Siri Not Included in OS X Mountian Lion. Here’s Why.

Apple’s latest operating system, OS X Mountain Lion, will be released this summer, and a bunch of new features have already been announced. Apple has said they are so proud of the success of iOS, they want to start to bring that “feel” over to OS X.

One feature not announced for OS X 10.8 is Siri. Granted, Siri isn’t really an iOS feature, as much as it is an iPhone 4S feature, but this is something that could come in handy on a desktop or laptop computer. So, why wouldn’t this be ported over? One of the answers is in the hardware, not the software.

The iPhone 4S has different hardware in it, that deals with background noise differently than other iOS devices, and definitely different than our Macs. With the iPhone, you hold it up to your face to talk into it. You generally wouldn’t do that with your computer. Also, the iPhone 4S uses 2 microphones to process the incoming audio. The main one on the bottom of the phone, and the tiny pinhole mic on the top. This allows Siri to hear you clearly by filtering out the background noise, and better processing what you’re saying. Your Mac only has the one mic. Future Macs may come with the proper hardware, and maybe we’ll see a Mac version of Siri, but I don’t think it will be included in on operating system update.

There are other reasons we may not see Siri in OS X. Since Macs currently don’t have GPS built in, there would be issues with location detection.  In some cases it would just be easier to type out what you want to do, rather than initiating Siri, and telling her to do it for you. In the case of MacBooks, you don’t always have a connection to the internet, unless you are stationary somewhere on Wifi.

Do you think Apple should include Siri on upcoming Macs? Let us know in the comments below.

[CNN]