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

Thursday June 6, 2019 1:29 pm PDT by Juli Clover
macOS Catalina introduces Sidecar, a native feature that turns the iPad into a secondary display for the Mac. It's a useful function that works well, but it's also something that third-party companies have been doing for several years now.

One of those companies makes the Luna Display, a hardware-based dongle that plugs into the Mac to turn the iPad into a secondary display. According to Luna Display's founders, though Sidecar offers similar connected technology, the Luna Display is sticking around.


"We're not going anywhere," wrote CEO Matt Ronge and Head of Product Giovanni Donelli in a blog post shared this afternoon. The two go on to explain that while they're disappointed in Apple's decision, they plan to continue to cater to creative professionals.
We've spent the last five years building innovative products like Astropad and Luna Display that cater to true creative professionals. Our team has always doubled-down on delivering deep customization and low-latency input. Why? Because that's user-driven and that's what we do.

If you have basic needs, Apple's Sidecar may do the trick. But if you're a pro, we've built Luna Display to fit around your creative workflow.

We know that creative pros have highly-individualized and unique ways of working productively. Whether you need to collaborate with multiple users, or take advantage of the Mac mini's portability by setting your iPad as the main display -- Luna offers the freedom and flexibility to build a connected workspace around your needs, so you can be productive anywhere.
Luna Display's founders are also planning to expand to new platforms and see a "bright future" in Windows.

The Luna Display adapter has been around since it launched as a Kickstarter project in 2017, and before that, Astropad, an iOS and Mac app that offers Sidecar-like functionality, was available for using an iPad or iPhone as a secondary display for a Mac.

Sidecar is available in macOS Catalina and it takes just a few clicks to turn an iPad into a secondary display. Sidecar does have its limitations, though, and is only available on newer Macs from 2015/2016 and later.

Related Roundup: macOS Catalina
Tag: Sidecar Guide
[ 96 comments ]


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Bbqthis
10 weeks ago
What else were they going to do? Just say GG and announce their shutdown the day after WWDC?
Rating: 36 Votes
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verniesgarden
10 weeks ago
they will be solid until the market of unsupported iPads and Macs fades out, hopefully they can provide some differentiating feature sets. but to say "side car won't handle professional needs" is naive, as apples is building a native solution.
Rating: 14 Votes
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mosher
10 weeks ago
they still have 3 months of existence
Rating: 13 Votes
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Mad Mac Maniac
10 weeks ago
Especially because it seems Sidecar is limited to a small subset of Macs....
Rating: 11 Votes
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BootsWalking
10 weeks ago
I hope they're able to tough it out. They have an innovative product and my heart goes out to any engineering firm that gets Sherlocked like this. With the ingenuity they exhibited with Luna I'm sure they'll be able to come up with other winning products to replace the revenue lost on Luna.
Rating: 7 Votes
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LordCoe13
10 weeks ago

Luna Display's founders are also planning to expand to new platforms and see a "bright future" in Windows.


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.
Rating: 5 Votes
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roar08
10 weeks ago
I have a Luna and while I *really* like it, and have gotten a lot of use out of it when I'm mobile, I have Catalina on my 2018 15" MBP and iPadOS on my iPad Pro ... and it's hands-down more responsive than the Luna ... so far.
Rating: 5 Votes
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aevan
10 weeks ago

I think the operative word "currently" should be inserted. Sidecar only currently works on a limited set of apps and Apple hardware. Given that Catalina is currently in preview, restricted to developers, I think it is probably premature to conclude that's the final list of supported hardware. I'm skeptical it will be that restricted.


It seems to be using HEVC which requires at least Skylake CPUs.
Rating: 5 Votes
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gixxerfool
10 weeks ago
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?
Rating: 5 Votes
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rjohnstone
10 weeks ago
Given Sidecar only works on a limited set of apps and Apple hardware, they will be good for a while.

Only works with the following Macs.

* 27-inch iMac (Late 2015 or newer)
* iMac Pro
* MacBook Pro (2016 or newer)
* MacBook Air (2018)
* 12-inch MacBook (early 2016 or newer)
* Mac mini (2018)
* Mac Pro (2019)
Rating: 4 Votes

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