Apple’s Universal Control

https://500ish.com/it-really-just-works-d359cfcdffe6?gi=5e5236274b4e

by imartin2k • 4 years ago

250 266 4 years ago

It works between Macs as well.

norman784• 4 years ago

Not that useful do, I use my Macs via ethernet, but I need to turn wifi on in order to use this feature, it really sucks that I need to do that.

pmontra• 4 years ago

This is surprising. What's in a WiFi connection that is not there in an Ethernet one?

Do they ignore the home network and communicate directly WiFi card to WiFi card?

skibble• 4 years ago

If you disable automatic connection for that network, you can have Wi-Fi on without being connected (I have this setup on a work Mac connected via Ethernet so I can use AirDrop).

knolan16• 4 years ago

You can use both Wi-Fi and Ethernet, just rearrange the interface order in system preferences and your networking will all go through Ethernet and all these features will use Wi-Fi.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202480

can16358p• 4 years ago

Genuine question: what are some practical use cases for this? I use my Macbook and iPad but always exclusively for different purposes and never both at the same time.

What are some potential things that this can unlock? I might well try it but just can't think of a practical use case for me.

hughrr4• 4 years ago

I usually do my email and messaging on the iPad now with my Mac’s keyboard and mouse. I can do that while I’m watching something full screen on the mac.

Also it’s really useful when you’re writing up documentation. I draw up draft diagrams in GoodNotes with Apple Pencil and you can just drag them straight across the screens into the target document!

It’s pretty remarkable. I think people will find use cases for it as time goes on because it’s so new it’s not well understood yet.

I like it though. A lot.

Edit: also experimenting with sharing two screens at once on zoom. One with presentation (iPad) and one with code/IDE on it (mac)

susodapop• 4 years ago

Drag and drop files between devices is handy when you quickly need to move media files from one to the other.

DominikPeters2• 4 years ago

I was peer-reviewing some papers yesterday, which I do by annotating PDFs on my iPad with the Pencil. After I finish annotating, I write the review on my laptop. While writing, I moved my cursor over to the iPad to select a sentence I wanted to quote, copied it, and pasted it into my review. Pretty cool.

jiriro• 4 years ago

annotating PDFs on my iPad with the Pencil

How do you do the annotation? The markup tool or something else?

areoform• 4 years ago

It's a portable second screen that is thin, has a 10+ hour battery life, can open documents + websites. It's the dream!

You can code on your mac, while reading documentation / keeping an eye on your email on the iPad propped up next to you from any café in the world.

fxtentacle2• 4 years ago

But can you really context switch between programming and a totally unrelated email without destroying your code quality? I mean this as a genuine question because I work single screen and I typically also need headphones to get in the zone.

vinay427• 4 years ago

This sounds like a use case better suited to Sidecar to use the iPad as an external display. I’m not sure I see how it benefits very much from the additional Universal Control features, but having never used it I’m quite open to being wrong.

fxtentacle2• 4 years ago

If you're into the grind that comes with being an app developer, this makes testing your apps on real devices much easier.

jiehong• 4 years ago

Some apps only work on one platform (eg. instagram), and this makes using them much simpler.

But there shouldn’t be any restrictions for apps to run on only one device in the first place.

1122332• 4 years ago

connect Ipad->hdmi dongle->hdmi grabber dongle->mac now you have video source device that looks like webcam. This feature makes the setup easier to control

mimsee• 4 years ago

You could also use OBS Virtual Camera feature[0] to capture your desktop as a webcam instead of the iPad.

[0] https://obsproject.com/

grapeskin• 4 years ago

The iPad is a pretty good art device. At least when it comes to drawing. For final editing touches, I prefer using a desktop.

Being able to treat my iPad and MacBook as one seamless device for art work sounds great.

3D artists, for example, pretty much have to do their 3D modeling work on a desktop. But the iPad is a better device for drawing 2d textures. If I could drag and drop textures onto 3D projects, that’d be nice. Or even just drawing layers on my iPad and dragging them into a desktop photoshop project or something.

Outside of art, it seems much less useful though.

viktorcode3• 4 years ago

Files drag n drop

vvillena• 4 years ago

I usually connect to Google Meet calls using my iPad, so I can carry it around if I need to. If I'm working on my computer, the iPad is placed a bit out of reach to make the camera angle work a bit better.

Universal Control means I can now control my mic and hang up using my mouse, instead of having to awkwardly reach to the screen. It's a stupid and basic use case, but hey, it works!

There's no need to have this enable complex new workflows. Sometimes it's about those simple things.

knolan16• 4 years ago

You can also connect multiple Macs, no iPad needed. I’ve an iMac in my office and I bring my MacBook Pro to lectures, the lab or meetings. I’ll often have both machines on my desk and will need to move some files from one machine to another, usually via Airdrop or some Cloud service.

This just removes some of that friction.

paxys• 4 years ago

It's hilarious to see everyone in the linked Twitter thread lose their minds over this feature. It's neat, I'm sure, but we have had Mouse without Borders and several other similar apps for over a decade now doing exactly this.

grecy• 4 years ago

And this is what Apple has been doing for well over a decade now. Pulling to together a bunch of related ideas and solutions that on their own are nothing overly special, but combined turn into something "wow".

Their genius isn't necessarily in being first or even inventing something (touch screen phone), it's tweaking the edges and getting it "just right".

makach• 4 years ago

this - I used so many different tools and methods to get this same functionality. It's not new or novel. But apple gets it right. They spent the time to make it appear magical.

hughrr4• 4 years ago

That’s what I pay them for.

I don’t want to be experimented on like the bleeding edge companies are doing constantly. I want something solid that works.

Of course it’s not perfect but the whole ecosystem integration and solidness is far far far above anything else out there.

quitit• 4 years ago

It also solves some other "ecosystem" problems.

For example I have a few iPad apps installed on my Mac, the reason being that I wanted keyboard/mouse and easier copying of content into and out of the iPad app while I was working on my desktop machine. With universal control I don't need to have the dual installs anymore, nor have to deal with the problems that would come with that (e.g. having to duplicate content across both installs).

There's also plenty of apps which the developer has barred from installing on macOS where this is the only real solution.

xenadu02• 4 years ago

Ideas are cheap. Hacking together a PoC is too. Shipping some kind of product is a bit more difficult but the first to ship is usually a complete failure. You can point to almost <i>any</i> product category - whether computer related or not - and this holds true. Revolutionary ideas are ahead of their time both technologically and culturally. The makers don't know how to put the ideas to productive use. Then people flail around throwing product ideas at the wall to see what sticks. The implementation is often full of caveats, missing features, or is mere novelty (it folds! why? ... shutup, it folds ok).

