Unofficial Siri Ports Turned Off by Apple Ahead of iPad 3 Launch?

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On more than one occasion we’ve shown you various Siri ports for non-iPhone 4S devices, some more illegal than others, but most of them working, at least up to a point. We never advised you to try to make Siri work on your older iPhone, iPad or iPod touch unit but, on the other hand, Apple didn’t really warn iOS device users against porting Siri to non-iPhone 4S devices.

The company did say the only supported device for Siri was the iPhone 4S, which apparently contains special Siri-friendly hardware to make the virtual assistant experience a more pleasant and efficient one, but it never took a firm stance against hackers/developers that tried to make Siri work on older devices.

Today we learned that Apple may have changed its mind and it’s currently trying to disable any Siri use originating from non-iPhone 4S units. The company did not make any specific announcement to draw attention at the matter, but various Siri users noted that the virtual assistant is not working any more on other iOS devices:

Apparently, Apple has altered its requirements for a successful Siri connection, adding a new token to the mix that has caused problems for those who connect to a 3rd party Siri server on non-iPhone 4S devices.

According to Twitter and various other reports, Apple has added a new SetActivationToken to the mix, and this has caused issues for those trying to use 3rd party servers. Fortunately, there does seem to be a work-around, at least for the meantime.

Just like with the jailbreaking environment, where Apple is yet to prevent jailbreaks, as all its attempts to stop such practices have been bested by hackers, it appears that a fix for making Siri work even after Apple’s recent intervention is available to the masses:

To fix these latest Siri server issues, it has been reported that a purge of the com.apple.assistant.plist file located in the var/mobile/Library/Preferences/ directory remedies the issue. I have not been able to independently confirm this, but I have heard success reports on Twitter.

What’s certain is that Siri is very important to Apple. I continue to see it as the most important feature of the iPhone 4S and I’m fairly sure the iPad 3, the iPhone 5/6 and the upcoming iTV, or whatever Apple will call its future HDTV line, will come with Siri pre-loaded, quite possibly an even smarter one. How is that a reason for Apple to want to turn off all unofficial Siri ports? Well, by killing off the rogue Siri, Apple will be encouraging Siri fans to buy devices that support the technology, therefore the company will cash in on its virtual assistant’s popularity. Not to mention that by blocking Siri access on older devices, Apple is actually protecting its data centers from unwanted increased traffic originating from unsupported devices. After all, Siri is a cloud-based feature that requires an active Internet connection to work.

Let’s hear it from you, rogue Siri users, is the service still working for you?