It’s almost over 7 months since Apple first showed the world macOS Monterey. The announcement was back in June 2021 at WWDC. Official rollout begun on October 25th.
During the keynote, Apple was very excited about a new feature that would enable unmatched continuity across Apple devices. It was named ‘Universal Control’. It would enable one to use just one keyboard across all of their Apple devices, seamlessly.
Craig Federighi was quite excited during the keynote saying, “Universal Control is so incredible, you just have to see it in action.” He then went ahead to blow our minds with how seamless everything worked as he moved between an iPad, a MacBook, and an iMac.
This was in June! And we’re in January 2022, and the feature is yet to be available!
Some time in December, The Verge reported that the feature had further been delayed to Spring 2022. However, no accurate timelines have been given.
Apple has not been clear as to why the feature hasn’t yet rolled out, when they spent a good amount of time talking about it during WWDC.
While it is normal to see features delay after announcement, it is weird – at least according to me – to announce features when they’re not yet ready to ship. Like, wouldn’t it have made a little more sense to just hold on to the announcement until things were ready?
Universal control is a game-changer no other ecosystem can boast of. Being able to control your tablet, your desktop and your laptop all at once (more-so switching between the different input devices, dropping files between devices, and yet still working seamlessly) sounds like magic. It’s something that will not only be very cool to show around, but also very helpful in terms of productivity.
I would love to be able to edit my videos and pictures on the go – between my iPad and my Mac. Yes, I can do it with Sidecar, but that just makes the iPad a secondary screen. Universal Control on the other hand embraces iPadOS and allows me to interact with the numerous apps developers have built for the platform.
Hopefully, we get to see the feature launch and it doesn’t become another AirPower situation.
