Apple unveils iPhone 4S

Apple on Tuesday unveiled the iPhone 4S, a faster version of its best-selling smartphone that includes a virtual "personal assistant" you can talk to.

"When you think about it, only Apple could make such amazing software, hardware and services and bring them together into such a powerful yet integrated experience," the company's new CEO Tim Cook said at a press conference Tuesday at the company's headquarters in Cupertino, California.

The next-generation iPhone also will be available on Sprint's wireless network for the first time, in addition to AT&T and Verizon. A model with 16 GB of storage starts at $200 with a two-year wireless contact; the 64 GB model costs $400.

An online presale for the phone begins on Friday, and the phone will become available in stores on October 14.

Steve Jobs, the Apple co-founder who recently resigned as CEO amid health concerns, did not take the stage at the press conference and was not seen by CNN reporters at the event.

The iPhone 4S looks identical to a previous model, but it contains an A5 processor that the company says is up to seven times faster at rendering graphics and twice as fast at processing data.

It has a personal assistant called "Siri," which takes voice commands and can translate speech into text.

Siri also talks back, answering questions and reading calendar events and updates.
Apple CEO Tim Cook's opening speech

"I've been in the AI (artificial intelligence) field a long time. This blows me away," Apple's Scott Forstall, a senior vice president for iPhone software, said after he announced the new service, which only works on the iPhone 4S, not on previous models.

In a demo, Forstall asked the phone to "find me a Greek restaurant in Palo Alto." The phone pulled up restaurants from the app Yelp and said: "I have found 14 Greek restaurants; five of them are in Palo Alto. I have listed them according to ranking."

Some people who followed the event online joked that Siri reminded them of the computer HAL from the movie, "2001: A Space Odyssey."

"We are clearly headed to Terminator/HAL territory here. Humans are doomed. Deal with it," wrote Sam Grobart on the New York Times' live blog of the press conference.

The voice feature also pulls data from Wikipedia and search engine WolframAlpha, among other information services.

The iPhone 4S is also a "world phone," meaning it will be able to place calls more easily on wireless networks all over the world, not just in the United States.