64^2/128=12.8 petabytes. Still hard enough to be pointless, assuming they didn't use a terrible random number generator.. Ok, PS3 didn't use any RNG, but if Apple uses a predictable PRNG, 128-bit collisions won't be as hard to find as them should seem.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple would just alter the algorithm for newer phones and whitelist only they keys that they currently have generated. You'd have to be lucky to randomly generate an existing key.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Paradise Pete]

Fire with fire.

Which rarely makes sense, especially when dealing with actual fire.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, that's always been my opinion, that it is honestly just speech recognition hooked up to Cleverbot.

Can you please enlighten me, why this is the best thing since sliced bread?

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Trogre]

Not that it's relevant to the argument at hand, but you might like to research the practice of back-firing, in relation to creating a firebreak, particularly with bushfires.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[AmiMoJo]

Back when people were cloning cable modem they needed valid MAC addresses to make it work. People would sniff them from the network itself, or technicians would simply note them down when doing legit installs/repairs.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Anonymous Coward]

nope

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[DeathElk]

So that dreaded walled garden has it's upsides then huh?

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Electricity Likes Me]

It wouldn't matter though: if one were to harvest a suitably large number of phone IDs, say, 10,000 or so, then you could easily randomize the ID used for Siri queries amongst that set of phones such that distinguishing "emulator" queries was effectively impossible.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's just HTTP, you just need a laptop with packet sniffing software. Just find a cafe with wifi frequented by iDrones and pluck the UUIDs out of the air! It wouldn't surprise me if there are already databases of UUIDs being compiled and available on black markets

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[DrXym]

More interesting would be if someone crafts an app (an android app even) which can eavesdrop or provoke nearby iPhones to yield their ids. Perhaps the surrogate siri app could even implement this functionality - you walk down the street, the app harvests a bunch of ids. If one id gets banned it goes off onto the next, or perhaps uses them in rotation. You could leech off the local population indefinitely like that until Apple got its act together and changed the protocol, used encryption via keys embedded into the iPhone or worked with mobile operators to identify rogue phones using their IP addresses.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[DrXym]

Depends I guess if there is an algorithm. Apple (assuming they were smart) could use genuinely random noise to generate 128-bit uuids. They could maintain a list of the ones in use and there would no possibility of generating one except by (extremely slim) chance. Of course maybe they do just allocate them from a block or in some other predictable way. In which case they're fucked. As they would if there is a way to get an iPhone to cough up its id, e.g. by walking past while doing a bluetooth discovery, pretending to be a free wifi spot, nmaping phones on the local wifi or some other ruse.

They'd have to fallback on IP analysis and perhaps subtle differences in behaviour between a genuine device and a fake one.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Per Wigren]

So that dreaded walled garden has it's upsides then huh?

Yes, for Apple.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[norpy]

apart from crunching the ip addresses, seeing a lot of requests from geographically diverse locations on the same ID would throw up a pretty big red flag.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[norpy]

I think he meant access to the root certificate STORE on the phone. You just install your own trusted root key and MITM yourself for fun and profit!

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who lives in Shanghai, I think you watch too many movies.

Real life is not what you see on a big screen.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never used it but there's a button I always accidentally touch on the keyboard on my Android phone that pops up a voice-recognition (I'm pretty certain) thing that I cancel. Why don't Android users just use that if they're interested in talking to their phone?

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[9jack9]

I use that voice-recognition thing occasionally. It works fairly well. If you say "Is it going to snow today?", then it produces the text "is it going to snow today", but it doesn't give you a weather report.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Calydor]

You mean they're sold in stores instead of on the street?

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[gl4ss]

there's some devs who have millions of them waiting for their db's to be cracked.

probably a few guys with generators too. can't start blacklisting them either I suppose.

but what apple will do, is to change the protocol a bit, have itunes deliver a new id for use with it or some stuff like that.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[cynyr]

how many legitimate phones do you expect they block in the process? especially if the UUID generator can take a good guess at IDs already in use...

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[SgtKeeling]

This is an interesting point. It would be worth sending a request with gibberish for an UUID, and see if anything gets sent back.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[jellomizer]

While cracking the code is fine for hackers to see how it works. It isn't going to viable to clones or competing products.
We went threw this route and this behavior of hacking Apples products to make a clone tends to kill the brand.
It must be too long ago to remember the days of WebOS when it was owned by Palm.
What killed WebOS, (or at least put it in the category were there is a small vocal group of geeks saying it isn't really that dead, perhaps if they join forces with the BeOS and Amiga people they can become a small minority) the fact that they made their OS to mimic an iPod to allow it to connect to iTunes. So what did that do. It made apple to upgrade their iTunes to block out the WebOS device. Then Palm needed to make a new hack to get it to work again... In the mean time WebOS customers have a device that isn't fully working.
So now if you start hacking into Siri to release an Android device that uses it. Apple will patch it, go the next step push out an upgrade then the Android device will loose that feature for a few weeks then by the time it gets release it will work for a week then get broken again. Pissing off customers, and not really helping anyone.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[jellomizer]

Does anyone with and iPhone 4S really use Siri that much to make it a killer feature?

I am just asking... I have and iPhone 4(normal... With the Phillips head screws) and I don't see Siri as that big of a deal. It seems like something that will be mildly useful 4 times a year, I will have a little fun with it when I first get it. Then it will just kinda be one of those features on the phone I really don't use much. Like the Compass app.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[necro81]

Please, let's not bring Amazon into this.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[JoeMerchant]

Flashback 2006: the worst thing about owning my new MacBook

...the fanbois are just awful.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Grismar]

I think the flaw in this plan lies in getting that app to run on a million iPhone's whilst maintaining your anonymity as a developer...

Unless you consider yourself the digital equivalent of a digital suicide bomber and considering getting sued into a hole in the ground is worth it if it gets a few million iPhone IDs out there. Even though Apple will be selling all those iPhone owners the next model in a year or so.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[CaptSlaq]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_burn#Back_burning

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be easier to make a free cow clicker game that reports every user's GUID to your server as part of its operation.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[justforgetme]

ok, the solution is simple: write an iphone virus that calls home to a siri emulation server and relays its data packets as well as the system response :-)

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Deorus]

This is not to mention that should Apple decide to cross those GUIDs with people's Apple IDs (which they do register when they register the phones), then the chances of the trial process succeeding would be reduced even further, because in such a context my iPhone's GUID would not work without my Apple ID.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Slashdot Parent]

I'm informed (rabidly and often) that Android phones already have superior features and that Siri is merely a clone with fancy marketing.

I don't think Android users hold any type of monopoly on obnoxious product advocacy.

Anyway, there is currently nothing available on Android that is comparable to Siri. We have voice recognition that is pretty good, but you have to give your commands to the phone using a predetermined format. With Siri, you just speak to it naturally, and it can usually figure out what you meant.

It's really pretty neat. Not neat enough to get me to switch to iPhone, but I'm very impressed with it.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Max Rool]

Fire with fire.

Which rarely makes sense, especially when dealing with actual fire.

I think we should bring this into the 21st century and change it to "fight pew pew with pew pew"

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, but if the same GUID shows up scors of times they could perform a simple search to match same GUID to multiple requests / IPs and quickly determine who's sharing (en masse) their GUID & shut them down - if an andoid developer hard coded their valid iphone guid.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Anonymous Coward]

There is actually a fairly simple reason. Because they CAN.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Hadlock]

It's possible (currently) that you could share an ID number with a friend who actually owns an iPhone. I'm sure the next patch (either client or server) will only allow one IP address a day access to the siri service. If your buddy doesn't use his siri service, you might be able to permanently use it.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[iluvcapra]

Fire with fire.

Or "Tu quoque" as the Romans would say.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[iluvcapra]

I don't think Android users hold any type of monopoly on obnoxious product advocacy.

That really doesn't justify it.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Slashdot Parent]

That really doesn't justify it.

Not trying to justify it. Just trying to point out that you will get the same or worse from fanbois of any product, i.e. there was no reason for you to have singled out Android advocates.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[amicusNYCL]

but largely dependent on the quality of your device - if the manufacturer [HTC, cough] used cheap mics, no chance

I don't know about that, the voice dialing feature works just fine on my Evo 4G without having to train it. The voice search even correctly spells foreign words (telling it to search for "Funker Vogt" finds the correct band, for example).

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Anonymous Coward]

Not Really. Chinese are engaged much more in Visuals than they are in aural communication when it comes to their tech devices.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[amicusNYCL]

Isn't it feasible that a legitimate app sends the GUID along with requests, for advertising and tracking purposes? Does that violate the app store terms? If not, what's to stop a developer with an existing list of valid GUIDs from selling it to someone else? Other than legal threats, I mean.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, that's always been my opinion, that it is honestly just speech recognition hooked up to Cleverbot.

Can you please enlighten me, why this is the best thing since sliced bread?

Because the Fandroids want to leech off of it. QED.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[bemymonkey]

Maybe HTC just used better mics on the Evo 4G. The ones on my Desire are pretty horrible...

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Anonymous Coward]

You want to port dynamips to Android? :)

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Ibiwan]

I've only ever done the slots thing once... I was in line for a Vegas buffet with my girlfriend and her family, and her little sister (not quite 21) handed me a quarter to play for her. I picked a machine, dropped the coin, and brought her back a handful of quarters. She picked one out of the pile and handed it to me, and I went and repeated the feat. We did this 5 or 6 times, before the line was up and we went in to eat. Not sure I should ever touch a slot machine again, after that run!

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[thunderclap]

Perhaps WM 7 could run Android in a that would run IOS in Another VM. Hey they could also resurrect Jobs while they are at it.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[swb]

You laugh, but I've heard more than once that VMware is actively pursuing virtualization for smartphones.

Some VMware employee told me that the basic concept was to create an idealized virtual hardware platform that a phone vendor could target its mobile OS towards. New hardware, CPUs or other physical improvements wouldn't matter then to the OS developers as only the hypervisor hardware interfaces/drivers would have to be changed. You could probably even change the guts on the phone and not change the model as the vm layer would deal with the changes.

It's an interesting concept, but I'm not sure the wicked efficiencies needed on low-power, low(er) CPU/RAM devices would work with a hypervisor.

It would be more fun if it allowed you to run iOS and Android simultaneously and switch between them.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[wierd_w]

The idea is to have a "legitimate" reason for having the game/app phone home with that information.

While I realize that the app store authorization evaluation Is not very comprehensive, it is still a good idea to keep apple in the "pot vs kettle" type position. Their apps use the guid to determine legitimacy of service use, why shouldn't a 3rd party app developer? See where I am going?

Said app developer does not leak the known whitelist. What he leaks is the prediction algorithm he builds from it.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Coren22]

You think it would be difficult to make a popular game that captured the unique IDs with some usage statistics with the cover of being to improve the product?

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[iluvcapra]

:/ When did I single it out? I didn't make any special pleading against it.

Or is it impossible to observe fanboyism unless one also instantly inoculates oneself with the lame and rather Politically Correct "...of course all side have their fanboys..."

(I will here, though, make the specific observation that Android fanboys seem the be extremely defensive and intent on policing fanboy debate and expression, the terms and definitions used, and the socially valid and invalid forms of that expression, in order to obtain a sort of priority over other fanboy expression. Fandroids recognize the earlier Apple and Microsoft fanboy discourses and the sort of abuse their practitioners encountered, and want to obtain special treatment and greater respectability.)

(Most objective observers would consider fanboy discourse disruptive and unacceptable public expression, and Android fanboys are satisfied with this norm as it pertains to their enemies -- and in situations where fannboy expression is tolerated, tuquoue justification seems to be the order of the day. Android fanboys themselves have tried, more or less successfully, to create a narrative of respectability around their fanboy expression, mainly by using certain shibboleths, like "openness" and "freedom," to form a coded discourse with other groups.)

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Slashdot Parent]

Or is it impossible to observe fanboyism unless one also instantly inoculates oneself with the lame and rather Politically Correct "...of course all side have their fanboys..."

You can observe whatever you want, but don't be surprised if someone reminds you of the bigger picture when your observations contain a blind spot.

Android fanboys themselves have tried, more or less successfully, to create a narrative of respectability around their fanboy expression, mainly by using certain shibboleths, like "openness" and "freedom," to form a coded discourse with other groups

Or could it be that those words actually mean something? Can you download the source code for iOS? Can you modify it and place it on a new device and sell it (e.g. the Kindle Fire)? Can you modify iOS and install that modified version on your iDevice (e.g. CyanogenMod)?

Most objective observers would consider fanboy discourse disruptive and unacceptable public expression

Not to excuse obnoxious behavior, but if product advocacy is the most disruptive and unaccpetable expression that you've encountered on the Internet, consider yourself to be extremely fortunate.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Anonymous Coward]

However, if Apple knew what they were doing (and they usually do)

Exactly. When I read this, I thought, "Great. Now Apple can tell everyone what Apple wants them to hear." Kind of like the advertizing mentioned below, but far more than that. That is the power of a search engine, right? What if Apple had that power?

