How Universal Control on macOS Monterey Works | Hacker News Reader

How Universal Control on macOS Monterey Works

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150 pointsgumby149 comments

I've used the software Synergy [1] in the past as a software based KVM which has the advantage of being cross-platform with linux and Windows. It works fairly well but some of the features that Apple is promising with Universal Control are ones that Symless has struggled to deliver in their product, probably due to the fact that they don't control the entire stack like Apple does. They've promised drag and drop, copy and paste, and other features between systems but it seems that they've stopped advertising them as upcoming features.

Universal Control stood out to me as one of the more interesting ones of the WWDC keynote and one that I could see myself using, but am a tad skeptical it'll deliver on its promise fully. Apple's other continuity features are remarkably useful and great when they work, but in the cases that they don't (which while not normal, isn't uncommon enough to say they're a non-issue) it can be a real pain. This sort of feature needs to be rock-solid if you intend to integrate it into your personal workflow.

[1] https://symless.com/synergy

Symless have also struggled because the CEO shut the company down in 2018 and for 2 years thereafter collected revenue while having no active developers (check GitHub) so he could pay a huge self-inflicted personal tax bill.

It is claimed Synergy 3 will arrive in 2022 or 2023, which I expect (no insider info) will likely be a lipstick-on-a-pig Electron UI around the same buggy core they've been prodding for 10 years without substantial enhancement.

Disclosure: I worked at Symless on Synergy 2, and added support for macOS media keys. Very little has been done in the last 5-6 years on core functionality.

> It is claimed Synergy 3 will arrive in 2022 or 2023, which I expect (no insider info) will likely be a lipstick-on-a-pig Electron UI around the same buggy core they've been prodding for 10 years without substantial enhancement.

They claim they are hiring Node.js and React developers to deliver something with "the rock-solid stability of C++".

So I'd wager you are correct with an Electron UI.

Was that tax bill why it went completely commercial around 2018 and why the company became headquartered in the Isle of Man? If so, how big of a tax bill was it and for what tax(es)?

In the UK company directors can borrow money from their companies, but if it isn't repaid after a certain duration a tax of 32.5% becomes due.

The public record[0] tells the story

      Year end April 2017:
        - Number of employees     : 6
        - Directors Loan          : £238K 
        - Balance sheet           : £154K
        - Tax due                 : £60K

      Year end April 2018:
        - Number of employees     : 8
        - Directors Loan          : £999K (prev rolled over)
        - Balance sheet           : £736K
        - Tax due                 : £303K

      Year end April 2019:
        - Number of employees     : 2
        - Directors Loan          : £1.27M (prev rolled over)
        - Balance sheet           : £1.1M
        - Tax due                 : £307K

      Year end May 2020:
        - Number of employees     : 1
        - Directors Loan          : £253K (£1.1M has been repaid)
        - Balance sheet           : £227K
        - Tax due                 : £15K

Repaying the loan would have allowed for the 32.5% tax owed by the company to be reclaimed, then regular corporation tax of 19% and personal dividend/income taxes would have been paid.

My theory is that his directors loans were fully invested in personal assets (or spent), which explains why the tax wasn't ultimately paid in 2018/19. So he nerfed the company so his tax bill could paid from revenue earned between mid 2018 and early 2020. This fits with the fact that he only started rehiring seriously in 2020.

Customers effectively paid for unmaintained open source software during this time. Now of course, on the website, he brags about how much he loves customers.

I can't speak for the IoM move specifically. I know the CEO has familial connections there, but I'm sure the confluence of tax advantages helps.

[0] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...

Barrier[0] is a free Synergy fork from before they went commercial. Though I'm tempted to try the commercial version just for something easier to use.

[0] https://github.com/debauchee/barrier

I have a license for Synergy Pro, and they've stopped pushing users to use the garbage broken Synergy 2 which has always had enough issues to prevent me from recommending it, now users are directed to the latest Synergy 1 release, which works great for me across Windows, Mac, and Linux. (Always has...)

It was $5 iirc. I got more than what I paid for out of it. No hard feelings to those that I'm sure worked hard and put a lot of effort in on Synergy 2 once long ago. It wasn't meant to be. It won't be released in 2022 or 2023 either LOL, not in any kind of shape that you want to use, (or I'll gladly eat my own shoe leather in atonement for my heavy but informed skepticism.)

Apple technologies in general are great when they work, but entirely impervious to troubleshooting.

(Not) unlocking iPhone with Apple Watch when wearing a mask was driving me crazy in iOS 14.5. It worked two or three times and then stopped working until I disable/enable this feature.

Thanks god they fixed it in 14.6

I've found that I have to hold the watch very close to get it to work.

I'd think that they intended it to be on the same wrist as the hand holding the phone, but does anyone do that? I'm left handed and wear watches on the right wrist, and that pattern is practically universal in my experience.

Not in my experience: Watch on my left and iPhone in my right. Seems to work all the time, haven’t noticed any issues thus far.

I am right handed and wear apple watch on the right wrist from the day 1. :) But yeah, it's rare.

Also, I really tried to find any technical details on how close Apple Watch should be for this feature to work, but with no success.

I upgraded my 2017 macbook to Big Sur and the OS doesn't detect camera anymore. I tired 10 different things from checking permissions, reseting SMC and VRAM. No dice :/

I had similar issues, and tried the same to no avail. The only thing that worked was a complete reinstall of the operating system. Am guessing you might need to do the same.

