The real costs of the new Prima Donna: Siri

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Dulin's Books

yes the service itself was already available as an app called Siri.

Whats funny to me is that all the tech writers who wrote about the iphone 4s launch reported how Siri works and mentioned that it does the voice recognition at the servers and yet all of them now write about the data usage as if they had never heard how it works.

Because they only write what readers want to hear about. It was a cool feature to hear about - and all the stupid questions the writers came up with that surprisingly had answers. Now that people actually use it and wonder why they use so much data, they need to be told. "Oh now that you mention it, it might be because of this and that ... ". They wanted to sell it at first, and not say - this is a cool feature to have, but beware you won't be able to use it unless you have deep pockets for your increased data usage. Who in their right mind would have thought to get a iPhone? Sounds better to say: Siri is free to use in all manners other than data usage ....

[John F]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

I think on a per second scale, Siri is probably on par with Pandora or iTunes. Can't really compare to Netflix and other relatively high bitrate streaming video services, though.

Overall though, I'd guess it is using relatively little data. It's not like people are continually interacting with Siri. How long does it take to ask the question? How long does it take to get a response? How many questions do you ask in a minute.

Now compare that to The usage pattern for something like Pandora.

[rant on]
Besides, half the time it doesn't need to send any data, since half the time you get a response of "I'm sorry, somethings wrong..."
[rant off]

[Kumabjorn]

Originally Posted by teh603

What the heck is Siri, anyway? This is the first I've heard of it.

Take a gander at the last episode of The Big Bang Theory and you will grasp what it is all about.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by John F

Overall though, I'd guess it is using relatively little data. It's not like people are continually interacting with Siri.

It might not be Siri, but according to Arieso's study:

•iPhone 4S users are the “hungriest” data consumers, demanding twice as much data as iPhone 4 users and three times as much as iPhone 3G users
• Just 1% of all users now consume HALF of the entire downlink data

http://www.arieso.com/news-article.html?id=89

It's entirely plausible that Siri alone is not the sole culprit, as discussed in a ZDNet article. Siri is one factor among many, including bigger photos from the camera; faster performance leads to more use and more data downloaded and iCloud.

The WaPo article is a bit of a scare piece and as such exaggerates the threat of a "spectrum crunch." More likely is that they'll continue to do things like charge extra for the heavy bandwidth users. They may also be able to throttle that top 1% (sound familiar? ).

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

•iPhone 4S users are the “hungriest” data consumers, demanding twice as much data as iPhone 4 users and three times as much as iPhone 3G users
• Just 1% of all users now consume HALF of the entire downlink data

This sounds like a classic example of "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" - false causality - to me. "People who choose to buy the latest and greatest smartphone are the biggest data users, therefore it's the phone that's using more data". It seems much more probable that people who choose to buy such a phone select it because they ARE big mobile internet users. It's not the phone that's causing them to use more data; it's the users' actions.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It seems much more probable that people who choose to buy such a phone select it because they ARE big mobile internet users. It's not the phone that's causing them to use more data; it's the users' actions.

I haven't seen Arieso's full report, but that doesn't necessarily seem to be the case.

Long story short, their business is to supply bandwidth to telcos and similar big users; as such, they have a pretty good idea of the usage. They've done the survey for a few years, include lots of devices, and obviously have lots of historical data to draw upon.

Given the relatively minor differences between the 4 and 4S, it doesn't seem likely that user behavior is going to be dramatically different.

Similarly, if it was the case that the heaviest users migrated from the 3G or 4 or Nexus One to the 4S, they'd probably mention it. But it sounds like they're saying that data usage is going up both on a per-user and total basis.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Given the relatively minor differences between the 4 and 4S, it doesn't seem likely that user behavior is going to be dramatically different.

In this context, there are a couple of significant differences between the 4 and the 4s, the largest being that the 4S supports the catchily-named HSPA+, which doubles the maximum download speed. (And in my case definitely does). The second issue is that the new camera on the 4s means that pictures are just over 50% larger on the 4s than on the 4. So if you send a lot of photos, you will also use more data on the 4S.

The other issue, of course, is that earlier tests showed that Siri doesn't use much data - if you use it 10 times per day, every day, you will only use 30 MB of data. That's not very much.

[teh603]

Originally Posted by SeaKing

Siri is a kind of Artificial Intelligence. You can ask "your iPhone" a question and it will give you an answer. Apple bought a company, named Siri I think, that was heavily involved in this kind of technology, and implemented it into the latest iPhone.

Sounds like a Magic 8 Ball app, or perhaps the Epstein the Swami machines from Bioshock 1 and 2 ? And why would you need a data package for an app to say "Naah, don't think so," or "At least it'll be quick and painless"?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by teh603

Sounds like a Magic 8 Ball app, or perhaps the Epstein the Swami machines from Bioshock 1 and 2 ? And why would you need a data package for an app to say "Naah, don't think so," or "At least it'll be quick and painless"?

Don't knock it until you've seen it. It works astoundingly well.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Long story short, their business is to supply bandwidth to telcos and similar big users; as such, they have a pretty good idea of the usage. They've done the survey for a few years, include lots of devices, and obviously have lots of historical data to draw upon.

Similarly, if it was the case that the heaviest users migrated from the 3G or 4 or Nexus One to the 4S, they'd probably mention it. But it sounds like they're saying that data usage is going up both on a per-user and total basis.

Historical data yes. But how are they going to figure out that a previous iPhone 3G/3GS/4 or Nexus One user is now using an iPhone 4? Would privacy laws allow for them to get individual customer data and know exactly which customers upgraded their phones?