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[niw3]

OK then I am begging you to post a video of your superior speech recognition features of your Android phones, as thousands of Siri users did.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[toriver]

Don't forget the part where the USB consortium got pissed at Palm for lying about the device ID in violation of the manufacturer terms. Palm were just too lazy or too cheap to make their own sync software and wanted to hitch a ride with someone else's program. WebOS users would have a device that was "fully working" if Palm got someone to write an application that read the folder structures and the specified XML for playlists that anyone can use,

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Xemu]

You laugh, but I've heard more than once that VMware is actively pursuing virtualization for smartphones.

VMware is. Mobile phone vendors aren't. Myself I am actively pursuing getting filthy stinkin rich and pregnant.

With the licensing fees VMware are getting they are org*sming from the thought of getting revenues from 10M+ devices. It will never happend because mobile phone vendors are passionately pursuing lower licensing costs, not higher.

It's good vapor though.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[w0mprat]

How long until they figure out how to clone a phone? They already can do this :)

Besides, why would an Android user want to goto the trouble? I'm informed (rabidly and often) that Android phones already have superior features and that Siri is merely a clone with fancy marketing.

Vlingo for Android is essentially the same thing, but ultimately is free and available for some low end affordable devices. It's even better in some regards, most notably a lack of smart ass answers. But this is kind of redundant App, as Android has voice control integrated into the OS for a long time now.

Siri is nothing novel or new, nor an Apple innovation (purchased start-up), the only thing it is a masterpiece of marketing. Few people seem to be aware there alternatives.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[swb]

They'd probably have to give it away to OEMs to get it adopted, either outright with support or charge some nominal flat-rate license fee but provide free support and development -- I don't see them capable of licensing it out profitably to any OEMs until it is a totally stable and proven product.

IMHO, tho, the handset hardware market is just evolving too rapidly and the successful makers either have a portable enough build process (Android) or such a well-defined and finite hardware base (Apple iPhone) that it's a product in search of a solution for them.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[JTsyo]

Give them a new phone?

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the expectation is: 170/2. million yottabytes. Same difference.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Anonymous Coward]

(and that random guesses will run the risk of collision)

With the size of the address space for a 128-bit GUID they would have to be extremely unlucky to get even one collision.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[phatsonic]

> Anyway, there is currently nothing available on Android that is comparable to Siri.

There isn't? So what's wrong with the different AI tools for Android (iris, EVA intern, speaktoit assistant, ...)?

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[shagie]

With iOS 5, the unique identifier is a combination of app/device - not just device. See Apple Insider for a change with the UDID.

Deprecated in iOS 5.0
uniqueIdentifier An alphanumeric string unique to each device based on various hardware details. (read-only) (Deprecated in iOS 5.0. Instead, create a unique identifier specific to your app.)

It is possible (necessary?), that Apple retains private APIs to be able access this and does so with their applications - while the game that you propose writing wouldn't be able to access the UDID. If you want to do so, do so rapidly and hope your app doesn't get rejected.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Anonymous Coward]

That is delusional. What makes you think Apple isn't keeping a whitelist of all the valid unique IDs that they did actually generate. No matter the generation technique used, no matter if these ID are cryptographically signed or not, it is utterly trivial to keep a whitelist (and a blacklist) of the valid IDs generated by Apple.

I also very much doubt anyway that they're generating said IDs in a way allowing attackers to generate them: otherwise pirates could generate "dupes", forcing Apple to blacklist IDs of legit users.

Can't believe you got a +5 insightful: shows how little educated /. users are :(

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[jamesh]

Yes it would be hard to get a lot of ID's in the window between releasing the app and someone noticing what it is up to. A "naked lady of the day" app would do the trick - run it for a while until you get a lot of users then turn on the malicious code, but I don't know the numbers on who's using the latest iOS5 jailbreaks, or how many of those would install the theoretical malicious app. Even using an as-yet unknown safari exploit it would be tricky to convince a lot of users to visit your malicious website. An exploit in the facebook app might be a bit better though...

Might be easier just to pay an apple employee to obtain the ID's for you though :)

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[nobodie]

Seedy? Shanghai? you gotta be kidding. Shanghai is clean, bright and for sale to the highest bidder, therefore packaged in bright pretty paper that hides any ugly blemishes.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Slashdot Parent]

So what's wrong with the different AI tools for Android (iris, EVA intern, speaktoit assistant, ...)?

There is nothing wrong with them. In fact, I use voice commands all the time with my Android device. However, if you claim that any of the above are equivalent to Siri, then you have not used Siri.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[wierd_w]

The problem is a logistical one more than anything. Creating real random numbers is rather expensive. Creation of a random number electronically is problematic. It runs the risk of biased number sets. Take for instance, if you used bit reversals in a magnetic medium: certain crystal magnetic domains are larger or stronger than others, requiring more or less energy to flip the bit "randomly". The sizes/strength of the domains does not change, regardless of the initial bit pattern. This results in a statistically skewed random set, where sme bit patterns appear multiple times with regularity, and others don't appear at all.

Similar things happen with pure electronic decay based random number generators. Not all gate arrays are equal, and some hold their state better than others, so the same non uniform distribution happens.

In order for the collision risk to be minimal, the random has to not only be random, but also perfectly statistically distributed over the whole space. This increases the cost of the randomness considerably.

A clever psuedorandom creates complex patterns cheaply, and distributed over the whole space in a fashion that closely approximates random, and can further be garanteed to never repeat a sequence. This makes it the better solution to the problem.

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[badkarmadayaccount]

Why didn't they implement a virtual iPod driver and leave the lying to the OS?

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Paradise Pete]

Hence my use of the word "rarely" rather than "never."

Re:You still need iPhone 4S

[Paradise Pete]

I'm well aware. That's why I wrote "rarely." I didn't choose the word at random.

Apple upending their Bucket o' Lawyers on this

[ackthpt]

3.. 2.. 1...

Re:Apple upending their Bucket o' Lawyers on this

[fidget42]

Here is an easier solution, how about just send everything via HTTPS.

Re:Apple upending their Bucket o' Lawyers on this

[NemosomeN]

They are already having capacity problems. Sending everything via HTTPS would crush the servers.

Re:Apple upending their Bucket o' Lawyers on this

[CmdrPony]

They are already sending everything with HTTPS. That's why the researchers had to use gateway machine and certificate tricks to do man-in-the-middle attack.

Re:Apple upending their Bucket o' Lawyers on this

[NemosomeN]

Grah, was just about to ninja correct myself after having read the article.

Re:Apple upending their Bucket o' Lawyers on this

[Fnord666]

Here is an easier solution, how about just send everything via HTTPS.

Apple is. From TFA:

Surprisingly, when we did, we wouldnâ(TM)t gather any traffic when using Siri. So we ressorted to using tcpdump on a network gateway, and we realised Siriâ(TM)s traffic was TCP, on port 443, to a server at 17.174.4.4.

The app even validated that the cert used was signed by a trusted CA. Fortunately the iphone4S allows you to add your own trusted CA to the trust chain.

Re:Apple upending their Bucket o' Lawyers on this

[Opportunist]

That's easier for you. Not for a lawyer.

Re:Apple upending their Bucket o' Lawyers on this

[jopsen]

I doubt it, apple likes the attention and hype... So you can at least be sure they'll wait till the dust settles, before they blow it up again :)

Re:Apple upending their Bucket o' Lawyers on this

[mustPushCart]

Whats the difference between a bucket of lawyers and a bucket of shit? ...

Er... that wasn't a riddle it was a rhetorical statement.

Re:your ass cherry cracked

[masternerdguy]

The quality of the anonymous coward troll posts is declining. I expected more.

Slightly less impressed

[RightwingNutjob]

I thought it ran on the phone itself.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummmm.... no.... that would be why Siri fails so often due to network issues.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[Darinbob]

That's what they wanted people to think. 99% of all phone apps have very little to do with the actual phone and instead they're just quick reference URLs to some external site that does most of the work. Of course they tie all the apps to the phone so that you can't bypass the store.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[Psyborgue]

Why would they waste the processing horsepower? It would eat the battery if it was even at all possible. They can do higher quality recognition on their servers anyway. The customer does not need to know where the processing is done as long as "it just works". To the consumer, and even some more technically inclined, it's magic -- and that is the real genius in the way Apple presents it's products. They make people feel like they're somehow in the future, that they're talking to an intelligent phone, that Saint Steve has somehow created artificial life and they get to own a piece of this future for the price of a modest chunk of change and a two year contract.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has stated publicly that Siri uses Apple servers for processing. And observing the behavior of the device under lost network connection makes this quite obvious.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[aXis100]

Doing the processing on the server seems very slow to me - I can find a contact much faster by pressing the first few letters than waiting for the round-trip latency to siri.

Heaps of people have tried to demo siri to me and most of the time it was a gimick that failed badly - either was slower than manual methods or just innacurate.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[Nogami_Saeko]

I foresee some time in the (near?) future where Apple may "split" Siri - have some limited processing available on the client device for easy requests, or for when the network is unavailable, leaving network-only use for the really hard requests.

Because Siri is sending all of the requests to Apple's servers, I have no doubt that they're building a huge speech database and using it to refine their systems to make it far more accurate as people enter commands, use the correction tools and try rephrasing things in different ways.

This may be another reason why Apple is considering leaving Siri only for new devices. It's "possible" that if they provide client-side processing at some point, (some) older devices may really not have the memory or processing power available to handle that new version...

Re:Slightly less impressed

[safetyinnumbers]

I thought it ran on the phone itself.

The outage was a bit of a giveaway.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[adolf]

I've only used Siri a few times on borrowed iPhones...but what do you mean that it "fails so often due to network issues?"

Is this anything like when my Android phone tells me to "Speak Again?"

If so:

*shock* *horror*

Re:Slightly less impressed

[_xeno_]

Doing the processing on the server seems very slow to me - I can find a contact much faster by pressing the first few letters than waiting for the round-trip latency to siri.

Yep. It's extremely annoying, actually, because Siri replaces the existing voice commands. So doing something like "call brother" - which used to take maybe a half second - takes a good three seconds or so of lag time. More annoyingly is things like "play playlist driving songs" - first you have to wait for the three seconds round-trip processing, then you have to wait for the iPhone to decide which playlist that matches ("Looking for playlist driving songs," Siri says), then you have to wait for her to narrate "playing playlist driving songs" before the music actually starts.

Compare to the previous, non-Siri version:

"Play playlist driving songs."
(half-second pause) "Playing playlist driving songs." (music starts)

Yay progress. About the only thing I use Siri for is asking dumb questions and seeing what responses I get. For actual voice controls, it's - well, not useless, exactly, just obnoxiously slow.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[Swanktastic]

Haha! They fooled you too. The dirty little secret is that Siri is actually a nice old lady in Delhi.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[afabbro]

99% of all phone apps have very little to do with the actual phone and instead they're just quick reference URLs to some external site that does most of the work.

No.

You're claiming that out of 500,000-odd iPhone apps, only 5,000 are anything more than just "quick reference URLs to some external site that does most of the work"?

There are more than 5,000 games in the iOS app store.

There are probably 10,000 calculators, flashlight apps, and fart sound effect apps.

Sure, some apps are as you describe, and many apps talk to the net, but 99% are not just "quick reference URLs".

Re:Slightly less impressed

[R3d M3rcury]

No, actually, it's when Siri says, "I'm sorry, I can't access the network."

Also, Siri does a poor job of searching your actual phone. I had a note that I put in the notepad and Siri of my iPhone and Siri was unable to find it. If I went to the search screen and used the "speech to text" option, it found it no problem.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[R3d M3rcury]

Of course, now you can say things like, "Boy, I'd love to hear some driving songs" or "Driving songs would sound good right about now." See? There's less of the "command" protocol and more like you're speaking to an actual person!

Of course, the person you're talking to is a little slow. But that's better than having to use some specific syntax, right?

(The above is sarcasm.)

Re:Slightly less impressed

[CharlyFoxtrot]

So turn it off : "If you wish to use Voice Control while you are not connected to the Internet, turn Siri off from Settings > General > Siri. Make sure to turn Siri back on when you have Internet connectivity and you wish to use it again."

Re:Slightly less impressed

[adolf]

Hmm.

Interesting.

Last I checked, my Android phone didn't even include a notepad. :-/

Re:Slightly less impressed

[Opportunist]

Reminds me of the old GDR potato-peeling machine joke.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

It has this thing called the market and you can install any notepad app you want. I know, choices are hard, and that is why Apple makes them for most of their users... but sometimes you have to learn to make a decision on your own... or flip a coin.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[Fallingcow]

Apple's actually pretty quick to reject apps for not offering enough functionality over a website. Simply embedding a site in a webview and calling it an app (what was implied to be happening upthread) is pretty much a 100% guaranteed way to get your app rejected.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[cgenman]

It's terribly obnoxiously slow. It's also a lot broader than previous voice-command efforts. I set a baking timer by saying "Siri, set an alarm for twenty minutes from now." I had no idea that "twenty minutes from now" would be something that Siri understood. It just seemed like it would make sense. And it just worked. "Text my wife that I'll be about 10 minutes late" works too.

