Just connect, as EM Forster said. He may not have thought about the iPhone and Mac because they weren’t around at the time, but Apple seems to be taking the mantra to heart. Many of the two products’ newest features come to life when they meet another Apple device: the new iMac may look the same on the outside, but it has new powers on the inside.
Apple executives Colleen Novielli of Mac Product Marketing and Stephen Tonna of Platform Product Marketing sat down The independent to talk about how combining the capabilities of different Apple products has become even more useful with the latest software.
Last month, a redesigned iMac was released, with the same 24-inch display and seven different color options as its predecessor, but with a much more powerful Apple processor at its heart. In addition, new software was released for the Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, with functions that allow these different devices to work as one.
Continuity is the umbrella title for ways in which you can, for example, share content between different gadgets. If you have widgets – those specific types of apps that display extra information or have greater interactivity than most app icons – on your iPhone or iPad, you can now have them on your Mac desktop too. Even, and here’s the new element introduced with the latest software, called macOS Sonoma, if those apps aren’t on your Mac.
Apple has been building Continuity features for years, with AirDrop being an early example. This means you can easily transfer documents between devices. Stephen Tonna, who manages to be intensely focused and almost casually relaxed at the same time, explains how it got to this point.
“Remember, when we first introduced AirDrop, it was because we were in that transition as an industry of going completely wireless and replacing the USB drive. We’ve been away from that for a long time. AirDrop is still the easiest, fastest, and most seamless way to transfer content between devices and if you have an iPhone with a lot of photos and you want to share them quickly, this is the best way to do that. AirDrop works wherever you are. You don’t have to set up anything, pair devices, check if you’re on the same network or any other hassle. In fact, you don’t even need to be near a WiFi network, because it creates its own connection.
Continuity also works with other types of connections. “As long as you’re signed in with the same Apple ID, it just starts working. With your iPad and Apple Pencil you can be creative on your iMac,” Tonna explains. That works because you can set devices so that scribbles on your iPad with an Apple Pencil can appear on your Mac screen. You can also set your Mac to unlock when it senses your Apple Watch is nearby, play content from your iPhone on the Mac’s larger screen, send and receive text messages on both your Mac and phone, and more .
“What Continuity is really about is this rich set of features that let you switch seamlessly between your devices, allowing you to be even more creative with the things you do in your daily life. Our main superpower is that we can combine these things so that no complicated installation is required.”
For the iMac, the new processor also helps. Colleen Novielli describes the new computer with joy and pride, saying, “It’s the best and best-selling all-in-one in the world.” The iMac and Continuity, she adds, “Just bring your Mac to life for all the devices and users in a home or small business. Continuity works on all our Macs, but the iMac is great because the huge 24-inch display gives you plenty of space. Users say it makes them incredibly productive.”
As Tonna adds, you can use it to make FaceTime calls easier. “For example, I start a FaceTime call when I’m out for a walk, and when I get home I want to continue that FaceTime call on my iMac. Everything is transferred to the iMac with one click.”
A new feature called NameDrop has been in the news recently, with one police department thinking it was risky (it’s not). You bring two iPhones together and you share your contact information. No more “I’ll call you and you have my number” and you have to enter their name afterwards. I wonder how important that element of surprise is to Apple?
Tonna says: “Sharing contacts when you meet someone new used to be cumbersome. We deliver this in a unique way, and the wow factor is that the animation is simply beautiful. But it is also a very functional animation. It really tells you what’s happening. If you choose to share it, your contact literally switches between devices. It’s always nice to get the wow factor. But ultimately, we create these features so that users get more value from their products.”
Apple doesn’t have this seamless connectivity within itself. Samsung already lets you transfer things between different products bearing its name, and Huawei does the same. Chipmaker Qualcomm just announced Qualcomm Seamless, which will work with products from different brands, running different operating systems. Why is continuity something Apple thinks it can do best?
“The reason we can do better comes back to the core values at Apple, the fact that we make the hardware, the software and the services. The service component is critical because iCloud is the connector that allows you to seamlessly switch between devices in a secure and private way. The hardware and software components come from our ability to combine technologies like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to do things like understand when devices are near each other and enable features like Handoff.”
Handoff lets you transfer conversations from a phone to a Mac, or copy and paste between devices. Find a document on your iPhone, for example choose Copy and then press Paste on your iMac and watch it appear. As Novielli says, it’s a way to make things better. “People have ingrained behaviors, certain ways of doing things that have been possible through technology for a long time. So if someone needs to get a file from here to there, they think they have to open the email, attach the file, maybe zip the file. file. And then go to the other device. Our philosophy is: let’s let people do things in a better way.”
And as Tonna says, the initial possibility of a continuity function is rarely the final iteration. “We always think beyond what we can do, but it really comes down to solving an immediate user need and then listening to the feedback.”
This means that we can expect even more from Continuity in the future. Novielli sums it up this way: “Continuity is one of those things that allows technology to get out of the way and not interrupt your productive flow. This way you can be as productive as possible all day long.”