I’ve been an Apple user for 40+ years, and I really don’t want to tally up my lifetime customer value to Apple. However, I don’t trust them for software which is supposed to support collaboration. Personally focused software, great OS, and beautiful hardware yes, collaboration, no.
I almost never work in an environment with 100% homogeneous hardware and OS. A large portion of my career has been working as a contractor or consultant. Each new client has a different stack of tools. Any tools for collaborative work need to be as cross-platform as possible. For many of my jobs the tools also need to work in all regions without VPN (no Google in China).
Even though I have a Mac, when a prospective job applicant sends a resume in Pages, it’s a disqualifier, because they don’t understand that Windows users can’t read that.
Until Freeform works on Windows and Android, it’s not collaborative, it’s a walled garden.
I’m not following the dichotomy here. “Collaborative” doesn’t mean open and universal and free and cross platform… it means collaborative.
I also wouldn’t use Freeform (or Pages, or Reminders) in a professional capacity where I need to work with lots of people in heterogenous environments.
But I love Freeform (and Reminders) at home with family. I find them very collaborative AND a walled garden. The two seem like entirely compatible attributes.
Collaborative to me means I can easily add a person to a team and not have to spend a lot of time or money getting them different hardware or OS than what they already have access to. Depending on the particular situation, it's possible that Apple tools are collaborative, but even in the Bay Area working in design and engineering, I've never worked anywhere (including Apple itself) where everyone was on MacOS 100% of the time.
To me, the bottom line is that "collaborative" and "cross-platform" are not synonymous, and are distinct properties.
> Collaborative to me means I can easily add a person to a team and not have to spend a lot of time or money getting them different hardware or OS
This is assigning meaning to that word that just doesn't exist. There are separate variables at play:
- Collaboration features
- Platforms supported
- Cost
If I take what you said at face value, the software is no longer collaborative when it becomes cost prohibitive, but that doesn't make sense either. The software can be none or any or all of those things. If your criteria requires all three, then pick software that meets all three. Your need for all three has no bearing on how effectively collaborative this is for people who only need one.
In my mind, this tooling is collaborative, full stop.
This tooling is not cross-platform*.
If your needs require both boxes to be checked, a different tool like Miro is probably for you.
- *Although it does have a web interface, which admittedly I haven't used, so I can't comment on how effective it is.
Within a family, that can work, but even with my partner, who hates Windows so much that she uses a personally supplied Mac despite her company not officially supporting it, we use Google docs to work on stuff together.
It's partially familiarity, but also portability and functionality. I go back and forth between Microsoft and Google suites depending on work situations, and despite how much Apple has worked on Pages, Numbers, Keynote, etc., they're still not as complete or common as Microsoft or Google. Adding a third set of tools is a little like being fluent in 3 languages. It's too much of an overload.
The only professional situation where I've seen any of these Apple applications commonly used is Keynote by design teams. The typography and alignment tools in Keynote are better than Google and Microsoft, but those same design teams forget that no one outside of current Mac user can do anything with a .key file. Yes, I know iCloud on the web kinda sorta works, but it's so not Apple's first priority. Microsoft is still struggling to make their suite work as universally as Googles, and Apple is way behind here.
If I didn't know other tools and I never needed to work with people outside of the walled garden, I might put more time into using Apple's "productivity" (AKA iWork) apps.
once you start using that kind of app with literally anybody, you start building a mass of users that's gonna end up dragging others into that walled garden or exclude others from using it. hell, even when you just start using it alone, you begin to accumulate stuff that's gonna weigh you down, and make it harder to switch, to pick something else, and make it more likely that you're just gonna continue using this thing. and then perhaps use it for collaboration. which is gonna work just fine at first, if you happen to have apple users around. but then, whoops, somebody doesn't have an apple device. depending on value of that content and value of collaboration, it could be very, very awkward, to force someone to use it, or to bargain with someone about using it, which will probably end up at 'well, you could buy a used apple device? or something? idk'. that's...not great.
ability to let people collaborate freely and conveniently is one of the aspects of collaboration. if there's no way for someone to collaborate (such as, no app on other platforms,
so no way to collab without owning/buying an apple device), there's just no collaboration. it's anti-collaboration, even. others are specifically prohibited from collaborating, unless they clear some kind of requirement.
