When Apple introduced macOS Sequoia and its new iPhone mirroring capability, I didn't get it. Now, however, after seeing it in action and considering some non-obvious use cases, you might be ready to reconsider.
Apple unveiled the latest version of AI-powered macOS during its WWDC 2024 keynote, which also saw major updates to iOS, iPadOS, visionOS, tvOS, and watchOS. It also served as the launch pad for Apple Intelligence, a version of artificial intelligence created and patented by Apple. I understand that Apple has been building AI-enabled PCs for a while (since the M1 chip, they've included a built-in neural engine) and there are plenty of features, including better Siri, powerful photo editing features, and smart typing help. , to look forward to, but I found myself obsessing elsewhere.
Apple was putting the iPhone on your Mac, or rather, an iPhone screen floating in the middle of the beautiful macOS Sequoia desktop. In some ways, this is the most significant redesign of the new platform. It puts a completely different operating system (a mobile one, no less) on top of a laptop or desktop computer.
Wow. And also why?
I admit that I had a hard time conceiving what utility could be gained from having a second live interface on an already occupied desktop. Apple has said in the past that they create features, in some cases, based on user requests. Who had ever asked for this?
After the keynote, I had the opportunity to delve deeper, which helped me better understand this seemingly unholy marriage and why, in some cases, it could make perfect sense.
doing it like this
Apple created a new app to connect your iPhone running iOS 18 to your macOS Sequoia Mac. In a demo I saw, it took one click for this to happen. Behind the scenes, the two systems are creating a secure Bluetooth and WiFi connection. On the iPhone, there is a message indicating that mirroring is active. On Mac, well, there's the iPhone screen, complete with the Island's dynamic cutout (an odd choice if you ask me: why virtualize dead space?).
Honestly, I was surprised at the level of iPhone functionality that Apple could bring to the Mac desktop.
You can use the Mac trackpad to scroll through iPhone apps.
You can click to launch apps and run them within the iPhone screen on your Mac desktop.
Pinch and zoom on the Mac trackpad works as expected with iPhone apps.
There's even full drag and drop capability between the two interfaces. So you can take a video from the Go Pro app on your iPhone's mirrored screen and drag and drop it into another app, like Final Cut Pro on Mac.
Basically, you're passing through a large screen to get to a smaller one, on a different platform, that's locked next to your desktop. It's strange and cool, but is it necessary?
Not everything makes sense. You can search through your phone's mirrored screen, but why not just search on your desktop?
You can use iPhone screen mirroring in landscape mode and play games. However, there's no obvious way to tell someone trying to play a game that uses the iPhone's gyroscope that it's a bad idea.
I like that there's enough awareness that while the iPhone screen can look exactly like the phone screen, you can click to access a slightly larger bezel that lets you control the mirrored screen.
It's not the kind of duplication that locks you in. To finish it, simply pick up and unlock the phone to end the connection.
However, even seeing all this, I wondered how people could use iPhone Mirroring.
However, even seeing all this, I wondered how people could use iPhone Mirroring. There is an opportunity to play some games that are not available on Mac. Fans of multiplayer word games may like that if they receive a notification, they can open the phone's mirrored screen, make a move, and then get back to work.
When macOS Sequoia launches later this fall, you'll even be able to resize the iPhone's mirrored window, which I suppose could be useful for horizontal gaming.
Your phone notifications sound redundant, especially for those of us in the iCloud ecosystem where all of our Apple products receive the same iMessages. But the system is smart enough to know that it shouldn't repeat notifications on both screens, and you'll have the option to decide which iPhone notifications appear on your Mac.
Some notifications only appear on your iPhone and others appear in both places, but you can't always act on them on Mac. This new feature could close that gap. A fellow journalist mentioned that iPhone mirroring would finally give him a way to go from a notification he saw on his Mac for his baby camera app, where it's not a camera app, to live streaming on the iPhone. This finally seemed really useful to me.
Is that reason enough to stick your iPhone screen on your Mac desktop? I don't know. It may take up too much space on my 13-inch MacBook Air, but it would be great on a 27-inch iMac, if I had one.