Well, it works when the network is responding. And it works terribly slow. But it is really a step towards natural language understanding of voice. Or rather, unlike a lot of other efforts I feel like the phone is trying to understand me rather than the other way around.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[adolf]

...and none of them will be searchable, whether with a hacked Siri client, a native Iris client, or the default voice/text search tools. (Unlike an iPhone, which apparently gets at least half of this right.)

Choice is easy: I already have an Android notepad app that I like very well, thanks. Adding its content to the phone's generalized search functionality is hard, though.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[Skuld-Chan]

What do you call Google docs?

Re:Slightly less impressed

[SeaFox]

Nope, that's why the carriers love it, too. Every time you use Siri you're drawing KBs on your (mostly likely) not-unlimited data plan.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[jopsen]

Why would they waste the processing horsepower? It would eat the battery if it was even at all possible.

Data transmission vs. CPU cycles... I'm pretty sure CPU cycle is most battery friendly.

They can do higher quality recognition on their servers anyway

According to wikipedia, iPhone 4S ships with an 800MHz dual core processor, on a server you might have a little more, but it's shared with a lot of other users... Also there's the round trip time when you're using a server...

Re:Slightly less impressed

[shutdown -p now]

Given that Apple are touted as masters of seamless and intuitive user interface design, how come this process isn't automated? It would seem to me that it'd be pretty trivial to, at the very least, detect lack of network connectivity, and turn it off accordingly.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[prichardson]

What's hilarious is that the Android developer tutorial is for a notepad application.

Link here

I guess you could load it on your phone if you wanted.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[am 2k]

Simply embedding a site in a webview and calling it an app (what was implied to be happening upthread) is pretty much a 100% guaranteed way to get your app rejected.

Just like the Gmail app?

Re:Slightly less impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm LMAOing!

Re:Slightly less impressed

[Xest]

Well look on the bright side, they fixed the antenna in the 4S so at least it doesn't fail to work when you're holding it wrong.

In all seriousness though, what happens when I try and use Siri on a train going through a tunnel that's long and so takes a minute or to? does it just wait until we're out the tunnel and then respond or does it kick up an error if there's no data connection?

Like the poster above I didn't realise Siri sent everything to be processed server side, that is kind of a big weakness.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[jittles]

Or the Bank of America app, or any other app for a major site that uses Flash that needs to be remade for iOS...

Re:Slightly less impressed

[sgt scrub]

For that you would want FreeTTS. I'd much rather have something home grown than all my interactions with my phone getting sent to some companies servers.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure to do the sort of things siri does it also requires a lot more ram than 512MB and a huge, resident database.. Server side is more efficient if you factor all that in.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[Max Rool]

I'm LMAOing!

Same here

Re:Slightly less impressed

[Fallingcow]

I very much doubt it's just a webview showing gmail.com. I'd check, but it looks like it's still out of the store.

I'm not saying quite a bit of shit doesn't make it through Apple's review process, but it is generally *not* the case that you can just throw a frame around your website, do NOTHING else, and get your app accepted.

You *can*, in some cases, re-write the front end to your site in Objective-C or Air and get it accepted :)

Re:Slightly less impressed

[am 2k]

Well, they added some kind of push notifications to it, but that feature was broken (and it announced this fact right at first launch). How this app got past the app store review, we will never know...

Re:Slightly less impressed

[amicusNYCL]

Last I checked, my Android phone didn't even include a notepad. :-/

AK Notepad is a decent notepad app for Android, if you really want one. Unless you're just trying to be snarky.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[amicusNYCL]

About the only thing I use Siri for is asking dumb questions and seeing what responses I get.

I can tell you I was disappointed that my friend's iPhone was unable to locate a source of hookers and blow in my area.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[amicusNYCL]

Like the poster above I didn't realise Siri sent everything to be processed server side, that is kind of a big weakness.

Speaking as an anti-Apple guy, I think that Siri is ahead of its time and that the real impressive part is the natural language recognition. Ideally all processing would be done on the device itself, but that's where it's ahead of its time. The processing requirements for the service are too much for the phone to handle right now, but in another 5 or 10 years after a few more CPU and battery revisions I would imagine that this could be done without the assistance of a server. I'm no fan of Apple, but the engineers working on the language recognition have outdone themselves.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[amicusNYCL]

iPhone 4S ships with an 800MHz dual core processor, on a server you might have a little more

I think you're on to something there, I think that Apple may in fact be using servers that are powered by a little more than the hardware that powers the phone. They may even have more than one server.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

Simply embedding a site in a webview and calling it an app (what was implied to be happening upthread) is pretty much a 100% guaranteed way to get your app rejected.

Just like the Gmail app?

Amazing! Your short post is actually wrong in more ways than it contains words.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[_xeno_]

Except I want to turn it off while I have Internet connectivity. The scenario (and it's a real scenario, but with a different playlist name) is that I'm driving in my car with my iPhone hooked up to the stereo and want to play a specific playlist. This is why Siri was able to do it in the first place, after all - I'm complaining that it takes an annoyingly long time to do it, not that I can't access voice controls at all.

And what that KB article fails to mention is that if you turn off Siri while connected to the Internet, Apple deletes all your training data from their servers! So you can't just toggle it off briefly and back on again - it's all or nothing. (Apparently your phone will resend the training data if you turn Siri back on? Maybe? I'm unclear on exactly what data is deleted, but it warns you that your data will be deleted if you try to turn Siri off.)

Ultimately, all of this is entirely unnecessary. The way Siri should have worked - the way I assumed it would work when Apple announced it - is that the existing voice controls are given a first pass. If they recognize the command, then they handle it with no network access. If not, then hand it off to Apple's servers. This gives you the best of both worlds - natural language recognition for things like "wake me up at one PM tomorrow morning" and a quick turnaround for existing commands like "play playlist driving songs."

Re:Slightly less impressed

[CharlyFoxtrot]

It'll probably come in a future revision, that's the Apple way. Like how they shipped Lion without the ability to rearrange full screen apps and workspaces in System Control but then added it in an update. Implement, ship, improve.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Except I want to turn it off while I have Internet connectivity. The scenario (and it's a real scenario, but with a different playlist name) is that I'm driving in my car with my iPhone hooked up to the stereo and want to play a specific playlist. This is why Siri was able to do it in the first place, after all - I'm complaining that it takes an annoyingly long time to do it, not that I can't access voice controls at all.

First world problems. Everything's Amazing & Nobody's Happy

And what that KB article fails to mention is that if you turn off Siri while connected to the Internet, Apple deletes all your training data from their servers! So you can't just toggle it off briefly and back on again - it's all or nothing. (Apparently your phone will resend the training data if you turn Siri back on? Maybe? I'm unclear on exactly what data is deleted, but it warns you that your data will be deleted if you try to turn Siri off.)

That's a privacy issue. People in this story are already commenting on how Apple must be gathering information on them.

Ultimately, all of this is entirely unnecessary. The way Siri should have worked - the way I assumed it would work when Apple announced it - is that the existing voice controls are given a first pass. If they recognize the command, then they handle it with no network access. If not, then hand it off to Apple's servers. This gives you the best of both worlds - natural language recognition for things like "wake me up at one PM tomorrow morning" and a quick turnaround for existing commands like "play playlist driving songs."

It's still beta, it'll get better. If it doesn't suit your needs right now, don't use it. I agree that traditional voice controls should handle input first but doing this might make Siri operation actually slower because you're going to try local processing first. I'm going to assume there was a trade-off in there somewhere Apple made and as usual when they do that it's going to piss some people off.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[Ironhandx]

The one on Android(in particular the Samsung Galaxy S2) has the same accuracy approximately and is much faster. The processing is done right on the phone as well so if you happen to be in a spotty reception area it isn't affected.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[adolf]

That is, indeed, hilarious. Perhaps it's even intentional: "You want a notepad application? Here's a manual, kid: Go figure it out."

Which, you know, I might just do. It's as good an excuse as any to start getting my teeth cut on coding Android apps. Thanks.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[adolf]

I call it a grossly overbearing and network-centric alternative to a simple textual notepad that also didn't come with my phone. :)

Re:Slightly less impressed

[_xeno_]

First world problems. Everything's Amazing & Nobody's Happy

Really? Really? Oh my God, I have a complaint about a tech product which I posted on a tech website! I should just ignore flaws because I live in the first world!

I mean, can you imagine people complaining about 3D movies? They should just shut up because 3D is new and therefore better!

Sheesh, dude, deal with people complaining about minor things. It's not like I really care, but if the topic comes up in a discussion, then yes, I'm going to post my opinions about Siri. Deal with it.

It's still beta, it'll get better. If it doesn't suit your needs right now, don't use it.

Yep. If no one complains about problems they have with it, Steve Jobs will magically read people's minds from the grave and telepathically imprint ideas for fixes into the development team.

Or, people could complain about small flaws on blogs, and Apple can take feedback and improve their product. Which, in fact, they seem to be fairly good at doing. Complaints can be a good thing. It offers feedback and allows people to improve things.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[rsborg]

Given that Apple are touted as masters of seamless and intuitive user interface design, how come this process isn't automated? It would seem to me that it'd be pretty trivial to, at the very least, detect lack of network connectivity, and turn it off accordingly.

Apple is apparently picking up habits from Google, seeing as Siri is actually still a beta service.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[Xest]

I don't think they really have, it's fairly simple pattern matching. Take:

Example 1: Siri, tell my wife I'm going to be late home

It'll just be parsed as:

1. Siri - confirms it's a command for the phone
2. Tell - lookup against other terms, alternative for "contact", so do a contact action
3. Wife - found as a contact in the address book
4. Send "I'm going to be late home" to contact Wife

Example 2: "Is it raining outside?"

1. Assume command addressed to device
2. Lookup term categories, "raining" is a weather related term, outside is a place, presume meaning as current location if no further detail given
3. Return weather for current location

A quick Google search pulled up this thread:

http://www.everythingicafe.com/forum/threads/can-siri-answer-these-questions.81195/

Have a look at the answers, it struggled with most.

Really, all Siri is doing is splitting the message up and checking terms against defined categories and meanings and creating a probabilistic average of what application and what method for that application to use based on the categories discovered. There are far more advanced implementations of this technology in the business world in the shape of business intelligence tools.

I worked on an application at my previous company that would scrape news stories and search them for our extensive list of client names, it was an engineering firm and we sold to defence, metals, minerals, food industries and once a client name was found it would look for key terms and in a similar way would build up a score for each of these industries we sold to, and would then dispatch the the story to the highest scoring industry (some clients had sites in multiple industries) sales and engineering manager in our firm. The directors loved it because it was like magic to them having the sales and engineering managers for each industry being handed industry stories relevant specific to them, and stories about our clients opening up new sites meant they were aware of a lot of sales opportunity they may not otherwise have been aware of, but despite the success it wasn't exactly the most complex of systems.

This is really far from groundbreaking - you can pose these questions in an equally natural language form into Google search and it'll respond and have been able to for years. I dare say because Google's voice recognition tech is better (it handles accents far better than Siri), because Google translate is better than anything Apple has, and because Google search is already better at figuring out what people want to know, then Google can build something like Siri with little effort, but more impressively have it work in different languages too. I'm not sure if you've used Google translate on Android but it was quite impressive when I played with it a year or two ago, being able to speak into it in English and have it translate and respond to me in French was impressive.

The only part that Google doesn't have is the translation related to things more local to the device itself (i.e. looking up your calendar), but that's trivial compared to what Google search already figures out.

Perhaps Google didn't realise the potential, perhaps they thought people would laugh at it and use it against Android if the poor performance of a multi-second round trip response was widely noticed, perhaps Google knew about Siri and are concerned about patent issues in creating their own version. I suspect a large part is that second point - if Google had done this it'd be bad, but despite it's numerous faults and flaws Apple fanboys are still hyping it up as the slightest thing since sliced bread. It's yet another fine example where the difference between a negative and positive view of a feature is the marketing. One thing is for sure though, Google devs could slap together a Siri killer in under a week leveraging their existing technology because they already have all the component parts.

Re:Slightly less impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would they waste the processing horsepower? It would eat the battery if it was even at all possible.

Data transmission vs. CPU cycles... I'm pretty sure CPU cycle is most battery friendly.

They can do higher quality recognition on their servers anyway

According to wikipedia, iPhone 4S ships with an 800MHz dual core processor, on a server you might have a little more, but it's shared with a lot of other users... Also there's the round trip time when you're using a server...