with closed stuff like this, you always open yourself up to a future scenario where somebody will either not be able to use it and get excluded, or get forced to use it. it's not even on the web. it's a proprietary format. it's a dead end for content. i'd be very interested to hear what kind of export this thing does, if it even can do that.
honestly, these kinds of apps and walled garden things should get shot at much sooner, without even getting the benefit of 'well it's just for personal use/for apple users - it's fine' (no it's not. soon usage spreads to other things, and sooner people become entrenched in proprietary stuff and drag others in with them), before they end up becoming a bigger problem, like imessage bubbles have, or whatever interoperability thing has. the choice that you're making by choosing things like this is 'am I comfortable with selling a $429 iPhone SE or a $329 iPad to my friend/my colleague/my family/my kid/some random person, just so they would be able to get on a thing with me'. in walled gardens, you end up not just operating as a 'user/customer', but also as a salesman for that company.
I'd argue if it was completely incidental then it's network effect. If it's deliberately done to achieve anticompetitive outcome it's more than that. In the case of Apple, we know they do these things for anticompetitive reasons. They are on the record in email chains discussing how they weaponised iMessage in exactly that way. So I think they don't get the benefit of a benign assumption here ... it's more than likely they are specifically doing this as a way to drive a wedge that forces people into their ecosystem against their will.
yes, and? (edit: well, actually, no, you're just ignoring the lock-in part. but even if so,) in this case, it's a network that's more limited than others in terms of who's able to access it and what hurdles they have to overcome. like, network effect can be pretty bad, but this, mixed with ecosystem lock-in, is even worse.
I tried to read your message few times with an open spirit but I don't buy it.
The moment I, for any reason, I cannot collaborate unless I get my hands back on an Apple device (and possibly Apple id which is even more complicated) it stops being a collaborative software.
I sort of have an idea on what he meant. Everyone in my family and close friends have at least one Apple device and the “collaborative” environment in that sense is wonderful, especially with Reminders, notes, sharing files etc.
It however fails once you go outside.
Might be a stupid analogy so let’s net focus on this but I sort of see it like this:in my country, we can speak our language and it works for collaboration. Once you go outside, it fails. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t successful as a “collaborative” tool for that environment.
I think you and op just might have different scales of where you think it should work well enough.
More like everyone entrenched in the ecosystem. I can't imagine this is a super great experience for someone who only has an iPhone SE but non-Apple everything else. Especially when the creator is used to the canvas of their 27" Studio Display.
> Is Slack, Teams, or Trello not collaborative because it won't run on my XBox360?
This is not their point because your XBox360 is not something you use to perform your job (or, at least, it's not something most people use to perform their jobs). If I use a Windows computer for work and I can't use this software to collaborate on that work, then this isn't really "collaborative" software in the practical sense.
You’re expressing an ideology here. It’s not pragmatic and doesn’t reflect real world experience.
Yes, I have friends who don’t have Apple devices and I can’t use Freeform with them, so of course there are limits.
I recently sent my 85 year old mother an iPad so she can more easily watch videos and do video calls. She can use Freeform with me, but there is no chance she would be able to use a Linux or Windows collaboration tool, or even something web based.
By your logic, there is no such thing as a collaborative tool, but this is obviously not what people mean.
I agree with brookst. The fact that most Apple first-party software only works on Apple devices is a given, and any time you call an app “collaborative” it’s a given that we’re talking only about the devices which can run the software.
What are we supposed to call it when they add collaboration to one of their apps? “Adding walled garden” is nonsensical, because to whatever extent it’s a walled garden, that was already the case before adding collaboration.
I’ve worked in design companies where every machine… including the bookkeeper’s, was a Mac. This app Won’t run into any issues in that environment.
It’s like every time somebody posts a commercial SaaS app people will ask if it can be self-hosted. We know what these things are. Seems fair to start there.
I've worked and interviewed at several tech companies that were nearly or fully Mac-exclusive. The only two exceptions that come to mind was at one where the finance guy had a Windows laptop because he lived in Excel and at one where one of the backend guys ran a custom built Linux tower, both of whom were the oddballs in their respective companies with everybody else toting MacBooks.
