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On the Mac, Siri has room to grow
It’s about time.
That was my initial reaction when I heard the report last week that one of the major features of the next version of OS X would be Apple’s virtual assistant, Siri.
That’s a long time in the making: Siri debuted on the iPhone 4s back in 2011–seems virtually ancient, doesn’t it? Since then, the voice-activated assistant has been a staple of Apple’s devices, migrating first to the iPad, and more recently to the Apple Watch early last year and the new Apple TV last fall.
But the Mac, Apple’s longest running product line, has been left out in the cold. It’s an odd choice, given that most Macs are plenty powerful to handle the computing needs of the virtual assistant. Meanwhile, there’s been competition from other quarters, such as Microsoft’s Cortana on Windows 10 (and even iOS) and Google’s voice search built into Chrome, Android…and even iOS.
That said, Siri’s late arrival on the Mac doesn’t make it an unwelcome one. I’m just hoping that it comes with some improvements.