While Siri on the iPhone has improved dramatically over the past five years, Apple’s intelligent personal assistant has remained conspicuously absent on the Mac, a curious omission given that Apple had no problem implementing Siri on both the Apple Watch and the recently released
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According to a new report from 9to5Mac, Siri is slated to debut as one of the flagship features on OS X 10.12 later this year. Hardly a feature Apple has ignored, the report notes that Apple has been testing Siri on the Mac for three years in order to get the functionality and implementation just right.
As for how it will work, there will be a Siri icon in the OS X menu bar that will spring into action when clicked. Further, users will also be able to configure keyboard shortcuts to beckon Siri. Not only that, but Macs connected to a power source will be able to use the “Hey Siri” command that initially launched with the iPhone 6s this past fall.
When a user clicks the Siri button, a dark, transparent Siri interface will appear in the top right corner of the screen… This interface will feature colorful sound waves to indicate speech input. The interface design in testing is not finalized and may still change before the summer introduction, according to sources.
Given how the iPhone has understandably been Apple’s main focus in recent years, it’s nice to see the company’s Mac lineup finally getting some attention. While Apple has certainly bestowed OS X with new features over the past few years, it’s been quite awhile since we’ve seen an OS X upgrade that one could reasonably categorize as “exciting.” To be sure, OS X Yosemite and OS X El Capitan were solid upgrades, but they didn’t quite move the needle as far as compelling new features were concerned.
With word that the Mac is finally getting Siri support, one can only hope that Apple is finally devoting resources towards making its Mac lineup more attractive. While spec upgrades are nice, there’s no replacement for a compelling software update capable of truly taking advantage of all of that souped up processing power.
