[HN Gopher] Apple's Universal Control
___________________________________________________________________
Apple's Universal Control
Author : imartin2k
Score : 228 points
Date : 2022-03-19 07:45 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (500ish.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (500ish.com)
| rcarmo wrote:
| 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).
| saagarjha wrote:
| 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.
| rcarmo wrote:
| 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...
| johnwalkr wrote:
| It does not work well for multi touch, even from Mac to Mac
| in my experience.
| filiperui wrote:
| You're right. My use case is also Mac to Mac and
| Barrier/Synergy does not provide the UC experience. No
| multi gestures support - and the thing that annoys me the
| most - trackpad scrolling events aren't mapped _one to
| one_ , you end up scrolling lines on the target, not the
| precision you're expecting.
|
| To be honest I'm not sure if Barrier developers could
| actually mimic that without resorting to some sort of
| undocumented APIs and/or obscure techniques.
| saagarjha wrote:
| The APIs are all there on Quartz events, it's just that
| nobody seems to use them :(
| johnwalkr wrote:
| In my case, my always-on workstation is a windows
| machine, and I also need a 3-button mouse for a decent
| CAD experience. So, I just give up on gestures and
| multitouch anyway (I prefer this consistency over having
| slightly different behavior across machines). Probably
| for similar reasons, it would be difficult to make
| barrier work as we wished on MacOS and still be multi-
| platform.
| terhechte wrote:
| 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.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| >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.
| therein wrote:
| 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.
| jorl17 wrote:
| But you can already cast the screen contents as well. It's
| called Sidecar!
| rnjesus wrote:
| 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.
| bene_legionary wrote:
| I think Pleco's developers are more focused on improving
| the dictionary than porting it to computers (they have an
| Android version too), but it would be very nice to have a
| computer version that can look up words if you right click
| them, for example.
| wsc981 wrote:
| 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.
| terhechte wrote:
| That is indeed a nice setup I hadn't thought about.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| 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.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Can't you install iPad apps on Macs now? Seems like that
| would be an easier solution to your needs.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| There are ways but last I knew, if the dev has disabled
| installing the iOS version on macOS (as Slack and Discord
| regrettably have), you need to turn off SIP to be able to
| decrypt the iOS app bundles, then re-sign them and re-
| enable SIP.
|
| My only M1 mac is a company machine and I don't like the
| idea of disabling SIP on it, even temporarily.
| [deleted]
| leokennis wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| karlshea wrote:
| > 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.
| howinteresting wrote:
| How do I universal control my iPad from my Linux computer?
| Just Works within your own ecosystem, Never Works outside of
| it.
| hyperbovine wrote:
| Does anything that relies on "Linux on the desktop" just
| work? Of course not. I say this as a user.
| atchoo wrote:
| > 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.
| superasn wrote:
| > 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.
| xvector wrote:
| Do you really trust the average individual to install apps
| that with zero configuration can read your screen from any
| of your devices?
|
| This walled garden is 100% a feature.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm an Apple developer, and own _lots_ of Apple products.
|
| Apple gear and software always has a low-level advantage,
| as they own the SDK, but I haven't seen them actually use
| this to deliberately disadvantage competitors (unlike some
| other companies that I won't mention).
|
| That said, I have seen them "Sherlock" developers, though;
| where they implement integrated versions of products made
| by independent devs. This has been fairly controversial, as
| they have not always paid/given credit to the developers
| they plowed under. That sucks, because it would, literally,
| cost them nothing to simply mention the product that
| inspired their work. I suspect that's because lawyers.
|
| I tend to like Apple for the same reason that other
| developers hate them. That "walled garden" is a big fat
| PItA, but it is also the reason for an enormous, lucrative,
| market. We need to learn to take the bad with the good, if
| we want to be happy.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Apple gear and software always has a low-level
| advantage, as they own the SDK, but I haven't seen them
| actually use this to deliberately disadvantage
| competitors (unlike some other companies that I won't
| mention).
|
| Try to write code for macOS that can stream data from
| disk as fast as Logic Pro. Maybe there's really no magic,
| and I'm just an idiot, but I certainly couldn't do it.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm not exactly sure what that has to do with disputing
| the quoted sentence. It's actually what I was talking
| about. Everybody knows that Apple has "internal APIs,"
| giving them access that non-Apple software does not have.
