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

I like Apple's mobile devices but ever since the iPad turned out to be a giant iPhone instead of a true desktop/mobile hybrid, I'm scared as hell that they will lock down their desktop/laptop ecosystem the way they do with mobile. It's clear now that iOS is absorbing everything Mac.

Now I'm trapped between MacOS, Windows 10 and maybe Google's Chrome environment. Linux, please take off. I wished the open source community had good interface/usability designers.

It's already a great desktop OS. And they did announce some things (file system) that will make it even better.

> As someone who does not use or want Apple's mobile devices

My guess is that most of Mac users do want/use Apple mobile devices, and that in fact the majority of their computing time is now on those devices so it makes sense that the team would focus heavily on the interface and overlap between iOS / MacOS.

What does it not have that you want (and think a lot of other people also want)?

Wait for the Platforms State of the Union video, it will be probably available in few hours on Apple's developers website [1]. It's basically another keynote, but more developer oriented.

https://developer.apple.com/videos/

Edit: mayoff beat me to it :)

The stuff announced last week is mainly of interest to developers, not end users. Most of what was in the keynote was for end users.

That said, I'd be surprised if they couldn't fit last week's stuff into the Platforms State of the Union (later today), which is basically the developer-oriented keynote.

> Copy/paste across iPhone and Mac is very useful.

I don't use a Mac or an iPhone, but I applaud this sort of device harmony.

That said, I am worried that it would unnecessarily leverage the cloud. My guess is that instead of the two devices directly communicating with one another—that is, instead of leveraging the fact that they are probably on the same local network and should just work in concert—the clipboard data will be sent via a cloud intermediary. That is, it will be exfiltrated from the local network, sent through Apple, and then back into the local network.

If I am wrong about that, I am happy to hear it.

> I really don't want to be that guy talking to my Mac at work

What about your disabled colleague?

I think clipboard permissions for applications is going to become an issue with features like this. I may be incorrect but I'm pretty sure that clipboard access is unrestricted on both OS X (ugh, macOS) and iOS.

Sometimes I copy my private keys to the clipboard.

cat privatekey > pbcopy

Scary if it ends up on my mobile device clipboard.

I use iOS and a password manager, and maybe 5-10% of apps I use have an integration for it (and I place the blame on Apple for this, imo if they actually care about user security as much as they want everyone to believe they do, they should have an app store review policy that forbids having a password field without using the password manager extension).

Anyway, the effect is that almost every time I sign into an iOS app, I'm copy & pasting my password into the password field. So now my passwords will all be synced via bluetooth and/or to icloud whenever I sign into an app.

At this point, is using a password manager actually less secure than just re-using the same password everywhere like everyone else does?

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.

>I really don't want to be that guy talking to my Mac at work.

If Siri might bring an end to shared offices, I am all for it! But joking aside, yes, there are surroundings, where you don't want to talk to your device - in which I also prefer text messages to phone conversations.

But well-done voice integration can vastly improve usability. Just think of not having to grab your mouse and look for that music/video player control just to mute/stop things, but being able to do it with a short voice command without leaving your editor.

As someone who uses KDE Connect for copy/paste between my Android phone and my Linux desktop I can say that this feature is _amazing_.

I loved that I could hear the audience audibly gasp when the presenter brought that up and that the presenter was caught off-guard.

I can feel you. (Even though I am already on Linux.) It's always weird to be sitting there at 26, wondering about how "kids these days" use the internet.

I'm doing the same thing. Two years ago I started to do most of my work in a Virtual Machine in Debian Linux. Looks like my gut was right - I'll wait until 10.10 or my MBP doesn't work anymore and then I'll have to do a painful switch.

Actually I already migrated most of my things (Evernote, Things, Mail.app) already into Emacs and must say that this old Lisp machine is the best OS of the three^^ So I take the world becoming closed and proprietary as a chance to go back to sanity.

Out of curiosity, what scared you away from 10.11?

So nothing in Linux is new technology?

https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-dupes is your friend.

> 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.

Ditto, this is supposed to be a Developers' event.

> Maybe while they're at it they can add a real package manager too.

Contrary to those who suggested Brew, I stand by your request: de-installing anything that went in as a .pkg is a .pita and Apple doesn't provide, as best I can tell, any mechanism short of the author providing its own "Uninstall.app" to remove software.

I've gotten very close by scripting some of the `pkgutil` output, but it's nowhere near `apt-get remove` and friends.

I definitely feel this pain too, but:

They can't upgrade to recent GNU tools (bash is the one most people complain about) because of the GPLv3. And I feel their developer manpower is better spent on fixing OS bugs at this point. These issues are better fixed by developers less encumbered by the closed-sourceness of OS X.

