Siri Comes to the iPadâ€¦Sort Of

**Waqas** · October 24, 2011

Apple has decided to restrict the usage of Siri to the iPhone 4S but that doesn’t mean that enterprising developers haven’t started the process of porting to devices like the regular iPhone 4 and iPad.

Over the weekend, developer @jackoplane was able to show some progress of getting Siri working on the iPad 1. The breakthrough comes a week after Steve Troughton was able to get everyone’s favorite personal assistant to run on the iPhone 4.

Of course, there is a catch. Siri will load on jailbroken iPhone 4 devices — and the iPad 1 — but it won’t work the way you might expect.

Because Siri’s secret sauce comes from interacting directly with Apple’s servers in the cloud, Siri doesn’t function if the device being used is not an iPhone 4S.

Jailbreak Story quotes Stroughton as saying that any iOS device could theoretically be spoofed to look like an iPhone 4S. It’s also possible that the Siri interface could be used to work with Google or services like TellMe.

Joshua Tucker of ModMyi and Jackoplane are maintaining an FAQ with information about the state of the Siri port to other devices. The progress is impressive — though obviously a lot of work is yet to be done.

Why is Apple Limiting Siri’s Hardware

Many have questioned Apple’s decision to limit Siri to the iPhone 4S. While Apple maintains that the A5 dual-core chip on the iPhone 4S is required for many of the processes, the fact that pre-iOS 5 Siri worked on the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 3GS has caused some developers to question this claim.

The very fact that Siri will run on an iPhone 4 — albeit without server interaction — may indicate that this is a forced restriction rather than anything in hardware. This wouldn’t be the first time Apple has imposed software limits on capable hardware.

Of course, the restriction could also be more practical. By only working on the iPhone 4S, Apple has more control over how well Siri can scale from the cloud. When Siri first launched alongside the iPhone 4S, some users reported periods of instability — thanks to a rush of users flooding the service — and the cloud. Now multiply that impact by the 50 million iPhone 4 devices. It could be that Apple wants to restrict Siri until it can be sure it will support the load.

In any event, we wish the developers and jailbreakers well on their quest to get Siri working on other iOS devices.

Photos courtesy of @Jackoplane