Apple Previews New 'Freeform' App to Work Collaboratively

[MacRumors]

Apple today previewed an all-new app called Freeform to work collaboratively on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

The Freeform app offers a flexible digital canvass to work collaboratively in real-time via FaceTime, featuring full support for the Apple Pencil when using an iPad. Users can add images, notes, scribbles, documents, web links, PDFs, and more, and view others' contributions as they add content or make edits.

Collaborators can start a session from FaceTime and see the updates from other users directly in a Messages thread. Freeform will come to iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS Ventura later this year.

Article Link: Apple Previews New 'Freeform' App to Work Collaboratively

 

[_Spinn_]

Very excited to try this out!

 

[macman01101]

This is like excalidraw!! Amazing!

 

[DFZD]

That's Papers with Collaboration. Sweet.

 

[Danfango]

That makes those of us fed up of GoodNotes sync issues very happy 🤣

 

[TheDailyApple]

This could be great for tutoring students. I could see teachers and professors using this for remote work.

 

[walterpaisley]

This is going to be somewhat useless for business collaboration if there's no web accessible version for non-Mac users. Hopefully they release a web-enabled version like they already have for Pages etc.

 

[qacjared]

I wonder what Disney thinks of this name.

Disney owns a channel called Freeform, formerly named ABC Family.

 

[GhostOS]

RIP all the current premium iPadOS collaborating apps that are demanding subscription payments.

 

[PsykX]

Microsoft had Whiteboard, and it's okay but far from what Apple could have done with a creative app like that.

I was really surprised it did not exist yet. Good to see this thing !

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

Now THIS is pod-racing!

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

I wonder what Disney thinks of this name.

Disney owns a channel called Freeform, formerly named ABC Family.

Trademarks are filed into categories or classes; so Apple's Freeform won't be in the same as Disney's.

 

[satchmo]

Looks a lot like Notes...with collaboration.
This likely kills Mural app on iOS. But for other platforms, it should still thrive.

 

[William Gates]

I was just looking at Whiteboard to display work order PDFs in our office, but Microsoft just dropped PDF support in the latest version. Freeform coming just in time.

 

[JippaLippa]

Once again, great tool...if all your collaborators are on the ecosystem.
In my case, all the people I collaborate with on work use windows...
So tough luck.

 

[klasma]

I wonder what Disney thinks of this name.

Disney owns a channel called Freeform, formerly named ABC Family.

Freeform is a generic term, so probably can’t be trademarked.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

This is going to be somewhat useless for business collaboration if there's no web accessible version for non-Mac users. Hopefully they release a web-enabled version like they already have for Pages etc.

You mean you don't work in an all-Apple office?

This has the potential for being another, "Just one more reason..." for accelerating the movement to Macs from WinTel. It's a much smaller reason than others, but sometimes the tipping point turns out to be a small thing.

I wouldn't expect Apple to make a web version of this. They do that when they have a service they'd like to sell to a wider audience, such as Apple Music and Apple TV+. Free apps like this, iMessage, and FaceTime are used as hooks for hardware sales.

Leaving aside the performance benefits of M1/M2, I've felt the biggest corporate benefit to having Apple Silicon Macs is the unified software architecture across all platforms. For the many companies that are Apple-mobile-Windows-desktop and already have a suite of company-exclusive iOS/iPadOS apps, the ability to easily port those apps to Mac is the biggest game changer - why develop/support apps on two or three distinct software platforms (iOS, web, Windows) when you can support just one?

The new collaboration features announced today - not just this one, but the share sheet enhancements, extension of SharePlay, etc. are all signs of Apple taking an aggressive stance on "switch to Apple hardware and get all these goodies at no extra charge." While there will always be a market for "industrial-strength" apps of all descriptions, this kind of baked-in collaboration will be more than enough for many organizations.

But let's get real - there will always be a limited market for business collaboration tools of this sort. Most "teams" remain very top-down. A presenter/trainer will benefit from having a built-in white board app, and every so often they may do a group exercise of some sort, but on the whole most workers do not collaborate with a team, they take marching orders and work independently.

Back in the '90s when I was working corporate IT they still said, "Nobody gets fired for buying Big Blue." In another 5 years or so I can see that being said of Apple. Considering how I've believed that Steve Jobs always modeled his vision for Apple on old-time IBM (closed systems, unified software/OS/hardware development, etc.)... If there was such a thing as Steve Jobs' Ghost, he'd be smiling today.

 

[walterpaisley]

You mean you don't work in an all-Apple office?

I do contract work with customers all the time who run Windows-only offices. From what I've seen, it's still mostly tech companies that have standardized on Macs across the board.

For many businesses, the risk of having something locked into a Mac-only app that isn't edtiable by someone using Windows or Linux is not worth whatever integration benefits there are using Freeform. There are so many very good cross-platform white boarding apps (Miro and Figjam especially), Freeform may be regulated to the same very niche market Pages and Numbers has.

