Which is the better desktop OS: macOS Sierra or Windows 10?

Design-wise, macOS Sierra is virtually identical to its predecessor, El Capitan. The 'flattened' visuals originally brought in for Yosemite are still present; they weren't popular at first but most of us have got used to them.

There are a couple of differences in the Mac OS interface.

For one thing, you'll be able to use tabs, for example, in a wide range of first- and third-party apps, rather than just web browsers. (Maps, Mail, TextEdit and all three iWork apps will support tabs from launch, as will - Apple claims - any third-party app that supports multiple windows.) It's a small enhancement but a highly logical one, and should make the bulk of commonly used apps more convenient for multitasking.

Windows 10 includes more major interface tinkering, including one biggie: the Start Menu is back. And it's improved - so much so that it may even make Windows apps useful.

On the left you'll see a list of most-used apps, as in Windows 7. At the bottom there's an 'All apps' shortcut, plus shortcuts to File Explorer, Settings and - conveniently - shut down and standby.

Microsoft has kept the Windows 8 Start screen functions on the right, with resizable Live Tiles that let you check unread mail or Calendar appointments. The Start Menu is customisable - you can resize it, and rearrange the tiles, create groups of tiles, and revert to the Windows 8 Start Screen should you wish to. 

Siri vs Cortana

Sierra's single biggest new feature is probably Siri - as has been rumoured for years, Apple's voice-control tech, previously available on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple TV, has come to the Mac.

A particularly useful and impressive feature that was demoed live on stage at WWDC was the ability to search through documents using Siri; you can use natural language, specifying various parameters to apply to the document search, and Siri's search results sit afterwards in the Notifications pane from where they can be dragged and dropped into applicable apps, and generally manipulated at your whim.

Microsoft's equivalent of Siri is called Cortana, a system that fields and interprets natural language queries in both speech and text. This has been available on PCs since Windows 8.1, but it gets upgraded in Windows 10.

All the Cortana features from Windows Phone are now in Windows 10. So you can ask (or type): "What's the weather going to be like this weekend?" and get a forecast, or "Remind me to finish my tax return tomorrow night" and receive a reminder at the appropriate time. And this can be tied to people and places too: "Remind me to ring Jim when I get home", and so on.

Cortana has a Daily Glance with your meetings, the weather, information about your commute, sports scores and suchlike. If you allow it, Cortana can also access information from emails, such as flight numbers, and warn you if there's a delay or heavy traffic on the way to the airport.

Finally, Cortana can identify music playing, set alarms, record notes, play specific music, launch apps and give you directions on a map. We think it's great, and one of Windows 10's biggest draws.

Unlock your PC or Mac with another device

With the launch of macOS Sierra, you can unlock your Mac with your Apple Watch. Get within a certain distance of your Mac while wearing an (unlocked) Apple Watch, and the Mac will detect your approach and unlock: no more typing in lengthy passwords.

This is a handy feature, although the number of people who actually own Apple Watches is still relatively small. We're hoping that Apple will enable Touch ID-equipped iPhones to do something similar with their fingerprint scanners, or that a future Mac will have a fingerprint scanner of its own.

No such features on Windows quite yet, but it looks like that could change in the near future: Windows Central reports that the company plans to add the ability for Microsoft Bands, Windows Phones and other certified devices to unlock a PC.

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