Luna Display to Stick Around Despite New Sidecar Feature in macOS Catalina

[jonnysods]

Especially because it seems Sidecar is limited to a small subset of Macs....

This. They still have a market for a while longer.

 

[code-m]

This. They still have a market for a while longer.

Niche, that will eventually evaporate as Apple will improve upon this in future releases. Not sure why SideCar functionality could have been built into AirPlay with mirror or extended along with input functionality, call it AirPlay 3.

 

[deadoctopi]

This will be the case for both Duet Display and Luna Display. Luna Display has been amazing for me thus far and depending on compatibility of Mac models, it seems this may not be that big of an issue (for the short term, at least). By the time it becomes an issue for Mac, both companies will already be expanded in the PC market.

I’m pretty interested if they come to Windows. As a windows user who really enjoys his ipad pro for working mobile, this is a very good outlook. Gave duet display a chance, what a disgusting buggy and slow mess. And near non existent Customer Support. IMO, that is, YMMV.

 

[mariusignorello]

The usual save-face response of “well we have a better way of doing it” won’t work for this one. You can’t beat native.

 

[DocPenguin]

Luna Display already took a huge blow when Duet released hardware acceleration support without the need for a dongle. This is just the final nail in the coffin.

Now I just have this useless red dongle thing laying around. Anyone want it?

 

[CrysisDeu]

I think Sidecar also brings dmg to iPad drawing apps like procreate

 

[ikir]

Luna Display is hardware based so it has its advantages

 

[aevan]

So I’ve heard. I’ve also heard that it can be hacked through a terminal command to support unsupported Macs and that the user experience is crap. I wonder if that’s not the point, though. Why not optimize for unsupported Macs later, after you’re comfortable with test results from Skylake Macs?

I use Duet on a 2013 MBP and it’s really good, at least for standard business apps where latency may not be noticed as much (Office 365, Atlassian apps, Things, etc.) - I believe that if Duet can do it, so can Apple. It’s not their target market and not their top priority, but I bet they roll in support for more Macs later in the game. I’d be really surprised if they don’t. If Duet can optimize performance, so can Apple.

1. The hack allows it to be used on non-supported Macs but, if I understood it correctly, the picture quality is quite low.
2. Of course Apple could technically do it on older Macs, but it’s probably not happening. Apple does this thing only when they can do it in a way that has the least number of compromises possible. For example, they could make it work like Astropad, where there is pixelization during the movement of large areas, but that would mean compromising on image quality. Or they could do it like Duet and require a cable, but then they would have to take different cables and bandwidths into account and it wouldn’t be wireless. I can imagine Sidecar works in a way so that most people won’t notice a difference between it and a real monitor and looks the same wireless as wired and Apple made no compromises by eliminating Macs that don’t have the required capabilities. I could be wrong, but this seems like an Apple move to me. They leave these things to third party apps.

Again, I could be wrong.

 

[FatGolfer]

This. They still have a market for a while longer.

If they're targeting the pro market (which the statement suggests) I would say their target customer base will have modern hardware which is supported by Sidecar.

 

[Winni]

What else were they going to do? Just say GG and announce their shutdown the day after WWDC?

They could say "in old Apple tradition, we have been sherlocked".

 

[Uplift]

Damage control much?

I'm not a fan of Apple pushing the little guys out off the playground, but as we've seen in the past, it's not a matter of if but when.

Exactly, I do feel for them but people aren't going to pay for an expensive dongle when the feature is built into the mac for free.

I hope they knew this would eventually happen someday and had planned for it.

They'll have a small market for the time being for older macs but I can't imagine they're selling them by the millions anyway, it's still a niche product so any loss of sales will probably hurt them.
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Luna Display is hardware based so it has its advantages

Sidecar is a completely native implementation that no 3rd party will be able to utilize

 

[gixxerfool]

This forum confuses me. So when another company implements features Apple has, competition is good for the consumer. When Apple implements features others have, Apple is wrong. Do I have that correct?

 

[Kabeyun]

Surprised they’re not suing.
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I'm not a fan of Apple pushing the little guys out off the playground, but as we've seen in the past, it's not a matter of if but when.

So you’re saying that Apple (and presumably others) is wrong for adding features to its operating systems as time goes by. How odd. Let’s imagine what any major OS would look like if it was never improved to include what was once in the third party domain.

 

[elvislives]

anybody know if sidecar works with iPhones as well as iPads?

 

[aevan]

Surprised they’re not suing.
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So you’re saying that Apple (and presumably others) is wrong for adding features to its operating systems as time goes by. How odd. Let’s imagine what any major OS would look like if it was never improved to include what was once in the third party domain.

Apple is not wrong. This is good for consumers and for a service like this, only Apple (who has access to their own hardware and software in a way that no 3rd party developer does) can make something without compromises (or with minimum compromises). The same case was with Apple Pencil.

With that said, one can't help but feel for the little guys. I was ecstatic when Apple made their Pencil, and still I felt bad for Adonit. Same with Astropad, though their statement was a bit troublesome, if understandable. They said "if you're basic, you'll be fine with Sidecar, but if you're a "pro", then you'll want Astropad Studio. This is not true, if Sidecar works faster and better, pros and non-pros alike will prefer it to other solutions, even without certain features that Astropad has.