| This does make it difficult for independent developers to
| offer competing functionality (this has happened with
| me), but I have not felt that Apple has deliberately
| targeted competition. It's just that they have the
| ability to deliver something that serves the user, and
| their internal access gives them an advantage.
|
| As an independent developer, I can certainly understand
| why I would not be allowed to access some of these
| private APIs, and I don't feel that it is because Apple
| is afraid of any competition from li'l ol' me. I have
| always assumed that it's because access at that level may
| bypass some security methods.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| You have just described "deliberately disadvantaging" the
| competition, which was what you said you did not believe
| Apple had done.
| johnwalkr wrote:
| 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.
| viktorcode wrote:
| 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".
| cyberpunk wrote:
| And it doesn't even support basic gestures. Useless with a
| trackpad.
| sixothree wrote:
| 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.
| oxplot wrote:
| EDIT: need a break for sure
| the_common_man wrote:
| No offense but I Honestly think you need a break. You are
| letting comments and random people get to you.
| spsful wrote:
| 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.
| jdrc wrote:
| such an apple-y article. "genius", "just work", "holy shit",
| "incredible"
| spoonjim wrote:
| 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.
| amelius wrote:
| > with less user fussing/configurability.
|
| Why is it so popular among hackers then?
| sschueller wrote:
| I love how they sell their Mac studio as being "modular" /s
| hughrr wrote:
| 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.
| sixothree wrote:
| And you connect those modules to each other via industry
| standard cables. Perfectly modular, see!?
| abdusco wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| sixothree wrote:
| 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".
| merrywhether wrote:
| 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.
| amelius wrote:
| If this is "holy shit", what would they call it if someone made
| quantum computers perform practical work?
| discordance wrote:
| Really depends if it was milled from one piece of aluminum
| and how thin this quantum computer is
| bogantech wrote:
| They'll pretend they didn't know that was a thing until Apple
| "invents" it
| sprain wrote:
| It works. Yet I have no idea what I should use it for.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| "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.
| fleeno wrote:
| 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.
| 323 wrote:
| > _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.
| randyrand wrote:
| 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.
| techdragon wrote:
| 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!
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| Sadly "Fast User switching" seems to be full of bugs in
| itself (in my experience).
|
| It does seems to be a feature that gets very little testing
| or quality control. I'm not surprised at all if it causes
| issues with Universal Control.
| planb wrote:
| Rare? My wife and me use this all the time on the "living
| room MacBook" and universal control works without problems.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| zenexer wrote:
| 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.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| 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.
| zenexer wrote:
| That's intentional. What you're actually getting is this:
| +-----+ | A1 | +-----+ +-+ | A2 |
| |B| +-----+ +-+
|
| It's the same as if you were to have an actual third
| monitor. You can reposition B in the Display settings so it
| looks like this: +-----+ | A1 |
| +-+ +-----+ |B| | A2 | +-+ +-----+
|
| That arrangement had been working for me, but I have to
| manually configure it. However, that's no different from
| when I plug in a monitor with a mismatched resolution or
| DPI. It's even the same as Sidecar.
|
| That being said, it's been far from reliable, and Universal
| Control is both very late and very much unfinished. I've
| been experiencing different issues from the ones you
| mentioned, but they've been issues nonetheless.
| TimMeade wrote:
| Yea i have this issue also. The only alternative was to put
| the ipad to left of the monitor in displays and drag across
| to get to it. Works but not good. Hopefully apple will fix
| soon.
| yohannparis wrote:
| ... in beta!
| newaccount74 wrote:
| 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.
| zeusk wrote:
| 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.
| mihaaly wrote:
| 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!)
| deergomoo wrote:
| > 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.
| playpause wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| > 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.
| mihaaly wrote:
| 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.)
| [deleted]
| austinjp wrote:
| 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.
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| 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.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > 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.
| argsnd wrote:
| You know macOS has a built-in bog-standard VNC server right?
| luckman212 wrote:
| 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.
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| NoMachine for Mac also works quite well.
| johnwalkr wrote:
| Google Remote Desktop works great and takes troubleshooting
| network routing out of the equation.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| Is there any suggestion it will be rolled out to Apple TVs?
| knolan wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| knolan wrote:
| I'd imagine the Control Centre remote widget on
| iOS/iPadOS/WatchOS will come to the Mac. A swipe and a tap
| isn't much hassle!
| teilo wrote:
| 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.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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!
| vishnugupta wrote:
| 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.
| dangoor wrote:
| 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.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _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.)
| SparkyMcUnicorn wrote:
| I get this on Android.
|
| Did I set something custom up and forget about it, or is
| this standard?