I was paralyzed with panic when my mac randomly shutdown, and did a 1 hour update, thinking it was upgrading to big sur.

Thankfully it was something else, and I was able to keep catalina.

I refuse to be a QA engineer for apple for no pay. Running one OS version behind has worked really well so far.

fwiw, I was of the same opinion and update cadence, but then just installed Big Sur (from Mojave) and it's been totally fine. The only exception is that Omnifocus 2 bugs out a bit and shows a graphical artifact that they refuse to patch.

It’s not a great sign when the earliest OS X success dev success story is refusing to patch bugs :(

That’s a sincere frown. I don’t use Omni’s apps but I’m really disappointed that the high quality of the Mac app ecosystem is basically gone.

I agree, although in fairness they've come out with a v3 that's fully supported. Since it's only marginally different, and aesthetically less appealing, I haven't bothered buying it.

Exactly this. Advanced tldr; I spent 2 years struggling with the inability to troubleshoot Apple's problems to help track down horrific bugs.

AirDrop from my iPhone XS to my Early 2019 iMac had always been hit-or-miss. It would usually take 3-5 times of tapping the iMac icon in the Share -> AirDrop menu before it would actually work and deliver the payload between devices. For the longest time I gave up on trying to use AirDrop… and this is only between my own devices sharing the same Apple account.

Another example was Universal Clipboard between the iMac and iPhone. It always worked in one direction (IIRC macOS -> iPhone), while the opposite direction (iPhone -> macOS) rarely worked. It made trying to copy/paste between devices such a chore that led to disappointment so often it wasn't worth trying anymore.

Finally, unlocking my iMac using my Apple Watch (Auto Unlock). It so frequently fell flat on its face that it simply became another frustrating pain point. It would unlock properly once or twice, then it would stop working. Unchecking/rechecking the option in macOS preferences did nothing, and in fact caused the System Preferences pane to glitch/hang/timeout.

I've always been on the same Wi-Fi network, with Bluetooth permanently enabled on both devices. Then… very recently–sometime in the last 1 or 2 months–I noticed that using AirDrop began to work the first time… every time; suddenly Auto Unlock stopped glitching and failing; and wouldn't you know it, Universal Clipboard also worked every time in either direction.

Note that all of the above features share something in common: they certainly all use the same underlying framework/library to communicate between Apple devices. AirDrop, Continuity, Handoff, Auto Unlock, Universal Clipboard. These all deal with passing payloads between devices; worse, they depend on Bluetooth, which has got to be the most unreliable wireless protocol ever invented. Bluetooth stacks have always been a goddamn nightmare; far too many different hardware, firmware, and operating system software/driver vendors implement their own versions of the specs, and they don't play well together.

I would put money down that Apple found and fixed a bug in either a) the framework/library that handles all of these features, or b) their Bluetooth firmware/software stack. Something was fixed quite recently that suddenly made all of these features go from being completely unreliable to working like Magic™. It took them a very long time to locate and fix this, likely because their users have absolutely no way to help troubleshoot these features. It either works, or it doesn't; and if it doesn't, you're out of luck.

I'm still sticking with the Apple ecosystem. There are some horrific bumps here and there along the way, but if I compare what I have now to what I'd have on a Windows 10 machine… not a chance in hell I'm going back. Hot damn, everything that's dropping this fall is going to be incredible. Well, at least once they iron out all the new bugs that will surely come with the amount of features they're introducing.

> It either works, or it doesn't; and if it doesn't, you're out of luck.

In a lot of ways that's my biggest complaint with a lot of "Apple ecosystem magic". I just want them to design all these interesting features -- and even the more basic uninteresting ones -- with a recognition that no matter how seamless they try to be, sometimes they will fail, and that they should fail in ways that are neither invisible nor inscrutable. While I think this problem has been getting worse over the years, in no small part as the systems get more complex, "pretend things never fail" has been a long-standing problem with Apple's engineering culture.

Comments like this make me feel like core software quality is rotting across the board. On my Windows 10 computer the start key on my keyboard does not reliably open the start menu for the first 30m or so after a cold boot and will sometimes fail at other times. Sometimes when the menu launches it's missing the search pane, or missing the files pane, or missing the left pane. This is the start menu failing, a key component of windows since 9x. I have a cluttered desktop, and sometime in the last month or so I hit some unknown limit where now loading the desktop as a folder from explorer takes forever and hangs explorer. To load a list of files and folders.

But as of the update automatically installed today, there is a pointless weather widget added to my taskbar, and clicking on it opens the news? That's a core feature of the desktop OS?

Computers and software are getting more and more broadly capable but it feels like a high level of quality is not being maintained across that broad scope, even on the essentials.

> there is a pointless weather widget added to my taskbar, and clicking on it opens the news?

I reached the question mark at the end of that sentence… and I felt that single question mark so deep within my soul. Clicking the weather widget opens the news……… "?".

Some of the most useful fundamental functionality doesn't work either, running windows 10, you can't filter in task manager. It irks me to no end that this isn't possible. Try finding a misbehaving program on windows, you need third party tools to get anywhere.

> Try finding a misbehaving program on windows, you need third party tools to get anywhere.

I don’t think that's true since they bought SysInternals in 2006 (tools are still downloadable: https://docs.microsoft.com/sysinternals/downloads/sysinterna...)

