Apple has made it legally permissible for hackers to port the Siri voice assistant feature, which is officially exclusive to the iPhone 4S, to older Apple handsets, including the iPhone 4.
Apple’s Siri voice assistant stands as one of the primary selling points of the iPhone 4S, which is the only device that includes the feature. Yes, many hackers have tried to put Siri on other Apple gadgets, but they have so far been unstable and otherwise severely flawed. But that is all about to change.
As Alex Heath at Cult of Mac reports, Apple has released now released iOS 5.0.1, which includes the Siri code unencrypted, making it possible — and legal — for hackers to port Siri to older versions of the iPhone.
The notable change to iOS 5.0.1 was first uncovered (publicly) by well-known iPhone hacker MuscleNerd, who posted the information to Twitter. MuscleNerd notes that iOS 5.0.1 is “the first public 4S ipsw where the main filesystem keys are obtainable (due to non-encrypted ramdisks).” By un-encrypting the Siri code, Apple has made it possible to port the feature to other devices without violating Apple’s copyright.
It is entirely possible that Apple will close this loophole soon — in fact, we’d wager that that is a highly likely scenario — when it releases iOS 5.1. For now, however, those of you who have stuck with the iPhone 4, and choose to jailbreak your device, could very soon have Siri all to yourself.
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