Getting the details right is <i>really</i> hard and takes a lot of work. The last 10% takes as much work as the first 90%. Then the next 10% also takes 90%. Repeat a few more times and somehow it ends up being 1000% more difficult than you expected at the start. Often it requires merging multiple major ideas to create something that is more than the sum of its parts (then you get to watch fools who only got 1 of 50 parts correct claim they invented the whole thing).

Be assured that if you are successful a lot of people will rush to make sure you don't get any credit. I recommend you ignore them... their opinions don't matter and listening to them won't help you make better products or delight more customers.

Stay focused on what matters. Even if Slashdot calls your product "lame" it can still make a few billion. Even if HN says your idea can be done already trivially by "any linux user with curlftpfs" you can still create a startup, IPO, and become very rich. Even if someone says "we have had Mouse without Borders [...] for over a decade" you can still deliver a better experience that people will pay money for.

Just because there are existing "solutions" out there doesn't mean they are a) good or b) doing the job customers actually want them to do.

staindk• 4 years ago

Sure... but it seems that all the available solutions have their quirks and oddities. Some people (like yourself and the author of the top-level article) seem to think it is literally perfect, while others have issues and irritating experiences (see this [1] comment from this very thread).

Of course if Apple senses there is something cool out there that looks like it has only had e.g. $200k spent on it they could decide to put a bunch of devs on the same issue, spend much more money/time, and get a better product out. IMO that doesn't automatically mean they should go around calling it revolutionary if it does similar things but better or whatever.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30732528

planb2• 4 years ago

I have this Logitech software that does the same on my Windows work PC and Mac home Mac, and I can drag the mouse over and use it on both machines. Unfortunately, it does not work when my PC is on VPN (which it is all the time). Apple uses a separate Wifi connection for Universal Control, and it simply always works.

jdrc• 4 years ago

such an apple-y article. "genius", "just work", "holy shit", "incredible"

spoonjim2• 4 years ago

But this is exactly how Apple products are (and some others, like Dropbox and Toyota). It’s the same core concept as what you can get elsewhere, but much more reliable with less user fussing/configurability.

amelius2• 4 years ago

with less user fussing/configurability.

Why is it so popular among hackers then?

sschueller• 4 years ago

I love how they sell their Mac studio as being "modular" /s

hughrr4• 4 years ago

It is. Just you have stick the modules on the outside. Hmm.

TBF at least it’s not another iMac. I see so many of them stacked up for recycling where the logic board or power supply is duff. They still have perfectly good 5k 27” screens attached which are not duff.

I bought a studio display yesterday because I suspect it’ll outlast the iMac it’s no longer attached to.

abdusco• 4 years ago

Common mistake.

Modular as in buy-one-of-our-displays-and-connect-to-it modular. Not replace-or-upgrade-a-part-in-it, modular.

Crazyontap• 4 years ago

Yeah i was thinking the same thing. Sure it a cute little feature if it works, but to say that "it breaks your brain." is taking hyperbole to a whole new level. Either this person is very easily amused or has been drinking the apple kool aid for a very long time.

merrywhether• 4 years ago

Maybe this is a legitimately cool feature, and you’re just used to it by now from other ecosystems and products. Then both your and the author’s reactions can valid.

sixothree3• 4 years ago

It will completely break my brain if it actually works.

I have used Synergy, Mouse Without Border, Multiplicity, and more. They all suck. They. ALL. Suck.

Every single one of them needs to be reconnected multiple times a day. I fix this by using a schedule task that restarts them. lol

They ALL have clipboard issues where the clipboard stops working at some random point in the day.

Some of them have system breaking issues like the Synergy login screen issue. Where if you are at the lock screen (as happens throughout the day) and you move your mouse to another screen, your mouse is 100% stuck on the other screen. The only way to recover your client computer is via the power button. So take all that work you left when you got up to go to the bathroom, take it all and flush it down the toilet. Thanks Synergy. Fuck you Synergy.

They all have issues with more than two machines. Sometimes you can only access the left 100 pixels of a certain machine. Who knows!? It's fun isn't it!? Sometimes a specific screen will just... stop working. Who knows!? You were just sitting there. And now your workday has stopped.

Fuck you Synergy. Fuck you Mouse Without Borders. Fuck you Multiplicity. You all suck. You are all half-ass attempts at something that very much needs to "just work".

amelius2• 4 years ago

If this is "holy shit", what would they call it if someone made quantum computers perform practical work?

bogantech• 4 years ago

They'll pretend they didn't know that was a thing until Apple "invents" it

discordance• 4 years ago

Really depends if it was milled from one piece of aluminum and how thin this quantum computer is

Handytinge• 4 years ago

Man, there are some cynics in this thread. So it's a feature they loved and found incredible. So what? If you don't agree that's fine, no need to be so negative.

teruakohatu• 4 years ago

Is there any suggestion it will be rolled out to Apple TVs?

knolan16• 4 years ago

I don’t understand this use case. Why would you want to use your mouse and keyboard with tvOS? There’s nothing to drag and drop either.

You can screen share to an Apple TV however.

stnikolauswagne• 4 years ago

Random situation: I often sit with either my Macbook or iPad open while watching TV with my SO, there are a bunch of situations (skipping intro, quickly pausing, skipping forward/back) where I need to grab the remote to interact with the TV (or go through a bit of a hassle with pulling up the remote on iPad). Nothing super important but would be kind of neat to have.

1122332• 4 years ago

it just works, except when it doesn't. Two ipads, same settings, one works, the other doesn't. No way to troubleshoot.

Two macs, extending screen from A to B terminates universal control from B to A.

If this is beta, then why was it announced as soon to be released last year?

ungamedplayer2• 4 years ago

You are forgetting the point that this post is astoturfing .

Just ignore the Apple hypesphere and go about your life.

astura• 4 years ago

Astroturfing is fake, this is probably real. Real as in a real person expressing their real opinion. Plenty of people worship the Apple god.

saagarjha5• 4 years ago

My 2¢: it's cool, but it doesn't work nearly as well as described here, and this is definitely something that deserves the "beta" label. What's mystifying to me is why this is difficult, because I wrote my own version of this to work between Macs and it works far better than Apple's version, at least theoretically (as in, it works for me, and isn't broken in the ways that Apple's is broken, it's just not ready for release because I haven't polished the UI yet).

Apple's implementation requires you to have all the devices signed into the same iCloud account…well, guess which two computers on my desk I would like to share my input devices across? Yeah, my personal and work laptops, but I'm definitely not going to sign into iCloud on one of them, so the feature is useless for that right out of the gate. (And this is why I made my own thing, to be clear.) Putting that usecase aside, there's a Mac mini under the desk that I use for kernel debugging sometimes, and an iPad next to the monitor. Does it work with those?

For the iPad, if it's on, then sure, it works most of the time. Helpful when I am working on Swift Playgrounds I guess, since the Mac app doesn't have any of the app-making features I want to play with. If I didn't have the iOS Slack and Discord apps running on my Mac, I can see it being useful for that too. But otherwise, I don't really have a need to actually do anything on my iPad if I'm at my Mac, although I would be super interested to hear what people are using this for.