So I use Process Explorer, but I've not noticed it having a filter? It has a find, which is something, but I mean actually filtering a list should not be that problematic in this day and age? The reason I'm making the distinction is that find returns a list of handles, and then you can't do anything with those handles directly, you select them which then takes you back to the handle within the greater list of processes. It all feels pretty clunky. I am willing to admit there may be subtleties that I'm missing =)...

Sometimes moving icons around in the Windows start menu breaks the menu in strange ways with icons overlapping one another or disappearing altogether. This has happened across multiple completely heterogeneous machines.

yeah, also they made something like capture a screen recording with the desktop sound a thing that it's not for everyone.

As others have said, Synergy's problems are not technical but management. The guy who runs Symless isn't terribly good at business, no offense to him. the product is chronically mismanaged. Multiplicity from StarDock is Windows only but manages everything Apple's product does, too. There are open source VNC apps that handle copy/paste and DnD, it shouldn't be hard to at least look at that code as a guide, but without a good developer, Symless is rudderless.

Highly recommend Synergy for moving between Mac, Linux, and Windows seamlessly. It's a first day install for me on a new system

Used synergy in the past, but recently read that Barrier is the one to use these days. I installed it and it works.

I've used Synergy on both Windows->Windows and Windows->Mac. With a Macbook Pro 2015. It's really unpleasent due to constant stuttering, unless you connect to Ethernet. This is a known issue, it's appently due to airdrop. The OS switches the modem to a different channel to check for new devices or something, and then switches back. Although it does it fast enough to maintain network connections but anything real-time just looses control for a moment. Other wifi laptops seem fine. (Using same Wifi version)

The "easy" fix for this, if you have spare Ethernet ports, is to put a dedicated switch between the machines. I'm using Synergy right now, with peripherals on my Windows game machine (where having them connected directly is beneficial), but driving a MacBook most of the time. I have a cheap 4-port gig switch between the machines so that Synergy doesn't have to go over WiFi. The machines both use WiFi for all their Internet traffic. The switch is also great for VNC and SSH between the machines. I don't think Airdrop has any real effect; WiFi just has higher latency, more variable latency, and more packet loss than a switch will have.

Copy/paste works for me between Windows and Mac in Synergy.

Works flawlessly with no special setup between Windows, MacOS, and Linux.

synergy1 already has both drag and drop and copy and paste and I use those daily. However DnD doesn't seem to work between GNU/Linux and anything else.

Anyone remembers Teleport?

It was an app for macOS that did the same thing 10 years ago.

They released the source code a couple of years later:

https://github.com/johndbritton/teleport

Apple hired that developer a long time ago

The fact that all devices have to be signed in and connected to same icloud account … makes this not quite as seemless IMO.

For example work based or education based managed apple ID’s cannot use the universal control functionality.

https://support.apple.com/guide/apple-school-manager/service...

How else would you do it though? Surely you don’t want a random Mac to push its cursor onto your iPad? Same with all the other handoff features. Maybe I’m missing something!

With Sidecar I was hoping that physically connecting the iPad to the Mac would be enough. Would a physical connection (with perhaps an additional prompt) be a sufficiently secure authorization alternative? Putting my opsec hat on: I suppose someone could (theoretically) use an adapter to tunnel USB/Thunderbolt through a wireless connection to work around the need for a physical connection.

Didn’t think of that, good point!

Right now it’s “the ‘seemless’ way or the highway”.

As far as I understand they didn’t bother having alternative linking mechanism, like asking permission to the ipad though some other app or though safari for instance.

If it’s the same as sidecar 2FA is also mandatory for it to work. It makes sense for the proverbial 80%, and leaves a sour taste for the rest.

> How else would you do it though?

There are many ways. The simplest I can think of is a 6 digit numeric code that you have to enter, once from device A to B and then from B to A. The OS can also ask you to authenticate with your fingerprint before linking.

Didn’t think of that, good point!

Take a look at how Logitech's does it with their "Flow" feature on the MX series of devices.

https://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/options/page/flow-mul...

The same is true of sidecar makes this completely useless for me

I have a personal iPad and MacBook Pro but I code on work's managed iMac

Same. I considered switching iCloud accounts when I switch between work/personal modes but decided that the risk of accidentally leak information between account or losing data was too great.

At least with the Macs I can create a separate OS user account and have that account signed into the other iCloud account. Think iPad OS will support multiple users some day?

Then you may be able to use Airplay to project your display onto that managed Mac.

Is there a reason that you don’t login to iCloud when you are logged into your work iMac? You can control which data is shared between them if you want to keep personal stuff out of the work computer.

The cost of a Magic Keyboard cover for an iPad Pro becomes much more tolerable if it can serve as the main input for multiple devices.

Makes an iPad/Mac Mini combo pretty compelling.

Yes! I've tried out way too many keyboards in the last few years and the Magic Keyboard is by far my favorite. I'm not as big of a fan of the trackpad but before this announcement I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I could use the Magic Keyboard with my Mac Mini.

I'm a pretty big fan of it, too. Kind of like that bouncier rubberized feel. That said... it really needs an escape key, hah.

You can map caps lock to escape. Settings, Keyboard, Hardware Keyboard, Modifier Keys. Unfortunately the system and many apps still aren’t expecting escape input in places they should be.

Well, it’s only the mac’s mouse and keyboard that can control the iPad and not viceversa

iPads can already sort of control a Mac via Sidecar. Not entirely the same thing but it's there.

