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OS X is now macOS and gets support for Siri, auto unlock

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Re: OS X is now macOS and gets support for Siri, auto unlock

#171

Post by coldtea »

ebbv wrote: post #18
reacharavindh wrote: post #12

Copy/paste across iPhone and Mac is very useful. All the other features are Meh. I really don't want to be that guy talking to my Mac at work. I can't be sure that all my questions to Siri are not awkward to speak out. Would have been great to have a textual interface though. You know that Keyboard thingy that is always with a Mac?!

Spotlight is already incredibly useful, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's getting some of these improvements. We should know soon since Developer Preview of Sierra should be available today.

The definitely said it wont be available today.

Re: OS X is now macOS and gets support for Siri, auto unlock

#172

Post by izacus »

coldtea wrote: post #158
izacus wrote: post #97

Seriously, did Apple fire their OSX / macOS team? Pretty much all new features are spinoffs of their iOS infrastructure (Siri, handover, etc.) and the main OS development and innovation seems to have stalled. Not even a feature like telling software that you're on a metered connection and it shouldn't run backups! Is there anyone at Apple still working on innovating / improving OS X? Like people that tried to bring i…

> Not even a feature like telling software that you're on a metered connection and it shouldn't run backups! I don't think they ever added features for deprecated technologies / limitations. The assumption going forward (and for the last several years) from all players is always on / cheap broadband, not "metered connections".

How is connecting your Mac to iPhone / other phone LTE hotspot a "deprecated" techonolgy?

Having App Store download updates over a limited dataplan or even killing your non-perfect-signal HSDPA connection with updates is still utterly annoying.

Re: OS X is now macOS and gets support for Siri, auto unlock

#173

Post by kylec »

hollander wrote: post #19

So the Mac is listening all the time. How can I physically disable the microphone?

On the iPhone, the always-on "Hey Siri" activation is actually local on the device. You can test this out by activating Airplane Mode and saying "Hey Siri". The interface comes up, then says that you can't use Siri because you're offline.

This means that Apple isn't listening to you 24/7, only when Siri is activated. Sure, sometimes it's activated accidentally and might overhear something you didn't want it to, but those times are pretty rare.

If Apple introduces a "Hey Siri" feature on the Mac (which it's unclear about given the fact that in the demo Craig activated Siri by clicking on the icon, then later by pressing a key on the keyboard), I expect it would operate in the same way.

Finally, I'm sure there's a software setting you can use to disable Siri if you really don't want it to be activated.

Re: OS X is now macOS and gets support for Siri, auto unlock

#175

Post by mayoff »

izacus wrote: post #161
matthewmacleod wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems a little unfair. They did a bit of this in the last couple of rounds - introducing Metal, for example, or all the energy work they did a couple of releases ago. Baby steps :)

Metal is a proprietary 3D technology ported from iOS. Apple chose to do another closed tech instead of adopting Vulkan or fixing their slow OpenGL implementation. If you look at the numbers, you'll see that Metal is about 30% faster than OpenGL on OS X, which is interesting because OpenGL is about 30% slower on OS X than on Windows. Which means they're forcing developers to use their proprietary API to get comparable…

To be fair (regarding "closed tech"), Apple was hardly the only one to release a propriety Vulkan alternative (there's also Mantle and DX12) and Apple released Metal to developers almost two years before Vulkan 1.0 was released.

Re: OS X is now macOS and gets support for Siri, auto unlock

#176

Post by salzig »

macintux wrote: post #163
cag_ii wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd imagine you would need to unlock the Apple watch before it would unlock the computer.

Indeed. It's actually an interesting cycle: you can unlock the iPhone with your thumb, which unlocks your Watch if on your wrist, which unlocks your Mac if nearby. Any problem in computer science can be solved with another level of indirection.

and your fingerprint is on the mac. \o\ \o/ /o/

Re: OS X is now macOS and gets support for Siri, auto unlock

#177

Post by mitchty »

izacus wrote: post #161
matthewmacleod wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems a little unfair. They did a bit of this in the last couple of rounds - introducing Metal, for example, or all the energy work they did a couple of releases ago. Baby steps :)

Metal is a proprietary 3D technology ported from iOS. Apple chose to do another closed tech instead of adopting Vulkan or fixing their slow OpenGL implementation. If you look at the numbers, you'll see that Metal is about 30% faster than OpenGL on OS X, which is interesting because OpenGL is about 30% slower on OS X than on Windows. Which means they're forcing developers to use their proprietary API to get comparable…

Metal came out before Vulkan did, not sure you can couch that as them choosing to do another closed tech.

How is Metal any different from DirectX/Direct3D in this regard?

Re: OS X is now macOS and gets support for Siri, auto unlock

#178

Post by orbitur »

sofaofthedamned wrote: post #146
matthewmacleod wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems a little unfair. They did a bit of this in the last couple of rounds - introducing Metal, for example, or all the energy work they did a couple of releases ago. Baby steps :)

Metal is basically their proprietary version of Vulkan isn't it?

Metal came out before Vulkan.

Re: OS X is now macOS and gets support for Siri, auto unlock

#179

Post by bronson »

mikestew wrote: post #49

The good news is that I might not have to listen to people call it "Mac OS Ex" anymore. I'm hoping there's a bunch of new APIs hiding in there allowing ISVs to do cool stuff. Because the new version, meh, don't care about Siri much and the rest of the stuff is window dressing, IMO. Maybe some improvements for Xcode, testing tools?

Yeah, now you can take sides between "macahss" and "mac-oh-ess".

And, we could use some more window dressing! The Mac's weird window management now feels extremely dated compared to Win10 and KDE/Gnome.

Re: OS X is now macOS and gets support for Siri, auto unlock

#180

Post by kchoudhu »

mrswag wrote: post #27
spitfire wrote: post #11

Will they update the unix layer? A lot of the CLI tools there are positively prehistoric. Maybe while they're at it they can add a real package manager too.

> Will they update the unix layer? A lot of the CLI tools there are positively prehistoric. They won't, they don't want to touch any GPLv3 code.

Why would they touch GPLv3 code when perfectly good BSD tools available from FreeBSD?
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