> I cannot collaborate unless I get my hands back on ...( Apple id which is even more complicated) it stops being a collaborative software.
getting an Apple id doesn't require apple hardware and most of the tools are available via icloud.com. if an apple id prevents something from being a collaborative tool then google docs, Microsoft 365, Slack, et al are not collaborative tools.
You sound like a non-Facebook user complaining about Facebook messenger not being collaborative enough. Fair point (can't use FB if you're not subscribed) but completely not representative of the greater population or (in this case) Apple's target market.
Meh. The moment I, for any reason, cannot collaborate unless I get my hands on a computer it stops being collaborative.
Or not. 'Collaborative' doesn't mean 'accessible by anyone'. Collaborative just means capable of supporting two or more parties working together, and freeform clearly meets the criteria...
Very interesting that people can have such different definitions.
I suppose your view is that any tightly controlled software can’t be collaborative? Like Epic, that likely helps your health care professionals and labs exchange info and collaborate on your care, or air traffic control systems where lots of people collaborate to route planes and control airspace.
Those kinds of things aren’t collaborative software because they run on limited platforms and access is tightly controlled. Is that congruent with your viewpoint?
Ask apple why does it take them up to January 4th 2023 to contact me to recover my account since I've forgot the password. I'm locked out of my account since Nov 19th
I think the walled garden is the whole point here, and you are not the target for this app. It’s no coincidence that the sample they show on their devices is for a student (high school?) newspaper. This is like the blue texts in iMessage. Get them while they’re young, and they’ll be hooked for life. Imagine the shame of being excluded from a high school group project because, “we’re all doing it in Freeform, sorry.” Better ask mom for an iPhone just to be safe.
Aren't US schools blanketed with Chromebooks? That's really the only market where iMessage monopoly is a thing. The rest of the world uses cross-platform options.
I haven‘t checked recently, are there any good alternative tablets, running Android maybe?
I personally think iPads are insanely powerful and without (serious) competition.
Having used an iPad for my last couple years in high school, the machines were a total joke. Totally useless for english and history classes, and barely usable for math and science courses. When people weren't using them for classwork, they became instant distractions. The administration tried implementing MDM but ended up finding that the only solution was taking away the iPads during instructional time. Not to mention, ushering in iPads actually forced our computer science classes to shut down, since students no longer had machines with Python interpreters on them.
The iPad is insanely powerful and without serious competition, but completely useless in a classroom setting. Most people would prefer the laptops we had, teachers and students alike.
> Even though I have a Mac, when a prospective job applicant sends a resume in Pages, it’s a disqualifier, because they don’t understand that Windows users can’t read that.
Windows users can't even read some doc versions. Resumes should either be text or pdf. Anything else is a gamble.
There's also a high chance that even if the .doc file is readable, that it'll be displayed incorrectly, even if the user is opening it with Word but especially if they're using something else that can open Word docs (WordPad, TextEdit, LibreOffice, Pages, and many others).
Absolutely agree that PDF is the best choice. Readable and correctly renderable by just about everything, and even fixes the problem of missing fonts.
I guess you don’t realize Microsoft has been doing this with .docx and .xlsx for years. They claim it’s an open standard but it doesn’t work flawlessly in anything but their software. It’s more subtle but the same type of walled garden trickery.
Someone's CV in .docx would be readable at least and, most of the time with intact formatting (especially if the author didn't use spaces as indentation), even if opened in some {libre,star,open}office or whatever, heck, on modern Windows you can open .docx in Wordpad, ie you don't even need MS Office on Windows to open .docx.
But I don't even know what is the Pages[0] format, extension, what apps can open it on Windows.[1]
[0] like really, I never in my life needed this.
[1] yes, you just can open it in 7z, but the similar can be done with .docx too.
I don't mean to be dis-charitable to your comments but it sounds like you're saying that people should use the currently bigger walled garden over the currently smaller walled garden?
> Even though I have a Mac, when a prospective job applicant sends a resume in Pages, it’s a disqualifier, because they don’t understand that Windows users can’t read that.
