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macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
63,196
30,136



MacRumors has been seeing builds of OS X 10.9 in site logs since November, which is also when hints of Siri integration for Macs began appearing.

A recent Apple job posting (via TechCrunch / AppleInsider) reinforces the rumor that Siri might be bundled with the next version of OS X. In its listing for a Siri UI Engineer, Apple specifies that candidates should possess "Familiarity with Unix, especially Mac OS X" and a "Passion for the Macintosh platform and writing simple, elegant software that is easy and fun to use."

siriengineer.jpg
The listing, which does not include a specification for experience with iOS aside from knowledge of Apple's development APIs, states that the engineer will be in charge of implementing the content that appears within Siri's conversational view. The position will also require collaboration with other Siri teams.
This is a broad-ranging task - we take every application that Siri interacts with, distill it down to fundamentals, and implement that application's UI in a theme fitting with Siri. Consider it an entire miniature OS within the OS, and you get a good idea of the scope!

Of course, each of these little "snippets" corresponds to an individual application, so you will have extensive cross-functional work with many other teams. You'll need to work with them to enable access to their data and behaviors, and wire them up to your implementations. As a result, strong API design is needed to keep communications ideal.
As of mid-January, OS X 10.9 activity has increased considerably on MacRumors, suggesting the new operating system, with Siri included, may be imminent.

Job postings for Apple's iLife/iWork team also surfaced this week. iWork's last major update was in 2009, while iLife was last updated in 2010. An overhaul of the apps could potentially include Siri integration, allowing for voice commands for simple tasks such as photo and music editing.

macrumors_10_9_oct_jan_activity.jpg
Hits from systems running OS X 10.9 on MacRumors.com
Apple has been upgrading OS X on a yearly basis. 10.8 Mountain Lion was released in July of 2012, a year after 10.7 Lion was released in July of 2011. The first developer preview of OS X 10.8 appeared in February, and OS X 10.9 could follow a similar timeline.

Article Link: Apple Job Posting Hints at Siri for Macs in OS X 10.9
 

Aidan5806

macrumors 6502
Feb 20, 2012
312
0
Can there be new features added to siri before it gets ported onto macs? There's so much potential......
 

sza

macrumors 6502a
Dec 21, 2010
569
855
Siri for Mac may not be so useful as it for iOS since it is easier to type on a Mac. ;)
 

Robsta2142

macrumors newbie
Oct 22, 2012
11
1
Is it not unlikely given how recent the posting is that is may not come on OS X 10.9? Or is there enough time before filling the roles, developing the software and releasing it in July?
 

nzalog

macrumors 6502
Jul 25, 2012
274
2
:eek: Hands free porn surfing... Apple is on to something.


:(

Not sure what my roommate in going to think when he hears "Siri, google image hot asians chicks with nice ass" coming from my room.
 
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Squilly

macrumors 68020
Nov 17, 2012
2,260
4
PA
Hope my rMBP is compatible when it comes out. Pointless either way. OS X is based off of Unix?
 

Sam Yikin

macrumors regular
Oct 28, 2007
230
0
I'm pretty sure that Siri on Mac will NOT be exclusive to new Macs, and here's why:
1. Siri as an exclusive might be enough to sell $200 phones but not >$1000 Macs. Using it to sell a $20 OS sounds like it might be good enough.
2. I think that any hardware limitations that might've prevented Siri from being on older iPhones won't prevent it coming to older Macs. Why? Because I just dictated this sentence on my 2008 iMac and the speech recognition was just as good as Siri on my iPad 4. I believe it is because of the difference in processing power; AFAIK the first iPhone with Siri needed a special speech processing chip but desktop/laptop processors should be able to handle it on their own.
 

mrsir2009

macrumors 604
Sep 17, 2009
7,505
156
Melbourne, Australia
I'm pretty sure that Siri on Mac will NOT be exclusive to new Macs, and here's why:
1. Siri as an exclusive might be enough to sell $200 phones but not >$1000 Macs. Using it to sell a $20 OS sounds like it might be good enough.
2. I think that any hardware limitations that might've prevented Siri from being on older iPhones won't prevent it coming to older Macs. Why? Because I just dictated this sentence on my 2008 iMac and the speech recognition was just as good as Siri on my iPad 4. I believe it is because of the difference in processing power; AFAIK the first iPhone with Siri needed a special speech processing chip but desktop/laptop processors should be able to handle it on their own.

You mean a 800-1050 dollar phone.

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Nah, they'll just throw it into OS X and have this guy work out the bugs later ;)

They’ll fix the bugs with 10.10 ;)
 

kimble3

macrumors member
Jun 10, 2004
41
-1
Siri and AppleScript

Is it time for AppleScript to really show it's power? Applications that support AppleScript already have a built in vocabulary so it should be fairly straightforward to allow Siri to control existing apps.
 

1Alec1

macrumors regular
Is it time for AppleScript to really show it's power? Applications that support AppleScript already have a built in vocabulary so it should be fairly straightforward to allow Siri to control existing apps.

Very good idea. I never thought about that. AppleScript, Automator, and shell scripts + Siri! Actually, you can do that with the current voice recognition system in theory, but it never works, so you can't really.

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For some reason, Linux rings a bell. Does it have anything to do with Unix? Or is it Unix?

Yes, it is based on UNIX. And Mac is not based on Linux but on UNIX (indirectly).
 
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