Yesterday I posted that my Astropad Luna Display update had broken my ability to use my iPad as an external display for my MacBook Pro. Today the kind people at Astropad responded with a link for the previous version.

I replaced the upgrade and fired it up. I selected the "ignore this update" when prompted, and it seemed to start just fine. I plugged the iPad back into my MBP, and it connected as expected! I feel like I traveled back in time and did a simple "undo" on a nonsense bit of my life. But it's good to have the thing working again.

Thanks, Astropad!

As an always-improving software engineer, I understand the needs and desires of keeping your stuff up-to-date. I also appreciate the difficulty there is keeping the old versions of APIs or other interfaces in new versions of code. There are probably slick things in newer iOS versions that make this better and easier to maintain. I've run into it, where you have to make that call to stop supporting old enough systems that even the manufacturer has dropped support.

I can afford another iPad. I mean, really, if it was important enough, I could drop less dollars and have another big monitor attached to the MBP for easier-to-read screen real estate. This is more about not tossing something that otherwise "works" into the garbage (OK, I'd recycle, but still...tossing it aside). It's a neat use of a small space for a meaningful, but little bit of extra display. The iPad itself doesn't do enough extra to keep it for iPad reasons--I have another aged Android tablet that still works better than this does for apps, even though it is also slow and out-of-date and can't have the latest stuff. But the tiny bit of touch-screen it offers, adds a lot. 

I am in about 10 Zoom meetings a day. While the Zoom agenda annoyingly (but arguably helpfully) includes non-Zoom things on my calendar, and more annoyingly defaults to the first meeting that overlaps with the current time (which often includes all-day non-Zoom meetings), it's handy to be able to scroll the agenda and click the "start" or "join" button on the tablet, instead of chasing around with my mouse. Small thing, but thing nonetheless.

All this to say, again, "thanks, Astropad." I still think your solution has uses that Sidecar doesn't quite meet, and especially as long as the old version of the app can continue to function with my old version of the iPad, it helps me use this little piece of junk until its battery or screen finally give out.