Astropad's New 'Slate' App Lets You Control Your Mac With Your iPad and Apple Pencil
After several months of beta testing, Astropad is today officially launching its Astropad Slate app for the iPad. Slate turns an iPad into a large trackpad for a Mac, complete with Apple Pencil control.
With Slate, you can use an iPad and Apple Pencil to perform several useful tasks. The Apple Pencil serves as a cursor for controlling the desktop mouse, and a tap on the screen is used as a click.
When you write on the iPad, it is translated into typed text on the Mac, and there are two-finger gestures for actions like scrolling and zoom. If you have a newer iPad that supports Apple Pencil hover, you can use the hover gestures. For older iPads, Astropad added a simulated hover option.
In Mac apps that support drawing, sketching, and other creative work, you can use the iPad as a drawing tablet. It essentially serves as a no-screen interface for drawing, with the focus on the Mac.
You'll need an iPad that runs iPadOS 15 or later and a Mac that runs macOS 11 or later to use Astropad Slate. The devices can be connected over Wi-Fi, Peer-to-Peer networking, or an appropriate USB cable.
The Astropad Slate app is priced at $19.99 and can be purchased from the App Store. [Direct Link]
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Top Rated Comments
It’s a niche product. If this isn’t for you, and you “don’t get it”, ask about it respectfully or just move on with your life, maybe?
The widespread acceptance of disrespectful comments by people who don’t realize/care that people who worked on this stuff read them will never stop frustrating me. And I refuse to stop calling it out when I see it.
To the team who launched this - and I know they’re monitoring these forums, cause I do that for a living: Congrats on the launch! Good luck ?
They believe the user experience is better with 2 highly focused devices instead of one lesser capable 2 in 1. I’ve used the windows 2 in 1s and they’re ok for what they are, but not nearly as polished as separate devices, imo.
If that, why not just mirror the tablet's screen to a monitor?