[skimbrel]

This.

If Siri works as well as advertised, it will be a triumph for natural language processing as a field, not just Apple.

Getting that sort of parsing and semantic analysis into a form where it can be done by a mobile device must have taken a lot of work, and I'm sure that was only the start — Apple must have had to go back through every single data source and API in iOS to add semantic tags for Siri to latch onto.

[count]

Isn't that done by a backend that's not on the phone? I know at least dictation is done remotely...

[skimbrel]

I don’t think it’d be fast enough. Even in damn-near-perfect signal conditions I have a RTT over 100 ms when I’m on AT&T 3G. That and how lame would it be if Siri ceased functioning entirely (not just the maps/other network-requiring bits) when you had no coverage?

[simcop2387]

Given that the original product that Apple bought worked that way, I'd find it hard to believe that the newly integrated one changes things that significantly. If they did get it working locally it would be very interesting.