Productivity gains of using a Mac and an iOS device

Productivity benefits of using the Apple devices ecosystem

I’m an Apple user, and somewhat a “fanboy”, since when I bought my first mac in 2004.

I still have the receipt somewhere.

I do not even consider getting a phone that’s not an iPhone, or a computer that’s not a Mac.

One of the reasons is the tight integration between the tools and devices in the ecosystem.

If you are not into this, you might be missing some of those niceties that I can benefit from by being “locked in” into this Apple comfort zone, every day.

In this post I want to talk about a few of those in particular.

The first is AirDrop: I can move around pictures, videos, and other things from one Mac to another by just opening the AirDrop icon in the Finder, and picking the right Mac or iOS device.

Another thing is universal clipboard. Enabling continuity on both a Mac and an iOS device I can copy some text on the Mac and paste it into iOS, and the reverse.

Huge productivity saver.

Another one is instant hotspot setup and discovery. If I’m away from a WiFi network, I can just look up the iPhone in the WiFi networks on the Mac, and enable the hotspot - instant network anywhere I want.

Another nice one is being able to use the Mac to take a picture using the iPhone. This has proven to be quite handy when I was making Arduino tutorials as I could just take a picture at my electronic circuit with the phone.

You just right-click in the Finder, choose “import from iPhone” (or iPad) and take a photo. You can also scan a document.