And the author isn't calling "dibs" at all; her company's product hit the market first, but she isn't claiming any right to that market.
Not calling dibs: fair enough.
Edit: Just noticed the pronoun you used and was confused. I vaguely remember these people (the creators of this product) from when they launched the product as, well, male.
Turns out they still are: Here's their separate blog post btw:
https://blog.astropad.com/a-message-from-astropads-founders/
Did it? I remember hearing about Duet Display first, but maybe I just missed it.
Basically it's the fault of the bizarre SV venture capital funding model.
And in fact YC CEO Michael Seibel has said on many, many occasions that the number one reason YC companies fail is because they hire too many people, too quickly.
VC companies push you to grow efficiently not just grow at any cost (unless of course you have unique unit economics).
I wish that was the case. Unfortunately, patents exist and they enable exactly that sort of thing.
That does not obviate their point, of course. Getting Sherlocked by your platform sucks.
What I will say is that I think - despite the harm to the specific developer of the competing product - that adding new features to the OS for free is a net positive for consumers. It's one less thing they have to pay for out of their own pockets, and enhances the overall value of the product and its ecosystem.
Step 2: Allow Macs to use AirPlay to create a separate display from a Mac.
Step 3: “We have this nice beatific light display call the iPad and we already have the capability of low latency AirPlay”.....
Is that not obviously the next step?
iPad -> AirPlay -> 5KPlayerr -> Windows
Mac -> AirPlay -> AppleTV -> TV
Mac -> iDisplay (2010) -> iPad (https://gizmodo.com/review-idisplay-turns-your-ipad-into-a-s...)
Seeing that every combination between iPad/Windows/Mac/Airplay has been done for between 6-8 years. Why isn’t this obvious?
There was also a way you could hack around with VNC to do it early on.
In the 1990s, 2000s, or heck even early 2010s this would have been an open source utility that someone had spent a few months building as a passion project. And then 5-10 people from around the world would have pitched in a work week here and there to make it work really well and lots of people using it would be really happy from using it.
Now, because everything that possibly can be monetized needs to be monetized.. it has to be monetized. And everything needs to be made into a company, with programmers, product management, marketing, HR, legal etc etc.
I hate to defend Apple here, because I think they are beginning to halt progress rather than bring it forward, but.. meh. It's just a goddamn feature. You can't call dibs on obvious features. (And in terms of obviousness, I think this one is a lot more obvious than Sherlock.)