Asked Apple “on background” about this. They confirmed it’s only the Mac that can control other devices with its peripherals

> Then, you start up Universal Control by dragging your mouse pointer all the way to the left or right edge of your Mac’s screen, then a little bit beyond that edge. When you do, the Mac will assume that you’re trying to drag the mouse over to another device, in this case the iPad.

That's really clever! Users of multiple screens already know to do that, and that also makes users get used to treating other devices just like another screen.

Now we just have to wait for Apple to add the reverse - control your Mac from your iPad :)

This could be pretty useful bc of the touch screen + pencil combo. Back in 2016 I spent a weekend mocking up an "iPad as a graphics tablet" app, and it was surprisingly easy and effective [0][1]. I'm sure Apple could do a lot better.

[0]: https://github.com/Danappelxx/iPadMouse

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTHTx4MMwg4

There’s already Sidecar. It’s not quite what you want, but it’s a step in that direction.

I recently got an iPad, and I've been a bit disappointed by sidecar. First of all, it doesn't support the portrait orientation, which doesn't seem like it should be complicated.

Also it's a bit finicky. For instance if you are using sidecar and the system goes to sleep, waking the laptop will not wake the ipad, and if things are asleep to long you get an unclear error message and have to restart sidecar from a system menu a couple levels deep.

It's an awesome feature, and using an iPad as a second monitor makes for a really awesome lightweight setup for mobile working, but I wish they would invest a bit more in the UX. It's already 80% there, and most of the fixes required don't seem super complicated.

> It's already 80% there, and most of the fixes required don't seem super complicated.

I hope they make it evolve further, but it’s the story of Apple features. For the remaining 20% there are less seamless but more evolved third party apps (I personally use Duet, which is not without faults but has portrait support and more)

Is it as smooth and low-latency as sidecar?

I don’t use sidecar but I'd wager it's not as smooth nor optimized.

I use it with an older iPad so newer version might be better at it, but I see some artifacts on scrolling sometime, and it's clearly using the iPad's resources at full. There are params like resolution and processing that can be adjusted to priotitize what you care about (e.g. I go with retina res and more latency/lower processing).

I think sidecar will be better at the thing it does, I use duet mainly for the fexibility.

My iPad always wakes up if previously connected to sidecar, even wirelessly.

This works for me if it has been asleep for a few seconds, but if I leave for a few minutes I have to reconnect

I agree, it lacks some polish. I am a bit disappointed that they did not mention it, but I hope it is getting some love for the next update.

Yeah, Sidecar is pretty cool. I was surprised to learn that even pressure-sensitivity from the Apple Pencil worked (at least in Blender where I tried it out.)

It'd be nice if you could initiate it from the iPad side, though. There used to be a remote access feature built into iCloud called Back to my Mac, not sure why it was killed.

Using it as a Wacom is the killer feature of Sidecar imo

Wow… I just assumed Sidecar was a second monitor, totally underestimated it. Bummer it only works on newer MacBooks!

By newer macbooks, its just macbooks newer than 2015. The 2015s and earlier didn't have h265 encoders in hardware, and thus don't work properly. There is a hack you can install to force sidecar to run on earlier macs, but the latency and quality is terrible, partially because h264 is harder to shove over the wire than more compressed h256

Yes, I think it relies on some features of a recent-ish Bluetooth version.

To be fair, I never use it for something requiring complex input, but it’s nice for something like a movie, a music app, or something that runs in the background but you might want to have a glance at every now and then.

Logitech MX product have had this feature for a while now and its even cross platform. its called Logitech Flow and works almost as seamlessly as that mac demo. Only difference would be installing the Logitech Options app vs it being native. Seems like a great feature if you're fully in the Apple ecosystem.

> Only difference would be installing the Logitech Options app

Is that the app that wants to use all 8 cores and turn my iMac into a noisy space heater every now and then? I love Logitech’s hardware, but their software is consistently terrible.

never had that happen before. as we speak, the app is running at 1% of a core and 100mb ram. id imagine that whatever apple implements uses some sort of protocol that wouldn't be free in terms of resources either.

To be fair, it behaves most of the time. It’s just that sometimes (I’d say, about once a week) it doesn’t. And yes, Apple occasionally do cock up. But I have seen this sort of things happening too often for comfort with Logitech’s drivers, over more than one decade.

That doesn't support the iPad though, right?

And I'm going to guess that's because of Apple restrictions, anyway. Good luck getting past the App Store Review a program that tries to read and/or control the mouse pointer position.

It's already hard enough to do a Synergy-like thing in Android, although technically still barely possible.

I ponder if this is a new business model -- make a shitton types of applications outright impossible in the name of "security", then announce your own (proprietary) implementations of these types of applications that bind people to your brand of devices in order to encourage sales.

New? This is just market segmentation.

> First, you need to get the iPad and Mac relatively close to each other. Universal Control is built off the same Continuity and Handoff features that have long been a part of iOS and macOS.

Bummer. This means that this will be an iCloud-only feature, most likely. (Apple seems to have no reluctance to this, as HomePods also require iCloud to set them up.)

More pushes toward Apple services. :( It would be nice if I could use the full features of the OS/hardware I bought without having to engage with the privacy nightmare that is Apple's approach to network services.

it's how they verify that you own it. You can't just go trying to nose your mouse into someone else's iPad at a coffee shop (universal control works at up to 30ft range)

Of course they could always add something like PIN/QR code/plugging the iPad into the MacBook for local connections - but that will never happen with an Apple that prioritizes simplicity over functionality.

