hey siri turn on my super awesome
filming setup
[Music]
right so i've spent a large amount of
money on apple product over the last
year and in fact over the last
like 10 years since i've been in the
apple ecosystem and i often get messages
from people being like hey why are you
such an apple fanboy why do you love
apple products so much and the main
reason isn't that they're just
beautifully designed or they make me
feel really cool the main reason is that
i use
tech as just a tool i couldn't really
care less about the product even though
i'm a bit of a tech nerd
i just want the products to do the job
and to help me be more productive and
creative and to help my learning or
whatever the thing is that i'm trying to
do and to be honest apple isn't the only
one making decent products anymore this
is the microsoft surface laptop it's
pretty solid it's quite pretty it's
beautifully designed it comes in blue
which is my favorite color but the
reason that i swear by apple product and
i'm unlikely to change to anything else
anytime soon
is that when you have more of them they
just work
so beautifully together in an ecosystem
that just makes a lot of sense and these
various ways in which these products
work together genuinely does help me be
more productive it helps me save time
and that means i can spend more time
doing the things that really matter to
me so in this video i'm going to go over
my 12
favorite ways in which all of my suite
of apple products works together to help
me be more productive if you're within
the apple ecosystem yourself then some
of these are things you might be
familiar with but
hopefully you'll find some interesting
tips and tricks and hacks that you can
use to make your workflow more
productive as well let's start by
talking about continuity markup now
continuity is the term
apple gives when it talks about how
stuff available on one apple device
is automatically available on another
and so whatever you're trying to do
you're always using the best tool for
the job whether that's your imac or your
macbook or your ipad or even your iphone
or apple watch and one of my favorite
features of continuity that a lot of
people don't know about
is continuity markup now this thing is
absolutely magical
because the other day i was filling in
some forms that a solicitor sent me
to because i'm trying to buy a house as
an investment and because solicitors in
the uk and probably elsewhere are pretty
old-fashioned what they sent to me was
this long-ass word document that i had
to put handwritten signatures and had to
fill these forms and they were all like
random boxes rather than actual
checkboxes and initially i tried filling
it in just using word and became really
frustrated but then i remember that
continuity markup is a thing and so i
used the markup feature to send the
document straight to my ipad where i had
the apple pencil
and then i could just annotate it by
hand do a hand drawn signature
tick the boxes by hand rather than
having to create some weird square root
sign to
sort of masquerade as a tick mark and
everything i was doing on the ipad was
automatically reflecting on my macbook
and so i sent the form off to the
solicitor and it was happy days and the
fact that continuity markup existed
made me more productive in that space
and i've used this dozens of times
over the last few weeks for filling in
various forms for annotating various
documents
it's ridiculously helpful secondly let's
talk about apple notes now i'm a big fan
generally of note taking apps i have
dabbled with all of them
notion rome evernote obsidian onenote
all of them
but the one that i've found myself using
for the last few weeks
is actually apple notes because apple
notes also has these like really useful
continuity features that the other
note-taking apps just don't have the
main one is that because i carry my ipad
around with me all the time
i can just tap on the screen with my
apple pencil when the ipad is off and it
will automatically create a new note in
apple notes
and so in that sense my ipad kind of
acts as a
napkin that i always have with me that i
can always take notes on or draw a
diagram or write anything
i want and this is great because
whatever i write or draw on the ipad
automatically gets synchronized across
all my devices
and basically within like two seconds
appears on my macbook and imac as well
this is quite useful if i'm
brainstorming some video ideas and i
want to sketch out a quick thumbnail or
do a little spider diagram because
sort of drawing things visually helps me
figure things out those diagrams
automatically sync and then i could just
type proper text on my mac because i'm
faster at typing on my macbook than i am
handwriting with the apple pencil and
while those other ipad apps like good
notes and notability and stuff they're
all
pretty good it's just too much of a faff
to actually create a new note and so the
one i've been defaulting to recently is
actually apple notes and that works
beautifully thanks to this continuity
stuff they've got going on thirdly we
have airdrops now airdrop is completely
magical as well
this is just a thing that no other phone
manufacturer seems to have done very
well at all and that's being able to
wirelessly transfer files between apple
