Advice Requested: Top tips for someone new to macOS on cool functionality for using a Mac with your iPhone?

[izzy0242mr]

I'm getting my wife an M1 MacBook Air to upgrade from her ancient Windows laptop that is in pretty bad condition. She's hesitant about switching to a new OS, but I am a long-time Mac user and know it'll be better for just about everything she uses a laptop for (school, browsing, basic stuff, but occasional dabbling in video or photo editing, which is also better on a Mac).

She has an iPhone and I have an Android, so I don't really know all the ways iOS has cool compatibility features with macOS. I know some of the basics, like Handoff, and I'm sure I could Google odd features here and there, but thought I'd just ask this community: what are the most useful things you find about having both a Mac and an iPhone that make your experience using both better? Extra kudos if you found exceptionally useful things after switching from a Windows PC to a Mac while having an iPhone all along.

I want to help make her adjustment as smooth as possible (I've already found a few Windows-esque apps that will help), but I'm more interested in showing her cool ways she can do stuff with her iPhone + Mac that she couldn't ever do with her iPhone and PC.

Thanks!

 

[TorbenIbsen]

Cool and useful depends on the individual user. - And I don't think that you are doing your wife a favor by giving her a Mac and at the same time looking for "Windows-esque" apps for her. Either let her keep using a Windows PC or convince her to move entirely to the Apple world. Unless you go all-in there really is not much point in being in the Apple world.

The very BIG thing she can do with the Mac and the iPhone is to use iCloud synchronization, so her data are on both devices all the time. (iCloud synchronization is not the same as iCloud Files. Two different features).

So cool and useful should be made to mean: Go all-in and NOT use apps from the PC world.

 

[izzy0242mr]

And I don't think that you are doing your wife a favor by giving her a Mac and at the same time looking for "Windows-esque" apps for her.

Really the only thing I added was the alt+tab task switcher, since macOS doesn't let you preview open windows (and just switches between apps). And I don't even know for sure how much she will even use that.

The very BIG thing she can do with the Mac and the iPhone is to use iCloud synchronization, so her data are on both devices all the time.

Can you be more specific? Like what sort of things can she sync? I know photos. And obviously the Messages app syncs messages. But like besides that?

 

[Ben J.]

Can you be more specific? Like what sort of things can she sync? I know photos. And obviously the Messages app syncs messages. But like besides that?

Contacts
Photos
Email
Calendar
Reminders
Notes
Bookmarks
Keychain (Logins/passwords)
iCloud Drive (for storing files)

Another thing that might be useful; she can set up the iphone/mac so that she can pick up calls from the mac when iphone rings, and talk thru the mac mic or earpods and listen on the mac speaker. Very sexy.

In a situation without wifi coverage for the mac, it can be set to use the iphone cellular connection for internet.

I'm sure there's more.