Yeah, it's one Mac mini server that handles all Siri requests. And it's all about Data transmission vs. CPU cycles - database size has nothing to do with it.

The last time somebody screwed with Apple..

[Anonymous Coward]

... the SWAT team showed up

Re:The last time somebody screwed with Apple..

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, those were just Apple employees accompanied by police officers again.

So it's remote?

[Stormwatch]

So the iPhone can't really do the speech recognition and synthesis by itself? That's quite underwhelming.

Re:So it's remote?

[Mashiki]

What? You're shocked by that or something. It was all a gimmick to begin with. You won't have synthesis and recognition on board for another 2-4 generations.

Re:So it's remote?

[MBCook]

The iPhone is more than capable of speech synthesis. How do you think Voice Over works? Speech synthesis doesn't require a lot of processor, the original 1984 Mac could do it. Did the article mention that the results are sent back as sound files? I didn't see that.

But recognizing the speech, doing a good job, and figuring out all the commands... they use the server for that and I don't blame them. That way they can keep it constantly updated, with a huge database of phonemes/accents/vocabulary, and do it much faster than there iPhone would be able to on it's own.

Re:So it's remote?

[Psyborgue]

I, too am shocked at how many people didn't realize this was all done server side -- especially here.

Re:So it's remote?

[muon-catalyzed]

The most alarming fact, for me, is that they are sending all my speech data over the Internet to some enormous Cloud database. Oh, and while they have it all, I must trust Apple now that they are not gonna mine this data and send it backdoor to advertisers and other interests.

Re:So it's remote?

[mo]

Speech recognition isn't too CPU intensive, but it's *massively* memory intensive. It's not unreasonable for speech recognition engines to eat up a gig of ram, and the 4S only has 512mb. However, push it to a server with lots of ram and it can handle lots and lots of simultaneous speech recognition queries. It's tailor made to be a server-side task. At least until phones have gigs of free memory that aren't needed.

Re:So it's remote?

[Anonymous Coward]

I blame article summaries for not mentioning it. Some of us just don't care about certain topics and don't research it.

Re:So it's remote?

[n5vb]

So the iPhone can't really do the speech recognition and synthesis by itself? That's quite underwhelming.

Indeed. Doing it all server side just seems like cheating, somehow ..

Re:So it's remote?

[amiga3D]

Actually there was an article at /. the other day that talked about this fact already. For most people though it seems like it's the phone doing it and really that's all that matters for 90 percent of the users.

Re:So it's remote?

[amiga3D]

What? I think that may be the primary purpose of Siri in the end. Only a small minority give a crap about security anyway.

Re:So it's remote?

[mosb1000]

Well, they send your Siri requests. And, of course, almost everything you do on you cellphone is sent somewhere it can be tracked and recorded.

Re:So it's remote?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had assumed it was the case, otherwise why would they introduce it with their dual core update, and refuse to install it on less powerful devices? As it stands, offloading everything to a server, siri could probably run on a 1st gen...

Re:So it's remote?

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPhone can and does do speech recognition and synthesis by itself.

I have an iPhone 3G (older model) and use Dragon Dictation in offline mode. (The iPhone has no SIMM and is used as an iPod.) It works very well, with no WIFI connection.

Supposedly Siri uses Dragon tech for the speech recognition. The AI portion of Siri uses the Apple server for the processing of this data, in conjunction with Wolfram Alpha and other web services to supply results.

Re:So it's remote?

[mug funky]

it's a phone, genius. a device for sending your voice to other locations.

Re:So it's remote?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm thinking it would be great (the end effect, not the action) if a massive bot-net used all this information that people give away to do identify theft on such a large scale that the issue is brought into the lime-light and additional consumer protections are added to the system. Need to light a fire under the foot of a giant to make it move.

Re:So it's remote?

[Stewie241]

The really nifty trick would be to grab other contact information and make calls/leave voicemails impersonating the device owner.

Re:So it's remote?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, the 4s only has 512M? I guess that numbs the sting of AEGIS on my "open" "meego" N9 a little -- it may have a non-bypassable security framework keeping me from chrooting, installing a custom kernel, etc., but at least it has 802.11a/b/g/n and 1G of RAM to do whatever Nokia chooses to let me do.

Re:So it's remote?

[wesgray]

I, too am shocked at how many people didn't realize this was all done server side -- especially here.

Well lately, especially here you shouldn't be.

Re:So it's remote?

[tlhIngan]

The most alarming fact, for me, is that they are sending all my speech data over the Internet to some enormous Cloud database. Oh, and while they have it all, I must trust Apple now that they are not gonna mine this data and send it backdoor to advertisers and other interests.

And yet you're fine with Google doing it?

Yes, remember 411-GOOG? It's SOLE purpose was to gather voice recognition data. It was shut down once Google got enough samples.

Google Voice's voicemail transcription is based on the data collected from that service as well.

And you can definitely bet that Google is using it for advertising purposes.

At least though, when you look at Siri's options, the privacy policy and information used by Siri is linked right there - it's not buried inside the general Apple privacy policy but front and center when setting up Siri.

They're also summarized and displayed here.

Re:So it's remote?

[ogdenk]

Indeed. Doing it all server side just seems like cheating, somehow ..

Especially for folks like me who live in rural areas with very poor coverage. Voice recognition on my android phone is essentially useless and every time I'm in a position I could use it, I usually can't so it goes ignored.

Sad considering I was doing fairly accurate speaker-dependent voice recognition on a 25Mhz Mac LC III with like 16MB of RAM.

Speaker-independent algorithms have gotten a lot better and could probably be squeezed onto a smartphone without offloading to a server I would think. It would likely have to be written in C w/ a bit of ARM assembler thrown in to be remotely efficient. Would likely be laughable trying such a thing purely running in Dalvik. The idea of running everything in a Java VM with a perfectly good Linux kernel under there sickens me. I refuse to believe running a everything as a bastardized Java VM instance is more battery efficient than well-written native code. I think portability is not as much of a goal for Android these days as I've only seen ARM-based devices in the wild.

I imagine heavy use of local voice recognition software would eat batteries pretty quick if you want to try dictation or something.

The advantage of Google and Apple's approach is likely accuracy with lots of sample data to compare to.

Re:So it's remote?

[wvmarle]

Yet when I call a friend, only my friend received my voice, and he receives it as audio. The phone company doesn't store this (unless they've been requested to wiretap your line - not very common outside of the US luckily - and even then it's normally stored as audio only), they're not even allowed to listen in to it when it happens, they just have to transmit the audio signal from my phone to my friend's phone.

In this case the audio goes to the vendor of your phone, which then attempts to actively listen in to it and make out what you're trying to say, and as such can store this in a machine processable format. That's the big difference.

Re:So it's remote?

[shutdown -p now]

The most alarming fact, for me, is that they are sending all my speech data over the Internet to some enormous Cloud database.

Um. I take it you haven't heard about Google Voice? Or Voice Search on Android?

It's not like it's something new, and Apple isn't hiding the fact that processing is server-side.

Re:So it's remote?

[coinreturn]

Actually there was an article at /. the other day that talked about this fact already.

Yeah, but nobody RTFA.

Re:So it's remote?

[necro81]

Oh, and while they have it all, I must trust Apple now that they are not gonna mine this data and send it backdoor to advertisers and other interests

Dude, if you're that bugged by it, then by all means don't use it. Right now you have to go out of your way (i.e., buy a new phone) to get it. Even then, it can easily be disabled in the settings.

Re:So it's remote?

[neoform]

I must trust Apple now that they are not gonna mine this data and send it backdoor to advertisers and other interests.

Google, is doing exactly that with every search you do, FYI. Google also tracks every website you visit, for how long, what you looked at, what you clicked on, what you typed, how long it took you to type.

Google knows everything about you, and they actively sell that to marketers for their ad engine.

Apple makes money selling you hardware products, less than 1% of apple's revenue comes from ads. I trust Apple a lot more on this front simply because they have a lot less interest in selling my info to 3rd parties.

Re:So it's remote?

[Tuan121]

Look at me! I stated the obvious "omg my data is in the cloud for the evil corporations + governments to see!!" and want my +5 insightful please.

You need to stop using the internet, dig a hole in the forest, and sit in it with your tin foil hat. That way no one will know what you are doing and the rest of us can actually enjoy technology.

Re:So it's remote?

[gsmalleus]

I believe that Google's voice search app sends everything to the cloud too. In fact, Google ran a free 411 information service just to gather and improve upon their speech recognition database.

Re:So it's remote?

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPhone is able to process speech, which is what happens when you dictate messages directly instead of using Siri. I think the main motivation for processing speech server-side when using Siri is that Apple uses the data to improve their algorithms (which probably do some kind of machine learning). The other added benefit is that Apple can improve Siri's behavior without having to push updates to your phone at all.

I've only seen this vaguely mentioned somewhere so don't take my word for it, but it seems like a sensible thing to do.

Re:So it's remote?

[Anonymous Coward]

most people a concerned about security. The problem is they believe the statemnts made by corporations the imply security.

Re:So it's remote?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google's VR is the same.

Re:So it's remote?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it underwhelming. It's actually the most appropriate approach. It would be stupid to put that much computing power in a remote device, especially when it needs to communicate back to the cloud, anyway. Make the cloud really smart, and make the connection devices really cheap.

Re:So it's remote?

[Anonymous Coward]

How's the battery life?

Re:So it's remote?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes... we wouldn't want some search engine like Google or Yahoo! doing that... oh wait!

Re:So it's remote?

[toriver]

Yes, this should be stressed many times: Apple are in the business of selling to you, Google are in the business of selling you.

Re:So it's remote?

[amiga3D]

Maybe that's why so many people use 11111111 for their password? They're so worried about security?

Re:So it's remote?

[Anonymous Coward]

So the iPhone can't really do the speech recognition and synthesis by itself? That's quite underwhelming.

You are quite confused about what the iPhone can or can not do by itself. Both speech recognition and synthesis were available on the iPhone long before Siri, and run on the phone itself.

Win for Xiph (and open source)

[nzac]

Appears that Xiph came out on top for speech codecs.

This also shortly after apple realized that ALAC was going to fail (at least as a closed source product, they may push it better as an open source project now it can be played by everyone).

They still have the very entrenched AAC though.

Re:Win for Xiph (and open source)

[iluvcapra]

They don't have AAC. AAC is an MPEG-4 standard invented and licensed to MPEG-LA by the only company that could ever out-Apple Apple on IP, Dolby Laboratories.

Re:Win for Xiph (and open source)

[pipedwho]

Isn't AAC just the MPEG4 version of what we know as mp3 (which is really just MPEG1/Audio layer 3)? There are already many open source implementations of AAC, so I don't see it as the same thing.

The real problem with AAC is the MPEG patent swamp. Even if Apple were to release an open source codec, it would still be under the same shadow that hangs over anyone that isn't lining the pockets of the MPEG licensing body.

Re:Win for Xiph (and open source)

[Guy Harris]

Appears that Xiph came out on top for speech codecs.

...in the opinion of a spin-off from SRI; it might've been easier for them to go with an open source codec than to license a non-open-source codec. Remember, Apple bought the company that developed Siri; they didn't develop it themselves from Day One.

I'm not saying that the availability of the codec as open source was one of the reasons for the choice and that, if the open-source availability weren't an advantage, it would have lost to some closed-source codec; I'm just saying that one shouldn't assume this was an Apple decision (meaning the open-sourceness of it might have been irrelevant or perhaps a disadvantage) and draw conclusions from that assumption.

Re:Win for Xiph (and open source)

[nzac]

You miss the point, its adoption that matters. All modern codecs preform adequately considering the gains in bandwidth and storage.

If apple end up using Speex then, in hypothetical idealist opensouce theory, the line is drawn and only companies more closed (source) than apple can use the codec which is not many.

Re:Win for Xiph (and open source)

[Guy Harris]

You miss the point, its adoption that matters.

I was responding to "This also shortly after apple realized that ALAC was going to fail", if your intent was to connect the two, rather than just citing them as two independent cases where Apple were either using somebody else's open-source code or open-sourcing something of theirs.

If apple end up using Speex then, in hypothetical idealist opensouce theory, the line is drawn and only companies more closed (source) than apple can use the codec which is not many.

I presume you mean "only companies more closed (source) than Apple would refuse to consider the codec" or something such as that, as no sane theory would argue that Apple's adoption of the open-source Speex codec would prevent companies more open-source-friendly than Apple from using it. Whether Apple's use of it would encourage other companies to use it is another matter.

Re:Win for Xiph (and open source)

[mug funky]

it's a consortium. Dolby developed AC-3, and some tools they've developed are no doubt in the AAC spec, but AAC is essentially mp3 without the filterbank (which of course changed it a ton), and some nice features like long-term prediction, noise substitution etc etc.

Re:Win for Xiph (and open source)

[bhcompy]

Yet the music player still doesn't support Ogg Vorbis.

