In Excel, users can access the most recently used functions via the Touch Bar, as well as borders, cell colours and recommended charts, for easy formatting and layout. It can also launch 'Word Focus Mode', a new mode that makes your document full-screen and removes all ribbons and toolbars. In Word, the Touch Bar hosts a variety of shortcuts, including the ability to change paragraph and text formatting, insert objects and hyperlinks, and copy and paste. Apple Pay buttons will appear on supported sites and will prompt you to authorise purchases by scanning your fingerprint on your connected device, or on the touchbar of the new MacBook Pro. The OS also supports Apple Pay, although you will need to have a paired iPhone or Apple Watch to actually authorise the payment.
Optimised storage allows users to free up space on a hard drive by moving older or less used files to iCloud.
iCloud Drive also lets users access all their files from any of their Mac devices, including files stored on the desktop. The Universal Clipboard function is cross-device compatible, meaning that users can access data they've copied on any of their Apple devices. Macs now support automatic unlocking, using your Apple Watch to verify your identity and unlock your Mac. There are also numerous productivity features introduced in macOS Sierra too. In addition, users can take advantage of Siri to perform complex file queries, including multiple criteria, all using conversational language. Apple's virtual assistant now lives in an icon in the app dock and can also be launched via keyboard shortcut. MacOS Sierra introduces a raft of new features for desktop users, including new functionality through Siri. However, Apple is still naming the different iterations after areas of California, with the first edition of the new macOS labelled 'macOS Sierra'.
This brings the desktop software back into line with the rest of Apple's 'xOS' family, such as iOS, tvOS and watchOS. Ditching the 'OS X' label, the company has instead reverted back to the name used in its first products: macOS. It was widely rumoured beforehand, and those rumours proved accurate - Apple has changed the naming convention of its desktop operating system. MacRumors also revealed Apple has released new languages to its dictation tool, better support for PDFs with its PDFKit API and iCloud Analytics options.
Other new features in the beta include updates to Siri, with a wider range of sports updates such as Indian Premier League or the International Cricket Council. If you don't want to enable it forevermore, but just for the time being, you can do this from the Notifications Centre or Siri. Those testing out Apple's newest OS can enable Night Shift mode by heading to the Display settings from Preferences.