Apple just announced the latest version of their biggest operating system, and gee, is it going to be epic or what!!?
So, let’s start with the most obvious change:
OS X is now macOS
During the course of the WWDC, Apple showed a slide of their OS names. It was very clear from it that “OS X” was just not the right fit. See for yourself:
So Apple has renamed their oldest piece of software, and just as we’d predicted, it’s now going to be called macOS.
Siri on Mac
Again, true to one of our predictions, Siri has finally come to the Mac. And oh boy, it is even better than we had expected!
Here’s a quick sneak peak of all it can do
Understand natural language: So you can talk to Siri just like you would to an actual human assistant, and she’d understand you.
Access to files: Siri can now work as a replacement to Spotlight. Ask her to pull up “emails from John with pdf attachments from last month”. And viola! Your wish will be fulfilled.
Pin Siri results to the Notification Tray: This way your search results are readily available for you to access later without having to ask Siri again.
Search. Drag. Drop: You can not only save your searches, but also interact with them live. For example, if you’re working on Powerpoint and you ask Siri to search the web for images of ice-cream, then from the results that Siri generates, you can actually drag and drop images into the presentation!!
Universal and Seamless: Siri has access to literally every corner of your system. This ensures that it works even on full-screen apps and actually becomes useful to the way you use your Macbook.
New Photos App
The Photos App on both iOS and macOS has gotten some serious upgrades. The two updates are almost identical, but If you want to know more about the iOS updates.cording to their location and date. You’ll get readymade albums, saving you the time of sifting through them.
Intelligent Search: You can now open your gallery and search for a specific thing like “pizza” or “mountains”, and macOS will show you all the photos that contain your search term.
People Album: Like the places album, macOS can recognise faces and sort the photos into albums belonging to the same person!
Notes
Note 1: All of these features are available on both the macOS and iOS.
Note 2: To be honest, I’m not entirely dazzled by these features because they have been part of the Google Photos app for more than a year. And before you go “but that’s for Android,” I’d like to point out that the Google Photos app is available for iOS as well.
Apple Pay
Apple Pay now comes to Mac. Just so that there’s no confusion here, I’d like to point out that you’d still need an iPhone to use this feature.
This is how it works: When you’re shopping online on a Mac, choose to pay through Apple Pay. A payment gateway will pop open, at the same time, a notification will be sent to your iPhone. All you have to do is authenticate the payment on your iPhone using TouchID. That’s it. Your payment will go through.
Auto unlock with Apple Watch
This, for me, is by far the coolest feature.
If you’re wearing an Apple Watch, and if you proceed to open your MacBook, you’ll no longer be required to give a password. The Mac will recognise your Watch, will verify if it’s you who’s wearing the Watch, and let you bypass the lock screen altogether! So cool!
Universal Continuity
While the auto-unlock with Apple Watch may be cool, this feature will definitely be the most useful one.
Copy-Paste across devices: Using iCloud, Apple will now let you copy-paste across all your devices. Meaning you could copy a piece of text from a website on your iPad and simply paste it into an open Word doc on your Mac. No middleman, nothing. Just pure iCloud ease of working. Also works with images and videos!!
Always available desktop: Taking ease of access a step further, you will now be able to access all your files on the desktop from across your devices, which includes not only your other Macs but also your iPhone and iPad!!
Optimized Storage: macOS now allows you to automatically move files that you no longer need or those with multiple copies, to the iCloud. This makes your internal hard disk a lot lighter on storage. How much the iCloud storage plan will cost us is a different discussion altogether.
Other minor updates
- iMessage is getting a whole new facelift with things such a hand written notes and full screen animations. While the Mac will not be able to produce these effects, it will surely be able to view them.
- iTunes and Apple Music now boast a completely redesigned look and feel. Apparently their music suggestion algorithm has gotten exceptionally intelligent. All thanks to “deep learning”.
- Tabs are now supported across the entire macOS. Even third party applications will have no issues opening multiple tabs within their apps.
- Picture in Picture now lets you pull out a web video out of its player and let it float around on your workspace while you work on other things. You can even resize the window. Will work even on full screen apps. Yay!
I don’t know about you guys, but I am super excited to use the new macOS. It’s a shame that we have to wait till September/October to be able to actually download the upgrade. Maybe I will join the Beta testers list and download the beta version!
Who knows, maybe … But that’s a bridge we’ll cross when we get there. It’s nearly 3 am as I am writing this, and right now all I want to do is just hit the sack… and dream of getting lost in Appleland!
Adios!
