Astropad studio. full#
Astropad studio. software#
Astropad studio. mac#

Icons and folders appear much more visible and are more responsive while the mirrored desktop image fills the entire iPad canvas: we’ve never been this close to having a touch capable Mac in our hands.īut let’s slow down a bit and talk about the device itself.

Astropad studio. full#

First of all, seeing our Mac’s desktop on the iPad at full screen in retina resolution is a huge improvement over the previous experience. We at digital EPIGRAPHY have been using the Luna display with the help of Astro’s Kickstarter beta program for more than a month now and we are very satisfied with its benefits when producing studio drawings on our iPad Pro.

Luna turns the iPad into a wired or wireless (assuming a strong wi-fi network) touch capable second display that works great with the Apple Pencil.

Astropad studio. software#

It is either a USB-C or Mini DisplayPort device that plugs into the user’s computer port (Astro HQ’s software and hardware only favors Mac users at the moment) to distribute information to a dedicated iPad app called Luna Display. Solving the problem resulted by the variety of different resolutions and aspect ratios in tethered screens while keeping the connection stable and making the experience as fluid as possible has been Astro’s number one priority since day one.įast forward a year and here is Astro’s first hardware, the Luna Display, which is a small dongle (a little device able to be connected to and used with a computer, especially to allow access to wireless broadband or use of protected software) serving only one purpose: to give us the best possible second screen experience when using a Mac and an iPad. Nonetheless, black bars appear on top and bottom as soon as the entire Mac desktop is being tethered to the iPad. Astropad has been trying to take advantage of the entire iPad screen from the very beginning by letting the user mirror only a certain section of the Mac’s desktop adjusted to the tablet’s aspect ratio. However, since the experience was still based on “hacking” into the iPad’s software, which - although being far more reliable than the competition - still appeared glitchy at times. As much as we liked the idea of connecting our iPad to our laptop and using this setup to access desktop apps such as Photoshop in the field, the experience was never flawless until the basics that were laid down with Astropad Standard got hugely improved and refined with the introduction of the subscription based “pro” version of their app, Astropad Studio (see our review here). We’ve been using our iPad as a simple screen extension or Wacom tablet replacement both in the studio and in the field since Astropad released their excellent software’s first iteration (now called Astropad Standard) that creates the illusion of having a touch screen Mac on a tablet. The technology of utilizing a cable or wi-fi connection to expand the Mac’s desktop to the iPad through a certain combination of apps has been around for some time now.