[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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-19 23:01 UTC)