Luna Display is a small hardware dongle you plug into any modern Mac, including the new Mac mini, that wirelessly turns your iPad into a touch display for your Mac.
You can see Luna Display in action in the video below. I love this idea, and it seems a perfect solution for the Mac mini.
Beyond that, it feels like a missing link, that hybrid of macOS and iOS. My sense is that it supports Apple Pencil, but without pressure sensitivity. But that aside, this seems like a wonderful solution if you already have an iPad Pro and have a need for a Mac mini.
They explained why a dongle in that video, and they have the expertise.
And thus, I repeat my desire that Apple ship laptops with farkin’ touch screens.
I am deeply dubious of their website’s claim that “All of the adapters we have tested don’t implement Mini DisplayPort or USB-C properly, even Apple’s adapters”.
By which I mean I want specifics.
(The video explained nothing to me, because I couldn’t stand to sit through it, because it was annoying music and little snippets of text, not explaining anything I cared about, and not really searchable.
Video is the worst thing on the Internet for information transmission and retrieval, for most topics.)
(I mean, I’m sure it’s a fine product and does what it says.
I’m just not sure I believe e.g. Apple’s adapter doesn’t “implement Mini DisplayPort” properly without specifics.
I can’t see Apple just ignoring the Aux channel [which I infer they must be using for the backchannel for the touch information].
I do agree that a dongle is probably necessary for best experience, especially with the way Apple locks down Bluetooth in iOS.)
Video is the worst thing on the Internet for information transmission and retrieval, for most topics.)
Unless you’re selling an accessory that makes claims of physical convenience that can best be demonstrated by a visual demonstration.
Most topics, yes. As a demo, it’s a fine thing for these guys.
For “explaining the how and why”, it’s not.
Wow. Turn up crankiness to 11…
Why would this capability require a (pricey) dongle? Seems like you should be able to do this entirely in software!
We all have our hobbyhorses.
Yes, this is a feature that Apple should make native in iOS and macOS. I don’t care if it requires a physical USB connection, I just want it not to be a kludgey annual-subscription software like Astropad.
They are attributing to the Luna hardware, what is actually a feature of Astropad. You can run Astropad over USB->Lightning or over WiFi. In fact, to run an iPad as your primary display for long periods of time, you need to keep it plugged in to power, so you might as well just run it over USB.
Yes, the video shows that the dongle does work considerably better than today’s s/w solutions. But I still maintain that there is no reason this capability should require a dongle. And yes, it’s probably true that only Apple has access to the internals that would make a s/w solution possible. Not sure why they don’t just do this. Since the demise of Timbuktu, they’re not competing with anyone. And FWIW, I wish TB2 were still around — it worked WAY BETTER than the built-in screen sharing does today.
I think it’s a great solution for what it is. It’d be great, if you could just use the ipad in “Target Display” mode via a cable and/or as an airplay-display.
Those wifi-solutions are still limited by bandwidth… You can see at 0:46 in the video that the animation is not very smooth (probably even below the 30fps of the video), and i’d be surprised if it offered more than 8 bits of color depth or even then be color accurate or be without noticeable compression artifacts. You’d need a wifi-connection of around 3,5 Gbps to drive an Ipad Pro’s Display at 10bit/60hz. Maybe a bit less if you used a “lossless” compression, but then you’d have to be pretty fast to not introduce lag and even then you’d probably use that for utilizing the ipad’s full 24 bit/120hz display capabilities (meaning >16 Gbps uncompressed)
it’d be fine for “slow”, not color-sensitive work, like the keynote presentation shown in the video, though.
I just purchased this but it is working slower (for me) than Splashtop or Parallels Access. Bummer :(. I sent them an email yesterday asking for a return authorization.