Searching works just fine too, though it’s easy to see that Awa isn’t as good as recognizing natural language as Siri is. Just as long as it’s not some long, convoluted name. In fact, Awa opens any application or web page you throw at it pretty easily. That’s okay I guess since Awa never claimed to be able to retrieve the weather, but she can’t even just search the web for it? That was a tad disappointing. Oops, weather data is coming in a future version.

I started off, perhaps unfairly, with the question I ask Siri the most.

Now it’s time to ask some questions and set some commands. I also appreciate that upon clicking the menu bar icon, Awa starts listening to your command right away rather than requiring another click. It sits in the menu bar and the translucent window design fits nicely in with OS X El Capitan and Yosemite. It doesn’t look far off from the way Apple might design Siri for Mac. Right off the bat I have to admire the user interface. Tip: When you first open Awa, record a keyboard shortcut Putting Awa to the Test Now we just have to see if Awa can handle what she’s supposed to. The little bit here and there can add up. But still, this is a pretty decent list of potential tasks to have Awa complete. Don’t expect Awa to set any geofences for you or check sports scores. Right away it’s easy to tell that Awa isn’t nearly as smart as Siri. (This could be specific down to the address or broad like “restaurants in Tokyo.”) You can also just have conversations with Awa for fun. You can apparently use Awa to open applications on your Mac, go to specific websites or search the web, perform calculations, take notes, set reminders in the Reminders app and find places in Maps. First, let’s go through all of the commands the developer claims Awa is capable of acting on.

Macassistant keyboard shortcut