The best moment of this 12 months’s WWDC keynote was an easy demo of a macOS feature, Universal Control. The concept is straightforward sufficient: it permits you to use the keyboard and trackpad on a Mac to straight management an iPad, and even makes it easy to tug and drop content material between these gadgets.

What made the demo so spectacular is how straightforward and seamless all of it appeared. In a traditional Apple transfer, there was no setup required in any respect. The section occurred so quick that it even appeared (incorrectly, because it seems) just like the Mac was capable of bodily find the iPad in area so it knew the place to place the mouse pointer.

After Zaprudering the clip and asking Apple a number of questions, I now have a greater understanding of what’s happening right here. It seems that the whole system is definitely less complicated than it first seems. It’s primarily a brand new means to make use of a bunch of applied sciences Apple had already developed. That’s not a knock on Universal Control — typically one of the best software program options are a results of intelligent pondering as a substitute of brute drive technological enhancements.

So right here’s what’s taking place in that demo.

First, it’s essential get the iPad and Mac comparatively shut to one another. Universal Control is constructed off the identical Continuity and Handoff options which have lengthy been part of iOS and macOS. When the gadgets are shut sufficient, their Bluetooth modules let one another know. Of course, all of the gadgets right here must be on the identical iCloud account for this to work.

Then, you begin up Universal Control by dragging your mouse pointer all the best way to the left or proper fringe of your Mac’s display, then somewhat bit past that edge. When you do, the Mac will assume that you simply’re making an attempt to tug the mouse over to a different system, on this case the iPad.

So there’s no UWB location detection, simply good previous assumption. One notice is that when you’ve got a number of appropriate gadgets, Monterey assumes that you simply’re dragging in direction of the final iPad or Mac you interacted with.

At this level, a Wi-Fi Direct connection is made and the iPad will present a small bar on the facet with somewhat bump. It’s a form of indicator that the iPad is conscious you’re making an attempt to tug a mouse into it. Keep dragging and pow, the bump breaks free right into a round mouse pointer. When the mouse is on the iPad display, each it and the keyboard in your Mac management the iPad. Move it again to the Mac, and also you management the Mac.

But there’s a intelligent little affordance constructed into that unusual bar. There are a few arrows inside it, a touch which you could slide that bump up or down earlier than it breaks free into the iPad itself. Doing that’s the way you line up the iPad’s display together with your Mac’s, in order that dragging the mouse between the screens doesn’t end in a bizarre soar.

You undergo the identical course of to arrange a second system with Universal Control — it maxes out at three. If all this computerized setup feels like a trouble, you may simply go into system preferences and set a tool as your most popular Universal Control buddy gadget.

However you set it up, you may drag and drop content material between gadgets and it’ll use both Wi-Fi Direct or USB to switch the recordsdata. Of course, in case you’re dragging recordsdata into the iPad, be sure you have an app open (like Files) that may settle for it.

That’s just about the lengthy and the in need of it. There are nonetheless some particulars to hash out, Apple tells me, and it isn’t out there within the first developer preview. If you set your dock on the left or proper fringe of the display, for instance, it’s unclear if this entire setup will work.

What’s fascinating to me about this technique — as I focus on within the video above — is that it’s solely actually attainable due to an extended collection of software program enhancements which have been constructed into the iPad through the years, together with:

1. Continuity, Handoff, and AirDrop. Universal Control isn’t technically AirDrop, however it’s the identical fundamental concept. All of those are the fundamental ways in which Apple gadgets talk straight with one another as a substitute of by the cloud.
2. Multitasking. I’m not referring to split-screen, however the assist for drag-and-drop that got here together with the improved windowing choices on the iPad.
3. Keyboard and mouse assist. That’s an apparent pre-requisite, however it wasn’t at all times apparent that Apple would put mouse assist into the iPad.
4. Sidecar. Sidecar’s the instrument that allows you to use an iPad as a second Mac monitor. I don’t assume that Universal Control makes use of the identical bits of software program as Sidecar, however I do assume that there have been most likely classes there about latency that may show helpful right here.

I had a hunch that there could be an identical story of evolution on the Mac facet of this story. I figured that every one the iPad and iOS applied sciences discovering their means into the Mac with the previous few releases performed a component. Catalyst apps become native iPad apps for M1 Macs. Control Center, Shortcuts, and Focus mode all are iOS issues which might be additionally on the Mac.

Nice concept, however incorrect. Apple tells me that the muse on the Mac facet is so simple as it appears, primarily based on Continuity and Handoff.

I hope that Universal Control works as nicely in the actual world because it did on this staged demo — and I do know that’s no positive factor. But what I like concerning the characteristic is the way it’s only a intelligent recombination of present applied sciences that Apple had already constructed for different functions.

Inside the Apple ecosystem, you count on that the commerce you’re making for less than utilizing Apple gadgets is getting synergistic integrations like this. They’ve really been rarer than I might have guessed the previous few years. But because the Mac and the iPad begin buying and selling an increasing number of options with one another, I count on we’ll see extra of them going ahead.