We'll see. I suspect Freeform will do incredibly well, like Apple Notes.
Especially as FigJam costs $12/month (billed annually) per user, outside of the limited "Starter" free version.
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10 Things You Can Do With the Freeform App in iOS 16.2 and iPadOS 16.2
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We'll see. I suspect Freeform will do incredibly well, like Apple Notes.
Especially as FigJam costs $12/month (billed annually) per user, outside of the limited "Starter" free version.
Availability and Device Compatibility
Apple's Freeform app is available on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It requires iOS 16.2, iPadOS 16.2, or macOS Ventura 13.1 to work, and it is a standalone app that will not be available on devices not able to run these updates.
Can anyone explain the last sentence above? If the device requires those OS versions to work, why is the second half of the sentence necessary?
I'd really like an article on what Freeform can't do in comparison to other infinite canvas apps. Touching on pen options is fine, but I'd rather know about things besides pens/brush options as I don't see this as being a drawing app.
Apple with iOS 16.2 and iPadOS 16.2 is introducing the Freeform app, which is designed for brainstorming ideas, creating sketches, and collaborating with others on projects. Freeform is basically a blank canvas that you can use for anything.
In this guide, we've highlighted the various tools that you can use with the Freeform app on the iPhone and the iPad.
Shapes
There are hundreds of pre-designed "clip art" shapes that are available in Freeform, across the following categories: Basic, Geometry, Objects, Animals, Food, Nature, Symbols, Education, Arts, Science, People, Places, Activities, Transportation, Work, and Ornaments.
You can stack multiple shapes on top of one another with layering, change the color, draw over them, resize them with drag and drop gestures, break the component pieces apart and manipulate the design, add various borders, group them together, adjust opacity, and more. There are a huge number of tools for working with shapes for your projects.
Images, Scans, and Documents
The Freeform app supports all kinds of documents. You can add photos and videos directly from your Camera Roll in the Photos app, or take a photo with your iPhone or your iPad.
Photos and videos that you add to your project can be resized with drag and drop gestures, cropped, viewed in full, and layered with other images and shapes.
You can scan documents using the iPhone or iPad's camera in either color or black and white, add various documents from iCloud Drive, or add any link from Safari. Links and files are shown in little card-like tiles and can also be rearranged on the canvas with drag and drop gestures and layered over shapes, images, and other files for a visual look at your documents you've added.
Stickies
With the Freeform app you can add digital post-it notes, or Stickies as Apple calls them. The Stickies are basically the same as the Stickies app that is available for Mac. You can change the color of Stickies, choosing from one of seven, and add text.
On an iPad, you can use an Apple Pencil to write directly on one of the Stickies, but if you use typed text, you also have various formatting options available like bold, bullet lists, different font sizes, and more.
Text Insertion
Using the text box, any typed text can be inserted anywhere on the Freeform canvas. Text can be as long or as short as you want, and all of the standard formatting options are available for changing font, color, size, and alignment, as well as adding styles like bolding and underlining.
Drawing Tools
Freeform has the same set of drawing tools that you might be familiar with from Markup. You can draw with a finger on the iPhone, or on the iPad, with an Apple Pencil. There are pens, markers, and crayons to choose from, all with adjustable opacity, color, and line thickness.
You can also access an eraser, a select tool for targeted selections of items on your canvas, and a lasso fill tool that fills lines that you draw.
Colors
Freeform has support for a huge range of colors. You can pick a simple color from a grid, choose a color from a spectrum interface, use sliders, or manually type in color hex codes for a specific shade. Favorite colors can be saved to the bottom of the interface, and opacity can be adjusted for any color as well.
An eyedropper tool is available to match any color that's already on the canvas.
Object Movement
Any object in a Freeform document can be quickly rearranged and resized with drag and drop gestures. Tapping provides an interface where you can send an object to the "Back" or the "Front" for layering purposes, but there are no true layers to work with.
Objects can be locked in place, duplicated, and constrained or unconstrained in proportion, useful if you want to change one dimension and not another.
