When Siri was acquired by Apple last year, it wasn’t hard to figure out what was going to happen. With the release of the iPhone 4S, people are flocking to the new device in droves. The newest and brightest feature in iOS is now Siri, and it’s pretty clear that the acquisition was a good investment.
Within the first 24 hours of Apple’s iPhone 4S going on sale, it has already nabbed enough pre-sales to pay for the acquisition of Siri, a feat that I don’t think anyone could have expected.
Siri, which allows you to talk to your phone in plain language to have it perform tasks, is only being officially released on the iPhone 4S, helping drive sales of the new device, though hackers are already working on porting it to older handsets.
The one thing that did catch me off guard was the retention of the name Siri. The name sounds off-brand, even before getting into the overhyped discussions about the meaning of the word in Japanese.
(Side bar: There were inaccurate reports about the word Siri meaning “buttocks” in Japanese. This is untrue. The word carries no meaning in Japanese, nor is the feature listed as even available in Japan.)
I would have expected something more intuitive as Apple features typically carry their function within their name (see: iMessages, iChat). Yet the Siri name stuck and that’s what we are left with. The only thing I can think of is it was part of the original purchase deal. I’d assume Apple would have left themselves an out for that one though.
Source: TheNextWeb