For the Mac mini, things are substantially worse. It's sleeping most of the time, because I'm not using it, and that just means Universal Control doesn't work. It's kind of hilarious because often I will poke it with my software, which uses functionality that Apple already ships (try screensharing into a sleeping Mac!) to wake up the computer, but Universal Control doesn't seem to use it. Even when the computer is on getting it to recognize the device is hit-or-miss, even though they're on the same home network and feet from each other. It seems worse at discovering the device than AirDrop is, which is saying something.

Speaking of which, even when you've got all your devices all linked up, the display configuration part is super janky, for reasons I think are extremely Apple. It looks super cool to do a keynote demo where the mouse approaches the screen edge and jumps over to the device on that side, but in the real world, people have computer layouts that don't match that. My monitors don't always match where devices are in the real world, so I frequently have the cursor appear on the wrong side of the display, and then I need to go into System Preferences anyways to fix the thing, so the magic is completely gone at that point. Plus, the configuration doesn't save and the preference pane to rearrange displays clearly didn't get the necessary love to do screen layout correctly (it's non-trivial, but not actually that hard…a fun exercise in geometric algorithms to make sure all the displays are contiguous and things like snapping work). So things will just jump around, and you'll find that certain displays can't be placed in certain positions. If you get things wrong you might lose your cursor in the "abyss", although I think it tries really hard to keep the cursor on a screen visible.

Honestly, I don't get why the feature is like this. Apple spent months working on this past the initial ship date, and it's still in "beta", and it still seems really finicky. I get the whole "things are hard actually and it's not always obvious why" but I made this thing (and I'd really love to share it, but I just can't yet) and I am not seeing why what Apple did is significantly harder than forming a secure network connection and forwarding Quartz events over it, which is what I'm doing, and seemingly works far better than their implementation does for the purposes of controlling another Mac. What am I missing?

historia_novae• 4 years ago

I'm interested in your solution between Macs as my second one (MBP 2015) is not supported by Apple's feature.

saagarjha5• 4 years ago

I haven’t tried it on my older Macs but I don’t see why it shouldn’t work with them, too.

rcarmo2• 4 years ago

It boggles the mind to read this because I’ve been using Synergy (and now Barrier, and soon Barrier’s new fork once they ship) to do the same between Mac and Windows for many years, so… it’s nothing really new.

It is cute (I’m typing this on my iPad controlled by my MacBook Pro), but just doesn’t seem very reliable at the moment (and does not work at all from an older MacBook Air). There’s a bucketload of polish in the experience, but I would refrain from calling it groundbreaking or liberating… Just a little better (UI-wise) and a little worse (no PC support).

saagarjha5• 4 years ago

Synergy/Barrier straight up don't forward multitouch, which really sucks because part of the reason I want to use a Mac is because of their phenomenal support for gestures baked in throughout the OS.

rcarmo2• 4 years ago

Actually, I think Barrier does, at least between my Mac and my PC. But it's the weekend now, so I'm not going to fire up my work machine for anything...

terhechte2• 4 years ago

I agree. I'm a Mac user, still I've been using Synergy for years to do the very same thing with a Linux Desktop. I remember using it in like 2006. Now, Synergy doesn't run on iPads, and Universal Control is certainly "better" than synergy (in technical terms) because the Apple Behemoth invested a lot of money into this, but I can't help but wonder.. why: I don't see the use case, there's not a single app on the iPad that I'd like to control from the Mac.

wsc981• 4 years ago

Could be nice for mobile devs though, you don't really have to switch devices to test apps anymore. Just have a nice iPad stand next to your desktop and you'd be good to go.

therein• 4 years ago

If you were using it as a second screen to watch something or do some basic browsing for reference material, they are probably hoping this will address the desire to cast the screen contents from the Macbook. If you seamlessly are passing your mouse and keyboard inputs, you'll likely just have your iPad do the video streaming or browsing directly.

kitsunesoba3• 4 years ago

My “why” is because it allows me to use the native iPad versions of apps which only have resource hungry and sometimes more quirky web/electron versions on desktop. Currently the iPad is responsible for handling Slack and Discord, but that list may grow.

GeekyBear• 4 years ago

there's not a single app on the iPad that I'd like to control from the Mac.

Any software that has a native iOS version, but only has an Electron version on the Mac comes instantly to mind.

The Electron version of Slack's resource usage can be insane.

rnjesus2• 4 years ago

i use an ios chinese dictionary called pleco that, for some reason, the developers don’t allow to be installed on macos. i primarly use my macbook to study, and before this update, i just checked definitions using the app on my phone. now, i have my ipad directly next to my macbook on a stand, and i can easily drag the mouse across and and look up entries without needing to unlock my phone and peck out or copy/paste characters. these kind of small optimizations to workflow are really helpful.

leokennis• 4 years ago

This sounds a lot like the famous comment from yore that Dropbox “was just rsync between a computer and a mounted FTP server” or something.

Your comment makes it sound like not needing to setup apps, not having limitations and having all complexity abstracted away on an OS level are “polishing” or nice to have.

For most people, those thing are the feature.

Chance my mom will use Synergy? 0%. Chance she’ll use Universal Control at some point? I’d say pretty high.

bitwize• 4 years ago

But do Synergy and Barrier Just Work? It has to Just Work, otherwise it's a defective product, or a rough prototype for some Apple product.

See, that's the thing. My guess is you had to configure Synergy, and as a techie you're blind to this effort. But it is still effort, hence a time sink and a cognitive burden. The Apple version is none of these and a joy to use because Apple puts the emphasis on making it Just Work with zero configuration if possible.

Hundreds of millions more people will experience multi-device control for the first time with Apple Universal Control, than will have ever heard of Synergy.

superasn• 4 years ago

But do Synergy and Barrier Just Work? It has to Just Work, otherwise it's a defective product.

I don't own any apple products so correct me if I'm wrong, but if there was a way to make a program to "just work" will Apple allow it? From what I've heard devs complain apple's walled garden is pretty restrictive when it comes to things you can and cannot do especially when mobile devices are involved.

atchoo• 4 years ago

Hundreds of millions more people

It's a pretty niche feature. I have used both Barrier and Synergy in the past but as a workflow, visually manipulating multiple computers like this sucks. Few people need to do it and life is better if you can avoid needing to do it at all. Multiplatform development is the greatest win but still, the more you can minimise on-target testing, the better. A fast test harness on your dev machine is much nicer.

