Macos features that were exciting but didn’t see much usage

Iphone Mirroring

A feature that was super exciting to rarely being used. During the Apple event, I was really hyped to try the feature out. Once I got it, I have hardly used this feature. The first thing after I had paired the iphone with my mac was to stop seeing the iphone notifications on my Mac.

The mirroring works really well and I really don’t have any complaints on that front. All the apps that you browse on the iphone works great on the mirroring app too. But having used the feature, I question why I would want to do be using my iphone apps on a mirroring app as opposed to just using the iphone.

The most important usecases for me to reach for my iphone while I am working on my mac are : responding to texts which I can achieve through the iMessage app on the mac or whatsweb. And the other is the OTP texts for 2FA which also through the power of tight Apple ecosystem integration it autocompletes in Safari. I can’t really think of a scenario where I would want to use the mirroring as opposed to just picking up my iphone and using it.

As someone who has adopted the phone foyer methodology to be more concisous about my use of tech gadgets, this feature has just fallen out of favor for me.

Stage Manager

I am completely lost on this feature. I could see its appeal on iPadOS for the iPad pros. But any and all attempts to figure out how to work with stage manager has been an exercise in futility on macos. It makes me want to think if this feature was well thought out before rolling it out to macOS. Or if there is a usacase that doesn’t apply to me. As I sit to write this, I gave stage manager another go.

My attempt to unravel the stage manager goes something like this, you want to group programs within a workspace and switch between the groups. Lets suppose we have a workspace for blogposts with bunch of softwares open - terminal, typora, photos, safari browser, notes, finder. So when you work on typora you also want your notes app to lookup stuff you researched for the blogpost. When you want to preview it you have terminal and safari browser grouped together. But the implicit assumption here is that while grouping apps you have to be very deliberate not to group too many apps thus defeating the purpose I guess?

Looks like I might have finally understood how to use stage manager with this reflection section.

Shrinking (Apple TV series)

I just finished watching the Shrinking and really enjoyed it!

A little hearted, fun series which can be binge watched or at a slow pace.

Rating: 5/5

Through the lens