devices and so for me the most common
use case is if i film something on my
iphone as b-roll for a video or as part
of a vlog and i want to transfer that to
my mac to do some editing on then i can
just hit share
hit airdrop and i can wirelessly share
the file without having to plug anything
in it's also very helpful if for example
i've taken photos of friends and someone
says oh can you send me the photos
if they've got an iphone it's very easy
i can just airdrop them a ton of photos
at a time whereas if they don't have
airdrop then i have to share i have to
go on whatsapp and i have to whatsapp it
to them and then there's like a limit of
10 and then it
compresses the photos airdrop is just so
good it's great for screenshots as well
like if i'm editing a video or writing a
blog post and i want to put a screenshot
from my iphone into the document
i just take the screenshot hit share hit
airdrop and it automatically transfers
to my imac or to my macbook
which is great fourthly on the list we
have the universal clipboard this is
another completely completely magical
thing that i've now started taking for
granted but
since i've been testing the microsoft
surface laptop which doesn't have
universal clipboard features i've
realized how much i take it for granted
and just how magical a feature it
actually is and the way it works is that
anything that you copy
on an iphone or an imac or an ipad or a
macbook
anything you copy is then available as a
paste command on any of the other
devices and i find myself using this
many many times in a day and it's often
when doing stuff related to online
banking so
because i've got accounts with like
monzo and tide and revolut these are
mobile only banks that don't really have
decent web interfaces but often if i'm
getting an invoice from someone or
someone i have to pay they'll send me
like a pdf invoice that i'm looking at
on my macbook because i've got slack
open and then it's a case of okay so
i've got the account details on my mac
how do i get those account details onto
my iphone before or if you don't have
universal clipboard you have to like
okay
account number one two eight six three
four oh okay is that working
oh god you know i have to transfer money
to this solicitor and they've given me
like a 18 digit reference and i have to
type it manually
or i have to copy it and then email it
to myself or i have to copy it and text
it to myself
that's all a complete nightmare but
thanks to the universal clipboard i can
literally just copy the reference from
my mac
and then just hit paste on my iphone and
it will automatically paste it in
and every time this happens i get a
burst of dopamine release thinking oh my
god this is just so cool coming in at
point number five we have the continuity
camera and this is a fancy way of taking
a photo with your iphone or
a sketch on your ipad and it
automatically being added to the
document that you're working on and so
for me when i'm drafting my videos in
apple notes and then
after i draft them in apple notes
they'll go into notion which is how i
interface with the rest of my team but
when i draft them initially in apple
notes there's often something that i
want to sketch on the ipad or if i've
taken notes on a physical piece of paper
in my leuchtturm 1917 notebook
i want to take a photo of that and
insert it into the note because it's
relevant to the video now the old school
way of doing this would be to take the
photo on my iphone
air drop it to my imac and then copy and
paste it into the notes but
i can save time with continuity camera
because i can just hit the
insert attachment button on my mac and i
can click take photo
and it'll automatically open up the
iphone camera let me take a photo and it
immediately gets inserted into the note
it saves like three seconds of my life
every time but every time i do it i
think oh
you know i'm really glad i've saved this
three seconds of my life then i probably
spend
three seconds like appreciating the
feature but at number six we've got the
instant hotspot again this is something
that i
used i just completely take for granted
on apple devices but now that i've been
trying out the microsoft the windows
product
it's like if you want to hotspot your
phone then on
windows you have to like you have to
like turn on personal hotspot on your
phone and then you have to
go on the wi-fi settings and then you
have to enter the password if you're
doing it for the first time
and it's just a bit of a faff setting of
a personal hotspot whereas if i'm on the
imac or the macbook
or the ipad and the internet is bad or
there's no wi-fi or whatever
then i can just automatically enable
personal hotspot with just a single
click
on my mac and that is amazing yeah i've
just always taken it for granted i never
quite appreciated just how cool that is
until i started testing the windows
device as well at number seven we've got
cross
platform messaging now this was the
thing that attracted me to the apple
ecosystem initially like nine years ago
when it was like
all the rage that you can answer text
messages
on your mac or on your ipad mostly on
the mac because i've always got my
laptop or my imac in front of me and
it's cool enough that if someone else
with an apple device uses imessage to
send me a message i can reply to them