IMHO remoting into a machine is much less hassle than having a dedicated screen. Most use cases typically involve poking it now and again and having an occasional window on your main display is nicer than giving up desk space and properly aligning another display. If it's not part of your permanent setup then this extra display is often an ergonomic pest. You may be able to share peripherals but if you have to contort your neck to see it then ugh, it's not fun. It can be ergonomically nicer to use their own dedicated peripherals on a side table rather than sharing them.

If it's about sharing data then obviously network accessible storage (cloud, NAS or mount a remote machine's drive) is better.

johnwalkr4• 4 years ago

I’ve used barrier for years and love it. It’s great for separating personal and work devices but having access to both at once. But it requires some effort to run if the server is a static always on workstation, and constant effort if the server is a laptop which goes to sleep and/changes its IP address. I would never recommend it to someone that might need support.

hyperbovine• 4 years ago

Does anything that relies on “Linux on the desktop” just work? Of course not. I say this as a user.

howinteresting• 4 years ago

How do I universal control my iPad from my Linux computer? Just Works within your own ecosystem, Never Works outside of it.

karlshea• 4 years ago

Apple puts the emphasis on making it Just Work

They really, really don't. I have constant Bluetooth issues with all of my Apple devices, and since all of their flashy stuff relies on Bluetooth most of it breaks every couple of days.

Universal clipboard failures, AirDrop failures, AirPod pairing issues when trying to switch between devices, and total Bluetooth stack crashes.

They get things working to 80% and then just stop maintaining them.

viktorcode3• 4 years ago

I've been Synergy user years ago but then I got fed up with amount of issues that simply couldn't be resolved (third mouse button issues, wrong key mappings, special keys pressed during crossing the boundary could mess things up on the new computer). So in the end I just put two keyboard and mice for two computers on the table.

Synergy left the impression as something opposite of "it just works".

cyberpunk5• 4 years ago

And it doesn't even support basic gestures. Useless with a trackpad.

sixothree3• 4 years ago

Yeah, but nothing sucks quite like Synergy.

On Windows if you accidentally move your mouse off of the login screen you are _completely_ unable to user your client computer. You literally need to use the power button to recover your machine. This issue persisted for years before I gave up on Synergy and all of its suckiness.

ac50hz• 4 years ago

Hmm. .Mac and MobileMe always worked for me, happily synching my contacts and calendars. There was a hiccup when it was transitioned from .Mac to MobileMe which was blamed on my use of the mac.com variant of my account name instead of me.com. Nevertheless, this was quickly resolved thanks to an Apple Executive Team intervention, it continues to Just Work.

All I need now is a small extension to Universal Control that would let some direct control be delegated to my AppleID and one of my devices, to temporarily control, for setup and short show+teach sessions, family iPhone and iPad devices in remote locations.

viktorcode3• 4 years ago

MobileMe didn't work for anyone in the world (parts of the service) in the first month after the launch.

paulryanrogers• 4 years ago

Wait having to involve the executive team isn't a disqualifier for "just works"?!

samwillis• 4 years ago

Everyone is quite right there have been systems like this available to the “Pro User” for a long time but what’s different here is it’s being brought to the main stream. They are taking a niche professional tool and making it available in a “just works” way to literally everyone. A lot of people have a Mac and an iPad, this will be their first experience of this. It’s going to be very popular with people who had no idea it was possible.

The other thing to consider is that Apple will be able to integrate at a lower deeper level than third party apps. It’s the drag and drop between devices that is going to be the game changer, that isn’t currently possible with the iPad with a third party app, the APIs don’t exist.

So yes, it’s not new but it is new to 99% of people. Just like smart phones, tablets or portable music “jukebox” players weren’t new but apple took them mainstream.

knolan16• 4 years ago

This is exactly what Apple have done again and again and yet people are still surprised when it happens.

Touch screens, FaceTime, AirDrop, Handoff, Sidecar. These are generally polished and reliable iterations of existing ideas that don’t require a bunch of other apps and configuration. They are usually marketed and smartly named, unlike Windows where they can’t seem to name anything or features are locked behind different tiers of the OS.

Even the PC Master Race brigade who love to shout that they could build a better machine for less than whatever desktop Apple releases miss the point. Macs are appliances. They work reliably and do so for a long time and you know what you’re getting in terms of functionality.

waffleiron• 4 years ago

I’ve never been an real Apple user, however I got a MacBook Pro from my employer. Recently my android broke, and a friend gave me an 2020 iPhone SE as temporary replacement while I look for a replacement.

The thing that really blew my mind was the shared clipboard, I’ve always been sending myself messages through Signal or Discord to share my clipboard. Now it’s just automatic. The only thing I would have liked was a better way to discover this, I only did by accident.

I’ve used KDE connect in the past, and this feels like the polished version of it.

edit: Mac Pro -> MacBook Pro

lloeki• 4 years ago

Continuity has been a wonderful feature that I use only from time to time, but when I use it it's been absolutely glorious in removing mental friction for menial tasks. Copying TOTP codes is one thing that just makes 2FA that much less of an annoyance.

It's infectious. So much so that I'm constantly annoyed that Music supports neither Continuity nor some form of remote control. It feels like the feature was released and then they suddenly stopped adding more apps to support it.

Lamad123• 4 years ago

The smug face I had while making similar claims with so much confidence and zeal got crushed when started seeing weird shit like the infamous green lines on the screen and the fucking "stage light effect".. I love how even embarrassing failures of this company have fancy names!

nixpulvis• 4 years ago

The polish isn't as shiny as it once was. Let's fix the Music app no? How about passwords? What about the complete failure of a window manager on macOS.

Feature bloat has plagued Apple developers to the point nobody knows how to wrangle all the gestures and interactions properly. Even a man as diligent as Steve, I suspect, wouldn't know what to do with the current state of things. He'd probably just burn it all down and start over with the front end, as is the natural order of things.

passivate6• 4 years ago

Even the PC Master Race brigade who love to shout that they could build a better machine for less than whatever desktop Apple releases miss the point.

Apple locks their ecosystem so nobody else can make a smooth seamless experience. They ensure that only they can deliver such an integrated experience. I respect the effort of their engineers, but there are countless smart UX people and engineers in the world.

reaperducer2• 4 years ago

They are usually marketed and smartly named

People really underestimate the contagiousness of Apple brand names.

Earlier this week I was listening to several non-technical people in the real world talking about their "AirTags." Eventually one of them took hers out, and it turned out they were talking about their Tile trackers. Nobody says "Tile," but everyone says "AirTags" now.

And in my company, everyone says "FaceTime," but nobody means FaceTime because it's a Windows-only organization. They mean Teams, or Zoom, or even BlueJeans, but they never actually mean FaceTime.

ignu• 4 years ago

When Apple does this, it's really hard to undersell the "reliable" aspect of it.

The responsiveness and web experience of the first iPhone was just, a generational leap.

Same thing with Universal Control. I've used Synergy, ShareMouse and basically every clone, and I've never seen close to this same precision as Universal Control which Just Works out of the box.

