Out of all the changes coming to macOS Sierra this fall, Siri is by far the most significant, especially when it comes to searching for stuff on your computer or the web.
Sound familiar?
That's exactly what Spotlight does.
Even though Spotlight has been around since 2005, it's been steadily improving ever since. Just a year ago, Apple gave Spotlight its biggest update ever in El Capitan by adding a lot of Siri-like functionality to it. Sports scores. Weather. Natural language search. And so on.
So here's one that'll really bake your noodle: Why did all that effort go into adding more intelligence to Spotlight when Siri was coming to Mac just a year later?
And since Siri is more capable than Spotlight, why does Spotlight exist at all anymore?
With macOS Sierra, you essentially have two digital assistants that do the same thing competing for your attention. The only real difference is that one requires you to type and the other makes you speak. It's redundant and awkward.
It's not just on Mac either. Spotlight and Siri have been effectively competing with each other since Siri's debut in 2011. Now Siri has matured to the point that you don't really need Spotlight at all.
Apple would probably say it views the two differently. Siri is an assistant, while Spotlight is simply a search tool. But the two overlap in so many ways that this argument falls flat.
It's even worse on the Mac, where the two features are literally right next to each other in the taskbar:
The solution? After all these years, it's time for Spotlight to die in favor of Siri. All Siri needs to add is a field to type queries into when you don't want to talk.
