You'll probably see yourself in the new "Apple at Work" video
You might recall that last year Apple dropped a video showing how a motley group of underdogs at a fictional packaging company overcame a number of obstacles to create a revolutionary "round box" in just two days starting with nothing but a sketch. What the team did have was every Apple device to help them create the box and deliver a prototype to the boss in time.
Apple promotes its devices for those working from home
Apple decided to revisit these characters for a new video that is all about the team getting the word that project "Pandora's Box" is back on. But this being 2020, the team is now working from home. All of the familiar things that you personally might have had to deal with this year while working from home become hurdles that the team needs to overcome. One team member asks, "What day is it?" And devising a work schedule isn't easy. "10 minutes for lunch? It takes 15 minutes to make lunch," a member of the team complains.
Meanwhile, Apple devices are all over the place. An iPhone is used in place of a scanner to send team members the specs of the box. The iPad, iMac, and MacBook are seen doing some heavy lifting with the Apple Watch and the AirPods wireless Bluetooth earbuds playing a small part. Even Siri gets a turn as the digital assistant is asked to read a bedtime story (with no monsters) to two kids belonging to a team member.
The team gets some bad news when the meeting gets moved up and the budget is cut in half. But the AR-powered Measure app on the iPad is used to help find a solution. Soon, it is presentation day and as the client is joining the meeting, the video comes to an end. While last year's video had the tag line "Apple at Work," this year the line reads, "Apple at Work From Home."
As Apple says, "It’s still a world of deadlines, meetings, group chats, conference calls, coworkers, and bosses. But it’s also a world of kids, a dog, and a hairless cat. And it’s a world where collaboration never misses a beat, whether the team uses iPad, iPhone, iMac, MacBook, or all of the above. Working from home (or working from anywhere) isn’t new, but what you can make happen together is."
The Apple at Work web page lists a number of features that help a team get things done. For example, the Calendar app can share a schedule across devices and manage different teams doing different projects in different locations. With Notes, users can sign, scan, and share documents. Speaking of sharing, documents marked-up using the Apple Pencil on an iPad or a finger on the iPhone can be shared among team members. And as we saw in the video, documents scanned by an iPhone automatically appear on an iPad or Mac.
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