Astropad turns your iPad into a graphics tablet. When the iPad was introduced many were intrigued by the device, but measured its worth by comparing it to the desktop experience. Luckily, innovative app developers used the iPad's increased processing power and larger input surface area to take mobile app development to dazzling heights, excising it from the entrenched role of desktop app development's little brother. The iPad became truly its own thing, and no one but Microsoft thinks tablets should replace laptops anymore. And it's precisely at this point in the iPad’s evolution that the developers of Astropad have returned boldly to the question of how best to pair an iPad with a Mac. Astropad is not ahead of its time, or behind its time – it is exactly on time. First, it offers easily the most hassle-free iOS-to-Mac bridge setup I've ever experienced, as though all the setup mistakes of prior devs were analyzed and corrected in Astropad. It mercifully skips additional setup for the app you're controlling. Instead, Astropad displays a cropped virtualization of your Mac's screen – just fit it to your design app's canvas – that responds to input from the iPad's touch display. The app refresh rate is high enough to eliminate any input lag; there are, however, brief artifacts surrounding the area you are manipulating. They will not affect your work, but it does serve as a reminder that we are in 2015, not 3015. Using the iPad app itself is an immediately comfortable experience. There is no interface learning curve: the interface fits whatever shortcuts work for your app, seeking to stay as out of the way as possible. Between the ability to customize keyboard interactions, smoothly manipulate the iPad UI, pair with some of the latest pressure-sensitive iPad styluses, and have the desktop app leave a minimal interface footprint, Astropad is one of the most thoroughly thought-through initial stable offerings I've encountered. If you already have an iPad, the price of the iPad app is a negligible investment when you consider what other immersive graphics tablets cost. If you don't, this might be the app that gets you investing in one. A Retina MacBook Pro and an iPad Air 2, the complete design hardware powerhouse. Who knew? Everyone all along, after all.
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