It's been around for a while already. The dictation feature in OS X 10.10 already knows that trick. The thought of the little thinks is what still makes me stick with OS X.
This rubs me the wrong way because it's a vicious (positive, I guess) cycle. You keep buying iPhones, they stockpile billions in cash, and they can "think of the little things" (which is really just "How can we make OS X more like iOS and less suitable for power users?").
It's sad... but I can't imagine anyone taking the time to hack this together on their *nix laptop, and even if they did, it's not likely to be portable until a handful of other tinkerers donate their time. This will bring the downvotes, but the way we're stuck on Apple these days is far worse than the MS lock-in we revolted about in the 90s.
Here's a wonderful example: two SMS, one from google and one from Deutsche Bank (who, at the time, probably had enough money to care about details) https://twitter.com/salzprojekt/status/707303168703602688
Both SMS have the same purpose: sending me a single-use login token. But only google thought enough about it to change the sentence structure so as to make the code visible without unlocking the phone.
Now, of course, I exclusively use the MT with my Macs & plan on moving to iPad Pro. I've realized that what actually makes someone more efficient and productive are not the tools that seem the most complex or offer the most options. What I've realized is that the biggest impediment to productive general computing is what I'm going to coin as "context exhaustion."
iOS is an OS designed to be orders of magnitude better in this category than a PC OS. A roll-your-own, completely open Linux distro is the opposite. At the end of the day, the tool that requires the least maintenance and repetition of movements is the tool that actually offers the most real productivity advancement. To use my example, once I realized giving up precise input was completely negated by the freedom of zoom gestures, I realized the great economic benefit of the MT. I'm critically faster at navigating interfaces with gestures like double-tap-to-zoom.
The best part is, Apple isn't trying to achieve market dominance the way MS did. They're simply offering high end products in high demand - and if they don't match your vision of what productive work should look like, you'll always have other options that will be much more popular in terms of market share.
A lot of focused complaints like these, I think, are the result of Apple fans not taking advantage of new features that reduce contexts.
Some people like to be productive, others like to control every aspect of their devices. It's okay. Choose based on your needs.
I am amazed by how quickly people forgot in what position Apple was more than a decade ago.
Apple caring about their products has nothing to with money. It just shows that they really care.
I almost completely agree. But IMHO "really care" includes Apple organising its business so that really caring ends up making them money, without its being zero-sum.
Microsoft also has billions of cash, but never have they done such a thing. They even had more time and money than Apple in the 90s.