Mostly not, due to licensing. The GNU utils that transitioned to GPL v3 (eg Bash) are kind of stuck there in 2007.

Their tools are up to date with POSIX UNIX certification, just not with GNU extra goodies.

HFS+ already supports file compression, and all system files already are. You can use it yourself depending on how much you trust it.

https://github.com/diimdeep/afsctool

See, the thing is - I use sync across multiple Apple devices. I have had zero problems with duplicated or missing entries, and it's one of the absolute killer features of the ecosystem for me.

It's hard to get a real impression of what problems may or may not exist, unfortunately.

Apple is bad at cloud syncing. And "cloud" stuff in general, really. That's just not the scale they think on naturally.

Apple has always done "workgroup"-size sharing pretty well, though. See: early AppleTalk; Bonjour; AirPlay; Time Machine with a Time Capsule; etc. (Though I won't include iTunes Home Sharing in that list; it's garbage.)

But, I was surprised to learn, OSX Server.app is actually supposed to be part of that "workgroup-sized solutions" list, too. It's basically "Active Directory Controller - Home Edition"—an actually not-insane thing to use to manage ~3-8 devices for your family. Stick it on a Mac Mini, forward some ports through your router, set up dynamic DNS and a LetsEncrypt cert, and suddenly everyone can consume regular old CalDAV calendars and LDAP contacts. (Plus some cute other things, like putting all your family's devices under Profile Management so you can push an update to them whenever you are about to e.g. change the wi-fi password, instead of having to go around to everything and change it.)

I've used Apple sync between my laptop and phone for my calendars for over a year with no issues. I have several friends with Apple devices who depend on reliable calendars and none have complained about this aspect. YMMV.

Same here. I've had multiple problems with sync. Specially with Notes. I've lost notes, I've had notes duplicated, etc. The best decision I had was to switch to Simplenote.

It was under the impression that it's not one desktop being synced across all your computers, but rather your desktop on other machines are accessible anywhere. Akin to iCloud tabs, or Chrome tab syncing.

Basically you open Finder on your MacBook and there's a new sidebar entry: "Desktop on imron's iMac"

I really hope this is an Opt-In feature rather than Opt-Out. Out-of-sync iMessage threads, bizarre chicken-or-egg "Approve Keychain for this device from your other device" (what device? I never approved it in the first place - JUST STAY AWAY FROM MY PASSWORDS, I'm perfectly happy with 1Password + Dropbox sync), and my personal pet peeve is Spaces. I used to love OS X Spaces as with really easy to use keyboard shortcuts, Apple got rid of around Lion and replaced it with mediocre "workspaces" with very little keyboard friendly-ness - TotalSpaces helps fill the void, but once has to disable sip in order to use it.

</endrant>

Completely agree. Apple's unstated policy regarding sync is that customer data loss is acceptable, and for that reason I avoid any form of sync from Apple.

I don't have a problem with syncing, so long as it is not turned on by default. I also wouldn't use it if it depends on iCloud.

Dropbox + symlinks works great already.

If you use the say command in the Terminal you get the definitive answer.

That's true for macOS Sierra, but will Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan and earlier be retroactively rebranded as macOS? Now we will have to listen to people say things like "I upgraded my Mac from Mac OS X 10.10 to macOS Siera". :)

Is it Mac Oh Ess or does it rhyme with GladOS?

You need to listen to Gruber shred Roman numerals - it's pretty funny. Episode 155 of The Talk Show.

I have never in RL heard anyone call it "OS ten"

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.

Complete and utter speculation, but if this is implemented well I imagine it is done the same as iMessages, with end to end encryption to all your devices. (Which, last I read about it, has its flaws and isn't a perfect system against state level actors, but it's not the worst.)

I had kept my Macs at 10.6 for a long time but had to "upgrade" one of them to help my daughter with an iPhone problem (really annoying that you have to update your Mac just to copy files to a phone, but whatever). Everything was worse. Search was terrible. Mail was in the crapper. The weirdest shock was when I was using Apple apps and discovered they'd changed Shift-Command-S from "Save As" to "Duplicate." That move is really emblematic of Apple's direction with the Mac — arbitrary changes that either eliminate features or make everyday workflow more cumbersome.

I bought my first Mac in 1989. I bought my first non-Mac PC in 2015 and stopped using Mac altogether.

Apple really needs to improve OpenGL support at least. Bump version to 4.4. They should also fix any OpenGL bugs in a timely manner.

Windows file sharing (at least with Windows 10 Pro) is pretty broken as well. Transferring multiple large files (especially 2 GB+) from OS X to a win10 file share seems to fail every time.

WWDC is about software. Hardware updates mostly happen later in the year.