Re:Win for Xiph (and open source)

[nzac]

I presume you mean "only companies more closed (source) than Apple would refuse to consider the codec"

Sorry did not proof. Ment to say use an alternative codec.

I did intend them as independent cases (Xiph created FLAC though).

Re:Win for Xiph (and open source)

[nzac]

Thus since iTunes and iPods have the vast majority of the market share makes it so entrenched that it won't be changing any-time soon.

Re:Win for Xiph (and open source)

[nzac]

They still would have a lot of control over it and uses for it though.

I would think you could link ACC to the success of the iPod (helped to lock other players out and fit more music on) and thus the success of iEverythingElse.

Outside of DD and maybe TV broadcast apple would be responsible for most of its uses (especially as a standalone codec).

Re:Win for Xiph (and open source)

[CharlyFoxtrot]

It doesn't support MOD either and yet somehow it's still successful, fancy that.

Re:Win for Xiph (and open source)

[Henriok]

Xiph didn't create FLAC, Josh Coalson did, two years prior to it being included in the OGG cluster of codecs by Xiph.

Re:Win for Xiph (and open source)

[nzac]

Guess i should have researched it better. Wikipedia got it on Xiph's list of codecs and it is supported by the ogg tool set.

Its still part of Xiph's codec's as you said though.

Re:Win for Xiph (and open source)

[toriver]

I have come to lament Apple's music player's lack of support for SID files. Woe unto the C64 retro community.

Re:Win for Xiph (and open source)

[Henriok]

Error's corrected. All is well. Have a nice day :)

The culprit is gonna be associated with Android...

[bogaboga]

While this is an enviable achievement, I must say I am not that happy and here's why.

Apple fan boys are going to ramp up the mantra that Android geeks are behind this effort. With Ice Cream Sandwich's code released, we will be seeing an Android app pretty soon.

What will happen next are events reinforcing the myth that Android is a stolen product.

It's a sad day indeed.

The scam of Siri

[jmorris42]

> I thought it ran on the phone itself.

Nope, and that is the scam. Basically you are calling a service. Thus they could make Siri available on every iProduct with zero effort. That they decided to hold it as an exclusive feature for the 4S to try and create the 'gotta upgrade' stampede is truly lame. Keeping it to iProducts is ok, they ain't giving away a hefty compute farm after all, who do ya think they are after all, Google? But locking access to the service to one submodel of one product line is a terrible idea.

Re:The scam of Siri

[Torodung]

It's still a bit scammy, but I would guess they're using early adopters as a massive beta test before rolling it out to iLife in general, so rather than depriving anyone, they're being cautious and scaling up usage slowly. Think "Apple Newton," and it's reasonable to suspect the company may still be a little gun shy with this kind of tech. Even if it is running "in the cloud" instead of on the device, there's a whole lot that could go wrong with Siri. (Page is for entertainment purposes only. Not to be construed as actual examples. I am a non-attorney spokesperson.)

More than that, availability matters here, and they want the initial adopters to have a premium experience before they roll it out to the hoi polloi, and everything goes pear shape when they run into the usual scaling issues. You know, like the ones AT&T ran into with the first iPhones.

Re:The scam of Siri

[bucky0]

It's my understanding from reading the articles from a guy who managed to hack it onto the 3GS that the 4S actually has some pretty good voice canceling hardware onboard. Whether or not that's true, I can't say, but from the article I read, apparently things needed to be VERY quiet or the text-to-speech would fail hard.

Re:The scam of Siri

[demonlapin]

Apple doesn't have the experience that Google got out of 1-800-GOOG-411, of collecting a vast number of American voices speaking colloquial English. They need to limit it to the 4S for the time being in order to keep the total data load below threshold.

Re:The scam of Siri

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy there guys, it's not a scam... unless you want to completely water-down the meaning of what a 'scam' is, and render true scams meaningless.

Re:The scam of Siri

[scdeimos]

Whether or not that's true, I can't say, but from the article I read, apparently things needed to be VERY quiet or the text-to-speech would fail hard.

It's not true. Ambient noise has no effect on the rendering of text-to-speech, just your ability to hear it. Oh, you meant speech-to-text! Carry on then.

Re:The scam of Siri

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a terrible idea....says the guy that doesn't run the worlds second most valuable company.

Re:The scam of Siri

[Anonymous Coward]

But Microsoft does with Tellme. WP7 speech recognition is great, btw. Of course, Apple does it not-first but everyone acts like they're first.

Re:The scam of Siri

[Anonymous Coward]

Scam?? What BS!
Is google a scam because it doesn't run exclusively on your phone?
Is shazam a scam for the same reason?

Apple obviously decided that a minimum 4S hardware platform was required to keep the responsiveness and performance to acceptable levels, and that the parallelism and capacity of a server farm was the best way to manage interpretation.

Rather than just mouthing off, why not design your own completely-in-phone natural language system, to see if you can put your own reputation where your mouth is.

Re:The scam of Siri

[Shadowruni]

Crickey! Loo' at that. We're very lucky! You almost never see a four digit this far from its native habitat of lurking. Ah she's a beaut!

Re:The scam of Siri

[Shadowruni]

Thanks!

Re:The scam of Siri

[Shadowruni]

Crickey! Will you loo' at that. We're so very lucky! You almost never see a four digit this far from its native habitat of lurking an' she's being stalked by this five digit that's almost as rare. It's times like this I'm gla' I don't work with lizards that might eat me! //Window seat please...

Re:The scam of Siri

[InterruptDescriptorT]

Crickey! Loo' at that. We're very lucky! You almost never see a four digit this far from its native habitat of lurking. Ah she's a beaut!

Can this become a new Slashdot meme, please?

Re:The scam of Siri

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe not a scam but it certainly sucks that I now require an internet connection to do voice recognition when practically every Nokia for the last 5 years can do it client side.

Re:The scam of Siri

[wvmarle]

It also means that to have Siri work you have to pay for a data account (preferably an unlimited account - this will eat a lot of data if used frequently), as otherwise it will simply not work.

This may be a non-issue for markets like the US where you can only get a phone in conjunction with a heavily overpriced contract that by default includes data, it is an issue for other markets where plans and phones are separated.

I don't have a mobile data plan with my smart phone, don't see the need for it really, WiFi does the job just fine. I don't feel the need for e-mail on the go. I don't feel the need for watching streaming video on such a small screen. I'm not Facebook addicted either. And Angry Birds plays better offline: no ads. And that one moment a month or less that I think "now I really need some data" is not enough to pay for a subscription, and open WiFi networks are usually easy enough to find.

Re:The scam of Siri

[jmorris42]

> Apple obviously decided that a minimum 4S hardware platform was required

Yes, that is what the ad campaign would lead you to believe. The reality is that all of the work is server side and ANY client would work equally well. You could use a basic no frills cell phone, a landline or whatever to talk to Siri and get voice reponses. Any phone capable of hosting an app could interface with it and receive URLs or other trigger events back with a fairly simple client side application. And there are no technical limitations preventing the client from the iPhone 4S running unmodified on any of the iPhones with the same iOS revision installed. Simply, there is nothing unique to the iPhone 4S that enables Siri. But had they rolled it out as a regular iOS update or an app in the Store there wouldn't have been a 'killer feature' to hype for the new phone to drive the lemmings into the store for an upgrade. That is the scam I refer to.

Re:The scam of Siri

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a reason beyond marketing for this. The approximation detector is much, much better in the iPhone 4S. As you can activate Siri by simply holding it against your ear it would disturb the user experience which is so important for Apple. Additionally SIRI its still beta. Adding all those iPhone 4 users would simply stress the beta test even more. Again : user experience. PLUS : yes, while most of the stuff is offloaded to the iCloud, the significantly faster A5 processor is still involved. Again : user experience.

iOS is about user experience and is not like Android that does gimmicks just because it can no matter if it makes sense.

Re:The scam of Siri

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Yeah why wouldn't they want to flood their servers with millions of devices before they have had a chance to test under serious load first ? Come on, even Google ramped availability of its products by doing limited beta's first, then doing invites and only then going free sign up. Siri is still, unusually for Apple, a beta service after all.

Re:The scam of Siri

[jmorris42]

> This may be a non-issue for markets like the US where you can only get a phone in conjunction with
> a heavily overpriced contract that by default includes data, it is an issue for other markets where
> plans and phones are separated.

If you are determined enough you can get a smartphone here in the US up on the network without a data plan. I did. No damned way I'm paying more for a couple of GB of data than I'm paying for a DSL line. I'm not that dependent on the net that I can't live without it when outside WiFi range. And I don't use the phone much either. I see my device as a newer version of my old Handspring Visor that can make a few calls or texts when I need to. In other words, a PDA. So I shopped for a plan accordingly. Couple bux a month, not the insanity most folks get in their mobile bills.

Re:The scam of Siri

[Anonymous Coward]

Says the guy who thinks that guys thinking up the value of a company based on gambling on wallstreet means something :-P

Re:The scam of Siri

[demonlapin]

Speech recognition is not the really cool part of Siri.

Re:The scam of Siri

[coinreturn]

It is not a scam. All previous iPhones still operate as they always have. No features have been removed.

Re:The scam of Siri

[necro81]

It is widely rumored that siri's speech-to-text is performed by Nuance's Dragon Dictation, which has been available (for free) on iOS for a few years now. That, plus Dragon's presence on the market for over a decade, would have provided a substantial database of colloquial english (and other languages) to get started. Plus, Siri was available as its own standalone app for a while on iOS before Apple bought the company. The technology behind Siri has been in development for quite a few years and had ,DARPA backing. Siri didn't just spring out of nothing in Cupertino. I think they've got enough of a database of colloquial english to get going with.

No, I think limiting it to the iPhone 4S is mostly to drive sales to the new device. Limiting the rollout to avoid crushing their servers, as you suggest, is another very plausible reason. I don't buy the argument that Siri requires the extra processing power of the 4S.

Re:The scam of Siri

[Scott Ransom]

Yet another /. meme? And not even a very funny one at that....

* back to lurking *

Re:The scam of Siri

[kenshin33]

it used to work on 3GS and 4, b4 apple bought it !!!!

Re:The scam of Siri

[kenshin33]

then why was it working on older phones b4 ????

Re:The scam of Siri

[toriver]

The "old" Siri app has been removed from the App Store, I think that's what confuses people.

Re:The scam of Siri

[Anonymous Coward]

Siri just doesn't use that much -- doing 10 - 15 queries a day might eat up around 25MB / month.

See http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/11/how-data-heavy-is-siri-on-an-iphone-4s-ars-investigates.ars

AC 'cause I moderated.

Re:The scam of Siri

[MartinSchou]

I don't understand why you use the US as an example of markets that have good contracts for cell phones. From where I'm at (Denmark and Sweden), those guys gets raped and just beg for more while praying that next time lube will be introduced.

Here I get 10 GB/month with my 32 EUR/month subscription, and that includes paying for the phone itself.

That being said, I don't want to be without mobile data on my iPhone. If I'm even slightly lost, it has maps and that requires data. I can check email. I can use Skype. I can use the fucking internet, without having to go hunting for a WiFi connection when I'm in the middle of nowhere (Sweden has exceptionally good coverage).

I can even listen to almost live radio from anywhere in the world, as long as they're streaming through Stitcher.

Hell, I can use the phone as a modem for my portable computer, when I'm in a hotel that has decided that they'll charge me 5 EUR/hour for access to a limited subset of websites and email.

And honestly, paying 32 EUR/month for that is fine with me.

Re:The scam of Siri

[wvmarle]

I didn't intend to say US has good contracts, just that you can not get a phone without a very big contract that includes heaps of data.

Secondly when it comes to maps, on my Android phone I carry an off-line copy of Google Maps and OpenCycleMap, using a great free app called Locus. That covers my mapping needs. Another issue is that for data you almost have to go 3G, and for calls that just eats extra battery for no improvement whatsoever. I used to be on 3G, returned to 2G. And as soon as you leave your own country, data roaming costs are going to kill you. In Sweden that's maybe not an issue, in a tiny city state like Hong Kong it is.

Re:The scam of Siri

[Anonymous Coward]

It also means that to have Siri work you have to pay for a data account (preferably an unlimited account - this will eat a lot of data if used frequently), as otherwise it will simply not work.

I don't have a mobile data plan with my smart phone, don't see the need for it really, WiFi does the job just fine. I don't feel the need for e-mail on the go. I don't feel the need for watching streaming video on such a small screen. I'm not Facebook addicted either. And Angry Birds plays better offline: no ads. And that one moment a month or less that I think "now I really need some data" is not enough to pay for a subscription, and open WiFi networks are usually easy enough to find.

Average size of Siri request data: 63 KByte

Download-size of this Slashdot discussion: 1.23 MByte.

You wasted 20 Siri questions before even writing your little rant.

Nothing new

[CanEHdian]

I knew this long ago... I just asked "Siri, what protocols are you using to communicate with your server?"

