Guy Gets Siri On iPod Touch After Restoring From iPhone 4S Backup

By

siri-ipod-touch-copy

Since Apple launched Siri on the iPhone 4S back in October last year, hackers have been working their socks off to port the intelligent assistant to other iOS devices. But it seems all their hard work may have been wasted, because one guy claims he got Siri on his new iPod touch simply by restoring from an iPhone 4S backup.

AppleGordon” recently purchased a brand new white iPod touch and claims that instead of setting it up as a new device, he attempted to restore it from a backup of his iPhone 4S in iTunes. Once the process was complete, Gordon claims that Siri had been installed on his iPod.

The feature does not work because it cannot connect to Apple’s servers, and Gordon reports that it’s very buggy, causing the iPod to crash several times during the day. But the entire Siri interface is there, and Gordon claims that the Dictation feature works flawlessly.

It’s not just his iPod touch that has Siri, either. Gordon says that he also attempted the same thing with his Verizon iPhone 4 and managed to install Siri successfully on that, too.

And just in case you think that screenshot above has been pieced together by Gordon himself, here’s a video of the his iPod touch in action, courtesy of Cult of Mac contributor Michael Steeber:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxV3q_8ilO4

While the video and the screenshots prove that Siri is installed on Gordon’s device, we’re skeptical that it was installed simply using an iPhone 4S backup. Gordon’s device is jailbroken, and although he takes us through the Settings menu to show that third-party Siri tweaks or hacks have not been installed, we still feel that there’s a little more to this than Gordon reports.

As iDownloadBlog notes, it’s not a good idea to try doing this yourself, because restoring one device from a different device’s backups is dangerous, and could result in a bricked handset.

Newsletters

Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.

  • The Weekender

    The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.