“While Apple’s Siri has been an iOS staple since 2011, the tech has yet to make the jump to OS X,” Mikey Campbell reports for AppleInsider. “An exhaustive new patent filing, however, details a very similar desktop version of the virtual assistant that can perform dictation, high-level system commands and even act as a ‘third hand’ for Mac users.”
“Driven in cooperation with an off-site server, Siri for Mac has an identical backend to Siri for iOS,” Campbell reports. “The user-facing Siri asset can be integrated into a standalone app invoked by a special mouse or keyboard gesture, or may be tasked to run in the background, listening for a special activation phrase like the ‘Hey, Siri’ implementation in Apple’s forthcoming iOS 8.”
“A particularly interesting function describes ‘Using Digital Assistant as a Third Hand,'” Campbell reports. “In some cases, a user may be performing one task and find that a second or third action is required to facilitate unbroken focus on the primary operation. For example, while typing in a text editor, a user may want to access a picture or piece of information from the Web. Invoking a digital assistant by voice to perform this secondary task saves mouse clicks and allows continuous focus be paid to the text editing task at hand.”
Much more, including Apple’s patent application illustrations, in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Arline M.” for the heads up.]