I'd much rather not have to stop to type in a pin on my own devices.

I mean I don't know why people get so upset about this sort of thing. People who own two recent model apple devices and want to use them together like this definitely have iCloud accounts and are signed in to them. I don't know why someone who doesn't want to use apple services would have the hardware.

The problem is more subtle than just authorisation.. you need some way to 'group' machines on a network.

If you just use LAN broadcast/discovery, and you want things to be automatic, then multiple users on the same network end up snuffling their way in to your mouse sharing configuration or you're bombarded with requests to connect.

A pairing mode would solve this but then you have to train users to set it up, it's not "seamless", and Apple wouldn't have been able to do the cool demo.

Synergy 2 used a cloud approach to pairing for the same reason

This type of iCloud usage does not require subscribing to any services. It is just the basic integration that allows authentication. Otherwise you are wide open to random people.

Yes it requires iCloud.

Amen, I have no idea why you'd need iCloud to use... wireless KVM.

It allows for file transfers via drag and drop - pretty sure it uses iCloud as the data cache inbetween.

Why would it use iCloud for this rather than just pushing the files directly over bluetooth like Airdrop?

AirDrop uses Wi-Fi.

iCloud is used for two reasons: one, because it is existing infrastructure for sharing secret keys between Apple devices used by a single owner (and is thus "free" from a development standpoint for Apple), as well as the fact that more iCloud-only features tends users into opting in to iCloud, which eventually drives increased Apple services revenue via expanded paid service usage as well as lock-in to keep users using those paid services over time.

The HomePods work this way, too. You can't just connect them to Wi-Fi and use them via AirPlay 2, you must have an iCloud account to attach them to your LAN.

Does it use wifi? then how was it that people were air-dropping photos to random people on the NYC subway?

FTP is totally usable for this, using iCloud as a cache would add so much latency that it would be unusable.

Authentication and authorization.

Do you want random other people nearby being able to try to connect?

More and more gestures you don't know about as a normal user.

Where is the "all the gestures" instruction manual from Apple?

Where is the "all the gestures" instruction manual from Apple?

They would be in the users' wastebaskets with all the other paper shipped with the product.

There were interactive onboarding tutorials during install or upgrade, but pretty much everyone clicked spastically at them until they went away without reading them.

No one reads manuals. I have shipped a (admittedly low volume) game where I have never detected a user reading the help pages I slaved over. The prominent help icon never gets touched. I made an introductory tutorial which animatedly draws prettily curved highlighter arrows and circles on the screen to explain the important user interface elements… click click click… the new users do everything they can to close it and get it off the screen without reading it.

Search: "ipad gestures site:apple.com"

Search: "macos gestures site:apple.com"

The top hits for both of your questions, as translated into google-ese, are the documents you want, with the exception of iPad multitasking, but that's a deliberate decision by Apple. Should be resolved in iOS 15 when they finally expect regular people to maybe use multitasking.

They would be in the users' wastebaskets with all the other paper shipped with the product

Apple products ship with almost no paper these days, and haven't for a good number of years.

Usually it's just regulatory certificates and a quick setup leaflet with a link printed on it for the full manual, which nobody ever reads, with predictable results.

I think that’s exactly the point the GP was making.

They're IN the computer!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_o_O7v1ews

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj5HdGjvXcE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2uHBhKTSe0

> More and more gestures you don't know about as a normal user.

I see this complaint quite a bit, but it doesn’t make sense to me. Of course there are more and more features, and of course most people don’t know about most of them because there are so many.

> Where is the "all the gestures" instruction manual from Apple?

If you want to know about the new gestures, Apple demonstrates them during keynotes whose sole purpose is to announce them. They are covered internationally by pretty much all of the technology press.

As others have pointed out, there are in fact many places where Apple documents them too.

> If you want to know about the new gestures, Apple demonstrates them during keynotes whose sole purpose is to announce them.

I get your next point about documentation, but if you think saying I have to watch a 90 minute marketing presentation to learn about gestures is some kind of obvious or reasonable expectation? No thanks.

> saying I have to watch a 90 minute marketing presentation

It is literally nothing but an explanation and demonstration of new features.

It’s obvious that if you want new features to be demonstrated to you, you are going to need to watch a demonstration.

If you don’t, then you can read the documentation or ask your friends.

The complaint that nobody is telling normal users about these features makes no sense.

Demos in trackpad settings were quite informative for me.

Also, aren't there notifications with change notes when you upgrade?

Maybe something changed in Big Sur, I only used old MacBook Air up to Catalina.

There's the Tips app for iOS and iPadOS devices.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204895

They’re also good about giving a “what’s new in Big Sur” notifications after upgrade and as part of the OOBE iirc. Can’t be restarted from what I can find, unfortunately.

Tips app is great for iOS.

Go to the trackpad page in settings and it will show you with little animations.

First with AirDrop, then Continuity and Handoff, and now Universal Control, Apple's ubiquitous use of Bluetooth LE and Wi-Fi direct connections to devices sharing the same iCloud account makes me wonder how exactly does Apple secure all these over the air connections. Once hacked, an attacker presumably nearby can intercept phone calls and text messages, look what's in the clipboard, what website you've been browsing, where you've been, and now even what you are typing, all done remotely without the victim even noticing. I know there's an Apple Platform Security document, but that thing reads like marketing material rather than actually explaining what actually goes on under the hood. Has there been any serious attempts at breaking these things I wonder?