I'm happy to see Apple create this – it's going to be great for people who want something more, well, freeform than Notes – but I would love to see Apple make apps that strive to be the best, not just adequate.

 

[V.K.]

Once again, great tool...if all your collaborators are on the ecosystem.
In my case, all the people I collaborate with on work use windows...
So tough luck.

exactly. I've been looking for a good shared whiteboard app since forever. This one looks great except most of my collaborators are not in the Apple ecosystem. I do have one collaborator who has an iPad so I'll try it out with him. I'll also try it with my students - many of them do have ipads. But what I really want is a good cross-platform app like that.

 

[BWhaler]

Looks great. Hope it is being made by iWork team, which makes apps that rock. I also hope it’s not tied only to FaceTime, so we can use zoom and collab in Freeform.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

I do contract work with customers all the time who run Windows-only offices. From what I've seen, it's still mostly tech companies that have standardized on Macs across the board.

For many businesses, the risk of having something locked into a Mac-only app that isn't edtiable by someone using Windows or Linux is not worth whatever integration benefits there are using Freeform. There are so many very good cross-platform white boarding apps (Miro and Figjam especially), Freeform may be regulated to the same very niche market Pages and Numbers has.

I'm happy to see Apple create this – it's going to be great for people who want something more, well, freeform than Notes – but I would love to see Apple make apps that strive to be the best, not just adequate.

I was being facetious about the all-Apple office (although I have been in all-Apple workplaces for over 20 years).

However, how many all-Windows offices are there? My comments were mostly addressing a far more common reality these days - mobile (mostly iOS, some Android) plus desktop (mostly Windows). The proportion of workers in an enterprise who need a desktop or laptop PC has remained fairly stable for quite some time. The growth in personal computing in the workplace (as well as outside the workplace) has been in mobile - putting a computing device into the hands of the many workers who don't work at a desk, and adding one or more mobile devices to the toolset of workers who do have desktops. Apple is the leader in that movement, and that gives Apple a strong lever for making inroads into the traditional desktop.

Microsoft's pivot to the cloud has been a pragmatic recognition of the fact that they lost control of the future of personal computing when their mobile OSes failed to take root. Microsoft does not have a strong lever for dominating the cloud the way they were able to dominate the desktop for so long, but the cloud is so big they can afford to be just one of several large players.

I don't know why people even bother to mention that "this wouldn't work in my all-Windows office." That should be self-evident. Apple's not in the business of selling applications software. Running an Apple app on Windows means just one more Windows computer that won't be replaced by a Mac/iPhone/iPad.

You want Apple to strive to make apps that strive to be the best. Just what does that mean? MS Office may be dominant and feature-rich, but I don't think that makes it "best." I think it's a perfect example of bloatware - trying to have every feature demanded by any significant corporate user. It's big and overly complex for the casual user.

If you think Freeform would become best by competing for adoption on corporate Windows desktops... No. It will be "best" if it's so appealing and easy to use (within the Apple ecosystem) that businesses are willing to buy Apple products to obtain it. Apple users "playing" with it socially on their personal iPhones/iPads/Macs saying, "I want to have this at work, too." Much of this has to do with learning curve - something learned on their personal devices for fun that can be immediately implemented for work.

So yes, Apple will strive to make Freeform the best - easy to use as soon as it's opened, working reliably, doing exactly what people expect of it and maybe a little more.

 

[Viktor Fury]

RIP all the current premium iPadOS collaborating apps that are demanding subscription payments.

YES. So much this.

Way way too much of the potential of iPads, phones etc. are now tied up in needing you to pump out 10$ per app per month. I'd have no issue if it were reasonable pricing like a buck a month but I'm using less and less apps because they're all going subscription and I just can't justify paying $10 p/m for something like Milanote, or Fantastical etc. Huge kudos to Apple for introducing this.

 

[pcote]

One of the most exciting new of today’s announcement!

For those who want to try something from Apple that does a similar job right now:

- Create a Number document on iPad
- Share it with somebody else on iPad
- Delete the default table
- Activate the drawing tools
- Start collaborating!

Notice Numbers’ strength compared to Pages and Keynote: like Freeform, it has an infinite canvas, but you can do much more than drawing (for example, you can even include audio recording).

It isn’t totally real-time like Figma, FigJam or Miro, but hey, it works today! 😁

 

[groove-agent]

I'm looking forward to this app. If I remember correctly, it won't be available until next year?

 

[bettaboy123]

It doesn’t look like you technically need to share the document with anyone. I didn’t know I wanted a whiteboarding app built into all my Apple stuff until they showed it to me. The Notes app is… fine. But this seems like an incredible use case and I immediately saw how it would be helpful to me every single day.