Apple’s Freeform provides one other digital whiteboard possibility for distant work
Freeform is due out later this 12 months, however its availability on Apple gadgets might maintain it from gaining floor on numerous competing whiteboard apps in the marketplace.
Apple
Apple, at its builders convention this week, unveiled a digital whiteboard app to assist real-time collaboration amongst customers. The slick-looking app, named Freeform, was among the many highlights provided up by Apple execs through the WWDC keynote; they described it as a collaboration device that could possibly be simply used for venture planning or brainstorm periods.
But might its restricted attain maintain Freeform from gaining traction within the enterprise, a lot as Apple’s FaceTime video app — not like Zoom and Microsoft Teams — failed to succeed in a broad viewers through the COVID-19 pandemic?
Freeform may be opened from FaceTime: from there, customers can entry a shared whiteboard house for word taking and drawing (there’s assist for Apple Pencil), and share content material reminiscent of video and PDF information.
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Mouse cursors are seen to all contributors, indicating in real-time the place different customers are centered. You can even faucet on a person’s icon to shortly bounce to what they’re engaged on — which may be helpful when boards are sprawling with info.
Freeform, which is slated to reach later this 12 months, will compete with quite a few collaborative whiteboard apps geared toward use within the office. Mural and Miro are two widespread standalone whiteboard apps, whereas Microsoft relaunched its Whiteboard app final 12 months. Google, Zoom, ClickUp and Box are among the many different software program distributors which have included whiteboards into their merchandise of late.
“With support for both real-time and asynchronous collaboration, whiteboard tools play an increasingly important role in enabling teams to innovate, brainstorm and co-create when they can’t be together — evidenced by the continued growth of startups like Miro,” stated Angela Ashenden, principal analyst at CCS Insight. “By leveraging the group messaging features in iOS/iPadOS/iMacOS and allowing users to invite whole groups to collaborate, Apple seeks to remove the friction of shifting between apps and thereby improve adoption of its newer tools.”
While Freeform is comparable in performance to different digital whiteboard instruments in the marketplace, the app’s availability solely on Apple gadgets means it received’t have as broad a attain, stated Irwin Lazar, president and principal analyst at Metrigy.
“I could see this being useful for individuals or among small teams who are all on Apple’s OS, but I don’t see it having the widespread appeal of more robust tools that are supported across iOS, Mac, and Windows,” stated Lazar.
Ashenden agreed — to a degree. “The catch is that of course all collaborators must be Apple users — but that is the same for all the iWork apps and we still see consistent adoption of these tools by around 5-6% of all employees in CCS Insight’s surveys,” she stated.
Freeform can be out there on iOS 16, iPadOS 16 and MacOS Ventura when it’s launched.