It's hilarious to see everyone in the linked Twitter thread lose their minds over this feature. It's neat, I'm sure, but we have had Mouse without Borders and several other similar apps for over a decade now doing exactly this.
Ideas are cheap. Hacking together a PoC is too. Shipping some kind of product is a bit more difficult but the first to ship is usually a complete failure. You can point to almost <i>any</i> product category - whether computer related or not - and this holds true. Revolutionary ideas are ahead of their time both technologically and culturally. The makers don't know how to put the ideas to productive use. Then people flail around throwing product ideas at the wall to see what sticks. The implementation is often full of caveats, missing features, or is mere novelty (it folds! why? ... shutup, it folds ok).
Getting the details right is <i>really</i> hard and takes a lot of work. The last 10% takes as much work as the first 90%. Then the next 10% also takes 90%. Repeat a few more times and somehow it ends up being 1000% more difficult than you expected at the start. Often it requires merging multiple major ideas to create something that is more than the sum of its parts (then you get to watch fools who only got 1 of 50 parts correct claim they invented the whole thing).
Be assured that if you are successful a lot of people will rush to make sure you don't get any credit. I recommend you ignore them... their opinions don't matter and listening to them won't help you make better products or delight more customers.
Stay focused on what matters. Even if Slashdot calls your product "lame" it can still make a few billion. Even if HN says your idea can be done already trivially by "any linux user with curlftpfs" you can still create a startup, IPO, and become very rich. Even if someone says "we have had Mouse without Borders [...] for over a decade" you can still deliver a better experience that people will pay money for.
Just because there are existing "solutions" out there doesn't mean they are a) good or b) doing the job customers actually want them to do.
Sure... but it seems that all the available solutions have their quirks and oddities. Some people (like yourself and the author of the top-level article) seem to think it is literally perfect, while others have issues and irritating experiences (see this [1] comment from this very thread).
Of course if Apple senses there is something cool out there that looks like it has only had e.g. $200k spent on it they could decide to put a bunch of devs on the same issue, spend much more money/time, and get a better product out. IMO that doesn't automatically mean they should go around calling it revolutionary if it does similar things but better or whatever.
> IMO that doesn't automatically mean they should go around calling it revolutionary if it does similar things but better or whatever.
It's revolutionary in that it introduces a new capability to the average user (ignoring either tails), changing the way they interact with their computing devices. The mouse was revolutionary, for example. It existed, but the way it was integrated and became the focal point of UI interactions -- revolutionary. Will this be that? Most likely not, but we'll see.
The touchpad on Mac laptops is a better analogy here. Apple got the touchpad right a decade before Windows based machines. It was smooth, responsive, and gestures just worked. This is now an industry standard, but even 10 years ago wasn't a given that you'd have a Windows laptop with the right hardware and drivers. It feels like what they're doing here is very similar.
You seem to think all these problems are solved by throwing money at them, they're so easy. Apple knew the touchpad would be important and invested and vertically integrated. It took laptop manufacturers and Microsoft a decade to coordinate and catch up. I don't even like Apple as a company, but give credit where it's due.
> The touchpad on Mac laptops is a better analogy here. Apple got the touchpad right a decade before Windows based machines.
And maybe just as important, the "feel" of touchpads on non-Apple laptops is still generally "meh" to outright bad. People choose Apple products because it's clear that Apple prioritizes the UX.
I have this Logitech software that does the same on my Windows work PC and Mac home Mac, and I can drag the mouse over and use it on both machines. Unfortunately, it does not work when my PC is on VPN (which it is all the time). Apple uses a separate Wifi connection for Universal Control, and it simply always works.
And this is what Apple has been doing for well over a decade now. Pulling to together a bunch of related ideas and solutions that on their own are nothing overly special, but combined turn into something "wow".
Their genius isn't necessarily in being first or even inventing something (touch screen phone), it's tweaking the edges and getting it "just right".
For example I have a few iPad apps installed on my Mac, the reason being that I wanted keyboard/mouse and easier copying of content into and out of the iPad app while I was working on my desktop machine. With universal control I don't need to have the dual installs anymore, nor have to deal with the problems that would come with that (e.g. having to duplicate content across both installs).
There's also plenty of apps which the developer has barred from installing on macOS where this is the only real solution.
this - I used so many different tools and methods to get this same functionality. It's not new or novel. But apple gets it right. They spent the time to make it appear magical.