I'm actually upgrading to a new Mac right now, and Universal Control is an absolute game changer for that workflow.

tarsinge• 4 years ago

For me the "just works" that does it is the seamless copy and paste between my Macbook and iPhone, I never set it up and honestly I don't even looked how it works, it's just here when I need it.

adonese• 4 years ago

I enjoyed the drag and drop between windows and Samsung Galaxy device. It's certainly not as great as the highlighted apple's one, but it was really super nice!

calmouk• 4 years ago

This insight seems to be key -- thanks for sharing.

Pity that MG Siegler did not realise the opportunity to report more than what goes beyond an off-puttingly biased and superficial analysis. I recall his TechCrunch times more favourably; this article in contrast seems to not only have been written in haste, but written poorly at that.

passivate6• 4 years ago

Apple also locks down their ecosystem so nobody except them can actually make a "just works" product. How many smart UX people and engineers do we have on HN itself?

"But Apple has to lock it down, otherwise it would be a shitty ecosystem, just look at Windows lol" is a lame defense (IMO). There are countless ways to design open APIs, open data standards, etc while still having sane defaults for the non-pro users.

crooked-v• 4 years ago

And yet... how often does that actually happen?

threeseed• 4 years ago

The rumour going around is that the real use case for this feature is Apple Reality.

In AR it will allow you to control devices you physically pickup.

In VR it will create a fake-device and the real screen will be translated and superimposed.

knolan16• 4 years ago

Apple’s focus has been on pushing iPhone sales, however it seems now they are acknowledging that golden calf is tired and they are looking at making the ecosystem and services work more. So we’re seeing a merging of device functionality and increased interoperability.

With that in mind what uses would AR/VR offer that go beyond the usual gimmicks? Full floating 2D displays doesn’t seem like something Apple would do. They already do really well with placing 3D models in a space and their LiDAR scanner is impressive. I’d imagine they’re going to do something that makes you need several Apple products with any AR/VR head set.

Like the Apple Watch it’ll require an iPhone to work. It will extend the display of iPads and Macs. Stuff like the Touch Bar does will be shoved off to the side so you can use your fancy display entirely for viewing your content but UI elements will be pushed to the side off screen and you can push your mouse out of the screen to interact with it.

And some Lego AR game or something.

austinjp2• 4 years ago

I honestly don't get the appeal of the Apple ecosystem.

Yes, some bits "just work", and yes I wish that parts of the Linux and Windows ecosystems "just worked" too.

But....

There are aspects that not only don't "just work", they are aggressively terrible. For example, I still get wildly infuriated every time I try to share my partner's MacBook screen to my Linux laptop so I can build iOS apps, while my partner is logged into the MacBook. It's staggeringly bad. If I had a few spare thousand currency, sure, I'd buy a separate MacBook and a new iPhone, but that's not an option. Remote X windowing has worked for literally decades; Android remote screen access is trivial. Apple is waaaaaay behind the curve here, and it seems deliberately so, in order to encourage sales of multiple devices.

Small organisations and individual developers make their livings from addressing these issues. Then Apple re-implements the missing functionality, sometimes aggressively shutting out the third party provider; for example, remember f.lux's experience?

https://justgetflux.com/news/2016/01/14/apple.html

But when the missing functionality is added by Apple, the fan-boiz go wild:

https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iphone-night-shift-rev...

...including articles in the mainstream press

https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2016/apr/...

I'm sure similar happens in other ecosystems, but the level of hyperbole among Apple fans and degree of seemingly-deliberate brokenness and profiteering makes Apple utterly unappealing to me.

argsnd2• 4 years ago

You know macOS has a built-in bog-standard VNC server right?

luckman212• 4 years ago

The speed of the VNC server is pretty atrocious though. I've tried RealVNC, TightVNC, all the others. Could never get more than 2-3 fps out of it.

In the end wound up buying Jump Desktop which works well.

austinjp2• 4 years ago

Yep. Now, tell me how to reliably remotely interact with my MacBook desktop while my partner is logged in to that MacBook and I'm using a separate machine. Note -- and I can't believe this needs spelling out -- I want to see my desktop. Not the login screen, not my partner's desktop.

Also note: reliably. As in repeatably. As in, it "just works". Ha.

I gratefully await your advice.

Meanwhile, I'll refrain from tales of doing this 25 **ing years ago without breaking a sweat.

Sigh.

(Edit: s/view/interact/)

gillesjacobs5• 4 years ago

Exactly my experience too. It's amazing how people get invested in the brand and emotionally attached to the vendor locked walled garden. When you ask for something as simple as universal HiDPI scaling on Apple forums. A feature which many Linux distros have for 5 years now and Windows for even longer. I got passive-aggressive comments of how I should just buy the high-end Apple or LG displays and Apple docks which are literally 3x more expensive.

rootusrootus2• 4 years ago

It's amazing how people get invested in the brand and emotionally attached to the vendor locked walled garden.

IMO it's just as interesting as the people who hate Apple as if they are some kind of devil incarnate. And then talk down to Apple users like they're dumb, or cult members, etc. The vitriol is fascinating.

I can't decide if the haters are a reaction to the fans, or the fans a reaction to the haters. Probably both at this stage.

gillesjacobs5• 4 years ago

'Just werks' is great marketing but not backed up by reality. I have the displeasure of being handed an M1 Mac for a new ML and NLP job.

Let's not even talk about the issues osx-arm64 architecture brings for DevOps.

Bluetooth: devices do not disconnect when the device ID put to sleep. If I don't disconnect my headphones before leaving my laptop, I can't connect to my phone. My guess this is done for some Apple Bluetooth features, anyone using not-Apple is SooL.

HiDPI: Not using an Apple monitor? Too bad no hdpi scaling for you.

Yeah the hardware quality and design is nice, software and OS is hot garbage. My Linux Mint ThinkPad had higher UX polish than Macos Monterey.

skhr0680• 4 years ago

I hate magic spells like this but option+click on “Scaled” and you might get lucky.

Make sure you are using a good cable. Nothing made me hate cables like USB-C

nuriaion• 4 years ago

Good HiDPI scaling on my external Monitor is one of the reasons i switched back to os x. For me that works very good independent of the monitor manufacturer.

gillesjacobs5• 4 years ago

Any notebook with Windows and multiple Linux distros work with HiDPI scaling on any combination of my various docks, monitors, and cables.

Apple definitely does not "just work" in this case. They really "think different" as in different standards to ensure consumer lock-in in their walled garden.

roemerb• 4 years ago

Regarding the Bluetooth thing, it's indeed very annoying. I've found this utility that helps: https://github.com/odlp/bluesnooze

gillesjacobs5• 4 years ago

Thanks that's one everyday frustration down!

rawfan2• 4 years ago

Interesting. I have the complete opposite experience. HiDPI works great and consistently looks better on macOS than on Ubuntu, e.g..