from my mac
rather than having to go on my phone and
typing with the really crappy phone
keyboard but recently i don't know how
recently that i think they've they've
added this feature that lets you get
actual
sms text messages on your mac and so if
for example someone is actually texting
me who doesn't have an iphone and
they're those green bubble people
i can see and respond to them on my mac
or if i've got two-factor authentication
enabled for something and i get a text
to my phone
that text will often show up in my mac
as well and i can autofill the thing
from the mac which is kind of cool point
number eight is the ability to make and
answer phone calls
from your phone but actually to make or
answer them on the mac or on the apple
watch or on the ipad there's lots of
times where this has actually come in
handy so i think i've answered a call on
my apple watch
like three or four times in my life i
remember one of them was when i was on a
boat and i was punting i was like you
know there's a
river in cambridge and you pumped along
it was like a little poll and my mom was
calling because she was like visiting
cambridge and wanted to find out where
we were
and i didn't have my phone with me
because it was in the back so i didn't
want it to die if i fell in the water
but i got the call on my apple watch and
i answered the call and i was like
talking to my mom
on the apple watch while like doing this
punting thing while looking like a bit
of a because i was flexing the
apple watch so that was really cool
that's only happened a few times
more often what i do is like let's say
i'm on the sofa and i'm just chilling on
the ipad watching something or reading
something or taking some notes and then
my mom calls me either on facetime or by
normal call
instead of getting off the sofa finding
my phone or and then answering it i can
literally just answer the phone call on
my ipad or onto the facetime on my ipad
and that's quite nice and the third main
way in which i use this is if i need to
call customer support for anything
i'll often make the call using my mac
because then i can do stuff on the
computer
while i'm on a hold with customer
support for like half an hour
without having to either hold my phone
up to my ears or like have it on speaker
and
have that crappy music playing because i
can just very easily use my mac using
the
microphone on the mac or using my proper
microphone to make and answer the phone
call at number nine we've got sidecar
sidecar is pretty cool it lets you
connect your ipad and use that as a
external wireless display for your mac i
don't use it a lot when i'm at home
because these days i'm using the imac
and it has a big enough screen
but if i'm at like a co-working space or
a coffee shop
and for some reason i need the extra
screen real estate then i can always
sidecar into my ipad and it works
instantly
with basically zero lag and it's always
kind of magical when it happens and
finally at number 10 let's talk about
handoff now handoff is the feature that
these again the apple ecosystem has
where if you're working in one app
you can resume the same thing in the
same app on a different device and so
this works in browsing with safari and
chrome let's say i'm browsing something
on safari on the imac
and then i want to go for a wii i can go
on my iphone and it will tell me what
tab i've got open on safari
on my imac and i'm i'll be able to
continue my browsing session while i'm
going for a week it's also kind of nice
with apple pages so i'm writing a book
at the moment and
part of the drafting that i'm doing is
in apple pages just because it works
nicely on mac and ipad and all that
stuff and so if i'm working on a section
on the mac and i want to go onto the
sofa because i want a change of scenery
i can just resume it using pages using
handoff on my ipad
connect the apple magic keyboard to the
ipad and then i can continue typing away
and it's all very seamless i don't do
this very often because i don't often
like decide hey i'm going to write my
book on the so far but when i do
and the pages thing actually works with
handoff i just think down
this is pretty nice and so those were
some of the different ways in which like
the apple ecosystem products work
together in a really nice way
to help me be a little bit more
productive yes this sort of thing is not
really going to move the needle for your
productivity let's be honest about that
it's shaving off a few seconds with
every interaction
but i personally think those few seconds
add up and
i'm always a fan of trying to be most
efficient at doing everything
and the reason i buy all these apple
products is because broadly they get out
of my way and they let me do the things
that i actually care about
whereas if i'm working with windows
stuff sorry microsoft it's a nice
product but
i i often feel like i'm having to fight
against the system to do what i want
if you're interested in more ways of
being productive you might like to check
out this video over here
which is a video that talks about the
actual and needle moving things that do
improve my productivity
that aren't based around squeezing a few
seconds of efficiency here and there so
hopefully you'll like that thank you so
much for watching and
i'll see you in the next video bye