19 ms·

Apple’s Universal Control

250 points by imartin2k 5y ago

paxys 5y 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.
- planb 5y 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.
- grecy 5y 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".
 - hughrr 5y 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.
 - makach 5y 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.
 - quitit 5y 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.
 - notriddle 5y ago
 > 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.
 - Jcowell 5y ago
 This was shut down in the latest updates where it would check the app I believe. There’s a workaround kind of but it’s too troublesome to go through.
- xenadu02 5y 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 any 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 really 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 5y 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30732528
bartq 5y 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.
musicale 5y 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.
alphabettsy 5y ago
It works between Macs as well.
- norman784 5y 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 5y 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?
    - marcan_42 5y ago
      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 5y 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).
    - knolan 5y ago
      You don’t even need to do that, just rearrange the interface order. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202480 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202480
  - knolan 5y 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 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202480
can16358p 5y 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.
- hughrr 5y 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 5y ago
  Drag and drop files between devices is handy when you quickly need to move media files from one to the other.
- DominikPeters 5y 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 5y ago
    > annotating PDFs on my iPad with the Pencil How do you do the annotation? The markup tool or something else?
    - DominikPeters 5y ago
jdrc 5y ago
such an apple-y article. "genius", "just work", "holy shit", "incredible"
- spoonjim 5y 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.
  - amelius 5y ago
    > with less user fussing/configurability. Why is it so popular among hackers then?
    - spoonjim 5y ago
      Because they’re mostly working remotely. Most hackers using Macs aren’t writing Mac software, they’re writing server side software.
- sschueller 5y ago
  I love how they sell their Mac studio as being "modular" /s
  - hughrr 5y 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.
    - sixothree 5y ago
      And you connect those modules to each other via industry standard cables. Perfectly modular, see!?
teruakohatu 5y ago
Is there any suggestion it will be rolled out to Apple TVs?
- knolan 5y 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 5y 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.
    - knolan 5y ago
      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!
112233 5y 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?
- ungamedplayer 5y ago
  You are forgetting the point that this post is astoturfing . Just ignore the Apple hypesphere and go about your life.
  - astura 5y 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.
    - ungamedplayer 5y ago
      Feels pretty fake to me. I dont know anyone who gets so excited over software KVM.
saagarjha 5y 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?
rcarmo 5y 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).
- saagarjha 5y 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.
  - rcarmo 5y 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...
    - johnwalkr 5y ago
      It does not work well for multi touch, even from Mac to Mac in my experience.
      - filiperui 5y ago
        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.
ac50hz 5y 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.
- viktorcode 5y ago
  MobileMe didn't work for anyone in the world (parts of the service) in the first month after the launch.
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  Wait having to involve the executive team isn't a disqualifier for "just works"?!
samwillis 5y 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.
- knolan 5y 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 5y 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
threeseed 5y 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.
- knolan 5y 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.
austinjp 5y 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 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-review-2016-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iphone-night-shift-rev... ...including articles in the mainstream press https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2016/apr/03/night-shift-ios-iphone-sleep-app 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.
- argsnd 5y ago
  You know macOS has a built-in bog-standard VNC server right?
  - austinjp 5y 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/)
gillesjacobs 5y 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.
- nuriaion 5y 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.
  - gillesjacobs 5y 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.
    - matwood 5y ago
      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.
- roemerb 5y ago
  Regarding the Bluetooth thing, it's indeed very annoying. I've found this utility that helps: https://github.com/odlp/bluesnooze https://github.com/odlp/bluesnooze
tonetheman 5y 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.
- rootusrootus 5y 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 5y ago
    > You know what is more tiring than Apple fan boys? Haters. I digress. Haters don't spam HN with useless Apple related astroturfing.
- rawfan 5y 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.
  - tonetheman 5y 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.
janandonly 5y 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.
vishnugupta 5y 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 5y 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.
  - vishnugupta 5y 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 5y 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.
abridgett 5y ago
How does this compare with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X2x 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.
newaccount74 5y 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.
- yohannparis 5y ago
  ... in beta!
  - newaccount74 5y 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.
- zenexer 5y 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.
deleted 5y ago
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oxplot 5y ago
EDIT: need a break for sure
- the_common_man 5y ago
  No offense but I Honestly think you need a break. You are letting comments and random people get to you.
- spsful 5y 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.
teilo 5y 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.
- dkobia 5y 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.
- cyberpunk 5y 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 5y 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!
sprain 5y ago
It works. Yet I have no idea what I should use it for.
mihaaly 5y 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 5y 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!
bradgranath 5y 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 5y ago
  With the power of the M1 chip it's amazing how little it can do.
  - bradgranath 5y ago
    Seriously! What does Apple think you’re supposed to want to do with it?
cyberpunk 5y 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 5y 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.
  - cyberpunk 5y ago
    Cheers, will give that a go :}
- synthmeat 5y 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.
  - cyberpunk 5y ago
    This worked; I didn’t know this was even a thing, so — many thanks synthmeat!
pSYoniK 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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 5y ago
I use Synergy and gave Universal Control a go. Unfortunately, it doesn't work with the scroll wheel on my Logitech mouse.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

