Yup, 20 dollars down the drain.

I actually thought Siri sucked or my accent was too complicated to comprehend but then I tried it on 4s and it was infinitely better.

I feel your pain. I'd love Siri on my iPad 2 but it has the same problem... Though I'm not really sure why Apple didn't have the forethought to include that hardware since the iPad 2 launched after the iPhone 4 and not that long before the iPhone 4S.

Meh on you, Apple. Then again, I have no idea when/how the decision to include Siri was made. It may have been too late to include it on the iPad 2.

iPhone 4 CPU is ARM Cortex-A8.
iPhone 4S CPU is ARM Cortex-A9. (dual core)

Both are 800MHz with 512MB ram.

While A9 has some newer features, there are many comparisons out there that show same core/clocks speed produce very similar and in some cases better results for A8. The only real difference that clearly matters is the 2nd core. But, I am not an expert in this area and can only relate to the few forums I read and personal experience with friends. Sad.man shows one angle and I have friends with 4S and 4 with Siri and get same results. Only time 4 users had issues is when the Apple server simply didn't connect.

I realy think it was just Apple wanting people to upgrade more so than a hardware difference. After all this is the same company that instead of saying, yeah the antenna design is bad, they said no you're holding it wrong... here's a free bumper case. (even though they redesigned the Verizon version to fix the issue) Surely the 2nd core makes what is definitely a complicated app run better, but I don't think it flat out wouldn't have worked or worked noticeably worse over all.

Yes.

iOS you have to own a Mac and buy a developer license. Android you can own anything and simply download the SDK/Eclipse. So yes upfront costs are big difference.

Well, that's the thing with noise-cancellation... If there's no noise to cancel, they'll probably work pretty close to the same. It has nothing to do with the processors, it's the additional hardware on the chip that handles the noise cancellation (can't remember the name of the hardware right now... Ear-something, I think).

Apple certainly doesn't want to have too much overlap on a $100 phone versus a $200 phone, I'm certain of that. But in this case, I think it's fair to say there's also a hardware issue to consider. After all, Apple hasn't brought Siri to any device that doesn't have that noise cancellation hardware. Obviously, they feel the service wouldn't be up to their standard or we would have seen the service on the iPad 2 last year, as it was the most current hardware available at the time.

In this case, hardware is waaaaaaay down the list on developer cost. You can go buy a Mac for $600 that will run the SDK, even less if you go buy a used one. The developer license is like $200 or something.

On the other hand, even the most minimal app requires hundreds of man hours to produce. If you only have to check and develop for one or two OSes that cover 95% of the userbase, the time you save is going to be massive compared to testing for 2.2, 2.3, 3.0, 4.0 like you have to do on Android. You'll make up that hardware "cost" in less than a week's time if you're a one-man developer crew, one or two days if you're a more typical 2-4 man crew. Let's not forget about testing different chipsets, resolutions (not to mention the massive amount of time it requires to generate art for multiple resolutions), etc.

Not to mention that if you're serious about development, you have to go buy a veritable shit-ton of Android devices for testing versus two for iOS (current iPad and iPhone).

Rocketpig isn't just blowing smoke here. There's a lot more to mobile SoCs than just clocks and cores in the CPU:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/02/another-reason-why-apple-may-be-limiting-siri-to-iphone-4s/

Despite these similarities, the iPhone 4S differs from the iPhone 4 in two important ways. The first is that Apple used a separate chip from Audience to perform the background noise processing for the iPhone 4. The iPhone 4S, on the other hand, relies on an integrated version of the processor built directly into the A5 processor.

According to an S-1 form filed with the SEC for Audience's stock IPO, the company disclosed that "Apple has integrated our processor IP in certain of its mobile phones." More specifically, Apple licensed the technology to integrate into its own silicon instead of buying separate chips. (Audience made this disclosure since it earns less revenue for the license royalties than it does selling chips to Apple, its biggest customer.)

More important is the fact that the A5 includes a newer version of Audience's earSmart background noise processing than that used in the iPhone 4. According to Audience, its second-generation technology includes a number of improvements to processing speed and filtering algorithms, including the ability to filter "far-field" communications. In other words, the improved processing can filter voice input when a device is held away from the face—the way Apple often shows Siri being used.

Now, if you want to talk about Apple and forced upgrades, you might want to talk about features like email VIPs and offline Reading List. Probably not very resource-intensive, still not making it to 3GS. On the other hand, if I still had my 3GS, I'd probably just be glad I was getting new features at all after three years.