Apple explains why it is focusing on making iMacs, iPhones and other products work together

Apple’s new iMac might look the same on the outside, but it’s got new powers on the inside – and when it meets another one of Apple’s products. In an exclusive interview, senior Apple execs tell David Phelan that connectivity and continuity it is a core part of the company’s plan

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Only connect, as EM Forster said. He may not have been thinking about the iPhone and the Mac, as they weren’t around then, but Apple seems to be taking the mantra to heart. Many of the two products’ latest features come to life when they meet another Apple device – the new iMac might look the same on the outside, but it has new powers on the inside.

Apple executives Colleen Novielli from Mac Product Marketing and Stephen Tonna from Platform Product Marketing sat down with The Independent to talk about how combining the capabilities of different Apple products just became even more useful with the latest software.

Last month, an updated iMac arrived, with the same 24-inch display and seven different colour options as its predecessor, but a much more powerful Apple processor at its heart. Alongside it came new software for the Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, with features that help these disparate devices work as one.

Continuity is the umbrella title for ways in which you can share content, for instance, between different gadgets. If you have widgets – those particular kinds of apps which display extra information or have greater interactivity than most app icons – on your iPhone or iPad, you can now have them on your Mac desktop, too. Even, and here’s the new element introduced with the latest software, called macOS Sonoma, if those apps aren’t on your Mac.

Apple has built Continuity features for years, with AirDrop an early example. It means you can transfer documents between devices simply. Stephen Tonna, who manages to be both intensely focused and almost casually relaxed at the same time, explains how it arrived.

“If you remember, when we originally introduced AirDrop, it was because we were in that transition as an industry of going fully wireless and replacing the USB drive. We have long since moved on from that. AirDrop is still the easiest, fastest, most seamless way of transferring content between devices and when have an iPhone with lots of photos and you want to quickly share those, it is the best way to do that.” AirDrop works wherever you are – there’s no need for set-up, pairing devices, checking you’re on the same network or any other faff. In fact, you don’t even need to be anywhere near a wifi network, because it creates its own connection.

Continuity works with other kinds of connection, too. “As long as you’re signed in with the same Apple ID, things just start to work. You can use your iPad and Apple Pencil to be creative on your iMac,” Tonna explains. That works because you can set devices so scribbling on your iPad with an Apple Pencil can show up on your Mac screen. You can also set your Mac to unlock when it spots your Apple Watch is nearby, play content from your iPhone on the Mac’s bigger display, send and receive SMS messages on your Mac as well as your phone, and more.

“Really what Continuity is all about, is this rich set of features that lets you seamlessly move between your devices, helping you be even more creative with those things that you do in your everyday life. Our key superpower is that we can blend these things together so that there’s no complicated setup.”

For the iMac, the new processor helps, too. Colleen Novielli describes the new computer with delight and pride, saying that “It’s the best, and best-selling, all-in-one in the world.” The iMac and Continuity, she adds, “Just bring your Mac to life for all the devices and users in a household or a small business. Continuity works across all of our Macs but the iMac is great because the enormous 24-inch display gives you plenty of room. Users say it makes them incredibly productive.”

As Tonna adds, you can use it to give FaceTime calls greater convenience. “I start a FaceTime call when I’m out walking, say, and I get back to the house, so I want to continue that FaceTime on my iMac. With one click it transitions everything over to the iMac.”

A new feature called NameDrop has recently been in the news, with a police department thinking it was risky (it’s not). You bring two iPhones together and it lets you share your contact details. No more “I’ll ring you and you’ll have my number” and you having to enter their name afterwards. I wonder how important that element of surprise is to Apple?

Tonna says, “Contact sharing, when you meet someone new, was cumbersome before. We deliver this in a unique way, and the wow factor is that the animation is just beautiful. But it’s also a very functional animation. It really signals to you what’s happening. Your contact, should you choose to share it, is literally swapping between devices. It’s always nice to get the wow factor. But at the end of the day, we create these features so that are users get more value out of their products.”

Apple does not have this seamless connectivity to itself. Samsung already lets you transfer stuff between different products bearing its name, and Huawei does the same. Chip maker Qualcomm just announced Qualcomm Seamless, which will work across products from different brands, with different operating systems. Why is Continuity something Apple thinks it can do best?

“The reason we can do it better comes back to the core values at Apple, the fact that we make the hardware, the software and the services. The services piece is key because it’s iCloud that’s the connector that helps you seamlessly move between devices in a secure and private manner. The hardware and software components come in our ability to blend technologies like wifi and Bluetooth together to do things, like understanding when your devices are within proximity to each other and enable features like Handoff.”

Handoff is what lets you transfer calls from a phone to a Mac, or to copy and paste between devices. Find a document on your iPhone, say, choose Copy, and then press Paste on your iMac and watch it appear. As Novielli says, it’s a way of making things better. “People have ingrained behaviours, certain ways of doing things that have been enabled by technology for a long time So if someone needs to get a file from here to there, they think they need to open up email, attach the file, maybe zip the file. And then, go to the other device. Our philosophy is, let’s have people do things in a better way.”

And as Tonna says, the initial capability of a Continuity feature is rarely the last iteration. “We’re always thinking beyond what we can do, but it does genuinely come back to solving an immediate need for users and then listening to the feedback.”

Which means we can expect greater things to come from Continuity in the future. Novielli sums it up like this: “Continuity is one of those things that lets the technology get out of the way and not interrupt your productive flow. So you can be the most productive you can be, throughout your day.”