Re:Nothing new

[amiga3D]

damn.....I have no mod points....you should be +5 funny for sure.............

Re:Nothing new

[sjames]

I asked my Android that and it sent me here.

Command:

[PowerCyclist]

"Siri, Don't sue. Confirm.", Siri, "I'm afraid I can't do that Dave."

Re:Command:

[corychristison]

"Siri, Don't sue. Confirm.", Siri, "I'm afraid I can't do that Dave."

That's fine and all, but my name is not Dave..

Re:Command:

[PowerCyclist]

Yeah, neither is mine, but it's not often that you can make that joke and it be more relevant to the situation than this time.

Re:Command:

[Anonymous Coward]

Siri, Don't sue. Conform.
I'm afraid you're too late Dave.

Re:Command:

[PowerCyclist]

Oh no, It's the guys they sent to reclaim their prototypes again, RUUUNNNNN!

Re:Command:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Siri, Don't sue. Confirm.", Siri,
"I'm afraid I can't do that Dave."

This is so Siri, so sue me! Siri people.

Re:Command:

[Anonymous Coward]

No problem. You can ask Siri to call you Dave and it will comply.

Re:Command:

[theNAM666]

I'm sorry Dave, but your namespace change request has been denied, Dave.

Re:Command:

[Anonymous Coward]

I can call you Siri
And Siri when you call me
You can call me Dave

Would Apple mind?

[fluffy99]

If Apple is learning anything from Google, it's that customer info is valuable. Siri could easily become an advertising platform that rivals Google. Targeted advertising, where companies pay Apple for premium listings ( eg Asking Siri about a Pizza place returns Pizza Hut who paid the most for that key word).

If that's their angle, they might welcome more traffic to Siri.

Re:Would Apple mind?

[inKubus]

Well, there's that. There's definitely that. But what about the replies from Apple. Supposedly you tell the phone something, and then it decodes it and then it can actually change settings on your phone based on what you told it (e.g. send a message, create a calendar, etc.). Now I knew it was cloudy to begin with but I just started thinking, "what about the replies". Because that's the real "back door" here. First of all, Apple can send arbitrary commands to your phone. Not a big deal, but certainly something that might not raise as much suspicion now that there's a constant stream of binary between the two (soon to be encrypted further, I'd guess). Secondly, the requests and responses are travelling through the Internet and of course through the airwaves, which means someone could easily alter those replies with the aforementioned valid keys (pretty easy). And if you keep it quiet, you could even pretend like you're Apple's CA and not have to install a new cert on the phone. So, what is the API for the responses? What calls can a response make on the phone?

That's not to mention, of course, how easy it would be to just speex encode everything you say in a room and send to arbitrary internet hosts. No sir, I don't like it. Of course, I think it's stupid to ask your phone stuff anyway, but that's just me. I would like something speech oriented in a 55" LED format for my TV room, however.

The worst part of all is that Microsoft is now the only company that will make local speech recognition that's not a cloud service. Google, no, Apple, no, because both of these are relying on ads a LOT (and the general decline of traditional ad industries, thus flowing to them), and Microsoft relies on profits from publishing software. Microsoft is actually the ones looking the least evil, or at least the lowest enabler of evil. Sigh, what's the world coming to.

Re:Would Apple mind?

[jibjibjib]

> Secondly, the requests and responses are travelling through the Internet and of course through the airwaves, which means someone could easily alter those replies with the aforementioned valid keys (pretty easy)

If an attacker can arbitrarily alter the contents of an SSL session, we're all a bit screwed anyway. It's certainly not "pretty easy".

Re:Would Apple mind?

[evilviper]

Siri could easily become an advertising platform that rivals Google. Targeted advertising, where companies pay Apple for premium listings ( eg Asking Siri about a Pizza place returns Pizza Hut who paid the most for that key word).

What? Those are called Points-of-Interest, and there's nothing new or exciting about them. Google Maps, Mapquest, and other navigation software is free, precisely because they believe they'll make enough profit on the premium placement POI to make it worthwhile.

How does that remotely compete with Google? Except in-so-much as anywhere advertising could be done by Google but isn't, that's not competition at all, unless Siri turns into a full Navigation app, and has a web interface where you can search the web, it's not even the tiniest of threats to Google, or anyone else in the "ads on your phone" space.

Re:Would Apple mind?

[quacking duck]

Where do you get that Apple relies on ads? Never mind "relying on ads a LOT"?

Results from Wolfram Alpha are ad-free. In-Siri search results are ad-free. Creating events, reminders, call/texting, are all ad-free. The only time the user might see an ad is when you click on the Web Search for something Siri couldn't get an answer for right away, but that sends you to the browser where ads are fair game. Apple's own website is devoid of ads (can't say the same for Microsoft--bottom of their homepage was a banner ad for MS Office 2010. Yes, served from an ad farm).

In fact, Apple's philosophy on this seems to be "pay slightly more up front, we then make enough money that we won't subject you to 3rd party ads in our products or services." You'll therefore not find 3rd-party shovelware pre-installed on a Mac or iPhone, or ads in iCloud or the Siri service.

Re:Would Apple mind?

[R3d M3rcury]

Apple's own website is devoid of ads (can't say the same for Microsoft--bottom of their homepage was a banner ad for MS Office 2010. Yes, served from an ad farm).

Really? I just looked at Apple's web site and it had two ads trying to sell me an iPod touch, an iPod 2, and the biggest ad was for the iPhone 4S.

Which site are you looking at?

Re:Would Apple mind?

[Ixokai]

Umm, fact check: Apple doesn't even slightly rely on ads. At all. Apple is not an advertising company, at all.

They have the iAd product, which is little more then a hobby; Apple's profit is very, very clearly from direct hardware sales to customers -- by a /vast/ margin. Not from ads, ITMS, Apps, any of it. Its hardware sales to customers.

Its nothing like Google's business model.

Now, its possible Siri may be a future ad-related or information-related revenue stream, but only if it can be leveraged without harming the hardware sales-- because THAT is what Apple makes its dough on. It'll probably never be a huge deal, though it may be interesting.

Why is Siri cloud-powered? Perhaps because it has to be. Siri is a lot more then simply a speech recognition system-- even though the best speech recognition apps I've seen on IOS have also involved the cloud.

Just that alone seems to imply that it may take more processing power (and battery hogging) then mobile devices have to do well. But Siri does a lot more processing beyond that, juggling the possible recognition results based on context, thus changing its interpretation of the phrase and then re-evaluating again.

All three companies have VERY different business models.

Google relies on profits from its ad business.
Apple relies on profits from its hardware sales.
Microsoft relies on profits from published software.

Each has bits and pieces that go into others, but the /vast/ majority of their profits comes from their core business.

I admit to only being passingly familiar with Google and Microsoft's financials. But Apple's are very, very, very clearly oriented towards consumer hardware sales. Not ads, not music, not apps, not services. All of those things do nothing but maintain the ecosystem and thus make the devices more attractive. Apple's actual profit on them doesn't even compare to their actual driving businesses.

Re:Would Apple mind?

[cowboy76Spain]

If Apple is learning anything from Google, it's that customer info is valuable. Siri could easily become an advertising platform that rivals Google. Targeted advertising, where companies pay Apple for premium listings ( eg Asking Siri about a Pizza place returns Pizza Hut who paid the most for that key word).

If that's their angle, they might welcome more traffic to Siri.

<sarcasm>Yes, they are so thrilled by it. They wanted that everyone could connect to their servers, but they did not know how to make their protocols public. Being hacked has solved that problem!...</sarcasm>

What this crack means (unless has additional security measures) is that Siri will need a lot more of processing power and, what is worse, there is no way to predict how much power it will need now. Without getting to dip into related profits (selling of hardware / associated programs / etc). I bet they are doing a party right now just to celebrate!

Seriously, WTF? The crack does not give anything interesting/new away, just puts a third party in a position where it can be abused. If the people behind Siri wanted everyone to connect, they could have stated that themselves. Those are two very simple thoughts that everyone in /. could understand, yet they instead just follow the most retorted logic to justify it.

At least we are not discussing crimes here. If talking about murders, I bet some of you would posts things like "Thanks to the serial killer that murdered his wife and children, now he can chose a new wife and have more kids!"

Re:Would Apple mind?

[shutdown -p now]

They have the iAd product, which is little more then a hobby

iPod was once a hobby, too.

Apple executives are not stupid. While they're going to milk the hardware cow for all it can give, it is clear that they are realizing that it may not last forever, and preparing ways to "re-invent" the company business in advance. It is the same for the other companies you've listed, by the way - e.g. yes it's true that Microsoft gets most of its profits from software, today, but a huge chunk of that is already from subscription rather than sales, and there's a reason why Bing and AdCenter exist, too.

Re:Would Apple mind?

[phayes]

Google wasn't a in the telephone buisiness either not so long ago. Then they decided that owning part of the mobile OS market was a good growth direction and a means of keeping their search market share. Google could expand in this direction by making the OS free for others to license without undermining their core buisiness. Apple, however screamed bloody murder as android undermines their core buisiness and the cozy relationship between Apple & Google being on each others boards was history.

Turnabout is fair play, so Apple is now expanding into search through SIri. Apple does not need to make any money off of search. Mastering voice command will give apple many other advantages in the future as the rumors of a voice commanded appleTV show but the initial objective may just be to blunt andoid's growth & deflate google somewhat by making the easiest means of searching anything from an iphone siri instead of google.

Re:Would Apple mind?

[quacking duck]

Don't be deliberately obtuse. Images of and links to a company's own products, inline on its own website do NOT count as ads.

Do adblockers catch these? No, therefore they are not banner ads in any sense of the term. These image/links are not served from an ad server, they get no money from ad impressions on their own site or services.

Compare with the homepage for Microsoft, a company the GP claimed did NOT rely on ad revenue. At the very bottom is a banner ad for Office 2010 or other MS product/service, and to be clear, this one IS served in an iframe, by a 3rd party ad farm, and MS gets money from ad impressions to it.

The GP may have been thinking of iAds and ads within iTunes, and Apple obviously does advertise on other sites and other media (TV/print), but within the context of Siri and most of their own products and services there is no advertising to speak of.

Re:Would Apple mind?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which will never happen unless Apple has Siri installed on a majority of the smart phone out there. Apple will always be about 10% of the market. Nothing more, nothing less

Re:Would Apple mind?

[wjcofkc]

I came here to say pretty much the same thing. Fortunately I read through the comments before posting resulting in very little posting. Not this time though. Here, have a mod point.
: P

Re:Would Apple mind?

[toriver]

iAd exists to thwart Google. No other reason. Apple are not in the business of providing income to Google.

Re:Would Apple mind?

[fluffy99]

True, I doubt Apple is ready to take Siri mainstream anytime soon give it's current growing pains. More than likely it will be used as a selling point for Apple products as long as they can. Once there is a hint of a competitor, you'll probably see clients available for other OSs.

Re:Would Apple mind?

[R3d M3rcury]

Don't be deliberately obtuse. Images of and links to a company's own products, inline on its own website do NOT count as ads.

Ah, my mistake.

Microsoft advertising Office on their website: Bad. Apple advertising iPod on their website: good.

I went to Apple's website and clicked on the iPod touch link and it took me to an area of Apple's website to tell me more about the iPod touch. When I clicked on the picture of Microsoft Office, I got info about Microsoft Office. I'm not sure I see the difference.

Actually, if Microsoft is getting money showing ads for their products on their own website, that sounds like a pretty clever idea.

Re:Would Apple mind?

[quacking duck]

Yes, your mistake. I don't see why you continue insisting on making the same mistake, perhaps you didn't read the rest of my comment?

Apple or Microsoft or any other company inlining images and direct-linking to their product pages, on their own websites, is "good" because is not "advertising" in the context of buying space on a site to generate revenue from impressions or click-throughs. This is the context inKubus argued Apple "rely on a LOT" and is demonstrably false. Microsoft does however have the additional section at the bottom of their homepage that very clearly is not hosted on their own server, serves a banner ad, and generates a tracking hit when you click through.

Actually, if Microsoft is getting money showing ads for their products on their own website, that sounds like a pretty clever idea.

And that goes back to my previous point: Apple does not subject you to 3rd party ad farms within their own products/services, just to make a few extra cents per visitor.

Apple didn't write Siri anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, even the name comes from its origin: Stanford Research Institute. SRI wrote it, finished it, Apple bought it, closed it up. That's Apple's prerogative, but it should be very clear that they're now very much in the Microsoft territory of knowing who to buy over what to write.

Re:Apple didn't write Siri anyway

[amiga3D]

The difference being that generally MS bought up rivals to kill their products rather than compete with them. This got superior products out of the way so crappy MS stuff could continue to stifle. Apple buys up new and innovative tech to promote and market it. Have a few billion laying around they can do that now.

