Mark Gurman Claims Siri Finally Coming To The Mac This Year
Instead of integrating Siri as a swipe menu akin to the Mac’s Notification Center or as a full screen view like on the iPhone and even the iPad Pro, Siri for the Mac will live in the Mac’s Menu Bar. Similar to the Spotlight magnifying glass icon for search and notifications icon for Notification Center, a Siri icon in the top right corner of the menu bar will activate the voice control feature.
Siri on the Mac will have its own pane in System Preferences and users are said to also have the option to choose a keyboard shortcut for activating the service. Like with recent versions of iOS, users will be able to enable Siri at the first startup of OS X 10.12, according to sources. If the Mac running the new OS X version is plugged into power, a “Hey Siri” command will work much like with recent iPhone and iPad models.
The mockup looks pretty in terms of how the overlay displayed but I think the Siri button in the menu bar is an annoying default. Gurman doesn’t specify, but I’m assuming it will be a default icon that can be removed (hold ⌘ and drag with the mouse, like other menu items). If it is fixed in place, like the Spotlight icon is on El Capitan … well that would really suck.
Activation through ‘Hey Siri’ or a keyboard shortcut should suffice. Note how on iOS, there is no persistent button or Siri app visible in the interface — you can only activate with voice or the Home Button long press. If Apple really does want an onscreen indicator, I think they should incorporate it into the transient Spotlight window. Although Siri and Spotlight are not the same, they do overlap a lot in functionality, so connecting the features together makes sense. It’s hard to justify two permanent fixtures in the menubar when the features share so much common ground.