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| 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.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| > 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.
| ac50hz wrote:
| 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.
| viktorcode wrote:
| MobileMe didn't work for anyone in the world (parts of the
| service) in the first month after the launch.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Wait having to involve the executive team isn't a disqualifier
| for "just works"?!
| samwillis wrote:
| 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.
| calmouk wrote:
| 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.
| tarsinge wrote:
| 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.
| passivate wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| And yet... how often does that actually happen?
| passivate wrote:
| That is a very fair point. I think it starts at the
| leadership level which prioritizes things like UX, quality
| of materials used in construction, etc, etc. You need
| people at the top that are not just bean counters.
| adonese wrote:
| 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!
| knolan wrote:
| 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.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _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.
| Lamad123 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| It's kind of baffling how clunky/featureless/unintuitive
| apple's Music app is, right? Most of their apps are slick
| and intuitive, but Music is just so... _bad_. Especially
| given how amazing iTunes used to be!
| FractalHQ wrote:
| I use Rectangle for tiling and Bitwarden desktop app for
| passwords. Highly recommend them!
| TillE wrote:
| I know X11 WMs have had all sorts of fancy features for
| decades, but I've never seen any particular benefit from
| them personally.
|
| The Mac desktop works extremely well when used more or less
| as intended for the vast majority of Mac users (ie, on a
| laptop): with a multi-touch trackpad, flicking rapidly
| between virtual desktops, and flicking up to see everything
| at once.
| majormajor wrote:
| Yeah, ever since Expose launched in 10.3 (Panther?) I
| haven't seen a better window manager for a laptop.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> flicking rapidly between virtual desktops_
|
| Honestly, that's a terrible workflow for me. Due to the
| nature of my work, many times I need to tile 2, 3 or 4
| windows on the same screen so I can view them all at
| once. Flicking quickly between them instead of having
| them all static in front of me is a UX nightmare that
| gives me eye strain just thinking about it.
|
| I have no idea how people mange to multi task efficiently
| by flicking and not get headaches, or on desktop with a
| mouse and keyboard, but maybe Apple thinks most of its
| customers are content creators who should just be
| focusing on one app at a time and never need to tile
| several. I guess I just wasn't meant to be an Apple
| customer.
|
| For my type of work, I much prefer the Windows/Linux way
| of having the flicking option for laptops but also great
| out of the box tiling built in.
| knolan wrote:
| You don't have to flick anything. Windows align against
| each other and you can position them how you like. You
| can even configure it to always open specific apps in a
| particular virtual desktop should you chose.
|
| If you want a full screen app that you flick through like
| an iPad you can. If you want a mess of windows on one
| desktop you can use App Expose to see only the ones from
| a particular app. If you want a tiling manager you can
| install one.
|
| If you want to turn off all the gestures you can.
|
| It's a mature desktop OS that has many ways of doing
| things.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Yeah, but I don't need any of that swiping most of the
| time, nor do I wish to install a tiling window manager to
| do the tiling automatically for me all the time, as I
| only need the tiling sometimes and I prefer to do the
| tiling myself.
|
| I just want my OS to give me the option, out of the box,
| to quickly tile on demand 2 to 4 windows on the same
| screen in a sane layout that I can choose that's easily
| resizable to my current needs. That's it.
|
| Kind of like this:
|
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/apps/desktop/modern...
| Bud wrote:
| People forget that iTunes was a mess while Steve was still
| alive. Now it's considerably improved.
| reaperducer wrote:
| It gets worse, and it gets better.
|
| Apple Music still won't sync all of my wife's MP3 songs
| to her iPhone 13 Pro, even though she pays for the
| subscription. Some stuff goes through. Some doesn't. It's
| very random.
|
| My iPhone X syncs fine, even wirelessly, with the same
| library, though.
|
| I'm just glad (OK, amazed) that Apple Music still syncs
| songs with my 17-year-old first-generation iPod Shuffle.
