macOS Sierra public beta out; tried to get Siri on a date
Being a sucker for all things new I fired up my Apple beta testing profile to download the new macOS, Sierra. Sierra was launched at the WWDC event in June. Sierra is the upgrade from El Capitan released in October 2015. Unlike El Capitan, Sierra does bring new features to the fore whilst aligning the nomenclature of Apple’s operating systems.
First warning, Sierra is huge! The download did take me a few hours, will not say how many, least I embarrass my service provider. The beauty of the download is you can pause it and pick it once you get to your favourite free WiFi location. The download weighs in at a monstrous 4.9GB! As usual please make sure your data is backed up, the choice of software and media I leave to you. After the reboot, the installation took 30 minutes, much slower than I expected. I then proceeded to agree to all the legalese to me (yes I read every word!).
The installation was a success and all my files were in place. My free AVG antivirus was incompatible and was disabled after the installation. I can tell you about the file system improvements or the better graphics but the real reason to upgrade to Sierra was to get Siri. A computer you can now talk to and sound even crazier than normal in the office as you and your laptop engage in a conversation.
Yes, I left the check box ticked for Siri ticked. Once fully booted everything seems normal but Siri now lives patiently in your laptop dock.
As my laptop locale is set to Zambia, Siri defaults to John’s from the United Kingdom’s voice, not my kind of AI. Fire up your system preferences and change it to something that better suits your auditory palette, since you will be having extended conversations with it.
I changed to Irish female because I too needed to enjoy my own little Brexit. If you are comfortable with the iOS version of Siri the macOS user experience is very similar. I thought since it half price at the movies I would check what was playing….
She is a snarky one. Whilst the feature set is novel and annoying one’s co-workers on Tuesday is truly special, the operating system as whole does not deliver much. Siri as a function is useless in Zambia, for now. I hope that the public release has better back-end data to draw on for Zambia.
