A new rumor pegs Siri, the iOS virtual assistant, as coming to the iPad with iOS 6.
9to5Mac is reporting that Siri, which is currently only available on the iPhone 4S, will arrive for the iPad. And apparently, that is going to be one of the big features of iOS 6.
It won’t just be any old version of Siri either. Evidently, it’s going to be the full-fledged voice assistant that has been helping people find restaurants, get directions and more since it debuted with iOS 5 and the iPhone 4S back in October of 2011.
The Siri software that is coming to the iPad will feature everything but any phone-related commands. Those will stick to the iPhone 4S only.
Read: New iPad Review.
So what this means is that iPad owners will be gets Maps, Calendar management, Wolfram Alpha search capabilities, the ability to email, and more.
The input to use Siri, which is a hard press on the home button, will remain the same with the iPad and users will indeed be using the device’s microphone to communicate with the software.
However, it appears that there will be a major change in how Siri looks. Instead of the full-screen view found on the iPhone 4S, Siri will instead only take up a portion of the screen on the iPad.
It might look something like the mockup below:
The software will instead slide up from the bottom of the user interface taking up very little space in the process.
Unfortunately, it appears that Siri might not come to all versions of the iPad. Apple has reportedly been testing the software on both the new iPad and the iPad 2 but it may just come to Apple’s new iPad which was released back in March.
Apple is all but confirmed to be announcing iOS 6 at this year’s WWDC, set to take place later on this month, but it’s unclear if Siri for the iPad will be announced then or at a separate event later on this fall.
Fortunately, we only have a few days left before we find out for sure.
iOS 6 is also rumored to have deep Facebook integration as well as a new native Maps app that will replace Google Maps as the default maps app in iOS.
