As good as Apple's desktop-specific OS X is, it's not perfect. Every once in a while you'll find yourself hankering for a bit of Windows-inspired intervention. To that end, many turn to Parallels to get their fix, and the newest iteration has just been unveiled. For those unfamiliar, Parallels is a desktop virtualisation platform that allows users to access Windows-specific applications on their Apple device. The latest version, Parallels 11, will bring many of Microsoft's key applications over to the Mac, including old favourites the likes of Excel and Outlook.

Beaten to the punch

It will also introduce a few of the new elements we've seen for Windows 10, the most intriguing of which is the OS' digital assistant Cortana. As Engadget points out, now users will be able to have Cortana on their Mac device well before Siri makes her official appearance, which certainly feels like a slight troll on the part of Parallels.

The Coherence Mode that Parallels utilises, also makes it possible for users to use a number of Windows-optimised applications on their Mac desktop, and not have to switch to the Parallels 11 partition of their hard drive.

Parallels has also released a video (found below) detailing just how well Cortana works on a Mac desktop, as it can even use an Apple computer's location data to empower many of the voice-aided aspects of Microsoft's digital assistant. As such, it almost looks indistinguishable from a native OS X application.

Now the only question is, whether or not Apple will try and push a Siri-integrated update to OS X before the year's end, or include it in OS X El Capitan next year some time.