The 15.4 OSes have been released

[OtinG]

On Monday Apple released the 15.4 OSes for various devices.

tvOS 15.4 seems stable. Warning, it takes a long time to install and reboots the ATV about three times in the process, so be patient with it. I suggest waiting until the interface reappears before touching the remote. Apple added the ability to use the ATV in hotels and similar places, and added a few other things, so this is a relatively large update and takes a while to complete.

iOS 15.4 seem stable and okay.

iPadOS 15.4 is more stable than 15.3.x, and some annoying bugs have been squashed. I don't know what Apple called it, but there was an annoying bar that appeared across the bottom of the screen when a keyboard should have appeared. You had to tap the keyboard icon on it and at least one or two other steps to get the keyboard to appear. You could not seem to disable this option in 15.3.1, but it appears to be fixed now in 15.4. I'm appalled that the current Apple development staff seems to favor adding three or four steps to accomplish things when in the past only one step was required. But at least they corrected this one. Not sure if they corrected the disappearing bookmark location though. I get tired of having to drill down through bookmarks to get back to where I was.

....

[tomsem]

This includes public release of Universal Control. Looking forward to trying this out.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212757

[OtinG]

iPadOS 15.4 still has screwed up bookmarks. I’m still having issues with the bookmarks not staying open to the location they were when I close Safari.

[tomsem]

Universal Control seems to work as advertised, at least between a Mac and an iPad. I take it you can only do 2 devices at a time.

[tomsem]

Well Universal Control is still a beta feature, and there are some rough edges.

It seems to work as expected if only two nearby devices are unlocked: 2 Macs, or a Mac and an iPad.

But what if 2 Macs (with UC enabled) and an iPad are unlocked with UC enabled on both Macs? It seems the Macs will ignore the iPad and only control each other. I think you need to lock one of them to start UC with the iPad. If the iPad screen locks, then the unlocked Macs will start UC between them and neither can initiate it with the iPad. It might be nice if there were more control, i.e. Use UC with iPad only.

Or what about 1 Mac and 2 unlocked iPads? I haven’t tried it yet to see what happens. How does it decide which to UC with? Can you UC with one and Sidecar with the other?

Apart from that, there are also updates for tvOS / HomePod. For some reason they aren’t updating automatically, even though I have them set to do so (everything is on 15.4.1 now).

I’ve never been able to connect two headsets so 2 people can listen (possible on Apple TV 4K 2nd generation, which I have). The 2 show as Connected, but only the 2nd headset makes sound. Hoping the updates fix this, but have not had a chance to check yet.
[Edit: you gotta click the AirPlay icon in Control Center to enable two headsets or more than one audio output. So it’s working! ]

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by tomsem

Well Universal Control is still a beta feature, and there are some rough edges.

It seems to work as expected if only two nearby devices are unlocked: 2 Macs, or a Mac and an iPad.

But what if 2 Macs (with UC enabled) and an iPad are unlocked with UC enabled on both Macs? It seems the Macs will ignore the iPad and only control each other. I think you need to lock one of them to start UC with the iPad. If the iPad screen locks, then the unlocked Macs will start UC between them and neither can initiate it with the iPad. It might be nice if there were more control, i.e. Use UC with iPad only.

Or what about 1 Mac and 2 unlocked iPads? I haven’t tried it yet to see what happens. How does it decide which to UC with? Can you UC with one and Sidecar with the other?

Apart from that, there are also updates for tvOS / HomePod. For some reason they aren’t updating automatically, even though I have them set to do so (everything is on 15.4.1 now).

I’ve never been able to connect two headsets so 2 people can listen (possible on Apple TV 4K 2nd generation, which I have). The 2 show as Connected, but only the 2nd headset makes sound. Hoping the updates fix this, but have not had a chance to check yet.
[Edit: you gotta click the AirPlay icon in Control Center to enable two headsets or more than one audio output. So it’s working! ]

I haven't even tried out UC yet. I really don't see a scenario wherein it would be helpful to me though, but perhaps there is one. I'm not surprised if it is still in beta stage though.

I've never had much luck in using auto update. It simply never works on any of my devices. I've heard that it does eventually work after a few weeks, but I never wait that long, so I wind up doing a manual update.

Apple also released macOS 12.3.1.

Safari is still a piece of doggy poop, much like its ancient ancestor Cyber Dog. This past year they really screwed the pooch (See what I did there? ) when it comes to Safari. Across all my devices, Safari bookmarks is now utter garbage. If it syncs them via iCloud, they don't end up where they were moved to. And they sometimes move around. What a mess. Safari is really bad on Monterey. Too many added steps to accomplish things and too many things changed for the worst.