I'd love to hear what your DevOps issues are. I got an M1 laptop a few months ago and at that point everything just worked out-of-the-box. Ansible, Terraform, Docker.. no issues so far.

matwood2• 4 years ago

I'd love to hear what your DevOps issues are.

Same. I've been using m1's since they came out and early on Terraform didn't work (had to wait on Go to support apple silicon), but that was over a year ago at this point. Now, everything works great...

Maybe the OP relies on Docker?

kitsunesoba3• 4 years ago

I’ve also had a terrible experience with DPI scaling under Linux.

My Thinkpad Nano has a screen resolution that works best with its UI scaled to 150% or 175%. Windows does this pretty well, with mainly a tiny handful of old stuff where the dev flung a binary over the wall many moons ago and forgot about it not working right. macOS handles this scenario decently too, though at a slight performance hit since it renders at a higher resolution and then scales down.

Linux on the other hand has been a mess. I’ve tried GNOME, KDE, and Cinnamon on the latest Fedora both with X11 and Wayland (except for cinnamon, which is X11 only), and none of them get non-integer scaling 100% right across both the DE and all apps. This is the exacerbated by different UI toolkits having minds of their own and needing independent configuration, where on macOS and Windows they obey the system.

In fact, in my experience Linux works best if you have a boring ultra common setup — Intel iGPU with Intel networking with a single normal DPI monitor. As soon as you start deviating from that, expect things to start getting quirky.

Tagbert• 4 years ago

Why do you need to disconnect your headphones from your laptop to connect them to your phone? When I switch from laptop to iPhone I just go to Bluetooth settings and select the headphones and they connect.

I did turn off the auto-switching for AirPods as that caused some unintended switching and offered too little benefit.

tonetheman2• 4 years ago

The comments here are actually hard to read.

The only thing I can think of in context of the current world situation is these are "Apple Assets" that are posting on this thread. Or maybe Apple bots. Or just deluded Apple fan boys?

This technology pre-dates Apple and it is not just magic. There is in fact a program running somewhere. But the idea is cool.

HN needs a way to denote bots though or people who think like bots at least.

rawfan2• 4 years ago

My first thought when I read this article was: Dude, I used this probably 20 years ago and even then it had copy and paste between devices and drag and drop.

The case with this, though, is - as the article says - it just works. That's not the case with a single OSS KVM solution I know of. You'll always have to do some amount of configuration apart from installation that prevents widespread adoption.

tonetheman2• 4 years ago

Yeah I too used this tech many years ago.

Instead of what I consider spam and then all the bots/fanboys. It would be great to hear about how they implemented it. Or how they made it seamless. Much more interesting than an apple circle jerk.

rootusrootus2• 4 years ago

You know what is more tiring than Apple fan boys? Haters. If this topic does not interest you, close this submission and move on to the next one. HN even provides you a handy little "Hide" link that will keep you from ever seeing it again.

hu3• 4 years ago

You know what is more tiring than Apple fan boys? Haters.

I digress. Haters don't spam HN with useless Apple related astroturfing.

janandonly• 4 years ago

I noticed a big battery drain on my iPad though. Now it will lose a lot of power just because this option is switched on, even when I don’t use it.

vishnugupta3• 4 years ago

I've been in Apple's ecosystem (MacBook Pro + iPhone 11 + AirPod Pro) for 2.5 years. The harmony between the devices is just fantastic. Even after all these months I discover a nifty little feature that's super useful. The latest is copy/paste works across devices. Once discovered I began using it more often.

Apple epitomises the power of compounding. The level of deep integration they have built across and within devices (their own CPU, OS, and app etc.,) is impressive to say the least.

To pick another example; I just can't use any web browser other than Safari because of things like touch-ID enabled password store; privacy relay, hide my email and they keep piling on such thoughtful features once or twice a year. To an extent I'm now contemplating migrating from Fastmail (have my own domain) to Apple Mail.

daniel-cussen• 4 years ago

Yeah I've noticed similar things, really thoughtful, not just "Apple VPN" but real thought in the process. And tons of things that you effectively can't market, that went into the integrity of the T2 security chip, if you dig really deep it's really really good.

That good, huh? Better than Fastmail?

I'm asking because I'm now prioritizing digital subscriptions. It's just such good ROI, it's a unique kind of product that goes for subscriptions. Not so much into products as services. The really good services all require subscriptions, and can justify their cost easily.

Apparently subscriptions transform businesses at an "technology of business" to say it one way, at that level. Like it looks much better on their balance sheet to have subscriptions, and for good reason. But it's deeper than that.

vishnugupta3• 4 years ago

That good, huh? Better than Fastmail?

I suppose feature wise Fastmail is slightly better. Just that I need to pay about 8$/e-mail/month and it's free part of iCloud subscription. Plus, more convenient to manage from one place. But on the downside; it leads to single point of failure so I'm still weighing that decision.

dangoor• 4 years ago

I use 1Password, so I get touch ID-enabled logins in any browser. Works pretty well.

I'm also a Fastmail user, but I (a long time Apple product user) don't have the impression of their services being quite as solid as some of the others, so I wouldn't switch my mail over yet. Plus, Fastmail has some other features I like (easy to set up aliases, including their new "masked email" feature, which integrates with 1Password).

All of that said, I've been all-in on Apple stuff for a number of years for exactly the reason you cite. There's a lot of good stuff that works well together. Like getting a security code via SMS and having Safari (on the iPhone) offer that as an autofill option.

CharlesW3• 4 years ago

Like getting a security code via SMS and having Safari (on the iPhone) offer that as an autofill option.

BTW, this works with native apps too — just did it 30m ago with the Dave & Busters app. (My guess is that this works via the iOS keyboard.)

matt-attack2• 4 years ago

It’s so fast that Safari always offers it for the form field before the audible alert and notification for the text itself.

abridgett• 4 years ago

How does this compare with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X2x? x2x is over 25 years old. I'm sure UC is more streamlined, however the basic premise is the same. I did actually use x2x for a while (but normally just "exported the display" back to my home system. X-windows was/is rather amazing.

newaccount745• 4 years ago

"It just works" is a lie. It does not just work.

It fails all the time for inexplicable reasons. Eg. one computer has two users signed in -- doesn't work, silent failure, no error message.

Computer not yet booted -- does not work, no way to type in the login password. (Granted this is hard to solve, but would be what I need to get away without a KVM switch)

One computer crashes -- your second Mac is now mouseless for 5 minutes until some time out occurs.

Multiple monitors stacked vertically: You can only move the cursor across one of the borders, the other one doesn't work.

Using a 3rd party mouse with extra functions: can't use them or scrolling won't work anymore.

The problem is that when something fails, there is no error message, no log message, no indication what you need to do to make it work.

