'Siri, will you ever come to my iPhone 4?'

Lots of speculation over the weekend that Apple will bring the Siri voice command and personal assistant tool to the iPhone 4.

I'm here to tell you that it ain't gonna happen. Not now. Not next month. Not next year. Not ever.

Here's the deal. Apple is in the business of selling products (not hardware, not software ... products). The way the company does this is to bake exciting features into the new hardware that people using the old hardware will lust after.

Siri is one such feature. It's technology that Apple paid over $200 million for in order to be able to sell more stuff. And judging by the way the iPhone 4S is selling, it's working.

With that in mind, tell me why Apple would take this technology and make it available on older handsets?

Doesn't make any sense, does it? Which is why it's not going to happen. Apple's not going to port exciting technology like this onto a $99 handset when it can use it to sell more expensive hardware. Sure, Apple's probably tested this technology on the iPhone 4. Why wouldn't it? After all, the old Siri app worked fine on hardware prior to the iPhone 4S. But testing it on the iPhone 4 is a very different thing to releasing it for the iPhone 4. One makes good business sense, the other doesn't.

Now, I know that it seems a little sleazy to do this, especially as the iPhone 4 is capable of running Siri, but that's the way it is. If Apple did backport this technology into the iPhone 4, then that would set a precedent and people/pundits would start to expect this of all new software features.

It's not going to happen. Stop holding your breath. If you want Siri, you gotta pay for her.