| I used it just yesterday. My only complaint is that the
| icon displayed in the Finder sidebar for the second-
| generation Shuffles has the wrong aspect ratio. Still the
| best music player on the planet.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| A massive company with dozens of apps have some that don't
| meet your arbitrarily high bar? Shocker.
|
| Music works fine. Passwords work fine. The window manager
| works fine.
|
| Revolutionary? No. Needing an update? I think so.
|
| A failure? Only in your fevered dreams.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| Feel the same way. There are some uninspiring apps but
| they can't update all apps all the time. 2 things matter:
| 1) they are not being decprecated or ignored. Thats for
| google to do. and 2) when they do finally get a non-
| incremental update, they usually are much better.
| Meaning, they batched together a bunch of things that
| were true problems and fixed them in a smart/clever way.
| asiachick wrote:
| I wish they'd fix the home/end key. It's on their external
| keyboard but it's mostly useless without third party os
| extensiosns
| waffleiron wrote:
| 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
| catach wrote:
| > The thing that really blew my mind was the shared
| clipboard
|
| I wasn't aware this was a thing, and my mind just got
| blown. Thanks.
| knolan wrote:
| It's the kind of thing they'll talk up and demo at their
| keynotes and maybe on their webpage when the latest OS
| drops, so unless you're actively paying attention to them
| all of this goes unseen. Sometimes the annoying tips app
| may pop up and tell you too.
| catach wrote:
| Yeah, I'm pretty new to the ecosystem and I frequently
| have a nagging feeling that I should do a deep dive into
| documentation and guides just to catch up. Especially
| when it comes to wrangling Finder.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Shared clipboard has been huge for me, especially when
| prepping things like DMing or D&D haha
| calciphus wrote:
| Shared clipboard in an age of 2FA is amazing.
|
| For the windows and Android users (of which I am one), the
| first party "your phone" app in windows 10/11 gives you
| this along with a lot of other amazing features (running
| your phone apps on desktop, access to photos and sms,
| notifications, calling and answering through your
| computer).
| obscuren wrote:
| Consider my mind blown as well. Holy shit this works well.
| knolan wrote:
| You can also scan a document from your iPhone and insert
| the image anywhere from the context (right click) menu.
| All it's really doing is removing a few steps from the
| need to unlock your phone, open the notes app, select the
| scan document option and share/airdrop the result. It's
| simple and effective.
|
| I've seen so many students upload images for online exams
| via things like cam scanner unaware that they don't need
| third party solutions. They complain about the time
| needed to get the images off their phones and onto their
| laptops for exams because of these supposedly hidden
| features.
|
| (On Windows you can browse your android's phone's photos
| via the photos app via USB)
|
| Similarly they go to extremes with various oddball apps
| to make PDFs with cam scanner images in all sorts of
| orientations with nasty watermarks because they're
| unaware of the power of Preview.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Previews signature feature has made life so much easier.
| The ability to quickly sign W9's/contracts as a
| freelancer is a god send
| fitzroy wrote:
| My recent/related iOS hack is screenshotting difficult-to-
| select text in sites and apps. Live Text immediately
| performs OCR on the screenshot and the text can then be
| copied/pasted.
| lloeki wrote:
| 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.
| knolan wrote:
| With a HomePod you can transfer music from a phone to the
| speaker by holding it near it. It's not AirPlay it just
| switches over. A similar feature for MacOS would be nice.
|
| You can also use an Apple Watch as a remote for music
| playing on any device in your home. Apple want your money.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Also would be nice if it worked for Siri... I'm always hey
| Siri-ing my watch for timers and my phone is like "there is
| no timer set"
| axtonpitt wrote:
| Yeah agreed, not having continuity support in Music baffles
| me
| sigjuice wrote:
| That's likely because of the usual music industry
| bullshit. They are probably asking to be paid for a
| "continuity license".
| Wevah wrote:
| There is a Remote app for Music (and TV) on both iOS and
| watchOS, though it's a separate download on iOS.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| How do you se for 2FA?
| knolan wrote:
| If you're on your Mac or iOS device and you get a sms
| with a 2FA code the OS pops the code up for you for
| autocomplete. You can have iMessage send and receive sms
| from macOS.
| passivate wrote:
| >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.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Apple locks their ecosystem so nobody else can make a
| smooth seamless experience_
|
| KDE Connect and GS Connect do virtually the same things
| between Linux and Android, and sometimes even more than
| what Apple can do[1], and is proof that you don't need
| vendor lock-in and a 3 trillion $ valuation to achieve the
| same features, just a group of dedicated enthusiasts with a
| vision and free time on their hands. That's the beauty of
| FOSS.
