One of the reasons I don’t use my MacBook Air full time is because of the built in distractions Apple has introduced to their ecosystem. The latest version of iOS now has iPhone Mirroring built into the experience. With this new feature, you basically have a window with your iPhone appearing on your Mac desktop. Granted, you have to opt in instead of opting out of the feature, but it’s something they touted quite a bit at WWDC earlier this year, so I gave it a whirl.
I have no reason to have my iPhone mirrored to my Mac desktop. Like most folks these days, my smartphone is almost always in reach. This feature seems to be a bit more “let’s do something to warrant an update” instead of bringing something more useful to the Apple experience.
I liken the “iPhone Mirroring” feature to the Camera Control button on the iPhone 16 models: redundant at best.
Now, I know my Apple experience is not the same as everyone else’s Apple experience, so I guess I need to add some disclaimer that this is just my personal point of view. I have officially disclaimed. I feel like there’s a ton of other features and bugs the Apple developers could be addressing, like the sad state of HomeKit, or the fact that the Mail app isn’t super reliable if you venture outside of the iCloud space into your own mail host running IMAP. For those unaware, IMAP is a mail protocol that’s been around a few decades. Apple Mail struggles with IMAP from time to time.
I know Apple has “Focus Modes” built into their ecosystem, and I should be using Focus Mode to not be distracted by things like iPhone Mirroring. It all just feels like layer on top of layer of redundancy to me.
Now, I’d much rather deal with all this redundancy over Microsoft’s onslaught of ads in Windows 11 or constant scraping of data and weird takes on integrating AI into the platform. No company is ever going to take a screenshot of my desktop every five seconds in the name of AI. That’s just not going to happen.
Small wonder I’m using my Linux laptops more and more.
