One of the biggest changes in macOS Sierra, the new operating system for Mac laptops and desktops coming this fall, is the addition of Siri.
Apple thinks people might want Siri's help finding documents on their Mac, or changing one's settings on the fly, or finding old emails. And that's exactly what Siri can do.
It's a good idea in theory; but in practice, it's incredibly awkward. I can't imagine anyone ever using Siri on their Mac in public, especially in a work setting.
For the past week, my colleague Steve Kovach was testing out a beta version of macOS Sierra and he was constantly giving it commands and questions like "Send an email to Alyson," or "Turn on Bluetooth."
At home, using Siri on the Mac would probably be fine. I talk to my Amazon Echo all the time at home, asking for the time or the weather or a song request, and I never feel weird about it. But in a work setting, it was hard not to chuckle at these commands — regardless of whether or not Siri gave the correct response (it often didn't, but this is beta software, after all).
And so, it's disappointing to know that the standout feature of macOS Sierra, the first version of Apple's Mac operating system that doesn't belong to the OS X moniker, can only be used in some settings, and it won't help me at work at all. It's the same reason I don't use Siri on my iPhone at work — it's flat out embarrassing to have other people listen to me talking to a robot.
I think Siri on the Mac could keep getting better — down the road, I could see people using it like Joaquin Phoenix's character used his Samantha AI in the movie "Her," where he had full conversations with his personal assistant, which was also able to dictate everything he said, write emails for him, etc. But right now, Siri on the Mac is just plain awkward, and to me, it definitely won't change the way I interact with my computer anytime soon.
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