If anything, I hope this pushes Astropad into the Windows market, making iPads popular with PC tablet users, too.

Also, Apple could be a little less restrictive, perhaps open up Sidecar API so that Astropad can build a UI layer on top, adding their own gestures and features. This would also be good for consumers.

Either way, I've been waiting for something like this for a long while. Astropad is good (the update that came out recently especially, the pixelisation is reduced by quite a bit) but comes with certain quirks and requires Luna (which I have) to work like a separate monitor - so I'm really excited about Sidecar.

 

[benshive]

Good. According to Apple my Mac is apparently too old to run Sidecar so I'll still need Luna around

 

[agffth]

What else were they going to do? Just say GG and announce their shutdown the day after WWDC?

This is exactly what I would do in song and dance.

 

[trusso]

So you’re saying that Apple (and presumably others) is wrong for adding features to its operating systems as time goes by. How odd. Let’s imagine what any major OS would look like if it was never improved to include what was once in the third party domain.

No, that's not what I was saying at all.

What I actually said was, "I'm not a fan of Apple pushing the little guys out off the playground, but as we've seen in the past, it's not a matter of if but when."

Please don't be one of those people who twists others' words around just to make your own point. Some people might think you're clever, but to me it's just silly and immature. Trust me, you'll have a happier life once you don't feel the need to do such things.

 

[lartola]

The author should update the article to note that with a little terminal hack, courtesy of Steven Troughton-Smith, even older Macs can use the sidecar feature. MR even mentioned this in their dedicated Sidecar article that was posted earlier today:

View attachment 841386

Yeah I just saw that tweet. However, let's not forget that MacOS Catalina is in beta right now and I have the funny feeling that Apple will disable that command before the final version is released. They are very harsh when it comes to enforcing a restriction. And they became even more so in recent months.
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Ipad is a bit superfluous if you already have a touch enabled Win10 laptop

There has been synergy app around for a long time that works across platforms (not mobile os) from a single KB/Mouse etc and supports drag and drop on many screens not just 2 and combinations of laptops/desktops

I think that's exactly what Apple is trying to compete with by adding a desktop browser, mouse support and expanded multitasking on the iPad: touchscreen laptops. Apple was lacking in that category, we'll see if the iPad really fills the void.

 

[Kabeyun]

No, that's not what I was saying at all.

What I actually said was, "I'm not a fan of Apple pushing the little guys out off the playground, but as we've seen in the past, it's not a matter of if but when."

Please don't be one of those people who twists others' words around just to make your own point. Some people might think you're clever, but to me it's just silly and immature. Trust me, you'll have a happier life once you don't feel the need to do such things.

You were doing so well, letting me know I misunderstood you. I was even ready offer up a my bad. And then you went and started namecalling. I guess you think that namecalling is more mature than word twisting. Oh well.

 

[meboy]

Until Apple rejects their apps for duplicating core functionality like has happened many times in the past.

Apple should have had their asses handed to them for such practices a long time ago.

Not just a fine. They should have to change how they do things.

 

[x-evil-x]

Is sidecar any better than AirPlay screen sharing? It’s not anything like a wired connection it’s too slow.
How does it all work? WiFi? Bluetooth?

 

[trusso]

You were doing so well, letting me know I misunderstood you. I was even ready offer up a my bad. And then you went and started namecalling. I guess you think that namecalling is more mature than word twisting. Oh well.

Can you point out where I called you a name? I said a particular action was silly and immature. (But we've already been over this...)

I really don't wish to get into a debate about semantics here, I just hope you're not reading more into my words than what I'm literally saying.

 

[Kabeyun]

Can you point out where I called you a name? I said a particular action was silly and immature. (But we've already been over this...)

I really don't wish to get into a debate about semantics here, I just hope you're not reading more into my words than what I'm literally saying.

Getting back to the point, I agree that one can feel sympathy for developers whose solutions to missing features may become obsolete over time. We’ve seen this from iTunes to AirPlay to Voice Memos to Notes to all sorts things that are now core macOS functions or apps. I take issue with characterizing it as pushing them off the playground, or couching it as a big guy vs little guy problem, but maybe that’s a semantic argument as you said. Apple has an obligation to develop its operating system, which doesn’t just mean better code and adopting standards, but also adding sensible and useful features. That one’s project may overlap a future feature has long been a risk of being a developer. Some adapt, some fizzle, and a lucky few get to sell to Apple as part of that process (see Shazam, et al).

 

[lartola]

Until Apple rejects their apps for duplicating core functionality like has happened many times in the past.

Apple should have had their asses handed to them for such practices a long time ago.

Not just a fine. They should have to change how they do things.

It’s a miracle even that Apple allows Luna to offer the option to use the iPad as an external display for a Mac. Often, they don’t allow 3rd parties to even offer core functionality at all, let alone duplicate it.

I still remember what happened with printing pdfs from the iOS print dialog back in 2011: As soon as Apple found out that a 3rd party was allowing to create pdf documents from the iOS print dialog, they pulled it from the appstore after updating the guidelines to prohibit apps offering any kind of core functionality. This despite that the said pdf printing app wasn’t actually duplicating any core functionality: Apple did not support creating pdfs from the iOS print dialog at the time and would not do so for another five years, until iOS 10 in 2016.