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" This morning at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., new Apple CEO Tim Cook, along with VP of software Scott Forstall and product chief Phillip Schiller, announced the new iPhone 4S\u2014which looked remarkably like the iPhone 4. That&amp;#039;s because the industrial design of the new smartphone hasn&amp;#039;t changed substantially. But Apple touted all-new guts (dual-core A5 chip, new 8-megapixel camera, new HSDPA/CDMA dual antenna), as well as some never-before-seen features from the new iOS 5 operating system. The most innovative new software feature is Siri, a voice-controlled virtual assistant that can handle appointments, Internet searches, directions, and more.  The iPhone 4S will be available on October 14 starting at $199 for 16GB (although the current iPhone 4 will still be available for $99 and the 3GS will be given away free with a contract!). And now three of the four major carriers in the U.S.\u2014AT&amp;amp;amp;T, Verizon and Sprint (finally!)\u2014will sell the phone.  Normally, here&amp;#039;s where we&amp;#039;d assign one of our PM tech experts to assess what this all means, but instead, we&amp;#039;re going to throw that question to two of our experts and let them argue it out.  Glenn Derene, senior tech editor: John, let&amp;#039;s start with the hardware. What do you make of the new dual antenna system? Does that matter to end users? John Herrman, assistant tech editor: I think it was a little odd for the new antenna system to be featured so prominently in the presentation. I know Apple wants to emphasize internal upgrades in the 4S, and that antenna stuff in particular is a bit of a sore subject for them. But the whole &amp;quot;world phone&amp;quot; thing? That&amp;#039;s a minor feature for users. It&amp;#039;s a much bigger feature for Apple, which now has to manufacture only one version of the phone for both CDMA and GSM networks. As far as hardware upgrades go, I&amp;#039;m way more interested in the new camera. More than the new processor, even. Eight megapixels is nice, as is 1080p, but they&amp;#039;re promising big image quality gains. I truly believe that point-and-shoot cameras are close to dead. This seems like a big step in that direction, right? GD: It definitely seems to be another nail in the coffin. That&amp;#039;s why most of the momentum in camera tech has been focused on DSLRs and, more recently, mirrorless cameras with interchangeable lenses. That said, the fact that the iPhone is both an imaging device and a connected processing device makes point-and-shoots even more irrelevant. Now you can shoot a super-high-quality photo, edit or manipulate it, and automatically send it to the cloud. Speaking of which, I know most of iCloud was introduced at Apple&amp;#039;s iOS 5 event, but now that consumers are going to have this synchronized experience, how do you think it&amp;#039;s going to go over with users? I&amp;#039;m personally a bit hesitant to have my phone&amp;#039;s data automatically backed up to computers I don&amp;#039;t directly control. JH: Yeah, I think Apple&amp;#039;s banking on most people not really thinking about it. I&amp;#039;ve been using iCloud for a few months in beta, though, and I haven&amp;#039;t stopped syncing with my computer. The initial iCloud sync takes forever, plus the free version is limited to 5GB. I think the iCloud backup feature might flop. The rest of it\u2014the photo backup, in particular\u2014is nice and seamless. In fact, a lot of today&amp;#039;s event was about software we&amp;#039;ve already seen, iCloud included. I&amp;#039;ve got high hopes for cloud syncing in general. It feels inevitable, even if it&amp;#039;s going to take a few tries. I&amp;#039;m less sure about this whole voice control thing. It&amp;#039;s definitely cool. We were getting some pretty great results out of an older version of Siri just before the keynote, actually. But I don&amp;#039;t think I&amp;#039;ll be talking to my phone that much. I mean, in public it&amp;#039;s rude. In private it&amp;#039;s creepy. GD: Yeah, that&amp;#039;s one of those things that really amazes your friends when you show it to them, but tends to just feel strange when you do it on your own. As you&amp;#039;ve mentioned before, Siri has been in the App store for months and hasn&amp;#039;t been particularly popular. But now that Apple has deeply integrated it into the OS, that may change. What I find really interesting is that, if Siri really takes off, Apple has created an end run around Google&amp;#039;s search. JH: I saw a great term for this the other day: Disintermediation. As it stands, Google serves as a bridge to lots of other services. You search for something, or ask a question, and Google takes you to a site that can answer it. Siri does the same in a much more elegant way. Then again, my inner nerd might resist this one, too: Yelling &amp;quot;Find me Mexican food!&amp;quot; into my phone is neat, but I&amp;#039;m not sure it&amp;#039;s actually faster than just Google Mapping it. GD: True, but it&amp;#039;s worth noting that where this technology will have its greatest impact is in the vehicle. Auto companies have been working on voice control for years, but they might as well just let the iPhone do it now. JH: In-car speech recognition tech is fairly awful, yeah. GD: What is truly great about Siri, and may well change my mind about talking to your phone, is that it is truly conversational. You ask Siri natural language questions, such as &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s the best way to get to Teaneck, New Jersey?&amp;quot; and It&amp;#039;s going to bring up a mapping application and give you directions. Also, I noticed that Phill Schiller demoed a use case where he asked Siri to remind him to call his wife after work. It was using a geofence that he had set up around work to trigger that, which means that he didn&amp;#039;t have to give a time. That&amp;#039;s pretty fascinating integration. Then again, how far are we from having Siri just call your wife for you? Sort of depressing when you think about it. JH: &amp;quot;Siri: Fix my marriage&amp;quot; GD: Ha! JH: Also, people already talk to their phones a lot\u2014when they&amp;#039;re not working. Siri&amp;#039;s going to be fielding a lot of questions like, &amp;quot;Seriously? Call failed?&amp;quot; GD: Final thoughts: One of the biggest things about this conference was what wasn&amp;#039;t announced. There was no &amp;quot;iPhone 5,&amp;quot; just an upgrade of the existing hardware. It&amp;#039;s interesting that Sprint is now on board the iPhone bandwagon, but really, most of this is software. Should people upgrade? JH: Apple has kept the 3GS around, along with the current iPhone 4. The 3GS came out more than two years ago. I think that&amp;#039;s telling. It certainly doesn&amp;#039;t feel like the huge upgrade that the iPhone 4 was last year. The spec differences are substantial, yes, but there&amp;#039;s nothing truly huge in the hardware. Last time around we got the Retina screen, which really changed the feel of the phone. This time the changes are more outwardly subtle. Although a little thought experiment is worthwhile here: What would happen if Apple rounded out the design, and swapped the back of the phone out for an aluminum shell? I think that would have drastically changed the overall response from the media and fans, even though it doesn&amp;#039;t really change how good the phone is. People seem disappointed about the 4S, even upset. I think that&amp;#039;s odd, and that the iPhone 4S is a hugely compelling product\u2014unless you already own an iPhone 4. GD: True. I think iPhone 4 owners will have no need to upgrade. Curiously, the iPhone 3GS will be a freebie. Still not sure I&amp;#039;d recommend that. What I think is interesting is that, by not announcing an iPhone 5, Apple is giving a bit of a chance to Android and Windows Phone makers to present something radically new in the next 6 to 12 months. Not sure that&amp;#039;s going to happen, but still\u2014I&amp;#039;m now a bit more curious about Ice Cream Sandwiches. For exhaustive coverage of today&amp;#039;s iPhone event, check out ThisIsMyNext, Gizmodo and Engadget. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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