But then there is less and less to differentiate iOS and Android

Natty video from CNET on the history of the iPhone so far here.

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With all this talk of the voice function I decided to give google voice on my android another chance. I tried it out when I got the phone but found it was pretty lame so never used it since but I gave it ago it was pretty accurate.

As an example I said: I have to go home to eat. I'll be ready at 6 o'clock. See you then.

It got everything right apart from leaving out home. Other random examples were pretty close to being correct as well so I might give it another chance

But can google voice do all the assistant stuff that Siri is supposed to be doing? Like making calendar appointments, playing music, setting alarms and so forth, all using commands in natural language?

I'm also skeptical that Siri going to be as good as they say it is. It'll be great if it can do these things without taking it out of my pocket, but if you have to check it's done something correctly everytime, well.

for the price of an iphone, you can probably hire a secretary in india who can do all that for you :P

Yeah agree Siri seems to be a step ahead of what Android has to offer (unless there is a third party app out there?) but I'm sure Google will catch up soon. It will be interesting to hear if Siri lives up to the promise.

Apples biggest draw at the start was the hardware and available apps. Now I'd say it's clear both apple and Android users will have roughly the same apps and hardware with maybe a couple of months delay between them. The battle now seems to be turning towards the cloud and who can sync all your data better

who is Siri-a man or woman? or an Android?

The New Yorker loves Siri - and her HAL-like demeanour.

Yes that's great. But will Siri be able to replace my wife?
And if you want to see what the weather is like today then stick your head out the window!

The way I see this is that with all the tech sites leaking every possible Chinese built iPhone component onto the net almost daily, everyone presumed that they were for the 5. Fact is, the new tear shape housing and larger screen rumors only emerged in early August, which would be about right for pre-production builds prior to a 2012 iPhone 5 release.

Stating the obvious, but Apple can't sell you what they haven't built yet. They were never the total innovators, they just built better kit, beautifully designed, that pretty much worked out of the box. I'm sure that there's also the marketing angle with the 4S, all the third part vendors with cases and accessories would still like to move "4" product before changing their designs for a new-shaped 5.

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We're sure you can come up with things your wife can do that Siri can't do (yet).
[Wink-Wink, Nudge-Nudge.]

Depends.
The weather can change here quite quickly - and WeatherPro is very accurate.
I like to know if it's going to rain in the evening, so I can skip taking all the rain-gear with me when I bike to work (whenever that may happen the next time....)

sure but does it say "may be liable for extra charges". How does that work. With Android you can just do it, does the operator know you're sharing your internet connection when you're on the iphone?

I only ask because generating a wifi hotspot with my phone is the number 1 priority for me (ipad and laptop on the train etc etc) and it needs to work.