Re:Apple didn't write Siri anyway

[mosb1000]

Apple makes consumer electronics. Why should they be in the business of developing speech recognition and AI? Wouldn't they be spreading themselves thin? Apple likes to focus on doing only a few things. That kind of diversification would be counterproductive. Maybe in a few years when the tech is more established they'd take a crack at developing their own version.

Re:Apple didn't write Siri anyway

[Guy Harris]

That's Apple's prerogative, but it should be very clear that they're now very much in the Microsoft territory of knowing who to buy over what to write.

Or, to put it another way, knowing when to buy and when to write - which I'd apply to Apple, Microsoft, and other tech companies as well. (Note that one of the main competitors to iOS was developed by a company that was bought by the company that's now developing it.) Perhaps buying technology is the sign of a company losing its innovative mojo; it might also be the sign of a company that's gotten big enough that they can deal with the dictum that "not all the smart people in the world work for you" by buying some of the companies that have those other smart people rather than just by buying their products.

Re:Apple didn't write Siri anyway

[mug funky]

yeah, Apple never ever did that. ever.

Re:Apple didn't write Siri anyway

[toriver]

What, are you one of the OpenDoc users that cannot forgive Apple for killing that tech? That was in-house, not bought and killed.

Re:Apple didn't write Siri anyway

[toriver]

... and Google bought Android Inc. Same difference.

Re:The culprit is gonna be associated with Android

[c0d3g33k]

I'm not sure you really understand what source code is. The ICS source release has nothing to do with developers who write apps that use the Siri protocol. Nothing. At. All.

Re:The culprit is gonna be associated with Android

[Anonymous Coward]

You really think Android and iOS just HAPPENED to be so similar and just HAPPENED to come out within a year of each other? You are seriously that gullible?
All that will happen is that Apple will simply tack on a requirement to register a 4S with serial number, original purchase receipt and a plan verification from the cell provider before you can use SIRI. So confirmation from 3 different sources would be much more inconvenient for hackers to bother with.
Plus that fact that SIRI servers, if inundated with requests from all devices, would not handle the overload and be very poorly responding, making the hackers not want to use it anyway.
Either way, these hackers who think they are so very smart, are actually quite stupid for failing to anticipate that there are so many ways for them to lose.

So how many times ..

[n5vb]

.. can you ask Siri "where to hide a body" before a backend notification gets emailed to a detective at your local PD?

Re:So how many times ..

[Bill Dimm]

I asked Siri that question, and it responded: "You've already asked one time too many." It then displayed a map showing me how to get to Mexico.

Re:So how many times ..

[Sloppy]

I didn't know they let you have a phone, Hans.

Re:So how many times ..

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't know they let you have a phone, Hans.

If that comment doesn't get a rise out of someone's file system, I don't know what will.

Re:So how many times ..

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't usually bother with that hassle as the nice Italian men at my local pizza place already provide excellent service. I just phone them and order a regular crust (shallow grave), deep crust (deep grave), deep crust with anchovies (sleep with the fishes), or a Jimmy Hoffa Special (never be found) and give them "my" name and address. A week later, I leave a duffel bag full of small, unmarked, non-sequential, used bills in a locker at the airport and give the key to the bartender in the lounge.

Re:So how many times ..

[Anonymous Coward]

> I didn't know they let you have a phone, Hans

It's a closed source iphone, it's part of the punishment.

Re:So how many times ..

[Cro Magnon]

Siri should have displayed that map the first time. Great place to hide a body!

Obligatory that's what she said joke.

[mosb1000]

That's what she said.

Re:The culprit is gonna be associated with Android

[amiga3D]

I don't see an Android app being allowed access to an Apple server. Somehow I think someone at Cupertino will frown on that.

Pain in all the diodes behind my Retina display

[Torodung]

I am shocked anybody wants a "plastic pal that's fun to be with" in the first place. I mean, sh!t, did anybody notice that GPPs are made by Sirius Cybernetics in his books? Douglas Adams is probably suing Steve Jobs in ghost court right now.

Re:Pain in all the diodes behind my Retina display

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucksake... sh!t? really? do you say doo doo? It's shit... say it... nothing bad will happen to you.

Re:Pain in all the diodes behind my Retina display

[Anonymous Coward]

fsck off.

The Legal Battle Line is Drawn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

© 2002-2003, Jean-Marc Valin/Xiph.Org Foundation

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
Neither the name of the Xiph.org Foundation nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

This software is provided by the copyright holders and contributors “as is” and any express or implied warranties, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are disclaimed. In no event shall the foundation or contributors be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, or consequential damages (including, but not limited to, procurement of substitute goods or services; loss of use, data, or profits; or business interruption) however caused and on any theory of liability, whether in contract, strict liability, or tort (including negligence or otherwise) arising in any way out of the use of this software, even if advised of the possibility of such damage.

Re:The Legal Battle Line is Drawn ...

[jonwil]

Isn't that just 3-clause BSD (or something almost the same) and therefore there is no requirement for apple to share anything?

Re:The Legal Battle Line is Drawn ...

[king neckbeard]

Apple doesn't have to share source code, but the license includes attribution, which doesn't appear to have happened (if it did, we'd have known that from the day Siri was first available). It is possible, however, that it uses an independently developed codebase that fits the speex spec, but that would be a waste of time for most people.

Re:The Legal Battle Line is Drawn ...

[Guy Harris]

Apple doesn't have to share source code, but the license includes attribution, which doesn't appear to have happened (if it did, we'd have known that from the day Siri was first available).

We would if somebody'd bothered to fire up System Preferences^W^WSettings on an iOS 5 device and then go to General -> About -> Legal and scroll through all that crap looking for the text in question and found it. (I don't have an iOS 5 device to check it on.)

Re:The Legal Battle Line is Drawn ...

[AndrewStephens]

I have just done this. That exact text (as far as I can tell) is included in the text about 7/8ths of the way through.

So it looks like Apple is in the clear on this point.

Re:The Legal Battle Line is Drawn ...

[larry bagina]

Preferences -> General -> About -> Legal

It's a long list of licenses, 90% of which are the same fucking text over and over again. Maybe Stallman was right about BSD license being bad for that reason (though the GPL and LGPL are worse in that they're so much longer). A simple "this software uses $x from $y" would be more beneficial to everyone than a 300-page license dump.

Anyway, about 90% down is the xiph/speex notice. There's also notice pertaining to ACELP

Re:The Legal Battle Line is Drawn ...

[mug funky]

very interesting. i wonder if Apple will retcon this onto siri's documentation and force an update?

Re:The culprit is gonna be associated with Android

[Anonymous Coward]

The only people who think Android is stolen are either a) below contempt or b) worthy of being punched or c) OMG STEVE JOBS IS MY GAAWWWDDDDD!!!!!! and probably fit squarely into a) and b) already.

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why almost all apps work in airplane mode? Must be magic!

Re:Really?

[mug funky]

planes have wifi these days.

in other news, you're no longer allowed to smoke.

Re:The culprit is gonna be associated with Android

[pipedwho]

What will happen next are events reinforcing the myth that Android is a stolen product.

It's a sad day indeed.

You're telling me. I was trying to use my iPhone yesterday and half the OS was missing! Stolen from right under my nose.

A lesson in client/server security

[AndrewStephens]

TFA is actually pretty interesting:

As you know, the “S” in HTTPS stands for “secure” : all traffic between a client and an https server is ciphered. So we couldn’t read it using a sniffer. In that case, the simplest solution is to fake an HTTPS server, use a fake DNS server, and see what the incoming requests are. Unfortunately, the people behind Siri did things right : they check that guzzoni’s certificate is valid, so you cannot fake it. Well they did check that it was valid, but thing is, you can add your own “root certificate”, which lets you mark any certificate you want as valid.

Some Apple software (parts of iTunes) goes further and checks that the certificate presented by the server is actually signed by Apple. If the Siri software did this then the server would be impossible to fake man-in-middle-wise without hacking the client itself. Just checking that the certificate is valid is pretty useless protection - any certificate could be valid, what you care about is whether the server is who it says it is.

Re:A lesson in client/server security

[jibjibjib]

It's not a "pretty useless protection". It's not just checking that the certificate is valid, it's also checking that the certificate authority has a corresponding root certificate installed on the iPhone. It stops anyone who doesn't have access to the phone from eavesdropping or manipulating the data.

Re:A lesson in client/server security

[AndrewStephens]

I think you have missed my point. If the certificate is signed by some random authority it is "valid" but that only says that the authority (whoever that is) trusts the server. If the client did as it should (and what other Apple apps do), then it should check that the certificate is signed by a authority that it can check directly using the authority's public key built into the client.

That way it would be impossible to spoof the server and perform man-in-the-middle attack without either a) knowing the private key of Apple's signing authority (in which case Apple has bigger problems than people cracking Siri) or b) modifying the binary of the client application itself (always possible not matter what you do).

I just find it interesting that some applications do this properly, and others just seem to say "The cert looks legit to me, let's talk some secret stuff".

Re:A lesson in client/server security

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to have physical access to the phone (using iPhone Configuration Utility) or get the user to click through several screens saying "THIS WILL LET SOMEONE CONTROL YOUR DEVICE" to install a new root certificate.

Re:A lesson in client/server security

[Anonymous Coward]

It is if the root certificates are chosen by the user, and the user is part of your attacker model ;).

Re:A lesson in client/server security

[am 2k]

It's not a "pretty useless protection". It's not just checking that the certificate is valid, it's also checking that the certificate authority has a corresponding root certificate installed on the iPhone. It stops anyone who doesn't have access to the phone from eavesdropping or manipulating the data.

That would be true if it weren't for the dozens of CAs that have been hacked and are still in the list of roots on every iPhone.

Re:A lesson in client/server security

[Anonymous Coward]

No. It stops anyone who isn't a root authority from eavesdropping or manipulating the data.

In other words it's a pretty useless protection.

Re:A lesson in client/server security

[pavon]

No, I think you missed his point. The setup they are using is completely adequate for securing the privacy of communication between the user and Apple's server. It is just inadequate for preventing connections from non-approved applications.

So his point was that whether you consider it "pretty useless protection" or not depends on what you are trying to protect.

Re:A lesson in client/server security

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, iTunes has been emulated successfully by a friend of mine.

Which led to his site xitunes.com (If he is still paying to keep it up).

Re:A lesson in client/server security

[AndrewStephens]

The setup they are using is completely adequate for securing the privacy of communication between the user and Apple's server.

TFA describes how they eavesdropped on the communication between the user and Apple's server. Doesn't sound very secure to me.

Re:A lesson in client/server security

[pavon]

TFA describes how they eavesdropped on the communication between the user and Apple's server.

Yes, by installing bogus certificates on the iPhone. If you are able to do that (manually or remotely), then you are already able to view all the unencrypted content anyway (manually or remotely respectively) so the ability to eavesdrop in that case does not decrease security. If you are not able to add your own certificate, then the authentication they have in place is sufficient to prevent eavesdropping.

All encryption protects the channel, not the endpoints.

Trust in ads...

[SuperKendall]

Oh, and while they have it all, I must trust Apple now that they are not gonna mine this data and send it backdoor to advertisers and other interests.

So in protest you are going to buy a GOOGLE Android phone?

Yes, your data is quite safe from advertising profiling there!

Re:Trust in ads...

[Anonymous Coward]

"In protest"? You think the most expensive phone on the market is some kind of default?

wow, they send all the data?

[pavera]

I knew they were doing some heavy lifting on the server side, cause obviously it doesn't work without a network connection.

However, I figured they would at least do an initial processing pass on the phone and pass up the data points to the server instead of the raw audio. That at least would make sense, and you'd be able to pass much smaller amounts of data. It would also explain the need to have better hardware on the phone. Sending the raw audio seems insane.

Re:wow, they send all the data?

[arunce]

Do they keep it?

Re:wow, they send all the data?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised no-one has yet pointed out one of the biggest advantages of processing the speech server side, and that is the easy of upgrading their recognition algorithms and adding semantic analysis routines. Instead of upgrading every iPhone, they can just upgrade their server, or even just use a new/experimental version for a tiny subset of their users while they iron out some kinks.

The downside if, of course, the latency, but as networks get faster (as they are), this becomes less of a problem.

IMO the cloud is definitely they way to do this.

Re:wow, they send all the data?

[quacking duck]

That may be, but I still want an automatic fallback for offline work. A little (more) inaccuracy when creating an event, reminder, playing a song or playlist, etc is preferable to "sorry, can't do that since internet isn't available"

Re:wow, they send all the data?

[Sez Zero]

Do they keep it?

I'd assume they keep, or at least keep consolidations of, the voice data to help improve Siri's recognition and responses.

Maybe they don't know, but it seems people keep forgetting that Siri is a beta. When was the last time you saw Apple release a beta to consumers? I wouldn't be surprised if we saw Siri on EVERY Apple device in a year. The 4S users are just the beta users-- they get to stress test the system, see where people poke it for security holes and generally do things that a beta testing group is supposed to do.