I believe they do a key exchange through an encrypted iCloud connection. Then the actual data exchange is peer-to-peer.

I don’t believe airdrop is encrypted as you can airdrop to a stranger

It's still encrypted, just not authenticated. Still useful against sniffing.

that's a great feature. I really love my iPad, but changing the workflow to operate both systems is overwhelming. I can imagine myself using Universal Control everyday.

I've found the iPad to be a great place to isolate shitty, resource-hogging communication software (ahem, Slack) to a dedicated shitty-software-I-must-nonetheless-have-open-all-the-time console. This makes that practice even better, with the unified control and drag & drop and all that.

Yeah, the iPad is a great container for terrible software. No worries about Zoom backdooring your computer and leaving stuff all over the place.

I don’t really need unified control for this, though. The iPad just sits nicely on the desk for however long the stupid meetings are, and these apps are not interactive enough for having to lift a hand to be much of a pain.

Agreed. This is going to be my exact use case for Universal Control.

Universal Control looks interesting, but it also saddens me because it makes me think that target display mode will never be coming back.

This is so great. I have a keyboard that I switch Bluetooth to control my iPad a lot during the day so this will make things easier.

I want to be able to use my iPhone apps on my Mac, can I do that? I have some apps that only work on my phone like my TV remote app and my RSA 2fa app that I often would like to access from my Mac.

You can do that with a M1 Mac.

sorry can you explain how?

First result via a search engine https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/install-any-ios-app-m1-mac/

Ah I see, I have tried that, but the official roku remote app does not seem to show up for some reason and the RSA app I need can only be run in one place since it uses a unique key. I am thinking more about accessing the apps already on my phone like screen sharing or something.

Developer needs to authorize his iOS app for it to be available on the MacOS App Store.

There used to be a method to side load any iOS application (lots of people were using to play Genshin Impact) but Apple disabled that functionality in 11.3.

Apple brought the sideloading back, it seems to have been removed by mistake.

You can use a third party app like iMazing to backup the .ipa file from your iPhone/iPad, and install them on your Mac. It works for apps not whitelisted for Mac in the App Store.

There's also a way using Apple Configurator. Process is start an update for the desired app via configurator and nab the IPA from the temp directory on the Mac and install it, and remove the quarantine bit.

https://reincubate.com/support/how-to/download-run-ios-app-m...

Which update? The latest update explicit gives the error message that the app is not intended to run on the platform?

Actually, developers need to do nothing for their apps to appear on macOS. Most developers have specifically gone and opted their apps out, though.

Switch to Windows and Android as it's possible there with at least some Samsung devices?

Don’t think that’s possible without jailbreaking, sorry!

You can run SOME iPhone/iPad apps on an M1 Mac, but the publisher needs to allowed it and some software publishers seem to block it for no obvious reason.

One giant leap for Apple, and one small step for Userkind toward Ubiquitous Computing and the vision of the Xerox PARC Tab, Pad, and Board!

Ubiquitous Computing Demonstration using Tabs, Pads and Boards from 1988

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4_CcNLd2iE&ab_channel=Linus...

>In the 21st century the technology revolution will move into the everyday, the small and the invisible. Mark Weiser coined the phrase "ubiquitous computing" around 1988, during his tenure as Chief Technologist of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Both alone and with PARC Director and Chief Scientist John Seely Brown. Weiser wrote "The Computer for the 21st Century" back in 1991.

Ubicomp Tabs - Ubiquitous computing Xerox PARC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ofehNpoSrY&ab_channel=Leona...

>Ubiquitous computing (or "ubicomp") is a concept in software engineering and computer science where computing is made to appear anytime and everywhere. In contrast to desktop computing, ubiquitous computing can occur using any device, in any location, and in any format. A user interacts with the computer, which can exist in many different forms, including laptop computers, tablets and terminals in everyday objects such as a fridge or a pair of glasses. The underlying technologies to support ubiquitous computing include Internet, advanced middleware, operating system, mobile code, sensors, microprocessors, new I/O and user interfaces, networks, mobile protocols, location and positioning and new materials.

>This paradigm is also described as pervasive computing,[1] ambient intelligence,[2] or "everyware".[3] Each term emphasizes slightly different aspects. When primarily concerning the objects involved, it is also known as physical computing, the Internet of Things, haptic computing,[4] and "things that think". Rather than propose a single definition for ubiquitous computing and for these related terms, a taxonomy of properties for ubiquitous computing has been proposed, from which different kinds or flavors of ubiquitous systems and applications can be described.[5]

>Ubiquitous computing touches on a wide range of research topics, including distributed computing, mobile computing, location computing, mobile networking, context-aware computing, sensor networks, human-computer interaction, and artificial intelligence.

An Overview of the ParcTab Ubiquitous Computing Experiment. Roy Want, Bill N. Schilit, Norman I. Adams, Rich Gold, Karin Petersen, David Goldberg, John R. Ellis and Mark Weiser.

http://www.roywant.com/cv/papers/pubs/1995-12%20(IEEE%20PCom...

>6.3.1 Group Pointing and Annotation

>A PARCTAB used as a pointing device operates much like a mouse. However, a PARCTAB does not have a cable and can use proximity in combination with its wireless link to connect to the nearest computer. Many PARCTABs can also connect to the same computer. Consider, for example, the case in which a lecture is presented using a large electronic display such as a Liveboard (see 2.2). Each tab in the audience can control a different pointer on the display. We have built a remote display pointer using the PARCTAB screen as both a relative and absolute positioning tool: the user controls the location and motion of the pointer by moving a finger over the PARCTAB’s touch surface2.