|
| Unfortunately, the Apple apologetics brigade will shout
| loudly that vendor lock in is the key to Apple delivering
| these features and that openness is somehow bad as it will
| only hurt the ecosystem and get you hacked.
|
| Not hating on Apple or Apple users, just stating my POV.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8Uwh0hAhW8
| lstamour wrote:
| KDE connect does what the Remote Hippo app did a decade
| ago, from what I'm seeing of it's documentation - let's
| you use your phone as a trackpad and maybe share files
| and such. Yes, it's more advanced, but it's not a
| rethinking of things.
|
| This feature is indeed innovative yet iterative - it's
| like a zero-configuration Synergy or Logitech Flow where
| you can use the same mouse on multiple devices - but it
| requires basically no configuration at all to do so. And
| the impressive part is how it built on top of previous
| work to add shared clipboard between devices and other
| "handoff" features, plus has a similarity to features
| that shipped before handoff such as airdrop.
|
| To underscore how impressive it is, Microsoft still has
| yet to ship a suite of such features and they should have
| very similar resources available. Apple might be all
| marketing and sometimes buggy, confusing or unexpected,
| but there is an undeniable sense of progression when you
| look at the 5-10 year improvements.
|
| The caution I would have is that it works so well I was
| confused when my mouse cursor disappeared and showed up
| on another screen. And it can't automatically figure out
| the positioning of displays or computers, which is
| annoying now that Apple is experimenting with chips that
| can precisely position devices relative to each other.
| [Full disclosure, I have a couple shares in Apple.]
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> KDE connect does what the Remote Hippo app did a
| decade ago, from what I'm seeing of it's documentation -
| let's you use your phone as a trackpad and maybe share
| files and such. Yes, it's more advanced, but it's not a
| rethinking of things._
|
| It does way more than that:
|
| It will pause your PC music/movie when you get a call.
|
| It lets you sync clipboards.
|
| Syncs notifications, SMS, etc and can even reply to SMS
| from your PC.
|
| Remote view of photos and files on your phone from the
| PC.
|
| Take phone call on your PC.
|
| And I might be missing a couple.
|
| But, yes, the fact that Microsoft hasn't delivered such
| features on Windows is baffling. They did try with the
| Your Phone app, but that's worse than KDE connect.
| a4isms wrote:
| I don't see how it's a dichotomy.
|
| It's entirely possible that a closed ecosystem enables a
| large number of features with a certain set of tradeoffs,
| and an open ecosystem enables a large number of features
| with a different set of tradeoffs, and there is overlap
| between the feature sets.
|
| Does that mean that there is no need for an open
| ecosystem, when you can get what you need from a closed
| ecosystem? No, because while all the features you care
| about may be in both, the tradeoffs you have to make to
| use the closed ecosystem might not be the tradeoffs you
| want to make.
|
| And the converse is equally plausible: That you can get
| all the features you care about in both, but it does not
| mean that there is no need for a closed ecosystem,
| because while all the features someone cares about may be
| available in both, the tradeoffs they want to make may
| align more closely with the closed ecosystem's tradeoffs
| than with teh open ecosystem's tradeoffs.
|
| I think it is true that given some set of features, we
| can nearly always find a set of open source
| products/packages to deliver the required functionality,
| and for a very pedantic literal sense of "need, " OSS
| does everything people need.
|
| But hardware and software products are more than just a
| set of features. They're the other tradeoffs that form a
| messy collection of affordances and pain points, and
| different people have different needs from the entire
| product's perspective.
| jedberg wrote:
| There is no Android and PC that I can buy where KDE
| connect is just installed and works. That's the
| difference.
|
| I buy a new iPad and MacBook, log in with my iCloud
| account, and boom, it works.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> There is no Android and PC that I can buy where KDE
| connect is just installed and works. That's the
| difference._
|
| Sure, but now we're moving the goal posts and arguing
| about semantics. The original comment I replied to, said
| Apple features are only achievable due to their ecosystem
| and I disproved him, that's it. The fact that the Linux
| community doesn't have billions of $ for marketing and
| commercialization of their products is a separate issue
| that's been the thorn of Linux adoption on the desktop
| since forever.
