You may not remember this, but Siri debuted on the iPhone 4s on October 4, 2011, the day before Steve Jobs died. While it became a sort of cultural icon right away, it wasn’t necessarily all that accurate. All right, Siri would certainly pay attention to actor Samuel L. Jackson in a series of TV ads, but regular people had far more difficulty dealing with Apple’s digital voice assistant in the real world.

While it wasn’t obvious, Siri was actually labeled as a beta in those days; it’s not now. Getting accurate responses was always troublesome, even after Apple improved Siri, and added more features. Supposedly it can handle some context-related requests now. Supposedly.

Every day, my wife sets a daily alarm with Siri on her iPad. While she could create one alarm to fire every day, or just do it manually, she’s inclined to just get up at the appointed time, grab her iPad and set a new alarm for another half hour of snooze time.

Barbara has a clear, distinct, young-sounding voice with a trace of a Brooklyn accent. No self-respecting digital assistant should have difficulty responding to such a simple, basic request. She keeps her iPad up to date, and it will be capable of running iOS 11 since it’s a 64-bit model. But more often than not, she has to repeat the request a time or two before it’s correctly recognized and stored.

With 25 years of broadcast experience, I would like to think most people can understand me without difficulty. Siri? That depends.

Both customers and critics will tell you that Google Assistant is more accurate, and can do more things well. One reason is supposedly due to the fact that Google collects more data about you and other users, and is thus able to better contextualize user requests and provide meaningful answers.

Apple has opted for privacy, and it is thus presumed that Siri may be the safer alternative, but it’s not quite as flexible.

A few tests I consulted, such as this one, demonstrate that Google is capable of trouncing Siri with more responsive answers in some tests. Your mileage may vary, but I’ve made it clear where I stand. Siri was a cool idea when it launched in 2011, but it needs work.

Or did.

According to Apple, Siri is getting a major upgrade for the forthcoming iOS 11, which is due to ship this fall. Its voice will sound more natural, closer to a human voice than a digital being. Its responses will be accompanied by a more visual interface with suggestions and followup information. It will also use machine learning, on the device itself, to better predict your needs. While what Siri learns can be synced among your own devices, the data is otherwise private. There will also be expanded support for third-party developers to add Siri to their apps.

That, to me, sounds like a good thing. It has the potential of fixing some or most of Siri’s ills in accurately responding to your requests, right?

Well, an article in a certain major daily newspaper wants to label the new and improved Siri a huge fail. It quotes one developer as saying, “nothing changed.” But that’s absolutely untrue, based on what Apple demonstrated during the WWDC keynote and, reportedly, during work sessions with developers.

So why the disconnect?

Maybe the writer of that article wanted a juicy quote, and that’s certainly juicy if inaccurate.

But it’s also true that Apple released the first beta version of iOS 11 to developers after the Monday keynote. So millions of developers can now put the new Siri through its paces and test it against the Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana.

True, it’s an early beta being compared to final versions of the three competing digital assistants. But such a test ought to give an inkling of the scope of Apple’s improvements, and their potential. Sure, there are apt to be flaws some three months ahead of iOS 11’s final release candidate.

Ahead of such a test, saying that “nothing changed” makes little sense except for its sensational quality. Even if the only meaningful change is a more natural voice, something has changed. Is it more accurate, can Siri be held against all comers and hold its own?

A test of the beta would at least reveal the new Siri’s potential. When I begin to run the prerelease, I’ll focus primarily on the sort of information I want from Siri to see how well it does. Tests of this sort can be very subjective. It may even be possible that some of the published comparisons between Siri and Google Assistant — and other digital assistants — are being weighted to emphasize the areas where one contender routinely does better than the others, and ignore the areas where it’s worse. Does that convey  an accurate picture?

That Apple is making a big deal about improving Siri surely indicates they understand that it needs to get better. Unfortunately, some of the tech press is relentless. Once a conclusion is reached, it isn’t changed even if circumstances change.

So it’s still a supposed conventional wisdom that Google Maps is better than Apple Maps. Maybe it still is, even though the later has consistently improved. But I’ve used Google extensively in recent weeks in connection with one of my side gigs, and it can sometimes fail bigly in significant ways. Unfortunately, Apple’s alternative doesn’t work with the app I use for that gig, so I can’t really make a direct comparison.

In any case, I’m curious to read some updated comparisons to see where Siri for iOS 11 stands in relation to the rest of the pack. Unlike a reporter for a certain newspaper, I won’t reach any conclusions until I know the facts.

You can essentially sum up the WWDC keynote as many of 2017’s predictions about Macs, the iPad, and operating systems being realized in one place. My own humble predictions were actually more conservative than I expected.