Hiring is hard enough. You want to know something you can't possibly know, so you have to use very imperfect, approximate signals. I don't know why you'd want to kneecap yourself on purpose like this. You might as well just roll dice and hire when 7 comes up.
> Hiring is hard enough. You want to know something you can't possibly know, so you have to use very imperfect, approximate signals. I don't know why you'd want to kneecap yourself on purpose like this. You might as well just roll dice and hire when 7 comes up.
You have to use the signals you have.
And if the signal someone has sent for certain professional roles is "I don't understand appropriate formats to send documents in" then that is the signal you got.
> Hiring is hard enough. You want to know something you can't possibly know, so you have to use very imperfect, approximate signals. I don't know why you'd want to kneecap yourself on purpose like this. You might as well just roll dice and hire when 7 comes up.
In this case the signal is that the candidate would probably be a difficult colleague, since they couldn’t be bothered to spend the extra 30 seconds it takes to export to PDF from Pages. Or they didn’t know how, also a disqualifier.
Honestly, I kinda get it. I'm tired of people pushing Xcode dotfiles and __MACOSX folders to the main branch. If you're not conscious of the machine you use and the formats you employ, how can you be expected to collaborate effectively?
I've been doing this for decades and I don't even know what an Xcode dotfile is.
Maybe you mean .DS_Store files? That's probably best described as a Finder dotfile... For that, maybe just add the line ".DS_Store" to your .gitignore (or the equivalent for your SCM software)?
>Even though I have a Mac, when a prospective job applicant sends a resume in Pages, it’s a disqualifier, because they don’t understand that Windows users can’t read that.
or maybe they do understand, and are self selecting away from people like you...
Who would ever only want to work for a company that exclusively uses Apple products? That is an insane level of fanboyism that doesn't indicate a fully rational actor.
Apple's approach to collaboration is particularly embarrassing when you have tools like Figma that enable teams to work seamlessly across devices and platforms.
Just a few days ago I needed to edit a CSV file from a codebase I was working on. Opened it up in Numbers, changed a couple of cells, saved it. Later I realized none of my changes were in the CSV file. Turns out Apple saved it as some kind of other proprietary file. From now on I'll just open my files in VSCode, because that's easier than worrying about getting sucked into the Apple ecosystem.
It sounds like you need to export instead. CSV export isn't under save because it doesn't retain all the details of the document (such as formatting). This behaviour is standard and can be seen in MS Excel, LibreOffice, etc. as well.
> CSV export isn't under save because it doesn't retain all the details of the document (such as formatting). This behaviour is standard and can be seen in MS Excel, LibreOffice, etc. as well.
Office warns me my changes will be lost and offers to change to XLSX. Numbers just changes it silently, without warning.
Opened it up in Numbers, changed a couple of cells, saved it. Later I realized none of my changes were in the CSV file. Turns out Apple saved it as some kind of other proprietary file.
Yes, the Numbers program saved it as a Numbers document.
Just like Excel saves Excel files.
That's why it's called "import," not "open."
When you pressed Save, a Save As dialog popped up asking for a name. If you had just saved it to the same file, there would be no Save As dialog. It wouldn't ask you for a name because it knew the name.
This is standard across every app on every Mac going back decades. I don't use Windows very often, but I believe it's the same there, too. You aren't asked for a filename if you're updating the same file.
It doesn't sound like an Apple problem, it sounds like you didn't pay attention, and when the computer did what you asked, you blamed the computer. There's nothing Apple or Microsoft or anyone else can do about that.
You're right, Excel does save back to CSV. It discards half your changes because they can't be saved in a CSV, modifies anything that could possibly be a date, and rounds random numbers, THEN it saves it as a CSV.
No, you can't. It will import and re-export every cell, not just the one you modify. This includes interpreting dates and rounding numbers that exceed Excel's max value (instead of interpreting as a string)
They have a small banner at the top to warn about this, but it doesn't even address the things that were already lost the instant you opened it.
Numbers opens the CSV file, gives the user a screen to control import settings, and supports exporting as a CSV with custom delimeters.
