4 ms·

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

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 5y ago
>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.
- ricardobeat 5y ago
  SMS sync and taking calls from the computer have been a feature in the apple ecosystem since at least 2017. I agree with the other commenters - it's nice, but it's not nearly the same. The beauty of it is really that 'it just works' - you don't need to know about it, you don't need to open a specific app, find something by name and press 'connect', there are no options. The behaviour just slots in perfectly between the existing model of icloud / sharing / handoff. This kind of long-term design vision is difficult to achieve and very rare in FOSS, maybe with the exception of Elementary.
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    Of course but considering the cost of the Apple ecosystem HW and subscription fees, it's expected to be better than stuff anyone can get for free, no?
    - ricardobeat 5y ago
      From your own earlier comment: > and is proof that you don't need vendor lock-in and a 3 trillion $ valuation to achieve the same features > 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 Can't have it both ways.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago

>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.

ricardobeat 5y ago
SMS sync and taking calls from the computer have been a feature in the apple ecosystem since at least 2017. I agree with the other commenters - it's nice, but it's not nearly the same. The beauty of it is really that 'it just works' - you don't need to know about it, you don't need to open a specific app, find something by name and press 'connect', there are no options. The behaviour just slots in perfectly between the existing model of icloud / sharing / handoff. This kind of long-term design vision is difficult to achieve and very rare in FOSS, maybe with the exception of Elementary.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  Of course but considering the cost of the Apple ecosystem HW and subscription fees, it's expected to be better than stuff anyone can get for free, no?
  - ricardobeat 5y ago
    From your own earlier comment: > and is proof that you don't need vendor lock-in and a 3 trillion $ valuation to achieve the same features > 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 Can't have it both ways.