Last week, the iPad became a lot more laptop-like with the launch of mouse and trackpad support in iPadOS 13.4.

That means you can now connect any Bluetooth mouse to an iPad running Apple's latest software. You can also use a USB mouse, either with a Lightning to USB adapter for most iPads or a USB-A to USB-C adapter for iPad Pro models. Apple is also releasing its own Magic Keyboard accessory with a built-in trackpad in May, but that'll only work with iPad Pro models and will cost $280 and up.

I’ve been using my Logitech MX Master 2S mouse with a 2017 iPad Pro for much of the last week, and it's clearly a big step forward for getting work done on Apple's tablets. Still, mouse support does have a few launch issues that'll take some time to work through, and the whole system does require some adjustment coming from a proper laptop.

The good

The best part of iPad mouse support, by far, is text editing, which works exactly like you’d expect. The cursor automatically becomes an I-beam pointer when you hover over text, and you can double-click or triple-click to highlight words or paragraphs, respectively. Clicking and dragging lets you highlight blocks of text, and right-clicking any selection brings up options such as copy and paste. If you write a lot on an iPad—or aspire to—mouse support is a godsend.

Web browsing benefits substantially from mouse support as well. Website menus properly expand when you hover over them, and in Safari, right-clicking on a link brings up a contextual menu for things like copying images or sending links to a new tab. Best of all, highlighting text is no longer a laborious process of pressing, holding, and manipulating a tiny cursor tool with your finger, because you can just click and drag instead. This even works inside text fields on web pages, which used to give the iPad fits. (Case in point: I can finally publish this newsletter from my iPad, because using my web-based content management system is no longer a nightmare.)

Compared to pressing and holding with your finger, right-clicking for contextual menus also just feels more efficient. In addition to the Safari menus I mentioned above, you can right-click on home screen icons, notifications, files and more for a list of shortcut actions.

And of course, it’s nice to have the added precision, especially for media editing. Using Pixelmator Photo, for instance, I can now perform the kind of pixel-level cropping that was nearly impossible on the touch screen, and I finally bought a copy of Affinity Photo for Photoshop-style edits.

The bad

Using a mouse with the iPad does take some getting used to, mainly because of its awkward navigation gestures. Going home requires dragging the cursor continually down from the bottom of the screen, and you must drag even further to reach the app switcher. A proper home screen in the dock or a way to map the extra buttons on my mouse would help make navigation feel less clumsy.

The iPad cursor also has an unusual way of highlighting menu buttons: When you hover over an item, such as a home screen icon, the cursor disappears and the entire item becomes highlighted. If there are multiple items next to one another, the highlight then bounces from one to the next as your move your mouse without ever showing the cursor again. (Here's a video of this in action.) This seems more like a needless reinvention of the wheel than an improvement over what we're all used to.

Compounding the above issue is that many iPad apps aren’t optimized yet. Some retain the free-floating cursor instead of hiding it as you highlight menu items, which makes adapting to the new system even harder, and some don’t provide the kind of right-click menus you’ll find in Apple’s own apps. (I’ve temporarily suspended using Firefox in favor of Safari for this reason.) In a couple cases, I’ve seen apps fail to respond to mouse clicks at all. As with other big iOS changes, getting lots of app makers on board with cursor support will be a slog.

The ugly

While the above annoyances are minor, scrolling is the biggest problem with iPad mouse support so far. With the mouses I’ve tried, the iPad simply doesn’t recognize slow, gradual scrolling, so you have to flick the wheel quickly to make the iPad spring into action. I’m going to assume this won’t be a problem with Apple’s Magic Keyboard, but if the company is going to support third-party peripherals, it ought to do it properly.

On a related note, the iPad can’t handle horizontal scrolling unless your mouse has a separate scroll wheel for that purpose. If you want to scroll through the share sheet, camera roll, instrument selection in GarageBand, or anything else with a carousel-style menu, you’ll have to reach for the touch screen. I also haven't yet found a way to access Spotlight search without swiping down on the touchscreen.

Despite these issues, I still think mouse support was the right call for Apple. While the iPad is still a touch-first device, it’s also become a deeply modular computer that you can extend with other input mechanisms, from keyboards and styluses to musical keyboards and game controllers. The lack of mouse support was an increasingly inexplicable blind spot. Now that it’s here, it’ll make the iPad much more useful to lots of people.
 