|
| _> I buy a new iPad and MacBook, log in with my iCloud
| account, and boom, it works._
|
| Unfortunately, some people in the world that don't earn
| western wages can't afford to own several Apple products
| worth multiple times their salaries to enjoy the
| ecosystem, so it's great that FOSS alternatives exist
| that do the same things so those less fortunate can enjoy
| them at a fraction of the cost.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| Your comment bothered me, and I wanted to retort, but
| couldn't determine a way to do so without being a
| dickhead.
|
| I have the western income and I have multiple Apple
| products as a result, and I should really appreciate that
| more than I do.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Your comment bothered me, and I wanted to retort, but
| couldn't determine a way to do so without being a
| dickhead._
|
| Why did your comment bother you? I did not insult anyone.
| jedberg wrote:
| > The original comment I replied to, said Apple features
| are only achievable due to their ecosystem
|
| No, they said those features are only achievable on Apple
| systems by Apple because of they close everyone else out
| of their ecosystem.
|
| > so it's great that FOSS alternatives exist that do the
| same things so those less fortunate can enjoy them at a
| fraction of the cost.
|
| I agree 1000%, but that's not what we were talking about.
| passivate wrote:
| I think you misunderstood - What I meant was nobody
| except Apple can do it for the APPLE ecosystem.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| No one but apple has access to the apple ecosystem like
| apple.
|
| In a windows/linux/notApple ecosystem, you've got to give
| permission to an application to fully control other
| devices...that's...not a good idea, from a security
| standpoint. It's how Bonzi Buddy gets a really crappy
| hold of your information. But apple has spent a lot of
| time building a reputation where they can be trusted to
| do so( _)
|
| _ =and yet...
| tempnow987 wrote:
| Feel free to deliver this smooth experience on android or
| microsofts mobile platforms. The reality for me is that
| android stuff plays LESS well together and is less smooth.
| passivate wrote:
| Sadly, neither of those are open platforms.
| abridgett wrote:
| 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.
| frazbin wrote:
| 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!
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| '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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| 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.
| matwood wrote:
| IME, macOS handles mixed HiDPI better than any other OS.
| I'm currently using a MBP with it's HiDPI screen and it's
| driving an LG 4k and a Dell 1920x1200 - all work and look
| fine.
|
| I've tried Linux a few times in the past and it's been a
| mess - particularly in a mixed DPI environment. It also
| seems to come down to individual apps rather than the
| desktop manager. Not long ago I really wanted to make linux
| worked and so was asking questions on forums on how to make
| HiDPI work well, and a common response was 'no one needs
| HiDPI'...got it.
| Tagbert wrote:
| 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.
| roemerb wrote:
| Regarding the Bluetooth thing, it's indeed very annoying. I've
| found this utility that helps:
| https://github.com/odlp/bluesnooze
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| Thanks that's one everyday frustration down!
| rawfan wrote:
| 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.
| matwood wrote:
| >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?
| JamesonNetworks wrote:
| Docker for Mac has been so bad for so long. I finally moved
| to running all docker images on a linux box and using
| syncthing to sync code changes. My battery thanks me.
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| Yeah I rely on Docker. Anaconda gave a lot of issues too,
| but that is not my choice for python package mgmnt anyway.
| All issues are fixed with specifying Linux/amd64 as the
| build platform and only installing conda in containers.
| Installing conda locally is not something you should ever
| do in any case, it makes a mess of your home, shell
| profiles and environment variables.
|
| Still having OOM 'Killed' errors in builds that I should
| investigate. Don't know for sure if there are memory limits
| in default Docker settings on Macos, could be it. In any
| case, I should respec cleaner builds anyway because right
| now it's a mess.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| 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.
| beamatronic wrote:
| 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.
| bartq wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| 112233 wrote:
| 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?
| ungamedplayer wrote:
| You are forgetting the point that this post is astoturfing .
|
| Just ignore the Apple hypesphere and go about your life.
| astura wrote:
| Astroturfing is fake, this is probably real. Real as in a
| real person expressing their real opinion. Plenty of people
| worship the Apple god.
| [deleted]
| alphabettsy wrote:
| It works between Macs as well.
| norman784 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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?
| marcan_42 wrote:
| It's probably based on AWDL, same as AirDrop. So yes,
| that's a proprietary peer-to-peer protocol that ignores
| your home network.
| skibble wrote:
| 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).
| knolan wrote:
| You don't even need to do that, just rearrange the
| interface order.