What is sucky with Android phones and OS X? You want Universal Clipboard use something like Pushbullet or alternatives http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/26495/univer... you want cloud sync use the existing cloudservices or use Syncthing which lets you sync even without a cloud. You can get nearly all features today also with Android ( even unlocking the Mac with Android Wear https://www.gadgetish.com/index.html ). Of course you will not get them from Apple ;)

"Siri, a coworker is complaining next to me. What should I do?"

Your complaint is that an eight year old computer should run a just announced os.

Most people would be fucking ecstatic that their 8 year old computer still works and runs a current OS.

Those are not the only reasons to want the cloud features turned off. I don't want my phone and computer tied together, and it already annoys me how integrated the iPhone is to iTunes. I also don't want Apple cloud data storage. It's not a feature I need very often, and for the times I do, I have dropbox. I am not interested in having cloud storage integrated into the operating system like that.

I will not be upgrading to this version until it has been verified that all of this crap can be turned off completely.

It's not like iOS where everything is locked down. You are root and can do anything you want on your machine. It should be pretty trivial to prevent the cloud storage stuff from running.

Ya that cloud storage thing needs to be able to be turned off for my personal use because I don't want that feature and for work otherwise I can never upgrade past 10.11 and will basically have to go back to a Windows machine when it comes time to replace my work machine.

Apple Pay in Safari seems very interesting. I wish they had come up with something that would have worked with any browser as my personal primary machine is Linux, but I can probably upgrade my old macbook to use that.

You can turn them off in the setup process of macOS Sierra

Why should it not be? It's been a single checkbox in settings since it was introduced.

But that conflicts with the "Optimize revenue" directive.

Sony and Nintendo also don't care.

but but but but metal - they cried

MacID is a much safer (and seemingly more powerful, from what I could tell from the keynote) implementation of this idea. I've been using it for a long time and it's really solid.

https://macid.co/

What version of Mac OS was ever meant for more technical consumers though? Apple's DNA has always been consumer product focused in everything they build.

We don't share the same memories of the 90's

MY prediction is that Sierra will be aka macOS 10.12.

Starting next year we will have iOS 11 and macOS 11. That way the numbers are unified.

I wouldn't be too surprised if they just dropped the number, and kept the name.

"macOS Sierra" and so on.

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.

There's a sysconfig to turn off nearly everything in OS X if you're comfy with the CLI, I doubt Siri would be any different. It will probably be a usual GUI switch though, due to privacy laws.

How can they overstate bugginess? If you didn't hit a bug yet, you luckily don't know about it. If there's a bug, there's a bug.

I only heard them refer to it as "macOS Sierra".

Half the people here are complaining about too many new features and not enough stability, and the other half are complaining that there aren't enough new features. This is why Apple doesn't listen to consumers and instead just puts out whatever they want to.

Honestly the name switch is the most interesting thing. And it's marginally interesting.

Completely agree. Although I am no longer shocked by this stuff from Apple..

Could be in the dev sessions. Seems to be that the keynote hasn't been direct at devs in quite a few years. So the stuff you, as a developer, care about won't be shown in the big show.

KDE Connect is one of the most noteworthy developments in FOSS in the last few years, precisely because it's simple and elegant and "just works", like an Apple product, while at the same time carrying all the core values of FOSS.

Yeah, they made it so clear that four years after the App Store was introduced, I'm still perfectly able to install Non-App Store software. And brew <anything> is more up-to-date and bug-free than apt-get. The App Store doesn't support the GPL3, but then again, neither does the Linux kernel.

MIT license, by the way, is compatible with the store.

Weren't all pre OS-X versions also called Mac OS?

We colloquially call it "Mac OS" in English too.

You mean like, the cops, FBI, or TSA take your iphone, put it close to your laptop, and then have access to everything, probably including your encrypted hard drive?

Yeah, I'd say that's a pretty bad idea.

I believe the older models (and by older models, those that are 8(!) years and older) were deprecated as they didn't included a couple of the execution flags for processor assisted encryption.

It's the state of Linux on the Desktop anywhere. Expect three hours of fiddling kernel parameters to get sleep to work as expected, followed by the same for Wifi, Sound, Graphics. To be repeated at least with every dist update.

Expect different applications to use different languages, some to have menu bars within the window, some on top. Sometimes strg+c copies something, sometimes highlighting text does it. Not all applications use the same clipboard. Font rendering is inconsistent. Some applications bring their own color-, font-, kb-layout-management.

Linux is excellent on the server. On the desktop it's ... not something for people complaining about OS X.

They typically leave the keynote to high level features, or really big developer-focused features.

