macOS: Productivity gains of using a Mac and an iOS device

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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.

Lessons in this unit:

0: Introduction
1: How to use the macOS terminal
2: ▶︎ Productivity gains of using a Mac and an iOS device
3: A way to set up automations in macOS easily
4: How to hide a file or folder in macOS Finder
5: How to install a local SSL certificate in macOS
6: Reverting a file to a previous version, on a Mac
7: Take screenshots as JPG on macOS
8: Convert an image or resize it using macOS Shortcuts
9: Concatenating videos on macOS
10: Fix files creation date in macOS
11: Freeing space on a Mac
12: How to add an “Open in Terminal” icon in macOS Finder
13: How to add an “Open in VS Code” icon in macOS Finder
14: How to find the bundle ID of a Mac app
15: How to Fix the "Your CLT does not support macOS 11" error in macOS
16: How to play a sound from the macOS command line
17: How to remove the shadow from window screenshots in macOS
18: Removing all Homebrew stuff
19: Run a Node.js script from your macOS menu bar