Apple Officially Delays macOS Monterey Universal Control Until Spring 2022

[arvinsim]

Looks like the ramifications of working from home is starting to make itself felt for Apple. To the people still arguing in favour of this (for Apple), are you all willing to accept a slower pace of innovation?

Citation needed.

 

[Abazigal]

Citation needed.

Tim Cook seemed to be alluding to something when he wanted to start recalling employees back to the office earlier this year.

Apple asks staff to return to office three days a week starting in early September

Tim Cook said Apple employees can work remotely twice a week.

www.theverge.com

For all that we’ve been able to achieve while many of us have been separated, the truth is that there has been something essential missing from this past year: each other,” he said. “Video conference calling has narrowed the distance between us, to be sure, but there are things it simply cannot replicate.

His proposal of a hybrid system is perhaps the best compromise he is willing to make to people demanding for a more permanent WFH solution, and I think that he, as well as other members of senior management, would have a clearer picture of how not physically being in the office is starting to affect their pace of product design.

And I continue to be of the opinion that the longer employees stay away from the office, the more Apple will continue to slip behind in terms of product design and innovation.

 

[jtara]

Confused. Why does System Preferences have Universal Control? In at least 12.0.1?

Partially implemented? Is AirPlay to another Mac part of Universal Control? (Typical Apple blurring of marketing terms...)

I don't have two devices capable of Universal Control. But I see it in System Preferences on my 2020 27" iMac.

And I friend has a recent notebook and also 2020 27" iMac and was able to at least airplay to the other using the "Universal Control" settings, but then got baffled trying to run each one independently and share the keyboard/mouse.

They really screwed-up AirPlay, BTW. Trying to AirPlay to my Apple TV this morning first time I've done so since upgrade to Monterey and it is confusing as hell. Tried to mirror one external display to Apple TV. I kept getting my main screen duplicated everywhere. On every screen (I have two external monitors) plus Apple TV. Eventually managed to enable Apple TV as an extended display, but took a LOT of fiddling and really no idea how I did it.

I guess deeply-flawed Barrier is still only solution to keyboard/mouse sharing? Well, all I can use with my old 2012 Mac Mini anyway.

 

[MacBH928]

I miss steve when things released they actually made your life better, not just a media bang to grab attention and tell people you actually need to upgrade your software last year's is too old.

Monterey is the proof that the pressure to deliver annual major software upgrades is maybe too much. I would not mind a software schedule more about 18-24 months for major upgrades, giving time to implement new features and correct bugs

They should go back to 3-4 year release cycle. I am still on Mojave and I know nothing that Big Sur or Montery does that makes your life better and I am missing on. A working software better than a broken software, not to mention they don't make money on sales of MacOS so they are not losing anything.

There is no way some new innovation happens in 1 year time.

 

[0924487]

Does anyone else feel like this is a gimmick?

No, it’s revolutionary.

 

[rfog]

Existen solutions:

- Mouse without borders (Windows only, done in free time by Microsoft employees, works perfect -I'm using it).

- Synergy, all platforms (When I used it, it worked more or less good).

I don't understand why Apple has problems doing this, as it is a yet existent solution from at least two (three, because Logitech has its own, crappy, but has it) companies.

 

[Karma*Police]

Why is this feature so hard to get right?

The question is, how did they misjudge how difficult it would be to implement when they proudly announced it to the world? Someone fudged this up very, very badly.

 

[Mal Blackadder]

No - though I'm not sure I'd use it today. At my previous job I used to use a program called "Synergy" (erm, I think that was the name) to move from one computer to another with the same keyboard and mouse - this was useful for scenarios where one machine was running a task so intensive (ie, DVD burning) that you didn't want to cause it to crash while writing a disk. Nowadays with multiple monitors, a wicked fast computer, and no need to multitask like that, it doesn't seem as useful for me.

There is a open source fork of Syngery called Barrier that works across various operating systems including Mac.

 

[Mal Blackadder]

There are a lot of people, myself included, that have a hard time reliably connecting AirPods across multiple devices, and they've been on the market for what, 2 years now? I can only imagine the technological issues behind this ambitious and arguably useless feature.

Nothing ambitious about this feature, there is open source software that can do this called Barrier, it works on Macs and various other operating systems.

 

[chucker23n1]

Tim Cook seemed to be alluding to something when he wanted to start recalling employees back to the office earlier this year.

That's Tim Cook's opinion, but it doesn't have to reflect that of individual teams.

Nor does it mean that this is why the feature has been delayed.

His proposal of a hybrid system is perhaps the best compromise he is willing to make to people demanding for a more permanent WFH solution, and I think that he, as well as other members of senior management, would have a clearer picture of how not physically being in the office is starting to affect their pace of product design.

