William Gallagher
Shortly before Apple releases its Sidecar feature in macOS Catalina to allow Mac screen mirroring and extension onto iPads, the makers Duet Display are soon to release a version that will allow users to use an Android tablet as a Mac display.
Duet Display is a software tool that uses also uses a hardware connection to allow Mac users to utilize their iPads as an extra display, either mirroring or extending their desktop. Now that Apple has built a similar function into macOS Catalina called Sidecar, Duet Display is releasing an Android version of its software.
The app has previously worked with Windows, but did so by extending the PC screen onto iPads. Now its new version will be able to use Android tablets instead. It's not clear yet whether the software will allow Windows PCs to have their screens extended onto iPads, however.
Rahul Dewan, CEO and Founder of Duet Display, previously told AppleInsider that the company has been planning the move for some time.
"We have expected Apple [to get] into this space since day one," he said when asked about Apple's Sidecar announcement. "As we have been a top 10 iPad app for five years in a row, we were able to prove the market. So it isn't surprising that Apple wanted to provide their own solution."
"Since we expected Apple to get in to the space, we knew they only way to compete was to keep innovating," he added.
Duet Display is due to be released on the Google Play Store today, and for a claimed 50% discount. The company has not said what the retail or discounted price for the Android version will be, but the Mac edition is $9.99 plus in-app purchases.
There are already apps on Android that do this, including the free software-only Spacedesk and USB-cable tool Twomon which costs approximately $10.
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
5 Comments
Well, that's one way to avoid getting completely Sherlocked.
There’s gotta be dozens of people around the world really happy with this news.
Whooopty Do!
Re: Sherlocking.
I think we'd be better to remind ourselves that Apple don't directly earn income from OS updates. Calling this Sherlocking is tentative at best.
iOS and macOS have already included quite a lot of screen sharing/mirroring functionality for some time. Extending that onto iPads is certainly a logical pathway forward. Astropad/Duet Display were not the first people to do this either, home brew versions of this have existed for quite sometime via VNC.
The timing for Apple's introduction is likely to be one of performance, since the entire range of Apple devices are now sufficiently powerful enough to support such a feature without the use of a hardware dongle. (Something which the DuetDisplay still requires.) This point is especially important as Apple Pencil is no longer limited to Pro iPads.
It might also be poignant to consider the very wide range of software and services available for the mac. It is very easy to suggest that any new feature introduced into Apple's range of OS's is inspired by something that is already commercially available.