After the beta period it goes into wide release, and you have Siri on every Apple device, probably addressable by different names. I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually saw Siri licensed out to other device manufacturers. It won't be long until I'm barking at the coffee maker in the morning.

"Siri, Tea. Earl Grey, hot."

"Sorry, you're no Picard."

Re:wow, they send all the data?

[arunce]

But I'm Picard!! - reporting bug.

This is funny.. althought

[arunce]

I wouldn't be so admired if at the end of the line we could find an unknowingly Google plus an unwittingly Apple.

Apple bought Siri

[dutchwhizzman]

There's an awfully big chance the codec was determined and implemented way before Apple even touched the product.

Re:Apple bought Siri

[nzac]

I would think a general purpose speech codec would not be so hard coded into a product it could not be swapped out in a couple of days. I dont think there is speech recognition optimisation built in.

Unless they are going to change it (which since its still in beta they could do), its a win no matter how it got there.

wow

[buddyglass]

It seems fairly ill-advised for a company whose business is developing iOS apps to post their reverse engineering exploits on the corporate blog.

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

why don't the hackers just use the Pioneer zypr API to write a free browser based Siri-practically-clone and go home ?

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems fairly ill-advised for a company whose business is developing iOS apps to post their reverse engineering exploits on the corporate blog.

Agreed. And, I hope the afterlife is treating you well Steve.

Re:wow

[aardwolf64]

Definitely... I was thinking about posting that link to a discussion I've been in on getting Siri to work in the corporate environment (firewall rules, etc.), but I didn't because the email address is associated with my dev account.

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, screw apple, as more developers wise up there will be more and more info like this posted publicly.

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Not if they, for instance, get featured on /.

Re:The culprit is gonna be associated with Android

[sjames]

While it's not EXACTLY the same, Android already has speech recognition that can do a google search. Lets keep some perspective, Siri is an incremental improvement, not some amazing and unfathomable technology our star friends shared with Apple.

Hi Larry

[afabbro]

First time accepted submitter

Long time listener, first time caller. Thanks for taking my call.

Re:Hi Larry

[Sez Zero]

Long time listener, first time caller. Thanks for taking my call.

Experienced first time callers know that you're supposed to say "First time, long time" instead of the long version.

Re:The culprit is gonna be associated with Android

[quacking duck]

You say "incremental" as if it's a bad thing. Most of the world's consumer tech revolutions are merely increments and/or well-polished amalgamations of existing tech that made it more accessible to more people. The truly bleeding-edge technologies are too far outside the worldview of most people for them to bother with.

Re:The culprit is gonna be associated with Android

[sjames]

No, nothing wrong with it, it's just contrary to the marketing message and the fanbois. The same failure to recognize the incremental nature of most developments is at the heart of the IP sue-a-thon going on these days.

For a while

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, you could.

But presumably as soon as a "Siri for Android" app started to get popular, Apple could just blacklist that identifier from the system.

You could make an app that allowed a user to input their own identifier. Then each person who wanted to do it would have to go find a friend with an iPhone, and you could probably get away with that. But it'd be inconvenient at best.

Who cares at all?

[peted56]

I cannot for the life of me think of any reason anyone would want or need siri on any platform. Thanks but no..

Re:Who cares at all?

[Max Rool]

I cannot for the life of me think of any reason anyone would want or need siri on any platform. Thanks but no..

Haha, this reminds me of what I said when I first saw VisiCalc. I think Siri is cool, it is in the realms of the Star Trek Enterprise computer where they interfaced using voice. Siri obviously has a way to go, but i think it is still Beta, unless I am wrong.

Re:Who cares at all?

[toriver]

It is in beta. But Google and a multitude of MMO pulishers have ruined that term.

And yes, VisiCalc has several problems compared to a paper ledger, it is a fad that will die the moment someone needs to access their accounts and the floppy with the spreadsheet has been wiped.

Re:The culprit is gonna be associated with Android

[omfgnosis]

Apple will simply tack on a requirement to register a 4S with serial number, original purchase receipt and a plan verification from the cell provider

No way in hell. They'd sooner find a way to monetize officially opening up Siri cross-platform. All of this onerous treat-customers-like-criminals stuff is something Apple has consciously avoided in their business strategies for a long, long time—presumably observing that customers don't like to be treated like criminals, and don't like to give money to companies that make them feel bad.

Who thinks this is bad?

[cowboy76Spain]

I mean, this is just opening Siri's servers open to a DDOS when everyone downloads "Siri for Android" and "Siri for PC" and the server load multiplies manyfold...

Even if you rant about "Everything should be free", this is not a case of this... it could be if the hack allowed you to create the complete system (including servers), this only allows people to leech into someone else's server. It is not even a particularly complex hack that shows the mastery of the cracker.

In essence, IMO this thing will have some positive effect for people who will sell/use applications connecting to a system they don't support, and a lot of negative effect for the user who really support the system. I don't think it is a good thing, even if that puts me as a minority in /.

Disclaimer: Before you begin with it, I am not and I will not be an Apple user. Also, as my native language is not English, it is uncertain that I will find Siri useful anytime in the future.

Re:Who thinks this is bad?

[hey]

It doesn't even have to be an attempt at a useful app. Just send some data to that server.

WTH is Siri?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not in the summary, and it's not in the top 50 comments.

Mods: get off your asses, find a post that explains what the hell Siri is, and make sure that post is the top post in the thread.
Alternately, Editors: get off your asses and re-edit the summary to tell us what the fuck Siri is.

Re:WTH is Siri?

[Ash-Fox]

WTH is Siri?

It's dumb, that's what it is.

tell us what the fuck Siri is

You have your answer, now leave and never return.

Counterproductive

[StripedCow]

I don't understand these hackers, they only promote the lock-in policies of Apple. Because having Siri for a while may lure more users to Apple. After a while, Apple will just close the hole by using the UID's of the phone, like others mentioned, or some kind of unbreakable private-key cryptosystem.

Further, all those jailbreaking tools which are available just give Apple users a reason to say "hey, I'm not locked in, I can always jailbreak my device".

While you can root your device now, it does not mean you can root it forever. Apple devs are smart enough to make the system close to unbreakable, because cryptography is not that hard, and by the way, they are baking their own ICs now.

So I think Apple is just happy with this (relatively small) jailbreaking scene, just like Microsoft was happy with their software being illegally copied for a long while.

Re:Counterproductive

[Marcika]

by the way, they are baking their own ICs now

Source? Last thing I heard they were completely dependent on Samsung and desperately trying to get TSMC to step up in case Samsung pulls the rug out. Even the PWRefficent people that they hired were chip designers, not manufacturers.

Re:Counterproductive

[StripedCow]

Sorry, I meant baking figuratively. They are using their own designs (which they may have licensed from another firm; they can make modifications of course).

Re:Counterproductive

[coinreturn]

by the way, they are baking their own ICs now

Source? Last thing I heard they were completely dependent on Samsung and desperately trying to get TSMC to step up in case Samsung pulls the rug out. Even the PWRefficent people that they hired were chip designers, not manufacturers.

I think the iPod nano recall was all about baking ICs (by way of exploding battery).

So Siri is online only?

[Anonymous Coward]

So Siri only works when you're online? You can't tell it to record a to do item, unless you're within reach of a cell tower? If so, that's pretty dumb.

Re:The culprit is gonna be associated with Android

[coinreturn]

The only people who think Android is stolen are either a) below contempt or b) worthy of being punched or c) OMG STEVE JOBS IS MY GAAWWWDDDDD!!!!!! and probably fit squarely into a) and b) already.

You are now the wikipedia example of the logical fallacy "poisoning the well."

Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

This is such a waste of time. Why can't talented programmers spend their efforts on more productive activities. Write the next great game, etc. If you want Siri, buy an effing iPhone. I know I'm in the (very small) minority here, but I just don't understand hackers.

Re:Stupid

[Ash-Fox]

This is such a waste of time. Why can't talented programmers spend their efforts on more productive activities. Write the next great game, etc.

Have you considered the fact that reverse engineering ability doesn't equate to game writing ability?

As these individuals probably get more press and interest doing this than reverse engineering how a complex virus like Stuxnet works. Are you sure this is less productive? Seems like a good way to get yourself known out there.

Re:Stupid

[Max Rool]

This is such a waste of time. Why can't talented programmers spend their efforts on more productive activities. Write the next great game, etc. If you want Siri, buy an effing iPhone. I know I'm in the (very small) minority here, but I just don't understand hackers.

Me either, but the first product that Woz and Jobs made and sold was a telephone system hacking device. So from this we can see that sometimes other things can evolve from hacking at other peoples work.

Anyways

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking to your phone makes you look crazy and snob so for that reason I'M OUT

Re:Anyways

[Max Rool]

Speaking to your phone makes you look crazy and snob so for that reason I'M OUT

Haha yeah I remember back in the day when all you could do was speak into a phone.

Even ebay sniping app, does it server side

[Kartu]

I was surprised to discover that even ebay sniping apps do it server side. (somebody is storing your ebay credentials on their "not evil" server, yep)

Decode to text library?

[sgt scrub]

Now that we know how to direct the speek files, anyone know of an open source library for decoding the files to text?

Re:WTH is Siri? Look it up.

[Jeng]

I hate to be rude, but..

If you don't know what something is look it the fuck up.

Thank you.

Re:The culprit is gonna be associated with Android

[quacking duck]

Just like the iPod and iPhone, Apple seems to specialize in evolutionary implementation, but revolutionary in usage.

It remains to be seen if Siri is the latter, and I don't use it much myself, but the Iris project demonstrates that even if all the necessary tech was available on Android already, no one took it the (supposedly obvious) next step.

Despite claims that the Iris project "duplicated" Siri in only 8 hours, that was a wild exaggeration. A month later it is still very much something that regular users won't bother with. Their latest blog entry (from Oct 29) says most Android phones don't ship with the required speech libraries and users must download/install it themselves, they're missing multilingual support (Apple's own is far from complete, of course), and they're still implementing the framework to let it do certain voice actions like add calendar appointments.

I think it's great that they're trying with Iris, but they are obviously copying the Siri implementation, and it's disingenuous that some claim "Android had all those things first". They had most or maybe even all the parts, but they did not have a working car, because the parts were from different manufacturers that didn't fit together properly.

Hmmm

[Lisandro]

"Yes, that means anyone could now write an Android app that uses the real Siri!"

OR, you could try Vlingo....

Innovations

[Anonymous Coward]

This is actually is not a big innovations.
Long time ago there is Dragon Naturally speaking from Nuance.
It is the base for Siri.

They just combine it with the search engine and giving some touch.

What happened if Google Buy Nuance and then Improve it ?

I think you have Apple confused with Google

[Brannon]

Apple makes money selling hardware. Google makes money selling you.

Siri code

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably a lot of people already know this, but Siri is very similar to an open-source project that was co-opted by SRI International. The Sourceforge project used to be at http://sourceforge.net/projects/communicator/, but the project has suffered from long neglect.

Re:The culprit is gonna be associated with Android

[Anonymous Coward]

You really think Android and iOS just HAPPENED to be so similar and just HAPPENED to come out within a year of each other?

Just like the iPhone happened to come out one year after the LG Prada. You are onto something!

Telefon

[chochos]

Just tell Siri "Cleopatra says there will be snow from the west"

If you had your own server and enough iPhone ids..

[slapout]

Just set up your own server. The Android app would contact your server. Then your server would pretend to be a random iPhone 4S and send a request to Apple. Your server would then send the result back.

Also, can't share IDs because Siri is stateful

[200_success]

Another thing to consider is that Siri remembers things about you. For example, you can tell it "Justine is my mom", then later say "Call mom". Also, there are sessions — your command can be a interpreted in the context of recent commands. I would guess that the state is saved on the server side and tied to your unique ID. If so, then sharing an ID among multiple users would result in a nasty user experience, and would certainly defeat the point of Siri's more intelligent features.

Re:The culprit is gonna be associated with Android

[sjames]

I think it's fairly clear iris is meant to be a sort of clone, but in the broader case of other voice command capability, it would be equally disingenuous to claim that android is just an iPhone clone. Each has pieces that the other had first. That is to be expected with parallel development of two devices in the same class.

VoiceToGoog: qt-based open-source voice app

[Anonymous Coward]

For a multiplatform, multilingual voice recognition application for geeks, check out my new app http://code.google.com/p/voicetogoog/ now available at http://store.ovi.com/content/195998 . Since it’s an open-source (GPL) Qt-based app, it currently runs on Linux and on the Nokia N9 or N950 Linux smartphone. It’ll probably get ported to http://press.nokia.com/2011/08/18/symbian-anna-now-available-for-download/ next, but it also hope to port to Android via http://developer.qt.nokia.com/wiki/Necessitas . Also, please vote/like my VoiceToGoog-based proposal at http://www.ideasproject.com/ideas/11817