Apple has released macOS 27 Golden Gate, a free update that requires a Mac with Apple silicon and isn’t available for Intel Macs, MacRumors reported. The headline feature is Siri AI, a chatbot-style rebuild of Siri with its own app.
Siri AI
Apple’s release notes describe Siri AI as “more personal, more capable, and more conversational.” It’s built into Spotlight, can draw on personal context across messages, mail and photos, and can take actions across apps. Past conversations live in a dedicated Siri app that syncs through iCloud. Apple developed the new Siri in partnership with Google’s Gemini model, 9to5Mac noted, and it relies on a new per-device index of the user’s data.
App actions depend on developers exposing content and capabilities through the App Intents framework, so 9to5Mac expects that part to improve as apps are updated. A systemwide “Ask Siri” option in context menus lets users select text, images or files and ask about them, or have Siri rewrite or proofread selected text.
Siri AI is available in English at launch, with French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish coming in October. It won’t be available in China or the EU for now because of regulatory issues. 9to5Mac said beta feedback was overwhelmingly positive, though Siri can be slower than users of other AI assistants expect.
Visual Intelligence and apps
Visual Intelligence comes to the Mac for the first time. Press Command-Shift-Space, select part of the screen, and Siri can answer questions or act on what’s there, such as adding an event to the calendar. Photos gains Spatial Reframing, an Extend tool and better Clean Up. Safari can group tabs by topic automatically, watch pages for price drops or restocks with Notify Me, and build custom extensions from a natural-language description. Shortcuts gets a similar Describe a Shortcut option.
Design walk-backs
Golden Gate also reverses several divisive choices from macOS Tahoe. A new slider sets Liquid Glass anywhere from ultra-clear to fully tinted, window corner radii are standardized, and most of the icons Tahoe added next to menu items are gone, 9to5Mac reported. Apple also added new parental controls, including Ask to Browse in Safari and Time Allowances, and says AirDrop transfers, network file browsing and Spotlight and Mail search are faster.
The update is available now through Software Update in System Settings.
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