In this week’s Awesome Apps roundup, you’ll find apps for managing files, using AI to boost your writing, and turning an iPad into a creative input device for a Mac.
And if all that productivity wears you out, we’ve got other options. You can relax with a charmingly peaceful Apple Arcade game with a delightful Japanese theme. Or you can blast enemy spaceships in an arcade-style game that’s great on iPhone — but even better on Vision Pro.
Ladies and gentlemen, get ready to download.
The Astropad Darkboard is a new lightweight, ergonomic drawing surface for iPad. It gives artists a place to rest their arm while drawing without covering the screen.
There are versions for the three largest Apple tablets.
macOS Catalina enables an iPad to function as a second screen for a Mac, but one of the companies that already offers a solution for this job isn’t throwing in the towel. The founders of Astro HQ promise that their Luna Display and Astropad will offer a superior experience to Apple’s Sidecar, especially for creative professionals.
There’s also a new version of their software out today that offers better image quality on a connected iPad.
Astro HQ, makers of Luna Display, dreamed up a macOS laptop concept with a foldable display that covers the entire interior of the MacBook. The design includes a touchscreen and Apple Pencil support.
Artists’ concepts are often impractical dreams for the future but a version of this can be assembled right now. Sort of.
Turning a tablet into an external display for a laptop isn’t a new idea, but Apple is reportedly going “all in” by building this feature into the next version of macOS.
The iPad will supposedly function as a touchscreen for Mac software, which should catch the eye of digital artists.
A new version of the software that drives Astro HQ’s Luna Display promises to noticeably improve the screen refresh rate and latency for this dongle that lets an Apple tablet function as an external screen for a Mac.
The improvements have also been brought to Astropad Stiudio, this company’s app that turns an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil into drawing tools for a Mac.
Even a 15-inch MacBook Pro screen feels cramped when compared to a big desktop display. Too bad toting around a second screen for your laptop isn’t practical.
But maybe it is. Luna Display is a tiny wireless adapter that lets an iPad act as an external display for a Mac. We tested this accessory to see how well it lives up to its promise of a hassle-free way of extending our MacBook screen when on the go. Read on to find out how it did.
Anyone who feels their MacBook’s screen is too cramped can now use their iPad as as second display just by plugging in a dongle. Luna Display is now available to all after a successful Kickstarter campaign.
Astro HQ promises that its hardware/software solution is better than purely software options for using an iPad as an external monitor.
Apple has rejected updates to two popular iOS apps that attempted to provide users with a handy new shortcut on iPad.
The creators of Luna Display and Astropad devised a method of using the iPad’s front-facing camera as a button. Sadly, the shortcut did not go down well in Cupertino.
We’re down here at WWDC, fishing for ProTips. It’s rich hunting ground. WWDC is the world’s biggest gathering of Apple developers, the alpha geeks, experts par excellence. What’s a ProTip? A ProTip is a nugget of knowledge, a little bit of expertise from someone in the know — a pro.
Astro HQ is a two-person indie software company that launched its first app in February.
Run by two ex-Apple engineers — Matt Ronge and Giovanni Donelli — their app was successful. They’re now making their livelihoods from their software. They’re living the dream! Independent app developers!
They’re as rare as unicorns.
Only 0.01 percent of app developers are financially successful, according to a depressing survey by Gartner.
Ronge and Donelli did a lot of things right, including their own app marketing, which they say was key to their successful launch.
They did the app marketing themselves, with no prior experience, and a lot of what they learned was thanks to one book.