As with all Apple solutions, it's a seamless experience if it happens to work, but if it doesn't work you'll be pulling your hairs.

zenexer2• 4 years ago

I’ve had similar issues, but I believe one of the issues you’re encountering is intentional:

Multiple monitors stacked vertically: You can only move the cursor across one of the borders, the other one doesn't work.

Once two devices are connected, you can rearrange them in Display preferences just like any other monitors. I found this to work as expected. By default, the connected devices have their monitors aligned such that the corner of one monitor touches the corner of another, but you’re free to change that.

On the other hand, I’ve encountered additional issues. Even with a Magic Mouse or built-in trackpad, there are odd lag spikes.

Scrolling will randomly stop working.

Some first-party iPadOS apps will randomly freeze, including Settings. They’ll stop responding to touch input as well. Other apps will continue to work.

Overall, though, it works well enough that I’ve been using it to run Slack on my iPad while working on my MacBook.

newaccount745• 4 years ago

It's not intentional. I know I can rearrange the displays.

Here's my setup (I hope ASCII art works here):

    ┌─────┐ ┌───┐
    │ A1  │ │   │
    ├─────┤ │ B │
    │ A2  │ │   │
    └─────┘ └───┘

Mac A has two monitors stacked vertical: A1 and A2.

Mac B has a portrait monitor.

I can move between A2 and B. I can't move between A1 and B.

yohannparis• 4 years ago

... in beta!

newaccount745• 4 years ago

Airdrop has been out for years and it still has the same types of issues, so I have no hopes that they are going to fix it.

Edit: I'm not complaining that there are bugs or corner cases. Every software has that. My complaint is mainly that when something goes wrong, there are no error messages, no diagnostic tools, and the documentation is severely lacking. You have to randomly try things. How do you figure out that fast user switching breaks universal control? I just figured that out by accident. Your only hope is googling the issue and hope that someone figured it out and wrote a blog post about it.

323• 4 years ago

one computer has two users signed in -- doesn't work, silent failure, no error message

Surely that is an extremely rare scenario. Personally, I've never seen it in real life.

techdragon• 4 years ago

I don’t actually care how rare this is, when you have a major feature of your Operating System like Fast User switching which can leave two accounts logged in simultaneously, then it’s inexcusable to not test under these basic scenarios.

This is just more evidence of the systemic issues Apple has with maintaining software. Forgetting to test new features work with Fast User Switching is a failure to maintain the fast user switching feature of your operating system!

planb2• 4 years ago

Rare? My wife and me use this all the time on the “living room MacBook” and universal control works without problems.

randyrand• 4 years ago

I use 2 users constantly on my mac. 1 for personal. 1 for work.

I enjoy the hard separation. separate desktops. seperate windows. seperate instances of apps. seperate download folder. etc etc.

playpause• 4 years ago

Ha, I found the same thing. It’s very buggy right now. But I think there’s still an important grain of truth in the idea that it “just works”. OK it’s buggy, so it doesn’t always work. But when it does, it just works. It’s all or nothing. That’s why people prefer Apple stuff and are willing to overlook bugs. Their competitor’s products come with caveats that go way beyond “it’s got a few bugs we haven’t ironed out yet”.

bredren• 4 years ago

Their competitor’s products come with caveats that go way beyond “it’s got a few bugs we haven’t ironed out yet”.

The unspoken truth. Yes, you may get more debug output in other ecosystems but there are going to be mountains of bugs and a kludge of workarounds to get “seamless” integration.

Can this particular problem be solved better now? Yes. Can every other cross device integration be solved as well? No way!

The pain stretches across software and hardware.

newaccount745• 4 years ago

But when it does, it just works.

Until it doesn't. A few files in iCloud drive just stopped syncing a handful of times. Is it a network issue? A temporary glitch? Should I restart the computer? Or just wait a little? Nobody knows!

I switched to Syncthing for syncing files. It also fails sometimes. But it shows a clear, actionable error message when it fails (eg: file name contains characters not supported on target device). And there's a button to manually trigger a sync in case the file system observation didn't work.

With iCloud it's always a surprise. Is it going to sync? Probably. When? In the next minute probably. It's been 5 minutes, is there a way to sync right now? Try restarting the computer, maybe that'll fix it.

zeusk• 4 years ago

Try mouse without borders if you’re on windows as well - works without login, across multiple borders, with 3rd party mouse buttons and crashes cause quick disconnect.

fleeno• 4 years ago

Even the "just works" experience isn't great because it's just not intuitive to setup. There's no confirmation that yes, your iPad and this other machine are connected. It either fails silently, or you realize you can move your cursor over. But where do you move your cursor? You also need to setup Sidecar to tell it where your screens are located. The only way I got it to work was to look through third-party articles. I'd love to see a dropdown list of what machines I'm connected with.

In addition, going from my Mac to an iPad is laggy and it had the caps lock flipped between each machine!

What is really fun though is Synergy, which a few years ago was running a Mac, a Linux box, and an O2 all from the same keyboard and mouse.

deergomoo• 4 years ago

The problem is that when something fails, there is no error message, no log message, no indication what you need to do to make it work.
As with all Apple solutions, it's a seamless experience if it happens to work, but if it doesn't work you'll be pulling your hairs.

This is probably the thing that annoys me the most about Apple stuff, particularly over the last 5 years or so. I know they're never gonna give us knobs and dials to fiddle with this stuff when it goes wrong, but for christ's sake at least tell me what's wrong, or even that something is wrong. Prodding at the controls on my phone trying to work out why the hell it won't connect to the AirPods that are right there is not a good experience for anyone.

mihaaly2• 4 years ago

My favourite example is Airdrop. It never ever was reliable for me, hidden problems made it inoperational between changing combination of 3 apple products (2 MacBooks and one iPhone) most of the time. Mostly it does not work. The other device does not appear on the 'radar'. Even when works then one file at a time, choosing 3 options for each single one, e.g. transfer 4 pdf I require on the road for travel, drag only one (4 at the same time is refused), accept teansfer, select where to put it let's say files, then select where in files. repeated 4 times. Not even remotely user friendly or making life easier as it was supposed to. But if you have a picture (e.g. screenshot you have no choice at all, it decides that it WILL go among pictures, that's it! Right now I only can send files from one Mac to iPhone but not the other way around. It was working two ways before until an update on one of the devices, don't remember which one. And remained so even after repeated updates on both (one is an old SE so that may be just behind features or what, but I don't care why! I am not for my f.g phone but the other way around! I paid for it to help me not for solving mysteries! It should just work but it just not!)

oxplot• 4 years ago

EDIT: need a break for sure

the_common_man• 4 years ago

No offense but I Honestly think you need a break. You are letting comments and random people get to you.

spsful• 4 years ago

What are you talking about? This article is praising Apple for a smooth feature rollout. He gave a rather honest mention of an older botched rollout, but I don't see any bashing at all.

teilo2• 4 years ago

Yeah, it's clever to be able to control an iPad from a Mac. But it's real utility is controlling multiple Macs. I have a personal and a company laptop, and I use both all the time. This just made things much easier (and yes, I know about Synergy, but just never bothered to try it).