>An extension of this idea is Tabdraw, a multi-tab application that allows the tab screen to be used as if it were a piece of scrap paper. One mode of use allows each PARCTAB participating in the application to access and draw on a shared piece of virtual paper. The shared drawing is generally defined by the room that people are in. A group in one room will automatically obtain a separate drawing surface from that in another room. Alternatively, a group might arrange to share a drawing regardless of location. [...]

>6.4 Remote Control

>Television and stereo system remote-controls have popularized the notion of control at a distance. In fact so many pieces of consumer electronics have such controllers that one can now buy universal remote controls that control many devices at the same time. A PARCTAB can also act as a universal controller. Furthermore, it can command applications that traditionally take their input from a keyboard or a mouse.

>Since a tab can display arbitrary data, the controls available to a user can be changed depending on context. (Commercial universal remote controllers, in contrast, tend to need a large array of buttons.) Using the remote control application in an office may trigger a tab to provide a control panel that adjusts lighting and temperature, whereas in a conference room the interface might be biased toward presentation tools.

>We have experimented with two types of remote control. First, program controllers providing a more powerful set of commands than was available in the original program. If a program is already intended for remote use and has a network interface, controlling it and extending it with a PARCTAB application is very easy. Second, another UbiquitousComputing project at Xerox PARC, the Responsive Environment Project [7], has been exploring how environmental control can save energy during the day-to-day operation of a building. The project had created servers that control power outlets through a commercial system called X10. The PARCTAB has been used to interface with these servers and thus control power appliances in the test area.

Ubiquitous Computing: Tabs, Pads, Books, and Clouds

https://lowendmac.com/ed/rosen/10ar/ubiquitous-computing.htm...

>The iPad launch got me thinking about an old paper I'd once read about "Tabs, Pads, and Boards" and how small portable computers with different form factors were the direction technology was taking. Upon further review, it's amazing how well this model has held up over time. The paper was written - where else - at the famous Xerox PARC research facility, birthplace of the GUI, the mouse, and much of modern computing.

I wish they would just let me remotely login to my phone and tablet from my mac

Immediately setup my iPadOS 15 iPad beside my macOS 12 M1 machine....and it didn't work. At the time there were a couple of brief articles saying just move the mouse off the edge of your screen.

They haven't released this technology yet, so we can't test it out. Just an FYI to anyone who looks to try it out.

As an aside, I have a Mac Mini beside a MBP in my normal setup. My BT keyboard and mouse are connected to the mini. I wish I could do this as easily to jump between machines.

I am using Dell U3417W monitor [0] with windows desktop and linux laptop. Keyboard and mouse are connected to the monitor (via one Logitech unifying receiver). The monitor has built-in KVM switch and when I change video input using monitor hardware buttons keyboard and mouse switch automatically. And it's amazing! As far as I know the monitor has 2 or 3 USB A ports.

I found an article that seems to explain how to set everything up [1]. Sorry for medium, should work in incognito.

Interestingly, I almost bought standalone KVM switch when I discovered that my monitor already has one. Three years after I bought the monitor, I finally understood why there was that fancy blue USB 3 B cable in the box.

Also Logitech MX keys keyboard and MX master 2S mouse support three bluetooth/logitech adapter devices. So I can use this setup occasionally with a tablet and with my old mac that has hardly functioning keyboard and trackpad.

Logitech and Dell devices are worth the money.

[0] https://www.dell.com/si/business/p/dell-u3417w-monitor/pd

[1] https://medium.com/@ningzh/share-a-dell-u3417w-monitor-betwe...

> As an aside, I have a Mac Mini beside a MBP in my normal setup. My BT keyboard and mouse are connected to the mini. I wish I could do this as easily to jump between machines.

There are BT keyboards and mice that support multiple connected devices and let you switch between them. My keyboard and my mouse can support three each, and I use the functionality daily (on Mac, iOS, and Win10 devices).

For the combo I've got, at least, it's rock solid. My keyboard can also plug in, so at the inconvenience of needing to fumble around on the side of it to toggle the "BT or wired" switch, I could support four devices with it (I don't, but I could). All without any external hardware (KVMs, say) or extra software.

[EDIT] to give an idea of the ease, changing the input on my monitor is the most annoying part of switching devices (for the two that are connected to it) since I have to stretch forward to reach that button, and probably takes about 50% or more of the total time of switching. Mouse and keyboard each take maybe 2 seconds, total, including BT syncing to the other device. Since not all of that's hands-on time so you can be initiating a switch on the second one while the first is syncing, I bet I usually switch my inputs in about 3 seconds, total. Monitor's probably another 3-4 seconds on top of that.

I do the same thing across a Linux computer and 2 Macs (Logitech MX Anywhere 3 + Keychron K3; the Keychron is plugged into the Linux computer so it's constantly on a power source, and connects to the Macs via BT - meanwhile the mouse is connected via BT for all 3 devices), and mainly agree about the monitor being the most annoying part.

The one exception is when I also have BT headphones connected to the MBP and the keyboard idles into disconnecting - for some reason connecting the BT headphones when the keyboard and mouse are already connected is no problem, but connecting the keyboard when the mouse and headphones are already connected almost never works.

