Universal Control for iPad and Mac showed promise. A year later, this is his reality

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It was one of the star events of the last year. Apple proudly presented Universal Control at WWDC 2021 along with macOS Monterey and iOS 15 and showed how you can thanks to it Use a single keyboard and mouse to use your Mac and iPad without configuring anything. Like many other Apple things, it just works.

Now almost a year has passed since the launch of Universal Control, we have already installed other newer versions of the operating systems on our devices, and it seems that the feature has taken a back seat. Did something happen?

“The best technology is the one you don’t notice”

I personally tried Universal Control as soon as it was released in May 2022 in the stable version of iOS and macOS. I had to enable the option on my devices, but after that everything worked like silk. I didn’t have to tell my Mac what position my iPad was in, I could instantly move the cursor from one terminal to another completely transparently. My partner David demonstrated it with a video on his Twitter:

Other users were also amazed in the networks:

Communities like Reddit have messages from six months ago praising the novelty, with few complaints about limitations, e.g. B. that they can’t be used on devices managed by enterprise platforms or by people commenting that they prefer sidecar.

But on a newer level, the conversation ebbs. And that can indicate two things: people have forgotten that Universal Control exists, or they have adapted it so well into their daily lives that it has become the ideal: a function that does its job without you having to worry about it.

Donald Norman already said it in his book “The Design of Everyday Things”: “Good design costs a lot more to differentiate itself than bad design because good design meets our needs so well that it becomes invisible.” The best features of Apple are the ones you can forget about as they go unnoticed because they accomplish their mission and we take it for granted. It’s only when it fails that we realize how far we can fall short.

Sidecar and Universal Control at the same time: this is how we can combine the two options to extend the screen and keyboard of our Mac

I’m not saying that all users use Universal Control on a daily basis, most fans are the ones who have to resort to using multiple devices simultaneously on one table. In my personal case, I usually leave my iPad charging next to my Mac mini and this causes me to accidentally move the cursor towards the screen. A reminder that the feature is still there and I really appreciate it sometimes when the screens of all my devices need to work.



Source : www.applesfera.com