WWDC: MacOS Sierra brings Siri to the desktop and unveils 'auto unlock' for Apple Watch users

And Apple Pay comes to Safari for online shopping

Apple has announced a slew of technical upgrades in the opening day of its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, California.

The announcements include a new version of MacOS, the latest iteration of its desktop operating system and the first version to drop the 'OS X' brand.

Unveiled during the keynote, MacOS Sierra is the first version of Apple's desktop operating system to bring the iOS voice recognition assistant Siri to the desktop, following a similar shift made by Microsoft's Cortana from Windows Phone to Windows 10.

Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, demoed the feature and claimed that it's much more advanced than Siri on mobile. "On the Mac, Siri can do so much more, such as answering sophisticated queries such as: 'Show me documents I worked on last week offsite - just the ones Ken sent me that I tagged with draft'."

Siri can also carry out tasks such as searching the web, firing up Apple Music playlists and sending text messages.

Apple Pay plays a big part in MacOS Sierra, as Apple has included support for the payments service in Safari for the first time. This means you'll be able to select Apple Pay as a payment method when shopping online, authenticating payments by using a nearby iPhone or Apple Watch.

MacOS also boasts a feature called Auto Unlock. This enables users who own both a MacBook and an Apple Watch to unlock their MacOS-powered device by having their smartwatch in close proximity. Despite speculation that the iPhone would be supported, it appears this is limited to the Apple Watch - at the moment.

Universal Clipboard is another MacOS Sierra first that enables you to copy and paste across multiple devices, along with support for Tabs in third-party apps.

MacOS Sierra will be available to developers from today, followed by a public beta in July. It will be made available as a full release in the autumn, and to run it you'll need a MacBook (late 2009 and later), iMac (late 2009 and later), MacBook Air (2010 and later), MacBook Pro (2010 and later), Mac Mini (2010 and later) or Mac Pro (2010 and later).

While Apple has shown off its new Mac software, there's been no new hardware in sight. This comes despite speculation that Apple has been prepping new MacBook Pro with Touch ID sensors, USB Type-C connectivity and an OLED display touch bar above the keyboard.

However, it did show off a new file system, ADFS, which promises to improve on-disk encryption for both conventional drives, as well as flash-based storage.