MacOS Sierra, the latest version of Apple’s desktop operating system, is now available to download, the company announced today.
Besides the name change, the new version of macOS brings with it a number of new features to the Unix-based OS.
Support for Apple’s personal assistant, Siri, is the update’s marquee feature additions. Once users enable Siri, the sassy but helpful personal assistant will be able to help send messages and emails, as well as find specific files and look up information all from one’s Mac. Siri results can also be dragged and dropped into documents, and pinned to the ‘Today’ menu.
Apple Pay has also made the jump from iOS. When shopping online with Safari, users can authorize a purchase using their nearby iPhone (as long as it’s an iPhone 6 and up). At launch, Apple says more than 300,000 websites support payments made through Apple Pay in this way.
Apple has updated to Photos to make it more competitive with online offerings like Google Photos. A new feature called ‘Memories’ will comb through the photos using an advanced image recognition algorithm to create curated albums. When Apple introduced this feature back at WWDC, the company made it a point to tell attendees that Photos uses the onboard computing power at its disposal to detect faces and landmarks.
Other features include a tabbed interface in apps like Maps, Mail, Pages and a number of other apps, as well as a picture-in-picture mode.
MacOS is free to download and available on all Macs released since 2009.
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