This is gonna be such a big deal when Apple invents it in 5 years. Can't wait for the MacBook Pro Duo.
They're pretty conservative on the types of products they launch and careful enough to not pollute their existing line-up with whacky products that don't fit with their vision of how a product should be used or if it would cannibalize their other products.
Their MacBooks still don't have a touchscreen even though they could easily add a touch digitizer for almost no cost at all but they just don't want to mix touch with laptops for some reason, unlike the PC laptop makers who seem to have no issue adding that.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/surface-duo-2/9408kgxp4xjl...
Not cheap though.
I have a 13-inch 2.5K monitor and its DPI is too for its size and macOS's fractional scaling doesn't work well. So I'm looking for better options.
There are also a variety of different attachment options, from no attaching to your machine (which I find preferable) to those that attach to your laptop and add two screens, one either side.
Watch out of fly-by-night kickstarter projects in this area, there have been a few in recent years including a monster that promised to add three monitors to your laptop (left, right, top) which I'm surprised people were taken in by (I found the extra weight of one less than convenient, even when sat at a desk, never mind three, hence currently using a stand-alone external screen).
There was an app for this back in 2010. I used it quite a bit when I was on the road with an original iPad.
Nearly 15 years later, Apple does it seamlessly and natively in iOS+macOS without any third-party apps is even better.
Dongle: https://astropad.com/product/lunadisplay/
First turns iPad into Wacom, second is a second screen with features Sidecar doesn't offer, such as reversing for use with teleprompter.
I was considering this, but wound up w/ a Wacom One for my MacBook, mostly since it uses the same stylus technology as all of my other devices (Galaxy Note 10+, Kindle Scribe, Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360).
Don't you ever use two screens?
My eyes can only look at one thing at a time.
So e.g. MP3 players Vs iPod, smartphones Vs iPhone, tablets Vs iPad, ARM CPUs in computers Vs M-series, wireless charging, Bluetooth headphones etc. All around for years and years prior to apple's products, but most people think apple invented the concepts or was first to make etc
This Asus product will be forgotten about in a month or two and the world moves on. If apple released this exact same thing except with osx everyone including the mainstream media would be losing their shit and talking about ushering a new era of whatever, of breaking the mold, of innovation yada yada. We'd have endless tweets and breathless blog posts here on HN about their ultimate dev productivity set up, how they used it on a flight to create a 1M MRR start-up that just wouldn't have been possible without it, how it has changed their lives, how they'll never go back etc. It's called the reality distortion field for a reason. </M1 MBP User>
>breathless
Yeeeeeaaaaahhhhh!
You seem, like me, to be one of the few people on this board, who doesn't get breathless or lose their shit for every little announcement.
Or, more pithily and Unix-ily (and hence macOS-ily), my reply to your comment is:
/usr/bin/yes "Yes!"
This is objectively not true. It was an average product that was heavily marketed.
MP3 players were completely garbage, with low space, low battery or extremely expensive and inconvenient if you had to swap flash cards. Let's not even talk about the UI to browse and select music (when there was one at all, if the buttons were serviceable at all). In fact, MP3s were so bad that after a brief stint with an expensive flash card-based MP3 player; I went back to using my mini disc player since it wasn't much bulkier yet more convenient to operate. My brother had an Archos which was laughably bad compared to an iPod at a very close price.
In fact, it took until the iPod Mini for competitors to figure out products that were decently competitive. But at this point, the iPod Nano was right around the corner and would suit the vast majority of users at a very competitive price. Sure, Sony did come up with some sort of equivalent, but it was barely 10 percent cheaper and had none of the friendliness and coolness factor of an iPod.
I do believe that current Apple is resting on its laurel and is just happy raking in loads of cash for what are minor evolutions or me-too products that do not have the value they somehow successfully sell them for.
But to go back on the insanely great period Apple went through with the second Steve Jobs leadership is completely nuts. Apple was ahead of everyone in many things at this point in time and they did it at very competitive/affordable prices for the most part.
The fact that when you see new tech you immediately think "Apple" — even mockingly — tells me that Apple's marketing works.
Can't wait for the MacBook Pro Duo.
You even got the product line and capitalization right.