The other thing he has a clear picture of is that people will simply move to the competition if Apple won't offer at least hybrid.

Yes, there's an ineffable thing about in-person meetings, but beyond that, implementing a feature like Universal Control doesn't really require people to be in-house. It may be more convenient because you presumably have a larger variety of test devices on the campus than you do at home, but the bulk can probably be simulated and/or is straightforward enough to test with just one Mac and one iPad, or two Macs.

And I continue to be of the opinion that the longer employees stay away from the office, the more Apple will continue to slip behind in terms of product design and innovation.

Maybe, but also, the longer Apple is stubborn on its policies, the further they risk staff attrition.

They should go back to 3-4 year release cycle.

At no point in Mac OS history was there a 3-4 year release cycle. Probably the largest gap was between 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard, and that (2.5 years) wasn't planned to be as large.

 

[chucker23n1]

Nothing ambitious about this feature, there is open source software that can do this called Barrier, it works on Macs and various other operating systems.

Barrier isn't as seamless as this.

(There's a case to be made that Apple's approach is overengineered, but nevertheless, it is absolutely ambitious.)

 

[yitwail]

Nothing ambitious about this feature, there is open source software that can do this called Barrier, it works on Macs and various other operating systems.

The difference is that Universal Control works on Macs and iPadOS, whereas Barrier/Synergy are not supported on iPad.

 

[Mal Blackadder]

This was the one thing I was really looking forward to. I use two Macs everyday so this was going to be a nice addition to the workflow. Hopefully comes eventually

In the meantime just use Barrier the open source software that accomplishes the same thing.

 

[Henk Poley]

Lets hope this is because they figured out some nice drag and drop API additions.

 

[mabhatter]

I would LOVE a 2 year OS cycle. This yearly deal is ridiculous and kills developers.

Apple doesn't even deliver all the OS features for like six+ months after the new OS is "released". Taking longer and then actually releasing stuff would be better.

 

[svish]

Very bad. Such a long time since it was announced. By the time it comes out and all the initial bugs are fixed, it will be time for next version of macOS.

 

[gfbio]

Still waiting for the damned cut-paste keyboard shortcut in Finder. I know you should use Opt + Cmd + V to move instead of copy, but Cmd + X would be much more intuitive.

 

[2ilent8cho]

Since it seems to take almost a year from them showing MacOS features off at WWDC to them being in MacOS how about they stop this annual MacOS release craziness and just release a new major MacOS when they have enough working ready to ship features. I would be much happier at a new major release every 2 or 3 years.

 

[Boosf]

Apple has officially delayed Universal Control, a hallmark feature of macOS Monterey and iPadOS 15 announced in June, until Spring 2022.

In an update to the iPadOS 15 and macOS Monterey feature pages, Apple now indicates that Universal Control will be "available this spring." Universal Control, which allows users to use one mouse and keyboard across all of their Macs and iPads, has been absent from all versions of both macOS Monterey and iPadOS 15 thus far.

Apple had initially indicated that Universal Control would be launching in the fall of this year, presumably alongside the initial releases of macOS Monterey and iPadOS 15, but that promise did not materialize. Apple just today released macOS Monterey 12.1, including SharePlay and other new features, but lacking Universal Control. With the fall season officially ending on December 21, it seemed likely to be the case that the feature would be delayed until next year.

Article Link: Apple Officially Delays macOS Monterey Universal Control Until Spring 2022

It will be released any day now.....right?

 

[macintoshmac]

It will be released any day now.....right?

Just around the time the next macOS version will be imminent.

 

[nt5672]

THIS!

I’m a MacAdmin, and trying to get our fleet through a major update every year is brutal.

Yep. I remember back in the day we had equal mac's and PCs in the company. We had a full time PC support technician and no Mac technician. When we needed mac help, we called in a local mac expert. Happened maybe once or twice a year. Man I miss those days.

 

[maxoakland]

Bring all your workers back to the office and stop messing around on zoom and magically the productivity will rise and you wont have to delay projects constantly

Studies show productivity is better when people work from home instead of an office
You can read about it here

 

[maxoakland]

Yep. I remember back in the day we had equal mac's and PCs in the company. We had a full time PC support technician and no Mac technician. When we needed mac help, we called in a local mac expert. Happened maybe once or twice a year. Man I miss those days.

What’s changed since then?

 

[dysamoria]

Unsurprised. This is an overly ambitious feature that I don’t expect to work any time soon, if ever. I still don’t have reliable iCloud synch or even the correct region chosen for me by my iPhone weather widget...

 

[dysamoria]

Why is this feature so hard to get right?

Because it’s too complex and requires too many different things to communicate at exactly the right times, using networking that was probably never designed for this kind of real-time, cross-platform, low latency functionality.