The Luna Display from Astropad is a intelligent product enabling you to make use of your iPad as a second show. It was initially launched for Mac solely, however Apple launched a competing product, placing the corporate in jeopardy for a few years. Today, it’s out there for Windows machines as properly, finishing Astropad’s pivot to a multiplatform product.

To say that the corporate has had a tough time with bringing its merchandise to market can be the understatement of the century. We’ve been following the corporate and its product for its lengthy and arduous route. The firm initially launched its product about 5 years in the past, then added a wi-fi module again in 2018 to do away with the pesky wires. Its fast rise to stardom was torpedoed when Apple launched Sidecar again in 2019, successfully making Luna’s product moot, and sending the corporate into disaster mode.

To its credit score, the corporate and its founders have been good at staying clear with its providing all through. Once Apple beat it at its personal sport, the founders kept the lights on and introduced a yr in the past that it pivoted to engaged on a Windows product as an alternative, fueling its product growth with a $400,000 Kickstarter project.

The crimson dongle on the left of the pc is the Luna Display. Here, it’s wirelessly throwing to an iPad working as a secondary show. Image Credits: Astropad

As a part of the Kickstarter challenge, Astropad initially promised a May 2021 launch, however as issues go on the planet of product growth, the corporate and its 6,000 Kickstarter backers had been handled to a lot of delays alongside the way in which. It’s been a very long time coming, however that Windows product is lastly right here, together with model 5.0 of Luna Display. On paper, a minimum of, the product appears promising; the Luna dongle plugs in and communicates with Mac or Windows working programs, unlocking iPad assist for gestures, Apple Pencil and using exterior keyboards. The firm claims a latency of solely 16ms. Not pretty much as good as Apple’s claimed 9ms latency for its Sidecar product, however it’s fast sufficient for many use circumstances that don’t require real-time enter. Don’t count on to be doing heavy-duty design work or gaming on the show, in different phrases, however displaying a Chrome tab or a Word doc will work completely superb.

The firm claims that its clients have been clamoring for Windows assist, with a complete of 8,000 preorders. No doubt, its affected person and dependable followers shall be delighted that they’ll lastly get their mitts on the product they’ve been ready for.

The answer helps a couple of completely different modes of operation — you should use an iPad as a secondary show, you should use one other Mac (together with older tools) as a secondary show, or you’ll be able to run the product in “headless mode.” In this configuration, you should use your Mac or PC as the first show on your desktop Mac — comparable to a Mac Mini or a Mac Pro.

To construct out the software program stack powering the answer, Astropad relied on the Rust programming language. For followers of such issues, the company’s CEO Matt Ronge did an interesting deep-dive into the pros and cons of utilizing a comparatively new language to construct a low-latency answer.

“With Rust, we’ll have a high-performance and portable platform that we can easily run on Mac, iOS, Linux, Android, and Windows,” says Ronge. “Not only will this drastically expand our potential market size, but we also see many interesting new uses for our LIQUID technology that we’ll be able to pursue with our Rust based platform.”

Luna Display prices $129, and is available directly from Astropad starting today, for each Mac and Windows, utilizing USB-C, Mini DisplayPort or HDMI connectivity.