Of all the change to the Mac get this twelvemonth , the hype has been , justifiably , all aboutApple Intelligence . But another feature really catch my eye , and in my clock time testing it in themacOS Sequoia public beta , it ’s gotten me passably mad about its voltage .
That feature isiPhone Mirroring , which puts a mockup of your iPhone on your Mac ’s desktop , let you interact with it as if it were right there in your hands . It ’s a really neat unexampled trick and one that adds a lot of cross - compatibility between my Apple gadget .
Yet it ’s not just iPhone Mirroring ’s ability that have me singing its praises — it ’s also the absolutely disgraceful province of Microsoft ’s eq on Windows . CalledPhone Link , this app is so embarrassingly bad that it makes iPhone Mirroring — even in its bare province — look like the app of the twelvemonth in comparison . yield I separate my time betweenWindows and macOS , I require to see how these apps stack up against each other — and the results were not pretty .
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The Phone Link disaster
decent from when you first get to the iPhone Mirroring app in themacOS Sequoia beta , the experience is a pretty good one . Up pop a mockup of your iPhone on your Mac ’s desktop , with everything on the button as you ’d expect it . App icon are in the right billet , your wallpaper is the same , and all your configurations are entire .
Phone Link in Windows , though , is very different . Instead of depicting your speech sound on the concealment , it ’s much more of a traditional app . On the left you ’ll see your most late notifications , with your phone ’s status in the top - leave corner . In the midriff you ’ll see … well , that ’s the thing . My Phone Link experience was so inadequate that whatever the app intends to show in the mediate segment simply did n’t seem . Phone Link was adamant that my iPhone was not pair , even though it was displaying my recent notifications on the left . That pay you a look of how subpar Phone Link is .
acquire unlike approaches to expose paired devices is fine , but that ’s not my problem with Phone Link . Instead , pretty much every aspect of the Phone Link experience is a total incubus . After attempting to copulate my iPhone using a QR code , the Link to Windows iOS app said the outgrowth was concluded . Phone Link on Windows , though , just endlessly showed a spinning loading picture , with no progress in sight . Restart the app and it suppose my phone is pair but it needs Bluetooth permission , even though everything Phone Link asks for has been granted .
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And so I ’m left with a loopy , half - connected app that is basically useless except for shew my apprisal . Microsoft already has a reputation for shockingly speculative software ( having used Windows for over 20 years , I can demonstrate to that ) , and Phone Link is doing nothing to break up that impression .
Apple gets it right
Things could n’t be more different when it amount to Apple ’s iPhone Mirroring app . There ’s no indigence to scan a QR code or dive deeply into your twist ’s place setting . Just ensure your iPhone and your Mac are runningiOS 18andmacOS Sequoiarespectively , are sign in to the same Apple Account ( with two - factor certification enabled ) , and have Bluetooth and Wi - Fi swap on . Aside from the operating system essential , you ’ll probably have all that fix up anyway .
Apple ’s iPhone Mirroring app immediately starts on the front foot because it feel so much more visceral than Phone Link . Aside from not requiring any fiddly pair steps , the fact that it shows your mocked - up iPhone on the dot as it is in reality means you instinctively know how to apply it and where to discover everything . No rummage around in menu and pull off setting here .
you’re able to swipe through apps and projection screen using your black eye or a trackpad , then type like a shot into apps using your keyboard . Your iPhone notifications come out on your Mac just like macOS alerts ( with sound playing through your Mac speakers , not those of your iPhone ) , and you may move the iPhone mockup around your sieve however you want .
Do n’t get me amiss here , iPhone Mirroring is not double-dyed . I had a stack of bother with scrolling , as sometimes it just would n’t work at all ( especially perpendicular scrolling using awireless black eye ) , while my favorite iPhone Mirroring feature — drag and drop off single file from one gimmick to another — is totally absent at the moment . Annoyingly , you also ca n’t resize the iPhone trailer . And sure as shooting , the Phone Link experience is probably better with an Android machine than with an iPhone .
But I ca n’t cut Microsoft too much slack because the experience is already so terrible compared to iPhone Mirroring . Even in its earliest genus Beta condition , iPhone Mirroring is already leagues ahead of Phone Link in term of conception , functionality and dependableness , and that gap is only going to widen as Apple updates its beta software package .
It ’s left me wishing for something much better on Windows but , given how slipshod Phone Link has been for years , I ’m not just getting my hope up .
