Is Apple’s Freeform going to replace FigJam? | by Olimpia U. | Feb, 2023

Competition does great for improving products

We already know Figma is an awesome tool for designers, but not exclusively for them. There were a lot of cases where I used Figma for presentations or I used FigJam for collaboration and I have to be honest, FigJam is pretty fun to use.

In December, last year, Apple announced that Freeform arrived and two days ago I updated my iPad and there it was, hidden in my current applications. We have to give it to Apple, the application seems easy and fun to use for Apple fans and those with 100% Apple ecosystem. But it can replace FigJam? Let’s see a comparison.

According to Figma’s documentation, you can use FigJam for workshops, any kind of collaboration, ideation, braistorming, you name it and FigJam can provide the space for it.

So what elements does FigJam provide you to perform those sessions of collaboration?

• text — we need it to express ourselves
• stickers — always a must
• forms
• connector — if you want to connect one or more stickers
• stamps — helpful for voting
• widgets — which is the latest awesome thing Figma did and I think it’s the best feature ever for a tool
• plugins
• the most important thing: templates

As you can see, there isn’t anything you could wish for. I will mention, although you might know it, you can use Figma in any browser — which is another vote for them, if we keep score.

Here is what Apple says about their new baby:

“Freeform opens up endless possibilities for iPhone, iPad, and Mac users to visually collaborate…With an infinite canvas, support for uploading a wide range of files, iCloud integration, and collaboration capabilities, Freeform creates a shared space for brainstorming that users can take anywhere.” — Bob Borchers

For a fully integrated human in their ecosystem, it’s great. You have your iMessage, Facetime or Files integration so you could call our colleague and discuss on the board or add a new file.

So what elements does Freeform provide you to perform those sessions of collaboration?

And that’s pretty much it.

For now, I think Freeform can be used for personal needs instead of using Notes, which can be helpful for Apple users, but now great for those who uses everything Apple, but works on Windows.

Here we draw the line and we can say the winner is Figjam. It’s obviously the one with more features and we can all agree the Figma team did amazing things for this product.

Although Apple’s newest baby doesn’t shine like FigJam, we can find use cases to use it. It won’t replace FigJam for now or for a long time, but who knows what will happen in 2 years?