Beginnings can be hard to pinpoint. We founded Astropad in 2013. We met at Apple in 2007 as software engineers. But ourtrue beginning may have been in the 1990s when, though continents apart, we each sat wide-eyed before an original Macintosh,awestruck by the creative potential that Steve Jobs’ “bicycle for your mind” could unlock.
Makers of Astropad Studio and Luna Display. Turn your iPad into a drawing tablet with Astropad Studio. Extend your Mac display to any iPad or Mac with Luna Display. Go against the grain. Don’t do what everyone else is doing. Instead, swim upstream and question what’s out there — because we value the unexpected, and the unexpected is often born of dissent. Cross the canyons first. Don’t save the biggest challenges for last; attack the biggest challenges first.
Through these experiences, we found something we believed in: technology’sability to help people make things. Soit didn’t sit right with us when, in the early 21st century, we saw powerful mobile devices being used primarily fortime-wasting applications. In response to that app-based junk food, we developed Astropad Studio and Luna Display — technology designed for the creative community.
At Astropad, we believe that, just as bicycles help people travel faster and more efficiently, so too can products help people imagine new things. Those are the kinds of products that inspire us, and those are the kinds of products we’ll continue to build.
Matt
Ronge
Giovanni
Donelli
Malyse
McKinnon
Savannah
Reising
Jake
Swensen
Jeremy
Knope
Rachal
Duggan
Hoang
Nguyen
Melisa
Wahlstrom
Corwin
Derkatch
Tiffany
Lam
Rachel
Ramirez
Gabriel
Dubé
![Astropad 1 2 Astropad 1 2](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1644/5247/articles/Astropad_for_Windows_Is_Happening_Right_Now_2000x.jpg?v=1601480670)
Jesús Trinidad
Díaz Ramírez
Denise Wong
the astropad
manifesto
At Astropad, we value creativity. We build products that encourage it, and we seek out team members who do too. Because creativity is like wildfire. When we work in an inspired way, we create products that rouse others to do the same.
Don’t do what everyone else is doing. Instead, swim upstream and question what’s out there — because we value the unexpected, and the unexpected is often born of dissent.
Astro Pad 1 2 0
Don’t save the biggest challenges for last; attack the biggest challenges first. Build the bridge over the canyon before the simple road leading up to it. What do you gain by building what you already know you can?
Acquire information through experimentation. Have a lot of ideas, the courage to try the best ones out, and the confidence to move on if they don’t work.
Astro Pad 1 2 X 4
We don’t take outside investment. We are funded by our customers. We grow by supporting and listening to them, by identifying the “extra mile” that will enhance their experience — and then by delivering it.
Exaggerated claims and products seem to go hand in hand. But the truth always rises to the top, and the products that speak for themselves when in the hands of users will always win out.
![Astropad Astropad](https://astropad.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ClipStudio_Astropad12-1024x743.png)
work with us,
inspire others
Our team includes interdisciplinarycontributors from a variety of cities and backgrounds. Still, we all see something of ourselves in each other. An Astropad team member is kind, honest, a little contrarian, and obsessed with quality.
We seek people who are passionate about building the next generation of creative tools. Our work environment is remote, flexible, and full of learning opportunities.
As of now, we don’t have any open positions. But in the future, individuals with diverse work experience and a hunger for curiosity are encouraged to apply. Keep an eye out for open positions on our social media!
If you’ve wanted to use a mobile tablet as a Wacom Cintiq-like graphics input device for your computer, for a long time Astropad was the app that many turned to (a company called Avatron also offers Air Display for iOS and Air Stylus for Android). Now Duet, Inc. has introduced Duet Pro. These solutions display desktop applications such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator on an iPad, letting you use a stylus on the iPad display to draw or paint directly on the desktop document.
Both Astropad and Duet Pro are much less expensive than a Wacom Cintiq…if you already own an iPad. If you’re deciding which one to use, you’ll need to know the important differences between them.
Astro Pad 1 2 Bath House
Duet Pro started out as Duet Display, which lets a Mac or PC use an iPad or iPhone as an additional Mac display. Duet Pro adds support for advanced stylus features such as pressure and angle, bringing it into direct competition with Astropad. (Update: In December 2016, Duet Display and Duet Pro added the ability to let an iPad display the Touch Bar when connected to a Mac running macOS 10.12 Sierra.)
Duet Pro and Astropad both use an iOS app that communicates with a companion application that you run on your computer. But beyond that, they have more differences than you might think. Most of all, you’ll want to pay attention to the hardware they support and their pricing models.
(Update: In January 2017, Astropad announced Astropad Studio, a premium level that includes better performance and additional features. Like Duet Pro, Astropad Studio is available by subscription, but you can still pay just once for the Astropad app and use its base feature set without an Astropad Studio subscription.)
Astropad | Duet Pro | |
---|---|---|
Desktop system support | Mac | Mac and Windows |
Mobile hardware support | Any supported iOS device (including iPhones, using Astropad Mini) | iPad Pro only |
Stylus support | Various, works best with Apple Pencil (Update: Support for non-Apple styluses will be dropped by 2019.) | Apple Pencil only |
Connection between computer and tablet | USB or wi-fi | USB |
Hover/rollover support | No | Yes |
Display the Touch Bar for Macs running Sierra | Yes, in Astropad Studio | Yes |
Price | $29 for iPad, free for iPhone (Astropad Mini). Optional: Additional “pro” features through Astropad Studio, a $64.99 annual subscription. | $20 plus $20 annual subscription that includes future upgrades. The subscription is for Duet Pro and its Apple Pencil support; Duet Display alone is a one-time app purchase. |
You can draw some conclusions from that table:
- If you want to use Duet Pro, you have to own an iPad Pro and an Apple Pencil.
- If you use a Windows PC, you have to use Duet Pro because Astropad only works with Macs.
- If you don’t like subscription pricing, you have to use Astropad (but not Astropad Studio, which does require a subscription).
- If you want to connect wirelessly you have to use Astropad, but for best performance you’ll want to connect with a cable anyway.
I can’t compare the performance and usage of Astropad and Duet Pro, because I’ve only used Astropad. But given the major differences in what hardware they support and how they’re priced, you might be swayed one way or the other more by what hardware you own or how you prefer to pay.
About that “Hover/rollover support” line in the table: A frustrating aspect of using a mobile tablet as a graphics tablet is that they generally don’t support pointer hovering, so you can’t hover the pointer without clicking as you can with a mouse or Wacom tablet. Not being able to hover is a side effect of how most mobile devices work, where your finger or stylus can interact with the display only at the moment you actually touch it. But hovering is important when you want to select a small target, precisely grab object handles, or use mouse rollover effects such as tool tips. Duet Pro and Astropad Studio claim to support hovering, but those are premium levels of those apps which require a subscription.
After I originally wrote this post, Astropad came out with their own table comparing the two premium versions, Duet Display Pro vs Astropad Studio.
Astro Pad 1 2 X 2
One other feature which I thought might be too obscure to list in the table is support for using multiple devices as displays simultaneously. I had no problem creating a ridiculous multiple desktop display by using Air Display to connect multiple iPads and iPhones to my Mac, but Duet Display can use only one device as a display. I believe Astropad is also intended to connect a Mac to only one iOS device at a time.
Apple os history. (The photo for this article is from the Duet website.)