During last yr ’s WWDC keynote , Apple spent a surprising amount of time talking up a stage set of feature of speech focused on the idea of collaboration . The caller undertake to tie together a few disparate thought , such as working together on document in apps like Pages , Keynote , and Numbers with pre - existing communicating feature in Messages and FaceTime .
The decipherable subject matter was that Apple was accept a shot at collaborative office environments like Microsoft Teams and Google Docs . But given those longstanding alternatives with , if not devoted userbases , then at least entrenched user bases , there ’s a query of who on the dot these features are for ?
That said , as someone who works in a small environs dwell altogether by those in Apple ’s ecosystem , it seems like I ’d be the idealistic nominee for such feature . But in comparison to what other company pop the question , Apple ’s maraud feels a bit slapdash and channel - taped together , and my experience using it has been far from tranquil .
File away
Recently I was collaborating with my colleagueJason Snellon looks at Apple ’s late Macs . ( you could control outmy review of the M2 Pro Mac mini . ) Jason shared a draft of his MacBook Pro followup with me via Dropbox , a work flow we ’ve used many fourth dimension in the past tense . Meanwhile , I assay to portion out my own draft brushup , written in BBEdit , from where it was living in iCloud Drive .
This leaven to be a misunderstanding . Not only did the quislingism feature not work right – I repeatedly strike a Copy Link button in the Finder that put absolutely nothing on my clipboard – but it ended up disrupt my own transcript of the review , which suddenly block syncing dependably between my MacBook Air and the Mac mini psychometric test political machine . Instead , I had to go through and use BBEdit ’s built - in file comparison boast to laboriously practice changes on a paragraph - by - paragraph base and make indisputable I had the most current text from the copy on both machines . This bechance multiple time until I went back and un - shared the document with Jason , at which point it suddenly snapped back into sync on my Macs .
My impression is that synchronise between multiple peopleandsyncing between one person ’s different equipment do n’t play well together at present . And yet this is something that third parties like Dropbox have been able to handle for some years , and web - base solutions like Google Docs do n’t have to vex about at all . Relying on these features for serious quislingism is for certain a tough sell when they struggle with this basic functionality .
My attempts to join forces on recent projects regarding Apple ’s new Macs did not go as planned .
Dan Moren
Freeform may cost you
One of the major pavilion collaboration features from last year ’s keynote did n’t cease up cargo ships until near the oddment of 2022.Freeformis a fresh app that plunge with macOS Ventura 13.1 and iOS / iPadOS 16.2 . It ’s intended to be a shared whiteboard where you could enter text and create diagrams , write eminence with Apple Pencil , and even implant single file .
But Freeform also has a caboodle of jumpy edges that make it not quite ready for everyday usage . Until recently , there was a bug that made it so that cognitive content enter via Apple Pencil might disappear when on other platform . ( That was purportedly patched in this retiring workweek ’s iOS 16.3 and macOS 13.2 updates . ) Meanwhile , the Mac rendering of the app , which I was at one dot using to apportion a Freeform board with myself on my iPad and another substance abuser on their iPad , stop up crash every couple moment during function .
One of my full-grown foiling with Freeform is the aforementioned file - implant feature , which I found underwhelming . For example , in one dining table I want to judge to put an editable table in the document , in the same way that Pages permit you implant a mini spreadsheet , but Freeform can only add a link to ( or full copy of ) a spreadsheet , which shows a thumbnail and is n’t editable within Freeform itself . likewise , essay to embed a PDF just put in a thumbnail and a link to the file , rather than let user view and markup PDFs right in the board .
It feels as though Freeform has promise , but its current loop is a long way from stable , and it ’s hard to conceive of anybody using it for serious collaboration efforts .
The Notes you don’t play
This is n’t to say that all of Apple ’s attempts at collaboration are bad . In fact , there are a couple of features that I ’ve been quite proud of with . For example , while Jason and I were forge together on our Mac reviews , we partake a Numbers spreadsheet of benchmark data so we could both fill in the appropriate identification number . That stop up working very well , and I did n’t run into any significant matter . ( Although I was constantly prompted in my iMessage conversation with him to see the late change in our text file , which I base a bit vexatious . )
To my mind , however , the position where collaboration on Apple ’s platforms has really been successful is in the Notes app . I sleep together ! That surprises me as much as anyone , but over the last several days , the baseborn app that was once defined by its skeuomorphic yellow - lined theme background and Marker Felt font has become a power station of Apple ’s batting order . Recently , it even father the power to show , live , where other users ’ cursor are while they ’re blue-pencil a shared note .
I apply shared notes with my wife to keep track of draw of menage and childcare - connect activities , and I also use it with my cobalt - hosts atThe Reboundpodcast to keep show line and share statute title hypnotism during our recording sessions . To me , that ’s the perfect employment of collaboration , because it ’s a quick and soft gap that does n’t require us to download a separate app . If I want to co - write a whole papers , I ’d in all likelihood use Google Documents , but if I just want to apportion a scratchpad with some champion , Notes is where it ’s at . It ’s something that Freeform , and the rest of Apple ’s collaboration lineament , could probably place upright to learn from .
