Any flaw or fractionally-higher failure rate with Siri is bound to be pounced on by Apple’s detractors; and this is great tech that Apple wants to see succeed—as it has been!--rather than wither due to a not-quite-good-enough experience.
People hacking older phones and trying half-way solutions to replicate Siri on other ways may accept “good enough,” but I don’t blame Apple for holding Siri to a higher standard.
I feel the pain of people (like... me) who wish they had Siri and don’t, but Apple has a long history of supporting things on older tech rather than “forcing” an upgrade on their users. Of course they don’t do that always—but they do it often enough that saying Siri was just a gimmick to “force” people to upgrade from an older iPhone never quite made sense. Apple makes money first and foremost by making people satisfied with their products, not dissatisfied.
Now it’s not like Apple to explain the detailed inner workings of their R&D and marketing decisions. They keep their public message simple and focussed, and although a tiny micro-fraction of buyers may be put off that Apple doesn’t delve into these details, the market as a whole just doesn’t care. So don’t expect Apple to change their successful approach any time soon! The technical details like this are interesting, but we’ll rarely get them direct from Apple. Apple’s about what you can do, not the spec details. (And specs alone—separate from what you can DO—are empty hype after all.)