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202480
| knolan wrote:
| 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
| tonetheman wrote:
| 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.
| rawfan wrote:
| 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.
| tonetheman wrote:
| 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.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > You know what is more tiring than Apple fan boys? Haters.
|
| I digress. Haters don't spam HN with useless Apple related
| astroturfing.
| can16358p wrote:
| 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.
| knolan wrote:
| 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.
| jiehong wrote:
| 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.
| hughrr wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Drag and drop files between devices is handy when you quickly
| need to move media files from one to the other.
| DominikPeters wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > annotating PDFs on my iPad with the Pencil
|
| How do you do the annotation? The markup tool or something
| else?
| DominikPeters wrote:
| Documents by Readdle for me, but many people use Good
| Notes.
| knolan wrote:
| I used to use Notability but recently switched to Good
| Notes. iCloud sync would cause Notability to freeze and the
| recent Notability subscription drama made Good Notes cheap
| to switch.
| 112233 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| You could also use OBS Virtual Camera feature[0] to capture
| your desktop as a webcam instead of the iPad.
|
| [0]: https://obsproject.com/
| areoform wrote:
| 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 cafe in the world.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| 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.
| hughrr wrote:
| With practice yes. I still manage to write decent code
| while being hammered on slack constantly.
| vinay427 wrote:
| 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.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Sidecar is basically AirPlay mirroring, with the lag and
| quality degradation that entails.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| If you're into the grind that comes with being an app
| developer, this makes testing your apps on real devices much
| easier.
| viktorcode wrote:
| Files drag n drop
| grapeskin wrote:
| 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.
| vvillena wrote:
| 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.
| threeseed wrote:
| 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.
| knolan wrote:
| 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.
| gumboshoes wrote:
| I use Synergy and gave Universal Control a go. Unfortunately, it
| doesn't work with the scroll wheel on my Logitech mouse.
| bradgranath wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| With the power of the M1 chip it's amazing how little it can
| do.
| paxys wrote:
| 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.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| ctvo wrote:
| > IMO that doesn't automatically mean they should go around
| calling it revolutionary if it does similar things but
| better or whatever.
|
| It's revolutionary in that it introduces a new capability
| to the average user (ignoring either tails), changing the
| way they interact with their computing devices. The mouse
| was revolutionary, for example. It existed, but the way it
| was integrated and became the focal point of UI
| interactions -- revolutionary. Will this be that? Most
| likely not, but we'll see.
|
| The touchpad on Mac laptops is a better analogy here. Apple
| got the touchpad right a decade before Windows based
| machines. It was smooth, responsive, and gestures _just
| worked_. This is now an industry standard, but even 10
| years ago wasn 't a given that you'd have a Windows laptop
| with the right hardware and drivers. It feels like what
| they're doing here is very similar.
|
| You seem to think all these problems are solved by throwing
| money at them, they're so easy. Apple _knew_ the touchpad
| would be important and invested and vertically integrated.
| It took laptop manufacturers and Microsoft a decade to
| coordinate and catch up. I don 't even like Apple as a
| company, but give credit where it's due.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _The touchpad on Mac laptops is a better analogy here.
| Apple got the touchpad right a decade before Windows
| based machines._
|
| And maybe just as important, the "feel" of touchpads on
| non-Apple laptops is still generally "meh" to outright
| bad. People choose Apple products because it's clear that
| Apple prioritizes the UX.
| planb wrote:
| 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.
| grecy wrote:
| 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".
| hughrr wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| notriddle wrote:
| > There's also plenty of apps which the developer has
| barred from installing on macOS where this is the only real
| solution.
|
| You can bypass that with iMazing. It'll export the raw iPad
| app, which you can then install on your Mac, and it'll
| probably run fine.
| makach wrote:
| _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.
| saagarjha wrote:
| My 2C/: 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 wrote:
| I'm interested in your solution between Macs as my second one
| (MBP 2015) is not supported by Apple's feature.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I haven't tried it on my older Macs but I don't see why it
| shouldn't work with them, too.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| 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?
| synthmeat wrote:
| > 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.
| karkisuni wrote:
| 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.
| janandonly wrote:
| 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.
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