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Apple WWDC 2016: Sierra, MacOS

Introduction to Sierra

Sierra, the next operating system in Apple products future.

With Apple WWDC comes news, and in that news the introduction of the new Mac operating system; Sierra. Notably after 15 years of OS X, we will no longer see this present in its title instead, the product will simply be called “macOS.” As developer copies are released we shall soon find out a lot more.

Craig Federighi from Apple explained a number of features which will be included such as automatic unlocking, which will allow you to unlock a Mac simply by having your own Apple Watch close, this was not stated to be exclusive to iOS Devices.

Another feature in the continuity section named Universal Clipboard which allows a user to copy and paste between iOS devices and a desktop mac device and appears to be a two way service; the iOS device clipboard can be seen on the desktop device.

iCloud now takes a larger role, allowing files folders to be moved freely between devices, Mac to Mac and iOS to Mac and vice versa. With this, the “Optimized Storage” feature can organize old files automatically store them on iCloud and not on your device; but it can also take out the trash, clear web history, and other behind the scenes clean up.

Federighi noted, in one of the test scenarios the Optimized Storage system managed to free a total of 130GB of local storage.
Apple also stated that tabs will be a big thing, intended to be introduced across all multi window applications Apple Pay will be coming to the mac, see below the jokingly shown demonstration on how this works. It will useable from the desktop using TouchID or an Apple Watch via Continuity.

Am I doing it right?

And the last but not least, Siri is coming to the desktop and will have many features that will be familiar to iOS users, with multiple features shown in the presentation including opening playlists, creating tasks, quite similar to that of Cortana on the Microsoft Windows 10.

Sierra will be available to developers today and will have a public beta in July. The operating system is set for a fall 2016 general release.