Google's Little-Known Apple Freeform Alternative Has Been Around For Years

Nothing beats a good old whiteboard for lively brainstorming, creating a mood board, planning your next trip itinerary, school work, or even dumping and explaining ideas to your team. You can pin documents, draw and highlight, stick notes on it, and more. Now imagine collaborating with a whiteboard just the same way, but virtually.

Apple recently announced Freeform — a virtual canvas where you can collaborate with up to 100 people in real-time. It's a feature-rich app that lets you sketch (either with your finger or the Apple Pencil) in different styles; attach documents, PDF pages, links, sticky notes, and other media; and auto-align elements (via Apple). You can create multiple infinite whiteboards, save and share them, or open Freeform within a Facetime call.

But you don't need to feel left out, even if you're on the Android ecosystem and Google Workspace. Google has a Freeform alternative: meet Jamboard. Jamboard is an interactive, collaborative canvas that works on mobile and web.

Jamboard has been around since 2017, so it's more mature and developed too. Google even sells a dedicated Jamboard device — a crisp 55-inch 4K monitor on wheels.

Google Search and the entirety of Google Workspace are tightly integrated into Jamboard — allowing you to do quick searches, pull images, and import documents, sheets, slides, and more (via Google). A Jamboard session (or Jam) supports up to 16 collaborators (via Google). You can join from the Jamboard phone app, one Jamboard to another, the browser, or Meets. Jamboard is also perfect for educators and remote learning in particular.

It's not as feature-rich as Apple's Freeform because you only get a limited selection of pens, preset shapes, and other assets. But you can create sticky notes. And Google's advanced AI assists with handwriting and shape design. You can create as many Jams as you want, share them, or save them as PDFs.

The Jamboard device comes with two styluses and an eraser. It doesn't need any pairing because they work passively, just like on a low-tech whiteboard (via Google). You can write with the stylus and erase with your hands or the eraser. Jamboard doubles as a video-conferencing screen too thanks to its built-in speakers and mics. It starts from $4999 with a yearly fee of $600.