It has long been expected that Siri, Apple’s iOS-based virtual personal assistant, would eventually make it over to the Mac. However, we have yet to see her make a debut on the OS X platform. Now, a new patent application from Apple describes an intelligent assistant that would make Siri on the Mac a reality.
The patent application, which was filed in February of this year and based on a provisional application from a year earlier, describes a system that in one iteration can sit in the dock, waiting for touch input or voice commands to activate a personal assistant in a manner similar to Siri in iOS. The assistant would then perform tasks based on input by the user. The same system can function as a third hand, allowing users to interact physically with a mouse and keyboard while simultaneously performing a secondary task using their voice.
So far, the only thing we’ve seen in OS X that even vaguely resembles Siri is the dictation feature of OS X that allows users to speak words and sentences that are then converted on the fly to text. Apple is slowly integrating iOS features such as Notification Center and Reminders into OS X, so hopefully this patent filing indicates some Siri goodness is on it’s way to Apple’s desktop operating system.
