Apple Freeform vs Microsoft Whiteboard

March 08, 2025 | Author: Adam Levine
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Apple Freeform
Freeform is a great place to bring your ideas to life. Sketch out a project, design a mood board, or start a brainstorming session on a flexible canvas that supports almost any kind of file. And with iCloud, all your boards stay in sync, whether you’re on your Mac, your iPad, or on your iPhone.
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Microsoft Whiteboard
The collaborative digital canvas in Microsoft 365 for effective meetings and engaging learning.

Apple Freeform and Microsoft Whiteboard are, at first glance, two shockingly similar things—like two parallel universes where everyone decided the best way to collaborate was to scribble ideas onto an infinite void. Both let multiple humans (or particularly clever dolphins) sketch, type and paste things onto a boundless digital space in real time, as if organizing chaos was a fun weekend activity. They work across devices, sync through an invisible network of clouds and generally try to convince people that productivity can, in fact, be a thing.

But then, like any good intergalactic bureaucratic twist, the differences emerge. Freeform, a 2022 brainchild of Apple’s pristine, minimalist universe, is obsessed with sleek design and smooth, pencil-perfect strokes, like a digital notebook owned by a perfectionist artist who also happens to run a billion-dollar company. It’s fantastically good at letting creative people pretend they have control over their thoughts, embedding photos and sticky notes with the quiet, determined efficiency of a starship maintenance droid. It also only really wants to exist in the Apple ecosystem—because why venture outside when everything is already so shiny in here?

Meanwhile, Microsoft Whiteboard has been around since 2017, which, in software years, makes it something of a wise old oracle, if oracles wore sensible office attire and integrated seamlessly with OneDrive. It’s the sort of tool that means business—literally—offering templates, structured lists and the kind of grid-based organization that makes corporate managers sigh in quiet relief. Designed to keep teams, classrooms and interdepartmental feuds vaguely on track, it’s less about artistic expression and more about making sure Greg from accounting doesn’t accidentally delete the quarterly sales projections.

See also: Top 10 Visual Collaboration software
Author: Adam Levine
Adam is an expert in project management, collaboration and productivity technologies, team management, and motivation. With an extensive background working at prestigious companies such as Microsoft and Accenture, Adam's in-depth knowledge and experience in the field make him a sought-after professional. Currently, he has ventured into entrepreneurship, owning a thriving consulting and training agency where he imparts invaluable insights and practical strategies to individuals and organizations, empowering them to achieve their goals and maximize their potential. You can contact Adam via email [email protected]