Excel does save back to CSV. It discards half your changes because they can't be saved in a CSV, modifies anything that could possibly be a date, and rounds random numbers, THEN it saves it as a CSV.
Numbers makes this an explicit "Export" option because silently saving these types of changes is super dangerous.
Yeah this was the point I was trying to make. Obviously I didn't pay attention, but like...if I open a CSV file, my intuition tells me that if I click "save", it will save to the original CSV file. That's how most other programs work. Just because Excel also does it, doesn't make it a good idea. It's a bad idea and it's a hallmark of legacy software.
Excel will just silently modify everything and "save" it back as a CSV. I would rather that both Excel and Numbers only saved to CSV as an Export option.
Out of the choices out there, Apple allows for the easiest collaboration. Airdrop for me is the biggest player, integrated iMessage into MacOS and every other OS. Planning a trip with just these two things is much easier than whatever I could’ve accomplished between two Linux or two windows computers. Unless I used WhatsApp or something like that, but that’s WhatsApp allowing collaboration, not Windows
>Even though I have a Mac, when a prospective job applicant sends a resume in Pages, it’s a disqualifier, because they don’t understand that Windows users can’t read that.
Yes, there are solutions if everyone is onboard with the arrangement. However, sharing a .pages or .key file with a prospective employer or client is asking them to do extra work, and is rude at best and a deal killer at worst.
As a corollary, sharing .7zip or .tar or .rar when a .zip would do just fine are equivalent mistakes.
For me sending anything but a PDF is a deal killer. It's just odd to me to send your resume in a document format that supports editing. Take the time to make it into a PDF.
Until Freeform works on Windows and Android, it’s not collaborative, it’s a walled garden.
Perhaps the solution is for Android to make a better app, and better apps in general, that will draw people away from the iOS ecosystem.
Competition is supposed to be good. So compete.
All I ever hear from the Android side is a lot of "walled garden" pearl clutching. Seldom any innovation, and evidently no innovation good enough to break the magical spell of Apple.
When Android does innovate, and Apple chooses to adopt a method, then it's all "embrace, extend, extinguish! It's Micro$oft all over again!" As if Android never gets sloppy seconds on features, or half-baked mimicry of Apple products and services.
It's this continuous whining and moaning that makes Apple, and Apple users, tune out the Android dev bros. They're just reactionary and it's easy to not take them seriously.
The bottom line is the same now as it's always been: Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.
Competition is great until your competitors use their power to prevent third-parties from distributing software freely. Then it becomes a monopoly, by modern standards.
Amen to that. There have been multiple times in my career where I've stopped the process the moment when a recruiter asked me to fill in a shitty looking .doc or .docx file with the same info that is in the .PDF file that's containing my CV that I've already submitted.
Until Direct X games work on macos, it is not collaborative, it is a walled garden. Until all PS5 games work on Xbox X I can't collaborate in multiplayer, the reverse is true as well.
Many games support cross-platform play these days, so yes you certainly can collaborate between PS5 and Xbox X, if you choose the correct 'applications'.
I mean, they can they just have to convert it. Is it that different from sending it as a PDF because you need to have installed a PDF reader or Acrobat to read it?
The only reason .docx files are more easily readable is because everyone makes a point of natively building in the ability to convert them because it's so ubiquitous. But it's a Microsoft format that Microsoft put a lot of effort into locking down as much as they could get away with, only backing off on it when they started getting into anti-trust trouble.
> Even though I have a Mac, when a prospective job applicant sends a resume in Pages, it’s a disqualifier, because they don’t understand that Windows users can’t read that.
As someone who can remember the 1990s, when .DOC was the standard file format for any kind of business and much academic work, I find this terribly amusing.
I almost never work in an environment with 100% homogeneous hardware and OS. A large portion of my career has been working as a contractor or consultant. Each new client has a different stack of tools. Any tools for collaborative work need to be as cross-platform as possible. For many of my jobs the tools also need to work in all regions without VPN (no Google in China).
Even though I have a Mac, when a prospective job applicant sends a resume in Pages, it’s a disqualifier, because they don’t understand that Windows users can’t read that.
Until Freeform works on Windows and Android, it’s not collaborative, it’s a walled garden.