Apple’s been heavily promoting Siri, an iPhone 4S-exclusive digital secretary, in television commercials that are being aired in the United States and promoted on Apple’s website and their YouTube channel. But up until now, the company refrained from promoting the feature in print.
Apparently, the company has changed its mind as the first-ever Siri print ad makes its appearance in Rolling Stone magazine. The full-page advert depicts a user checking out a list of San Francisco coffee shops on an iPhone 4S.
This is accompanied by the tagline “I could use a latte” and a line saying “You speak. Siri helps. Say hello to the most amazing iPhone yet”…
Here’s that advert, courtesy of Twitter user Philip Bernstein (via AppleInsider).
Apple still labels Siri as a beta product. Though it’s pretty smooth most of the time, Siri does exhibit occasional disruptions stemming from server load, network congestion and other factors that affect uptime.
Siri is also the target of class-action lawsuits accusing Apple of “false and deceptive” advertising. A recent study from consulting firm Parks Associates revealed that Siri is still very much the No. 1 feature of the iPhone 4S, with nearly 90 percent of respondents asking her questions at least once a month.
Apple recently added deeper Yelp integration to Siri with iOS 5.1 and support for Japanese. According to Apple’s FAQ, 2012 will see Siri learn additional languages, including Chinese, Korean, Italian and Spanish.
Though Apple passed on an opportunity to enhanced the new iPad with Siri, they did bring the dictation feature (works with third-party apps) which taps the Siri cloud for voice recognition and speech-to-text.
With U.S. carriers AT&T and Sprint selling more iPhones than all other smartphones combined and the six-months-old iPhone 4S still being the nation’s best-selling smartphone, it’s fair to say Apple owes much of the iPhone 4S success to Siri being an exclusive iPhone 4S feature.
Did you like the Rolling Stone Siri advert? It’s kinda cool, isn’t it?
And what do you think, how long before Apple breaks Siri’s exclusivity to bring her to iPads and iPod touches?
Meet us in comments.