5 Apple Features That Will Get You Addicted to a macOS and iOS Integration.
There are many reasons to own a personal computer. In today's digital landscape, having a laptop, tablet, and or phone is essential to communicate and perform basic daily functions. As much as well sometimes wish that living off the grid would be nice. Being connected is still crucial.
Within the computer market, there are various ways to access the internet and get work done:
You have your mobile devices, like phones. These phones have become more than just talking devices; these are mini personal computers capable of almost as much as a full-on computer in your pocket.
You have a tablet; these devices are in between phone and computer. Many of these are for content consumption like videos, books, news, and online shopping, but a select few tablets rival a laptop, such as the new iPad Pro from Apple.
You have a computer; these come in desktop and laptop varieties equipped with more business-side applications and operating systems.
We are the most comfortable with computer interfaces and have used them most of our lives.
Many of us use all three of these devices throughout our days and weeks. It is essential to ensure that our tasks and data work seamlessly from device to device. Even having different operating systems, macOS, iPadOS, and iOS makes the process of seamless integration a breeze to use. Here are five things that every Mac and iPhone user needs to know about making integration a no-brainer.
AirDrop
Sharing photos and files across your devices on your home network is super easy. Just find the device you want to send it to, open it, and send it too, and poof. It's there, and if the device uses the same Apple ID account, there is no need to accept it; it is just there, ready to few. Some perfect use cases for this would be to send a document over to your iPad so that you can have someone sign it using the Apple Pencil instead of a trackpad or mouse on a computer. AirDrop is not a hidden feature by any means. AirDrop has been around for a while. Many people have taken full advantage of it for sending photos of the day's events while your group sits around the room in the evening.
iMessage
The next thing that makes working across devices seamless is iMessage. There is a lot to like about iMessage, and with many of the new features, it is turning from a simple texting platform into a full-on messaging and social media platform. Think Slack or Teams. Sharing photos, video, audio, and even Gifs is a breeze. For those group chats, you can now have inline replies and mentions. There is so much to like about iMessage except for the tiny problem that non iOS devices in group chats can have limited features. Read more about iMessage here.
Scan to Text
One of the newer features of macOS and iOS is the scan to text feature in the camera. Gone are the days of someone handing you a printed document that you need to type up. Just take your camera out, point it at a document and a miniature copy text icon appears onscreen. Select it. All the text in the frame becomes selectable to copy and paste into your document. It is perfect for transcribing printed documents like PDFs and even handwritten notes (make sure the handwriting is neat).
Universal Copy and Paste
Now the scanning to copying is all well and good, but you're probably not writing out a document on your phone. It would help if you still got it to your computer or iPad. Now you could copy into a Word or Pages document on your phone using the mobile versions of those apps and sync them to the cloud, but that takes too long. As long as your devices are again signed in to the same account, then you can copy things to your clipboard and paste them anywhere across devices. It comes in handy, especially when using the scan to text feature. No more waiting to sync mobile documents back to your computer; just hit copy and paste. Type something up on your computer, hit Control-V, and then tap into a text field on your phone, and everything is there just like you had it.
Side Car
In typical Apple fashion, the is ONE MORE THING. SideCar. Have you ever been traveling in a hotel or coffee shop with your MacBook and needed that second monitor that you have back at the office. Well, if you have an iPad with you now, you do. Either wirelessly or by USB, add your iPad to your computer as a second display in the display preferences menu. Especially if you have the larger 12.9" iPad Pro and a 13" MacBook Pro, it now gives you two of the same size screens to spread your windows and speed up your workflow. Another use case for this is using your iPad and Apple Pencil as a Wacom, like a tablet. Even though Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop are not entirely on the iPad, you can still take advantage of the ProMotion screen and Pencil with all the tools of the desktop-class Adobe applications.
Maybe you don't own a Mac or iPhone, or perhaps you only have one and use "the other phone or computer." But for those in the "Apple ecosystem," some call it the "cult of Mac." You can increase your productivity and workflows with seamless integrations that work for multiple industries and users.