So let’s begin: Some time back, in wishing and hoping for more productivity features on the iPad, one of my guests on The Tech Night Owl LIVE said it would be wrong to make it more Mac-like. Evidently Apple has another idea. So an iPad with iOS 11 will have a Dock that very closely resembles the one on a Mac. There will be a Files app that provides an interface with strong Finder-like influences. Consider drag and drop and other improvements to iPad multitasking and you’ll see evidence that Apple is definitely paying serious attention to finding ways to make it more productive. And using the macOS, in part, for inspiration.

Certainly the iPad Pro lineup is not meant strictly for consumption. For that, you’d do well with a fifth generation iPad, which starts at $329.

By far the most interesting development, however, was the evident demonstration of all or most of the Macs expected in 2017 at a single event. Everything will ship shortly, except for the iMac Pro, which is promised for December, meaning maybe a handful will arrive before 2018.

I’ll admit it. My predictions were way off about the iMac. I assumed that the promised the Pro version would simply consist of a few special configurations with more powerful parts. With the introduction of the Intel Core i9 processor family, I expected Apple to use them. I didn’t anticipate that Apple would beef up the thermal capacity of the iMac — to the tune of up to 80% — and install most of the parts you’d expect for a Mac Pro. That includes Intel Xeon processors with up to 18 cores and up to 128GB of ECC RAM. It’ll also drive a pair of 5K external displays.

While some might argue that the iMac Pro might be an expensive indulgence, Apple made the point of stating that the $4,999 entry-level model — with an 8-core Xeon, 32GB RAM and a 1TB SSD — is actually a couple of thousand dollars cheaper than comparable Windows PCs, minus the marvelous 5K display. Indeed, Apple has a corner on display technology. Even the LG UltraFine 5K monitor was designed in partnership with Apple, and LG reportedly supplies the panels Apple uses in its own computers.

What this also means is that there will be iMac Pro configurations that cost more than $10,000! Consider the iMac’s humble origins, in 1998, when it debuted as a modest $1,299 consumer computer using PowerBook parts. And you can top out the regular 27-inch iMac for $5,299.00. How the world has changed!

But what about the Mac Pro? Does the iMac Pro basically kill that product? Not so fast. Apple executives did promise a new Mac Pro — but not this year — at the early April confab with a handful of tech reporters. Very likely, it’ll become a headless iMac, with modular capacity and perhaps more ports. You’ll be able to swap out parts and it’ll receive regular upgrades. But it’ll probably follow the iMac Pro as a user configurable alternative, thus reducing development costs.

The regular iMac received a predictable refresh, as did the MacBook lineup. The Mac mini? You tell me. I had hoped we’d see something new by now, or maybe Apple is readying something for a fast introduction later this year.

After all those predictions about a 10.5-inch iPad Pro, and its nearly edge-to-edge display, and a new version of the 12.9-inch model, there was little surprise in the announcements. These are the improvements you expected, though I might have hoped for a rethought Smart Keyboard, complete with a slide-out trackpad drawer. But that’s just my idea, and nothing stops third parties from developing one.

macOS High Sierra includes, as I expected, the final version of the Apple File System (APFS), which is already available for iPhones and iPads running iOS 10.3 or later. That update was so seamless, you wouldn’t have noticed if you didn’t read about it. But the presence of APFS on a Mac will deliver some amazing improvements, including virtually instant copying, encryption and other goodies. I’m also wondering how Time Machine might change to accommodate all of the new file system’s inherent advantages. Will Apple do something to make it even easier for people to backup their data? What about being able to use a Time Machine drive as a startup volume? Possible?

Fortunately, all the Macs that can run Sierra will be able to install High Sierra. But some of the features, such as Metal 2, will require the graphics chips in more recent hardware. It’s a decent tradeoff.

For iOS 11, a predictable number of older gear will be cast aside. You’ll need an iPhone 5s or later, a 4th generation iPad or later, and an iPad mini 3 or later. And, oh yes, an iPod Touch 6th generation. Again, these system requirements are quite predictable.

The improvements in iOS 11 are fairly extensive, and I notice some small, but useful touches, such as using bolder type for labels. I’m also anxious to try it out on Barbara’s iPad Air 2 and see how it manages its more Mac-like multitasking.

And the promised Siri speaker is actually a $349 HomePod speaker that’ll arrive by December, but its integration with Apple services will extend its potential way beyond the competition from Amazon and Google. AirPlay 2 will bring HomeKit support to loads of compatible speakers around your home.

The only other announcement that caught my eye was the forthcoming arrival of Amazon Instant Video on the Apple TV. The Amazon tweet says, “all Apple TVs,” which means it’ll work on my 3rd generation unit too. Good move. And maybe, just maybe, Apple will deliver an 5K Apple TV this fall.