250 points by imartin2k 5y 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.

planb 5y 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.
grecy 5y 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".
- hughrr 5y 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.
- makach 5y 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.
- quitit 5y 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.
  - notriddle 5y ago
    > 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.
    - Jcowell 5y ago
      This was shut down in the latest updates where it would check the app I believe. There’s a workaround kind of but it’s too troublesome to go through.
xenadu02 5y 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 any 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 really 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 5y 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30732528

bartq 5y 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.

musicale 5y 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.

alphabettsy 5y ago

It works between Macs as well.

norman784 5y 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 5y 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?
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    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 5y 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).
  - knolan 5y ago
    You don’t even need to do that, just rearrange the interface order. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202480 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202480
- knolan 5y 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 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202480

can16358p 5y 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.

hughrr 5y 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 5y ago
Drag and drop files between devices is handy when you quickly need to move media files from one to the other.
DominikPeters 5y 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 5y ago
  > annotating PDFs on my iPad with the Pencil How do you do the annotation? The markup tool or something else?
  - DominikPeters 5y ago

jdrc 5y ago

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

spoonjim 5y 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.
- amelius 5y ago
  > with less user fussing/configurability. Why is it so popular among hackers then?
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    Because they’re mostly working remotely. Most hackers using Macs aren’t writing Mac software, they’re writing server side software.
sschueller 5y ago
I love how they sell their Mac studio as being "modular" /s
- hughrr 5y 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.
  - sixothree 5y ago
    And you connect those modules to each other via industry standard cables. Perfectly modular, see!?

teruakohatu 5y ago

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

knolan 5y 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 5y 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.
  - knolan 5y ago
    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!

112233 5y 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?

ungamedplayer 5y ago
You are forgetting the point that this post is astoturfing . Just ignore the Apple hypesphere and go about your life.
- astura 5y 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.
  - ungamedplayer 5y ago
    Feels pretty fake to me. I dont know anyone who gets so excited over software KVM.

saagarjha 5y 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?

rcarmo 5y 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).

saagarjha 5y 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.
- rcarmo 5y 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...
  - johnwalkr 5y ago
    It does not work well for multi touch, even from Mac to Mac in my experience.
    - filiperui 5y ago
      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.

ac50hz 5y 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.

viktorcode 5y ago
MobileMe didn't work for anyone in the world (parts of the service) in the first month after the launch.
paulryanrogers 5y ago
Wait having to involve the executive team isn't a disqualifier for "just works"?!

samwillis 5y 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.

knolan 5y 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 5y 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

threeseed 5y 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.

knolan 5y 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.

austinjp 5y 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 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-review-2016-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iphone-night-shift-rev... ...including articles in the mainstream press https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2016/apr/03/night-shift-ios-iphone-sleep-app 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.

argsnd 5y ago
You know macOS has a built-in bog-standard VNC server right?
- austinjp 5y 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/)

gillesjacobs 5y 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.

nuriaion 5y 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.
- gillesjacobs 5y 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.
  - matwood 5y ago
    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.
roemerb 5y ago
Regarding the Bluetooth thing, it's indeed very annoying. I've found this utility that helps: https://github.com/odlp/bluesnooze https://github.com/odlp/bluesnooze

tonetheman 5y 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.

rootusrootus 5y 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 5y ago
  > You know what is more tiring than Apple fan boys? Haters. I digress. Haters don't spam HN with useless Apple related astroturfing.
rawfan 5y 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.
- tonetheman 5y 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.

janandonly 5y 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.

vishnugupta 5y 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 5y 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.
- vishnugupta 5y 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 5y 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.

abridgett 5y ago

How does this compare with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X2x 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.

newaccount74 5y 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.

yohannparis 5y ago
... in beta!
- newaccount74 5y 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.
zenexer 5y 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.

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oxplot 5y ago

EDIT: need a break for sure

the_common_man 5y ago
No offense but I Honestly think you need a break. You are letting comments and random people get to you.
spsful 5y 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.

teilo 5y 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.

dkobia 5y 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.
cyberpunk 5y 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 5y 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!

sprain 5y ago

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

mihaaly 5y 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 5y 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!

bradgranath 5y 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 5y ago
With the power of the M1 chip it's amazing how little it can do.
- bradgranath 5y ago
  Seriously! What does Apple think you’re supposed to want to do with it?

cyberpunk 5y 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 5y 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.
- cyberpunk 5y ago
  Cheers, will give that a go :}
synthmeat 5y 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.
- cyberpunk 5y ago
  This worked; I didn’t know this was even a thing, so — many thanks synthmeat!

pSYoniK 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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 5y ago

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

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