Mac OS Sierra FREE
New operating system brings Siri to Macs
Apple has a reputation for being a revolutionary company. But it's taken an evolutionary approach to updating the software underlying its Mac computers.
While Microsoft has radically overhauled Windows numerous times over the last 10 years, Apple has opted for incremental changes, each year adding a few new features. This year is no different.
MacOS Sierra — the latest release's name — offers a handful of tweaks, the most notable being Siri, Apple's voice-controlled virtual assistant, which the company has brought to the Mac five years after the feature debuted on the iPhone. Siri works much the way you might expect.
You activate through a keyboard shortcut or a screen icon. It can do more than on the iPhone, though.
If you ask Siri to search for photos of siamese cats, for example, you can drag a resulting photo from the Siri window into a document. You can also turn Siri's responses into widgets in MacOS' notifications area so you can find them again quickly.
Another top feature of MacOS Sierra is something Apple calls "Universal Clipboard," which allows you to copy something on your Mac and paste it on your iOS device or vice versa.
MacOS Sierra features another new trick that can help you move items more easily between your Apple devices. ICloud, Apple's cloud storage service, can now be configured to automatically sync files stored on your desktop or in your documents folder on your Mac with your iOS devices and even with other Macs. Assuming it doesn't conflict with any of the software you use, it's certainly worth installing.
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