Handoff is perhaps my favorite of all the new features announced at yesterday’s WWDC keynote.
From Apple’s web site:
When your Mac and iOS devices are near each other, they can automatically pass whatever you’re doing from one device to another. Say you start writing a report on your Mac, but you want to continue on your iPad as you head to your meeting. Handoff lets you switch over and pick up instantly where you left off. Or maybe you start writing an email on your iPhone, but you want to finish it on your Mac. You can do that, too. Handoff works with Mail, Safari, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Maps, Messages, Reminders, Calendar, and Contacts. And app developers can easily build Handoff into their apps.
The key to Handoff’s success is widespread adoption. Apple is building Handoff support into all of their major apps, so that’s already a heck of a start. Developers creating apps with both an OS X and iOS component need to build Handoff support into their apps as well.
I can’t remember the last time I was so excited about a new OS release. Clearly, a lot of effort went into not just the individual releases of iOS and OS X, but into their integration as well. This was very well planned and executed, an excellent bit of engineering on Apple’s part. Well done.
I’m still trying to figure out: do all these proximity features work via direct connection (like AirDrop), or do they require you to be on the same Wi-Fi network? If it’s the former, that’s bloody cool, and makes me think that the Multipeer Connectivity feature is gonna become a lot more important in the next few years.
I’ve been doing this with my Moto X and it is WONDERFUL. Apple took it several steps further so I’m sure this will be a hugely popular feature.
in the case of “No Wi-Fi? No problem.” — i believe this is if your laptop isnt connected to wifi but your iphone is near, it will auto-discover it as a hotspot and you can join it, thus bringing connectivity to your laptop.
that may be a separate feature than the continuity stuff.
I wonder what the battery threshold is since hotspot can be a phone battery killer.
I want to know if you can hand off phone calls.
Right, but if you’re on your iPhone’s hotspot, you’re also (by definition) on the same Wi-Fi network as your phone. So phone calling should work, right?
Wish I could get it to work!
beta?