However, you're in luck; looks like Apple is introducing a new file system:

https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/schedule/#/details/701

Seriously, how is this the top comment? They are in fact working on a brand new filesystem under the hood plus a Dropbox Infinite competitor, on top of all the other stuff. They didn't exactly phone this one in.

Also from the likes of your pet feature wishlist I'm not sure you are making an informed critique. Apple has withdrawn from the Vulkan group and put serious effort into its own graphics API, Metal. While you may not like that decision, it's no indication of low engineering investment.

I would settle for fixing the bug where I have to restart Finder to rebuild the connection every time my NAS drive spins down.

Also the combination of screensharing to a headless MacMini and then AirPlaying to an Apple TV produces some fairly loathsome results.

That class of announcements, if any, will be in the 'developer State of the Union' address this afternoon, not in the press event you just saw.

Yes, Apple considers general purpose computers a legacy technology and more so a legacy business. Apple would much rather be in the locked down, small screen appliance business, i.e. computing devices made for techno-phobic user base.

But it may backfire spectacularly on them, since once they abandoned general purpose computers and server operating systems, their cloud services will/are suffering as a consequence.

Really, if you are a software developer not specifically developing for Apple platforms you are much better off building yourself a Linux system at this point.

iOS devices brought in revenue in Q1 2016 of around 58B, vs 7B for macOS - even iPad sales alone are greater than macOS devices. You can expect this focus on iOS to continue, or even accelerate, as they focus on making more money from all those iOS devices (like driving adoption of iCloud, Apple Music and other monthly subscriptions).

http://www.statista.com/statistics/382136/quarterly-segments...

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 :)

They did introduce a new file system - it just wasn't part of the keynote.

I am getting progressively more fed up with Apple with every new iteration of OS X, but unfortunately, none of the things I need to run will work on Linux yet. Hopefully that changes, because I don't know how much longer I can hold out.

Even their hardware isn't that good anymore -- they haven't updated the Mac Pro since 2013, for instance.

> Not even a feature like telling software that you're on a metered connection and it shouldn't run backups!

This is a keynote for the entire conference. They wouldn't mention something as trivial as this. Only major items get mentioned.

The small features are mentioned throughout the week in the conference sessions.

It would be nice if OSX could actually work with share point - a big issue if you have a mixed OSX / Wintel Shop.

It's not a major issue just adding more modern crypto.

they have a lot of updates to browsers https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/content/relea...

Well, they have "innovated" on security in a very detrimental way for us developers. SIP, for example, plus rheumatic sandbox rules has made coding on OS X very unpleasant and limited. It is like Apple don't want us to develop anything useful on OS X.

>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".

To match iOS, tvOS and watchOS.

Compiling.

Appears there is one: https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/schedule/#/details/701

Probably. The Apple Watch locks when removed from the wrist, and required subsequent authentication before it can be used for payments. There's minimal risk here.

As soon as the Apple Watch is taken off your wrist it has to be unlocked with the passcode again, I believe.

I think this is fair but I also struggle to think of a situation where my Mac and my Apple Watch get stolen and I'm not aware of it in time to lock my accounts.

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

That will happen in the Dev SOTU later in the day.

The article doesn't contain the term 'Safari-tab'. It does have 'Safari-like tabs' in it, by which I would imagine they mean tabs, like you get in the Safari user interface.

I’ve been asking for this for awhile now. It has never made sense for every app to try to tab-ify its windows in a slightly different way, when it so clearly needed to be a window manager feature. Although, I really hope it allows inter-app interleaving of tabs, and not just all-one-app tab stacks.

Tabs across all windows, all apps.

Get out of here with your reasonable requests, this is a DEVELOPER conference, not a design conf... oh - wait.

`brew install bash`

homebrew is your friend. They are not going to upgrade anything that has gone to GPL3.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11898249 and marked it off-topic.

You were downvoted for being wrong. And now you're being downvoted again because you're whining about it, instead of just admitting that you were wrong.

I see about as many people complaining that HN irrationally loves Apple as that it irrationally hates Apple. Neither one is true. Mostly HN downvotes people who don't check their facts.

You were downvoted (I downvoted you) not for being critical of any company, but by aggressively making profoundly sweeping statements in a way that seemed designed to troll people. What's more, what you said is incorrect. You don't need to attend (and indeed when I worked on OS X applications I never did)--you wait less than 24 hours for the videos to be posted, or you read the documentation that describes in detail any new features of the operating system.

Looks like you have to press a button for it to start listening.

You can unplug it.

I'm sure they'll allow you to disable Siri though (or maybe even disable the "hey Siri" crap and just use a button or something).

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.

I wonder if this will work similarly to pressing Fn twice to get to get the speech-to-text dialog in OSX.

'X' could potentially also stand for Xnu or uniX.