With the new iPadOS and iOS 16.2 Beta updates, Apple finally released freeform! Wanted to do a quick rundown of the experience and how it all works!
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Time Stamps
0:00 – Intro
0:55 – Devices Used
1:17 – FreeForm iCloud Settings That Must Be Turned On
1:50 – FreeForm Home Page navigation
2:10 – New Board
2:18 – Light Mode vs Dark Mode
2:40 – FreeForm Board Navigation
2:56 – FreeForm Tool Bar
3:31 – Add and Format Text
3:52 – Add Media Types
4:18 – Percentage Scaling max and min
4:44 – Renaming Board
4:52 – Sharing Freeform Board
5:15 – Live Collaboration Demo
5:39 – New Paint Tool
6:41 – Adding Image From Folder
7:15 – Deleting images from board
7:32 – Changing Post it Color
7:45 – Facetime Calls on Board
8:05 – Print Freeform board
8:11 – Export as PDF
8:20 – Annotate PDF?
8:50 – Adding a Link
#m2ipadpro #ipados16 #freeform
Freeform looks like a perfect app for commercial use, but it is not available on any other platform except iOS/iPadOS/macOS. unlike teenagers in schools, we really can’t bully our business partners into buying apple stuff and use Freeform instead of many other cross-platform solutions which came long before Apple. i hope Apple would at least make it available on web, otherwise it would probably die quicker before it even go public.
ya, Apple tend to limit things inside its own ecosystem…
The graphic tools inside Freeform are impressive! You can group and lock… you can use all geometry as MASKS (for instance make a rainbow colored giraffe with the right background). When you have made something cool, you can long-press and drag it to another app (or photos app).. etc etc.
IMPRESSED!
This is going to be HUGE for me as a college math professor for when I need to do online office hours. I will share my Freeform app window on my Mac and use my ipad and pencil to write/draw. I currently use ExplainEverything, but this is going to be MUCH easier. Freeform needs tithe ability to import a window to a live web se like EE, and well as the ability to import PDFs files as images that can be marked up in FreeForm, but I have found ways around those limitations already. Total game changer for me.
A trick i’ve been using is to open goodnotes on ipad and mirror the screen on the mac
explain everything is so buggy
You can import pdfs and other documents directly from the files app, it’s in the picture setting on the taskbar
Don’t forget about continuity camera on macOS Ventura which is the top feature on the macOS update this year, but it automagically lets you use your iPhone with the rear camera as the webcam so way better quality for the audience and free assuming you already have an iPhone. But if you forgot your iPad and still wanted to show your desk it lets you show your face with max camera and then hold iPhone over desk and with desk mode shows with the wide angle lens what you’re doing on the desk. Works in FaceTime and will for zoom and teams the iPhone shows up as an option to pick the camera but I think it will default to it also which should expose more people to it that may never have know me about the feature.
I went back to the beta just to try this. It was the key feature aside from external display that I was looking forward too. Going to be using it for mind mapping.
A creative and collaborative power house! Well done Apple. Looking forward to start using it once it’s released. Great video! Thank you.
I’m impressed with how easy this app is to use. I hardly use my Apple Pencil. But will definitely use it with this.
This is going to make note taking exactly what I’ve wanted for a while. I’m a freeform note taker, so this will obviously be perfect for me.
It looks a good white boarding app. Remarkably similar to Concepts, but this has more in-depth graphic capabilities and is available across many platforms, iOS / iPad OS, Windows, Android, and Chrome OS (except Mac OS which has no intrinsic touch display or pen support). The plus points for Freeform is it’s bundled with iOS / iPad OS and collaboration will be available from day one. Concepts’ canvas zooms in to out range is larger at 1600% to 0% but is ‘infinitely’ expandable from left / right / up / down (conceptually maybe, but there must be limits imposed by a devices RAM / storage capabilities). But it is a paid app based monthly or annual subscription model and collaboration / Team Share is currently in development.
It’s much more pleasant to edit / move things around in Freeform. Concepts is superior in many ways (at least for now), but I’m already using Freeform as my go-to mind map tool because of this easiness of moving things around. I hope for some integration with Apple Notes in the future, would be great to be able to embed infinite canvas into note.
Last week, I was tinkering with Windows Ink menu and I came across Microsoft Whiteboard there, which has the same idea behind it and the tools and the workflow are really similar. So both OSs have this collaboration centered apps in them, though Apple have the lead in this because whatever they build, it works well throughout their ecosystem, so phones and tablets are in too. Windows Whiteboard doesn’t have an Android version afaik.
It reminds me of MS Onenote which it the most versatile application of this kind. Free form is in the right direction, but it lacks of a lot of functionality, but maybe for a free app is ok I guess. Don’t forget that there are a lot of paid apps in the apple ecosystem and many companies will lose a lot of revenue if Apple launches a similar or better application free embedded in the operating system. Some functionality I would love to see is the ability to save different canvas in separate folders and the support for additional languages in the text recognition.
Microsoft also has their Whiteboard app. Though this might be better, especially if one is in the Apple ecosystem
Onenote is excellent. I can use it on laptop or iPad and can read it while on the go on my mobile phone. There is no ecosystem barrier for onenote. Pretty useful app.
Not a OneNote user, but I‘d like to know what you guys think about the comparison to Miro.
I’m not a beta person, but Freeform is the feature I’ve been most interested in since WWDC. Thank you so much for posting this. I suppose my question is about collaboration. I work in a university, and you would not believe (okay, maybe you would) how far behind the curve most of my coworkers are when it comes to tech. I’d be very interested to know from you and other commenters how the collaboration features work with people on Windows, or without an iCloud account.
Your best bet would be to use a browser based web app just like free form so that your buddies using windows or Linux or android can also collaborate. One such service is miro
My two questions are whether you can change the background (to something darker) and if when you copy and paste tables from Numbers or Excel if those tables still contain formulas and row/column labels, or just paste the values, or don’t paste at all
@oljobo thanks!
Taking notes in Freeform with the Apple Pencil is excellent, there is just enough stabilization, whereas scribble or even procreate has a steep learning curve to make your writing neat. Also with highlights/images/colour blotches you have the ability to move the layers from back to front! It’s awesome so far.
Excited for this! I’m new to the iPad mini with a Pencil and felt like I was missing something simple to draw and take notes with without going full on procreate.
This is the app I have always wanted Apple to make! Other apps have some similar tasks but none bring them all together in an easy to use, intuitive format like Freeform. Look forward to using this.
FreeForm is the one thing I’ve been waiting for with great anticipation. To me, it’s not really a collaboration tool but a combination notes app and brainstorming/organizing app. I haven’t done too much with it in the brief few weeks since it came out (I don’t do betas!), but I can see it’s going to be extremely useful.
One edge case that I’m thinking about for the future is using FreeForm as a kind of Prezi replacement. It looks as though there’s a heck of a lot you can do, presentation-wise, that traditional presentation apps can’t. Not quite sure about that one yet, but I’ll be playing with it.