But it does not "just work" by any stretch. I ran into the same typical crap that I see with Handoff and Airdrop. It "just works" until it inexplicably stops working, for no apparent reason, and nothing but a reboot fixes it. Even getting my two Macs to see each other was a PITA (a 16" M1 Max, and a 14" M1 Pro). I thought at first it was because one was hardwired (but also on the local wifi), but no. Disabling ethernet made no difference. Multiple reboots, no dice. Later on, 10 minutes after deciding to give up, it just decided to start working, a fact which I only discovered because I lost control of my mouse on one machine, not realizing I had moved it to the other.

Now that they "know" one another, we'll see if it works more consistently now.

cyberpunk5• 4 years ago

Exact same experience here.... (M1 Air (personal) and 14" pro (intel) work)..

Driving me fucking insane. I've gone back to just having two keyboards and trackpads on my desk.

gumby• 4 years ago

Every time I find handoff or shared clipboard not working it’s been because my devices are on different Wi-Fi networks.

For me that has been when SSIDs foo and foo-5 are both available (home, vacation house, work), so I’d tell my Mac (which tells my other devices) to try both.

Once I stopped doing this these features became rock solid. Note that editing your WiFi list (removing obsolete ones and ordering the search list) will speed up connecting to WiFi on all your devices.

PS: typing w, i, f, and i on my ipad resulted in the two different expansions above!

teilo2• 4 years ago

That's nice, but I've had shared clipboard break numerous times, and all devices were on the same SSID. It hasn't happened recently, which to me says that the past failures were caused by bugs in Apple's implementation. But I just had Airdrop fail last night transferring files to my wife's phone. It just suddenly stops transferring, and claims the device is out of space. It had 64GB free, and 1.5TB free on iCloud. Restarted the phone, and it started working again. Fail, Apple.

dkobia• 4 years ago

Have the exact same setup, 16" M1 Max, and a 14" M1 Pro and handoff issues can get annoying. Sometimes the issue is caused by switching the initializing screen push from one computer to the other. In essence changing the master, which decides who’s peripherals will be shared. This definitely feels “beta” as they’ve labeled it. A lot of progress but beta and I tip my hat to the team working on it.

sprain• 4 years ago

It works. Yet I have no idea what I should use it for.

mihaaly2• 4 years ago

My first try with iCloud, not long after got introduced, was a disaster. Test disaster only, but a definite disaster. I turned it on, added a document, turned off, then got notified that my local file will be deleted. Forced the 'iCloud first'paradigm on me. Tried, I was scared away right away and hard. All this after the security and privacy concern of storing my important data tied to an online account on some sort of who knows what computer location somewhere and some way, non-trasparent. Since then I put considerable effort avoiding this shitshow, which is not easy, it bugs me to turn on at every possible occasion (updates, new installs, or just for the heck of it sometimes) on a 'small print' way to opting out, it is not a straightforward choice of yes no and that's it but work to choose the other way, confirm that I surely want to go other way. My phone bugs me logging in all the time, update and settings notifications stick permanently, f.g obtrusive. Never ever will I consider this based on my almost completely negative experiences. (I used only for syncing contacts but turning it off once on my phone and say yes to the question 'do you want to keep a local copy of contacts' it deleted ALL my contacts from the phone.)

frazbin• 4 years ago

Wow amazing turns out if you prevent app developers from writing a feature for 10 years, when you do it yourself there's a big demand! Thanks Apple!

bradgranath2• 4 years ago

Maybe they could invent a way for PadOs to do something useful?

CoreUSB? XCode? A working Terminal? AppleScript? Logic? Any update at all to GarageBand?

It has literally the same logic inside it. Why do they hobble it like this?

e40• 4 years ago

With the power of the M1 chip it's amazing how little it can do.

bradgranath2• 4 years ago

Seriously! What does Apple think you’re supposed to want to do with it?

cyberpunk5• 4 years ago

Yet, it randomly works for me. I use a M1 air with a ethernet cable.. To get it started initially I had to turn on wifi (which drops my download speed from 20MB/s to 2MB/s in my office) and then, disabled wifi, and it still works. Cool! Then, after a while, it stops working...

Turn on wifi to see if there's some retard dependency on the physical layer and nada.. Still not working. Ach, whatever...

Then throughout the day, it just randomly works and doesn't on ethernet.

Da fuq. Ship working code or don't. What is this nonsense? It's, I imagine, a fucking service running on the iPad that receives a stream of events from my Mac like (moved a bit forward on the trackpad). How hard is it?

karkisuni• 4 years ago

one workaround for this is to turn off "Automatically join this network" for your office wifi and disconnect from it, but don't turn off Wifi entirely. That way it can still make direct wifi connections to your other apple devices.

cyberpunk5• 4 years ago

Cheers, will give that a go :}

synthmeat• 4 years ago

How hard is it?

Just keep both network interfaces fired up, and sort them by priority in Network preferences panel (I assume ethernet, then wifi for you use case). Then you can forget about everything and do work, tethered or not.

Turn the bluetooth on as well while you're at it.

This is the way.

cyberpunk5• 4 years ago

This worked; I didn’t know this was even a thing, so — many thanks synthmeat!

bartq• 4 years ago

If this works, it means pretty soon will work sending whole application window from iPad to macOS and vice versa inside some "iEnvelope" Swift wrapper which will allow much higher interoperability. Will be exciting to see it, but at the same time it's disappointing how slow the progress of improving end user OS UIs is.

pSYoniK• 4 years ago

This seems similar to Barrier in Zorin OS. Not across tablets and such, but across Zorin OS devices. I remember using this to share keyboard/mouse across my desktop and laptop, but I rarely end up actually using it.

It seems like one of those things that is interesting in concept, but I can't say I'm seeing the need/use case for it outside of that...

smoldesu• 4 years ago

For the record, the upstream version of Zorin Connect (KDE Connect) is available on all Linux distros, and also supports mouse control on Android devices.

beamatronic• 4 years ago

What would impress me is if each of the devices knew spatially it’s own position and that of all of the other devices. A local 3-D model of local radio emitters.

gumboshoes• 4 years ago

I use Synergy and gave Universal Control a go. Unfortunately, it doesn't work with the scroll wheel on my Logitech mouse.

musicale• 4 years ago

Whenever I have to copy and paste long passwords or authentication tokens etc. I wonder - is it really a good idea to put a password onto the clipboard?

But it's not as if I'm going to type it, especially into an iPhone, and not all apps support icloud keychain.

Apple’s Universal Control

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