File Management
Freeform boards can be saved as a PDF document or printed out, and they can also be saved to apps like Files and Dropbox. You can also email, text, and otherwise share links to boards with others.
Multiple Boards
You can have multiple Freeform boards, which can be viewed as icons or a list, and sorted in various ways such as by name or date. Groups are available to organize a large number of boards, and there are also separate sections for Recents, Shared, and Favorites.
Collaboration
Freeform has been designed as a collaboration tool, and you can share Freeform boards with other iPhone and iPad users. All Freeform board participants can work on the same board, adding images, texts, links, and more for group brainstorming sessions.
Changes made to Freeform boards are synced for all users in real time, though it is worth noting that collaboration has not yet been fully fleshed out during the beta testing process.
Availability and Device Compatibility
Apple's Freeform app is available on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It requires iOS 16.2, iPadOS 16.2, or macOS Ventura 13.1 to work, and it is a standalone app that will not be available on devices not able to run these updates.
Article Link: 10 Things You Can Do With the Freeform App in iOS 16.2 and iPadOS 16.2
This is the App Store listing for the iPad version of Freeform. I did try to download but it pops up to tell me I don’t have 16.2 (which is true, I have 16.1). I’ll just need to wait until next month.
Freeform
Freeform is a great place to bring your ideas to life. Sketch out a project, design a mood board or start a brainstorming session on a flexible canvas that supports almost any kind of file. And with iCloud, all your boards stay in sync, whether you’re on your Mac, your iPad or your iPhone...
apps.apple.com
Microsoft has MS Whiteboard for a long time. If your company uses Teams, then its likely to have Sharepoint and thus have Whiteboard integrated to Teams.
I just tried the beta and like it very much for taking quick notes which can easily be renamed and saved. I wish the background color could be changed to black (or another color) ... perhaps that will eventually come along. There are some similar apps out there which unfortunately will be hurt but overall I think this is a big plus for the iPad. I'm certainly going to use it more with this capability.
Since it requires that specific OS, it's entirely reasonable to advertise the app as a "feature" of that new OS. (Try not to find a negative in everything you encounter in life.)
You grossly miss the point. The fact that you chose LR 15 years ago while I chose Aperture (which seamlessly integrated with the PS that most of us had been using for years for more complex edits) is irrelevant. There were tens of thousands of users who preferred Aperture to LR - - even if you personally did not. At the time I considered Aperture far superior in fact, bombproof managing tens of thousands of RAW easily keyworded image files. Learning Aperture and building those Aperture libraries was a huge sunk cost that Apple in one fell swoop took away. Do not trust Apple to continue application software in the future.
The fact that some app becomes dominant does not even remotely mean that all other vendors should quit supplying product ! !
MS Word became dominant due to the ubiquitous MS OS. But that does not mean that just because the cubiclees at Chevron or wherever were indoctrinated to Word at work that other word processing apps should cease doing business. For instance personally I have always used alternatives to Word like Text Edit, BBedit, Pages, etc.
Same with Mac Project. Sure MS Project dominates, but there remain many competitors. Mac Project did some things (critical path flow charting for instance) far more easily than other apps at the time did. I built an enterprise workflow around it, and when Apple killed Mac Project it cost me money. There was no simple solution to easily switch from Mac Project to at the time. Do not trust Apple to continue application software in the future.
A similar thing happened last year with Apple's Filemaker app, with which I built workflows around since its ~1985 inception. Filemaker used to provide what they call a run-time capability, and I built enterprise workflows around it for more than a decade. When Apple's Filemaker arbitrarily killed FMP run-time it cost me an entire business model; quite a large personal loss. Do not trust Apple to continue application software in the future.
No, I didn't miss the point. I expressed my opinion.
"There were tens of thousands of users who preferred Aperture to LR - - even if you personally did not."
No doubt there were, and they likely didn't thoroughly test out and think through their decisions very well. If they did, they would have discovered that doing non-destructive edits using brushes/gradients/etc masked edits was far more convoluted/clunky/involved than the elegant manner Adobe came up with. That alone was a non-starter for me. And...knowing that Adobe as a corporation lived and breathed image/color science was a HUGE hint that they would be in the photo processing game far longer than Apple. And indeed that was the case. Adobe reached out to photographers (such as myself) bringing them into their San Francisco facility for discussions about what they liked and didn't like about LR, upcoming features, etc. They took photographer feedback very seriously.