Haha, looks like we have similar equipment (I posted my gear, by request, elsewhere in the thread—also Keychron and Logitech, but different models).

I've got a set of Jabra Bluetooth headphones, and I don't see the problem you do with disconnecting my Keychron, but they do like to connect to all my devices at once, but then are only capable of actually listening to one at a time and tend to get "stuck" on whatever the latest thing was to make a noise. Pair that with the fact that notifications exist and often make noise, and I not-infrequently have it switch away from music or YouTube or a video call or whatever to some other device that just made a notification sound, then get stuck on that device.

If you haven't, you might look into power savings settings for your keyboard. You can change some of that stuff with key combos. I'm sure it's documented on the Keychron site, but a lot of it was printed on a card that came with it, too. I had some powersavings-related annoyances that I solved by basically shutting off sleep mode. Battery life's still acceptable, so no big deal (for me—some people might need weeks and weeks on a charge).

I actually used to have the Triathlon as well, but preferred the feel of the MX Anywhere. Thanks for the note on the power settings - will definitely try to dig that up, I certainly don't need it to sleep as aggressively as it does given that it's always on power.

Can you point me to some mice and / or keyboards that can do that? I searched for something like this for ages and gave up.

Not everyone’s cup of tea, but if you like/need an ergonomic layout Kinesis Bluetooth keyboards support multiple devices.

My current keyboard: Keychron k8a3. It's not beautiful, but it's cheap (for a mechanical BT keyboard) and it's not given me any trouble [edit: any trouble with connectivity and device-switching being at all fiddly or unreliable, or with basic being-a-keyboard functionality—obviously the "complaints" paragraph below means it's given me some trouble]. fn + 1/2/3 switches devices. Has a built-in battery that charges over USB-C. Lasts days on battery even if I accidentally leave the KB's light on a couple nights, and despite my tuning its power-saving features down to basically nothing.

Complaints: it's easy to accidentally hit the light-pattern-cycle button on the top-right, or for a cat to do the same, and I always want it on "steady light, no pattern" (I hate flashing lights on keyboards) but then have to hammer the button twenty times to get back to my preferred setting if it gets pressed. This happens maybe once a week, and is annoying. I also had problems with it dropping into sleep mode a lot when I didn't want it to, but IIRC there was some settings-modifying key-combo in the manual that mostly fixed that (at the cost of worse battery life), and keeping the backlight on its lowest light level (rather than off) during use made the problem 100% go away.

https://www.keychron.com/products/keychron-k8-tenkeyless-wir...

$69

My current mouse: Logitech M720 Triathlon. Basically a boring, normal, easy-to-find lowish-mid-range BT mouse. One of the thumb-buttons on the side handles device switching. Tap once, the light under the current device (1, 2, or 3) comes on on the mouse (those lights are off normally). More taps and it starts cycling through them. Four taps and you're back where you started. Simple, quick, and reliable. Works fine. Has a weighted free-spinning scrollwheel (though you can push in a switch to make it feel like a more traditional wheel) that took some getting used to (that is: I hated it at first) but I really like it now.

https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/mice/m720-triathlon....

$40 on Amazon

In the past, I've also used a Logitech K380 BT keyboard, which was (and looks like still is?) TheWireCutter's recommended BT keyboard. It's very much a travel-type keyboard, though, so I don't love using it at my desk. It does support three devices at a time, though, and that functionality worked just fine while I was using it. I keep it around just-in-case, since it's tiny anyway, but don't use it much anymore. Nothing wrong with it, though.

https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/keyboards/k380-multi...

$30 on Amazon

(no affiliation with, nor particular loyalty to, Keychron or Logitech)

This article says 3 devices are supported and uses an example of iPad MacBook and iMac - so I think it will cover you, unless it’s m1 only. https://petapixel.com/2021/06/07/apples-universal-control-se...

For comparison, Sidecar didn’t work for me until late in the beta cycle. I think it was the last public beta where I finally got it to work. Ultimately I could never get in the habit of using Sidecar because it turns out I have to VPN into work, thwarting Sidecar altogether. I expect VPN to prevent me from using Universal Control too.

I don't think Universal Control uses the local network, I heard it uses 1) iCloud to link up and then 2) direct WiFi/Bluetooth for communication

I'm not sure I understand the difference between Sidecar and Universal Control. Is UC just Sidecar for more screens?

(FWIW, I use Sidecar every day and it works really well.)

What makes them similar is that the two machines need to be able to communicate with each other. The difference is that one turns the iPad into a display for the computer, while the other turns the computer into a keyboard & mouse for the iPad. I imagine VPNs will interfere with both.

Sidecar works great for me, too. I just have no occasion to use it where I’m not on VPN.

UC let's you use the iPad as an iPad and not as a screen. Think of it more as a KVM for your Mac and iPad.

This is great if you want to use the iPad app version of something rather that just needing an extra screen (Sidecar).

Sidecar is VNC, universal control is synergy.

If your VPN client supports split tunneling and your organization has enabled it then Sidecar works fine.

You can use USB for both Sidecar and Universal Control, by the way.

You can! Synergy does exactly this! However, you almost certainly want the fork, Barrier, now, as Synergy has stagnated.

https://github.com/debauchee/barrier

I’m using synergy for this. Works just as in the video (except for iPad support and drag and drop)

https://symless.com/synergy

I've been a user of Synergy for many years.

Note that it doesn't like when any of the computers involved go to sleep. There's a reason you can bind a hotkey to restart the server.

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