14 DAY TRIAL // A slew of iOS 6 details are churning up in the days leading up to the WWDC 2012 opening keynote where CEO Tim Cook is expected to unveil not only a range of Macintosh updates, but also the new mobile operating system powering iPhones, iPads, and iPod touch devices worldwide.
Excepting phone-related commands, Siri will become a full-fledged personal assistant for iPad users when iOS 6 is delivered to Apple customers this year, according to trusted sources speaking on condition of anonymity with 9to5mac.
A reliable source in and of itself, the site mentions music playback, iMessaging, Calendar managing, Reminders, Weather, Maps integration, E-mailing, Notes, Contacts searching, Safari integration, and more, as “present” in the tablet implementation of Siri.
The assistant will not be shown in full screen, but rather “slides up from below the display with a clever animation [...] as a small window on top of whatever interface the user is currently interacting with,” covering a considerable portion of the 10-inch display, but not all of it (as shown in the mockup image above, created by the site’s editors).
The assistant will be activated in the same manner as on the iPhone 4S - by a long press of the Home button - including from the locked state of the tablet PC.
Apple has been testing the Siri assistant for tablets on the newest generations of iPads - the 2nd and the 3rd. It appears Siri will not be available for first-generation iPad owners, though hackers might find ways to implement the feature on jailbroken units, as they did with the iPhone 4.
The reasons behind Apple’s decision to leave some generations behind are not related solely to the devices themselves, according to the report, but also to the server side of Siri. Supporting only a few device configurations enables Apple to improve Siri, which is still a beta product, “at a scalable pace,” the report says.