With webcams sold out at major retailers—and selling for inflated prices on sites like eBay—the best way to add a camera to your desktop computer right now might be through your phone.

While there are several apps that can turn your phone into a webcam, the best option I've found for the iPhone is called EpocCam. Get the iPhone app, then install EpocCam’s Windows or MacOS software, and the two devices will automatically connect over your Wi-Fi network (or optionally over USB). You can then use your phone’s camera with video chat apps like Google Duo and Zoom. The full EpocCam iPhone app does cost $8, but you can try a free version (with no audio) to make sure it works first.

For Android users, DroidCam works just as well. Install the desktop software for Windows or Linux, then enter the IP address that appears in the mobile app to connect over Wi-Fi. (You can connect over USB as well, though the setup process is a bit complicated.) The base app is free, but there's a $5 upgrade option for higher resolution and other extra features.
 

Other iOS 13.4 goodies: Apple's latest software update isn't strictly iPad-centric. It also includes new Memoji stickers, more convenient controls in the Mail app, support for third-party mapping apps in the CarPlay dashboard, and—perhaps most importantly—the ability to share iCloud Drive folders.

There's also one more feature worth noting for iPad users: You can now remap modifier keys on external keyboards. Just head to Settings > Keyboard > Hardware Keyboard > Modifier Keys for a list of keys to change. As someone who nearly always uses Windows, I have restored the natural order of things by flipping the Control and Command keys around.

Microsoft's new subscription push: On April 21, Microsoft will replace its Office 365 Personal and Home subscriptions with a new service called Microsoft 365. It'll still include the full Office suite and 1 TB of OneDrive storage, and it'll still cost $7 per month/$70 per year for individuals and $10 per month/$100 per year for families of up to six people, but he company plans to add more family-oriented features over time. A location-sharing app called Family Safety will let users track each others' whereabouts, and new Office features will help users check grammar, track expenses, and brush up presentation skills.

The one thing that jumped out to me, however, is a new family-centric version of Microsoft Teams, which will serve as a hub for shared documents, tasks, and video chat. Officially, Microsoft isn't abandoning Skype, but it isn't providing reasons to keep using that service either. The surge in video chat on other services like Zoom only underscores how Microsoft botched its acquisition of Skype nine years ago, and all signs point to Microsoft letting the service languish as it focuses on Teams instead.

Video chat drama aside, Microsoft 365 seems like a logical extension of what is already a valuable service. I've been a happy Office 365 subscriber for years—mainly for the cheap cloud storage it includes—and as long as Microsoft doesn't fix what isn't broken, I don't see that changing.

Dell's iPhone mirroring trickery: Back in January, Dell announced a way to wirelessly mirror the display from an iPhone onto the company's computers. That feature is now available, so if you have a Dell laptop or desktop from 2018 or later, you can download the Dell Mobile Connect app and make full use of apps like iMessage straight from your PC.

Mirroring has long been available for Android phones, not just from Dell, but from Samsung and various third-party apps. While the locked-down nature of iOS presumably makes this trickier for iPhones, somehow Dell has cracked the code. Maybe that'll encourage Microsoft, which has also been working on a mirroring feature in Windows for Android phones, to figure out something similar.
 

Over at Woot, the OnePlus 6T is available for $300. This is an unlocked model that works with Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile networks (but not Sprint). The OnePlus 6T came out in late 2018, and earned praise for its excellent value even at its launch price of $550. While it doesn't have the greatest camera, and it lacks some high-end features such as wireless charging and water resistance, those omissions are more forgivable at nearly half the price.

Other deals worth noting:

• RAVPower has a 65W wall charger with three ports (two USB-A, one USB-C) for $17 with the code HURRY082.
• Get Seagate's 2 TB portable hard drive for $45 from Staples when you add a cheap filler item (like this) and use the code 60426 at checkout.
• Loghtech's Crayon stylus for the iPad is down to just $35 from Verizon, half off the original price.
• As mentioned in my deal alert email yesterday, Misfit is clearing out its Vapor 2 smartwatch for $70.

It seems like every day, I'm hearing more about big layoffs at media companies as the coronavirus leaves the advertising industry in a state of paralysis. That makes me all the more grateful to have your direct support, and to be producing a newsletter without advertisers or sponsors. Thank you!

If you have any tech questions I can answer, please don't hesitate to reach out. And if you know anyone who might enjoy Advisorator, feel free to share this newsletter and let them know where to sign up.

Until next week,
Jared