Now back to the endless speculation about the iPhone 8.

The introduction of the original Apple LaserWriter, with the Adobe PostScript page description language, went a long way towards making the Mac a credible personal computer. It wasn’t just about having a pretty point-and-click interface. It was about having a genuine tool that soon came to dominate the prepress and publishing industries.

It also went a long way towards destroying a profession, traditional typesetting, and that’s how I got involved with Macs.

From the mid-1970s on, I earned a decent living as a typographer. I worked for small art studios, publishers, and typesetting plants. While such people used to work on machines that generated letterforms from vats of hot lead, I got involved when the industry moved to phototypesetting, where the output was generated onto photosensitive paper.

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Within days, the wraps will be lifted from the next version of macOS at the WWDC. After little or nothing appeared on the Apple rumor sites, the chatter has increased some in recent days. I’ll avoid most of the suggestions of possible new features, since it’s so close to the real event.

Except for one thing.

So at last year’s WWDC, a brand new file system was introduced, the Apple File System (APFS), which would provide more security, more efficiency, better performance, and lots of features that will help protect your data. It’s a good thing, or will be a good thing once the final macOS version is released. The developer’s version was feature crippled, without support for startup disks, Time Machine, FileVault and the Fusion Drive. I assume those problems will be resolved with the next OS release, so regular people can use APFS.

The iOS version of APFS was deployed to hundreds of millions of Apple customers with the release of iOS 10.3 in March. It appears to have been successful, but consider that there aren’t as many possible storage variations on iPhones and iPads. With more open access to the file system and loads of potential system installation possibilities, potential Mac issues are far more complicated and far more difficult to anticipate. Witness the features that did not, as of last year, work.

Among the industrial-strength file system features is a Snapshot, which has pointers to data and thus speeds up access. Let’s keep that in mind for a moment.

Now one of the unsung heroes of the macOS is Time Machine. The vast majority of customers never back up their Macs, and Steve Jobs cited low double-digit figures when Apple’s backup utility was launched in 2007. Time Machine stores incremental backups, which means that many versions of a file, or even files that have been subsequently deleted, are available for fairly quick recovery.

The original Time Machine took on a sci-fi air as you went back through time to find the file you lost, or to which you wanted to revert. The interface has since been toned down, but this is certainly a useful scheme that allows you to recover one or more files, or, if you’re setting up a new drive or a new Mac, everything you’ve stored on your computer.

Using Time Machine is really simple. One it’s set up, it will run a full backup (not a clone of your Mac’s startup drive) and then, every hour, store backups of what’s changed. If you set up a backup to a removable drive or memory stick, it will begin the process whenever the drive is mounted. It’s about as easy as it gets, since you don’t have to manually run a backup or schedule one, as you’d do with regular backup software.

I’ve used it every time I’ve set up a new Mac or recovered the contents of a drive, and it’s really simple to use. Working with Migration Assistant, Time Machine allows you to copy the contents of one Mac or drive to another. It make take a few hours to grab everything, but you’ll soon be up and running essentially as if nothing changed — except for having a new Mac or a new drive of course.

One thing Time Machine does not do is to allow you to boot from the backup drive. So if your startup drive fails, you would have to restore your data to a new drive before you can get back to work. That’s certainly a severe limitation for the busy person or business. The best solution to that dilemma is to install a dedicated backup app that can create a clone drive; in other words, a mirror of your setup drive. You can use an external drive for the backup, or even a partition, but the latter wouldn’t be a good move. If a drive fails, you’d lose both backups.

I use Carbon Copy Cloner with an external drive. Another app capable of cloning is SuperDuper, and both will get the job done in exemplary fashion. I run daily backups, when the work day is done. So if something nasty happens to the startup drive, I can get back to work with all of my data mostly intact; at least the stuff that was stored as of the time of the last backup. Time Machine runs on another external drive, and it can help me grab the rest.

Now the existing version of Time Machine was designed with the current file system, HFS+, in mind, recognizing its limitations. With APFS, Apple builds a new version of Time Machine. Does APFS make it possible to boot from a Time Machine volume?

I would not presume to guess what changes Apple might make to Time Machine. I suppose it might run the same, except for the changes needed to support APFS. But it may also be that Apple will take good advantage of a modern file system to make it run faster, and do more things.

As it is, loads of Mac users still don’t backup their data, despite the ease of setting up Time Machine. Maybe Apple will leverage the advantages of APFS to improve the process in a way that will encourage Mac users to get on the backup bandwagon. Even if there are no significant new features, that’ll still be a major advantage.