Thus, it was a very easy decision back then predicting how Adobe would dominate in that field (while Apple at some point would fold in that market) and here I am 15 years later continuing to use Lightroom everyday and enjoying it's benefits.
Apple simply could not keep up with Adobe's advances. Which continue to this day with their recent LR release offering AI-based almost 100% automatic/precision masking.
I'm sorry you made a poor decision. Really.
You seem to fail to grasp the past reality. Are you simply making it up? I started using Aperture in 2005, but LR was not even a choice until 2007. And in 2007 most of those of us already using Aperture found LR version 1.0 less desirable.
LR's dominance after Apple stopped Aperture after a decade is beside the point, as is your love of Adobe (since CC I do not, despite having previously owned/renewed the Design Collection for years). The point is not about your preference for image management, or mine. My point has always simply been: Do not trust Apple to continue application software in the future.
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"You seem to fail to grasp the past reality. Are you simply making it up? I started using Aperture in 2005, but LR was not even a choice until 2007."
No, I compared both programs when LR was released, 15 years ago as I said up above: "Regarding Aperture... When I was evaluating both Aperture and Lightroom 15 years ago I tried both programs for a month or so and chose Lightroom."
Before that I was using PS.
"as is your love of Adobe"
Oh stop with the oblique insults.
"Do not trust Apple to continue application software in the future."
I agree with that - But only when a competitor company so strongly dominates a market, as did/does Adobe.
And that's my point.
Excited to try this out even though I don’t have anyone to collaborate with.
There is mac support though. MacRumors, per usual, had mistakes in their article.
For its intended purpose it seems to cover the basic functionality that is expected for this type of application as long as you live in the apple ecosystem.
For an interaction like brain storming on a seemingly limitless sized digital whiteboard requiring an apple device and or IOS account is a big blocker. I thought being able to FaceTime with android folks was a sign of things to come. Guess not.
For an interaction like brain storming on a seemingly limitless sized digital whiteboard requiring an apple device and or IOS account is a big blocker. I thought being able to FaceTime with android folks was a sign of things to come. Guess not.
Just playing around with the 1.0 of this. Very underwhelming! There’s not a thing Freeform does that you couldn’t do already just sharing a Pages layout or Keynote document set up with a big canvas. It seems to share all of the same graphics and drawing tools. The only advantage I can imagine with Freeform would be simultaneous editing, if and when that comes online.
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At my work, we use a web based tool whiteboard called Miro, and it does everything Freeform promises plus a whole bunch more. Cross platform, of course.
This looks like it does WAY more than Freeform, but also costs money if you want beyond the very basics. Freeform is, well, free.
not seeing your problem at all. Yes it is an application, it appears to need certain levels of OS's to properly run, but laughingstock? No, just no
really, here let me send you a link to an article that you can read. https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...form-app-in-ios-16-2-and-ipados-16-2.2370650/
True. But if you like the concept but find yourself bumping up against the limitations of Freeform, you may well want to explore a more robust option. Most people aren't gonna pony up $8/month to make a little look book for their living room or whatever but if you start doing paid work you might wanna step up.Anyone comparing this to Miro is just being ridiculous. Miro costs $8 a month unless you are okay with only 3 boards!
This is FREE..
While your point is valid, and I do indeed use Numbers for a lot of things as you do. 1) need Numbers application or 2) need freeform application. hmmmmm, both free, Numbers also does tables. But honestly, not seeing an issue with a new application being released, use it or not as you prefer
I can see that. I was just pointing out that it is apples and oranges.
I'm surprised at this too. I feel like they were light on big headline OS features and someone glommed onto this as a selling point. To me seems like just a new and very lightweight addition to the iWork suite, alongside Pages, Numbers and Keynote. It's fine and all, but the buildup was way bigger than what's delivered here.