From Siri to photo memories, here are five new features of the MacOS Sierra, coming to the public as a beta in July.
NEW YORK—Only a few years ago, the launch of a new computer operating system set off impassioned clashes between devotees of the Mac and supporters of Windows.
Tuesday’s arrival of macOS Sierra seems like an after-thought by comparison, coming with nowhere near the media attention that’s paid to an iPhone or even iOS release.
The marquee feature is Siri’s debut on the Mac, and while this is mainly a welcome development, the fact is we all got to know Apple’s loquacious personal assistant on the phone first.
Indeed, with Sierra comes further evidence that we’re fully entrenched in a post-PC world, where the computers in our pockets have trumped those on our desks.
Microsoft with Windows 10 has for the most part designed a single operating system that is meant to work across PCs, phones, tablets, even Xboxes.
Apple’s strategy has been to keep macOS and iOS X distinct and separate, though more and more we’re seeing overlapping features that reach up into the cloud.
Mac aficionados should by all means go fetch Sierra, a free download in the Mac App Store and the first version of the Mac operating system in years to eschew the OS X moniker.
The new operating system brings in several relatively modest features, everything from desktop tabs and Apple Pay on the Web to refreshed designs for iTunes and Apple Music. A bigger deal comes with Apple’s reliance on iCloud Drive, the company’s answer to Dropbox and Google Drive.
Not everything went smoothly in my tests, starting with Siri, whose move to the Mac underscores a strategic thrust for Apple, as rival digital assistants from Google, Microsoft (Cortana), and Amazon (Alexa) expand their reach and voice.
A closer look:
*Siri. I’m very pleased Siri has finally made it onto the Mac. I’m less pleased that Siri’s presence on the Mac, is, for now, a mixed bag.
You can ask Siri to send texts, read your email, tell you weather or deliver a stock quote, all fine and dandy. Siri ties in nicely with search, such as when I asked it to find the documents I’ve written on Apple in the last two weeks. And you can pin results from your Siri query to the Notification Center on your Mac, another plus.
As with Siri on iOS X, you can use use the assistant to surface photos, such as all the pics you’ve taken with dogs in them. And Siri can help you adjust Mac system settings, like turning Do Not Disturb on or off.
Unfortunately, there were also disconnects: When I asked Siri to “launch System Preferences” it did just that; but when I asked instead to “open System Preferences” it was baffled.
Similarly, when I asked Siri to “raise the volume on my computer,” it did so. But when I asked it to “lower the volume” it was unable to.
And then there is this: I asked Siri how much available storage I had on my computer and it reported back 12.09GB. It actually had 47.95GB of free space.
Siri on the Mac doesn’t answer to the “Hey Siri” command that works in iOS, though you can easily summon the feature via a keyboard shortcut, or by clicking on an icon in the Dock or on the menu bar. It’s also worth mentioning that while Apple has opened up Siri to iOS developers, it has not done so for the Mac developers. That means you cannot use Siri on the Mac to order an Uber or Lyft.
*Manage storage. Sierra can help you save or reclaim storage on your Mac, mainly by stashing unneeded files up in iCloud. You can automatically store documents and desktop files there, and better yet, sync them to your other iCloud-enabled devices so you can access them from anywhere on another Mac, an iPad or iPhone.
You can also keep mail attachments and movies or TV shows you’ve already watched in iTunes up in iCloud.
The Mac can surface files that are cluttering up your system so you can choose whether to discard them.
By deleting files and taking advantage of iCloud Drive on my cramped MacBook Air, I got back nearly 19GB of storage. Bravo.
Incidentally, Apple’s iCloud storage plans range from 99 cents a month for 50GB up to $19.99 a month for 2TB.
*Universal Clipboard. All of us routinely copy and paste items on our computers. The Universal Clipboard feature lets you copy stuff off one Mac, and paste it onto another, or for that matter an iPhone or iPad. The devices must be signed onto an identical Apple ID.
*Auto Unlock. If you have an Apple Watch, you can use it to automatically wake up and unlock a sleeping Mac. The watch must be on your wrist at the time, within three meters of the computer, and be running the latest watchOS 3 software. Alas, the setup is a tad bit cumbersome—you need “two-step authorization”—and I had to troubleshoot with Apple before the watch was recognized.
*Picture in picture. You can watch some videos from Safari or iTunes on your Mac in a resizable window that floats over your desktop in either of the four corners of the display, while you’re continuing to do other work. I got it to work with videos from Vimeo and iTunes, but not others on USATODAY.com, YouTube and ESPN. Videos must comply with the HTML5 standard and the developer may have to turn on a control to get it work.
*Photos. As with the new Photos app in iOS 10, the Photos on the Mac has gotten a makeover, with an assist from advanced computer vision technology that can help the software identify people, places and objects within a scene. Search is improved—find all the photos I took by the beach—and the software also automatically creates collections or Memories from various parties, trips and other milestones, with photos plotted on a map. There’s a bit of serendipity at play here but exploring Memories collections is fun, even if it isn’t always obvious why some pictures are grouped with others.
*Messages. Messages is another app that has gotten a facelift not only on iOS 10 but the Mac. You can respond to messages with large-size emojis or by sending hearts, thumbs-ups or other symbols tacked onto your conversation bubbles. But while you can receive fancy stickers, handwritten messages, and “invisible ink” photos sent your way from an iOS 10 device, you cannot respond in kind from the Mac.
Email: [email protected]; Follow USA TODAY Personal Tech Columnist @edbaig on Twitter