I'm still getting used to Monterey which is a big leap from my MacBook Pro running Mojave. Over all I like Monterey, but it is still quirky nearly a year after being released. But so are iPadOS and iOS. Out of those three, iPadOS is still the most buggy as far as I can tell.

I have tried out running a few iPhone/iPad apps on my MacBook Air M1. They are okay, but they occupy such a small bit of real estate, and if the display in portrait only, even less. But it is certainly nice to have a few of them that don't have equivalent macOS apps.

On my MacBook Air M1, I'm using an Anker 341 USB C Hub I bought a year ago for my MacBook Pro. So it is mostly stuck on 5Gbits/s speeds for USB ports. I have a Samsung T5 2TB ext. SSB, a Dell U2515H 25" monitor, ethernet cable via an adapter, and a 65W power source plugged into it's PD port. It is plugged into a MacBook Air M1 Thunderbolt/USB-C port. So to take my MBA portable I only need unplug that one USB-C cable and the 3.5mm audio cable that connects a small Sony HiFi speaker system. So far it is working quite well as most of my apps are already updated to use the M series processor. I'm a bit miffed that Adobe has not updated all of its Photoshop features for M1 yet, but most of them have been, and I can always select to open PS via Rosetta 2 since PS is a "Universal" app rather than an "Intel" app.

[tomsem]

Turns out you can Sidecar one iPad and UC another.

I think for most people the use case is that they have a MacBook and iPad; UC means they don’t need a separate trackpad/keyboard for the iPad. And of course you can use iPad as extended display.

If you have 2 macs, then one keyboard/trackpad can control both. I need to play with this more: can you wake a sleeping Mac with it?

There’s a selector in Displays that shows up when iPads are around that lets you choose which mode you want to use them in. The Universal Control options allow the connection to be more automatic.

[OtinG]

I will read up on it. I already have a Dell U2515H 25” monitor connected as an extended display. For times when I take the MacBook Air M1 into the living room to use in what I call “recliner mode” it might be good to have the UC option with my iPad Air 2020. As a matter of fact, I probably should have done that last night during the tornado outbreak. That would have given me more screen space to track the storms.

[tomsem]

I had forgotten that Monterey lets you use the display of a second Mac as an extended display for a ‘primary’ one (AirPlay to Mac I think). I’d been using Luna Display for this, which works with pre Monterey macOS and older Macs running Monterey, but it has gotten a little unstable of late, and does not play nice with Universal Control yet.

So I’ve started to use it with my MacBook Pro (work machine) and iMac (personal machine) as extended display. It is working well, but it seems that to re-gain control of the iMac, I either need to go into Displays preferences on the MacBook Pro, or put it to sleep; there doesn’t seem to be a way do disconnect from the iMac side of things (option+command+Eject puts the display to sleep — it does turn off display — but it remains as a useless extended display for the MBP).

If I sleep the MPB, it disconnects from the iMac and I have to go back in to Displays and turn it back on.

Luna Display is a little more ‘automatic’, you can leave the host app running and start and stop the secondary app as desired. But it’s not enough of a plus for me to stick with it, except when I want to use it with an older Mac (which is not going to be very often).

There’s probably some way to script the extended display connect/disconnect to make it more convenient, but I haven’t been able to discover one.

[update, day 2: it really is no big deal to connect and disconnect, especially if I leave Displays panel open. Performance is at least as good as Luna Display and UC lets me do stuff on my iPad Pro using full size keyboard and trackpad. It all works great.]

[OtinG]

Not related to UC, but a few days ago I disconnected my Dell U2515H 25" monitor (used as extended monitor) from my MacBook Air M1, rearranged my home office workspace, then reconnected it. I have an Anker USB-C hub plugged into one of the MacBook Air M1 USB-C ports, and the Dell monitor is plugged into the HDMI port on the hub. After plugging the Dell monitor back into the hub (which was still connected to the MacBook Air M1), the Dell monitor and the MacBook Air M1 couldn't see each other, so the Dell kept going into sleep mode. I tried unplugging the HDMI a few times on both the hub and Dell, but it didn't help. Finally I unplugged the hub from the MacBook Air M1 then replugged it in, then the monitor was found and began working as it should.

I've noticed that with the MacBook Air M1 that devices plugged directly into its ports tend to work fine. However devices plugged into an adapter cable or into a hub which are connected to a MacBook Air M1 USB-C port can, and often are, flaky as far as connection goes.

It could have been a Dell issue too of course. When I used the Dell monitor plugged directly into my 2012 Mac mini's mini-Displayport port, any time I restarted the mini, or put it in sleep mode, it was difficult to get it to recognize the monitor. I read that the minis have an issue with that, so that might have also been a mini issue. It would often take 10 minutes or more of retrying in order to get the mini and Dell back together and running again.