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Siri has been made to run on older iOS devices some time ago. It was reported by MacRumors that special hardware is what sets the iPhone 4S as the exclusive device for Siri. Enter the new iPad.

The new iPad supports voice dictation, which, to me anyway, is a clear indicator of at least some of this earSmart technology making its way into iPad 3. Additionally, the new iPad has some sort of access token to Apple's servers, given the voice dictation feature. As discussed by answers to my question here, the new iPad is connecting to Apple servers for voice processing. Additionally, Voice Dictation would imply that the new iPad has access tokens for Siri's servers.

So, we have the hardware, and we have the token. The new iPad should be able to run Siri, pending an update from Apple or the jailbreak community.

Is this thought process correct? Have I missed anything?

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    Since Apple clearly do not intend for Siri to run on the new iPad I'm adding a jailbreak tag and asking people to address this directly with good hard links to details to avoid confusing new users into thinking that Siri is expected to run on the new hardware. Siri doesn't run out of the box and should that change, we can edit things if and when a correction is warranted. :-)
    – bmike
    Mar 19, 2012 at 16:14
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    Running Siri on unsupported devices requires more than a jailbreak. It requires the tokens assigned to devices (currently only provided to the iPhone 4S) that are eligible to run the software. These tokens are assigned in order to grant the device and Siri access to Apple's servers. Without them, jailbreakon devices can run Siri, but Siri will not connected to Apple's servers to query and return the things asked of her. This puts a legal wrench into the issue as hacking their servers is clearly a violation. This is more of a case of marketing than technology as the new iPad has the horsepower.
    – user10355
    Mar 21, 2012 at 1:04
  • @cksum As I've said, the tokens exist because iPad uses Voice dictation.
    – Moshe
    Mar 21, 2012 at 1:09
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    @Moshe That's not why Apple's controlling access to its servers. It has nothing to do with the hardware and everything to do with protecting Siri and who can access it (wisely I might add).
    – user10355
    Mar 21, 2012 at 3:26
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    @Moshe Unfortunately, no one will have an answer for you. We can debate about this, but only Apple knows and historically, they don't talk about such things. All this will bring is debate and guessing. But no facts, unfortunately.
    – user10355
    Mar 21, 2012 at 3:38

4 Answers 4

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The short answer is no, not yet. The long answer is because the only (reliable/legal) way to get Siri on a non-iPhone 4S device is to use a package found in Cydia called Spire. This requires you to have access to a Siri proxy server or an iPhone 4S for the tokens. However, @chpwn (the developer of the package) has stated many times that it will not run on iOS 5.1, because the iPhone 4S IPSW (the actual firmware downloaded from Apple) cannot be unencrypted at this time. This IPSW is needed to harvest the Siri files for use on other devices. He could port it illegally, but he doesn't plan on it. Because the new iPad is running iOS 5.1, Siri cannot be run on it, plus a public JailBreak for the new iPad hasn't been released yet.

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Currently, you can use Siri on most of the iDevices thanks to a jailbreak. You can install Siri on iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPod touch and iPad 1. But since you can jailbreak all iDevices running iOS 5.0, you can install Siri on most of the (resent) iDevices.

If you like what I'm saying here, you have to do some effort yourself (since the topic is balancing on the borders of (il)legality. But you'll find yourself a great tutorial in the link above and with the help of Google.

So I have my hopes up it won't take the jailbreak community a long time to jailbreak the new iPad with 5.1 and get Siri up and running on this new iDevice.

So yes. Siri will (probably) run on the new iPad, but you have to wait for a jailbreak.

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  • Ok, thanks for the hint. How about now?
    – Michiel
    Mar 19, 2012 at 16:17
  • Thank you! I think you listing out the specific devices that have jailbreaks for Siri was great - your call to add it or not. I don't have much experience with jail breaking, so any experience you can add to help people like me explaining how well (or not) these options run would be vote worthy :-)
    – bmike
    Mar 19, 2012 at 16:21
  • Here you go my friend :)
    – Michiel
    Mar 19, 2012 at 17:58
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The way Siri works at the moment, means after jailbreakig the iPad 3, it should be able to run Siri without external keys, since it has dictation keys. However these keys are unique to each device, and apple can easily change Siri servers to only allow dictation to iPad keys, and the rest of Siri to iPhone 4S keys. So 90% iPad 3 jailbreak will give it Siri. But apple can change that if they want.

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Siri should definitely run on iPad.. there is no reason it shouldn't, but I think Apple is using Siri as a selling point for the new iPhone and doesn't want to corrode that yet. I'm sure when iPhone gets its next big feature, Siri will eventually make its way to other products.

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