Tech
Astropad’s Workbench reimagines remote desktop for AI agents, not IT support
Demand for Apple’s Mac Mini has skyrocketed, particularly in China, as the small computer has become an ideal platform for experimenting with autonomous AI agents like OpenClaw and others. Now, a company called Astropad is building out a remote desktop solution specifically for this use case.
On Tuesday, Astropad CEO Matt Ronge introduced Astropad Workbench, a remote desktop solution for Apple devices that he pitches as made “for the AI era.”
While an AI agent running on a Mac Mini may not need a screen, its operator (the human) will want to log in at times to see what’s happening in order to check logs, monitor outputs, or restart stuck tasks, he says.
The new remote desktop solution offers a variety of features, including high-fidelity streaming; the ability to dictate prompts and commands with your voice; support for other input methods like the keyboard, Apple Pencil, or touch; and clients for both the iPad and iPhone — the latter essentially putting the remote desktop solution into your pocket for on-the-go access.
If you’re running AI agents across multiple Macs, Workbench offers a device chooser so you can move between them.
The idea came about because it was something the team at Astropad had wanted for themselves, as had their friends.
“We have heavily adopted AI at Astropad, and we’ve been using agents. And sometimes, you have an agent running on a long task, and you want to check on it,” says Ronge. “There’s not a great way to do this…there were existing remote desktop tools, but nothing built specifically for this,” he continues. “There have also been ways where you can use a terminal, or there are things like Telegram chats, but they’re limited. I mean, there are times you’ve got to see what’s happening on your Mac. You’ve got to approve a dialog or save something, or just visually see what’s happening.”
Workbench also leverages the company’s proprietary, low-latency display protocol, which it calls LIQUID, which supports the workflows creative professionals use. It retains full fidelity, even at Retina resolutions, Astropad claims, and doesn’t blur lines or pixelate data. The protocol already powers Astropad’s other products, like Luna Display, which turns your iPad into a second display, and Astropad Studio, which lets you use an iPad as a professional drawing tablet.
While monitoring an AI agent may not always need a high-fidelity solution, Ronge points out that it’s something that’s nice to have — especially if you’re approving designs or mock-ups your AI agent made.
Of course, remote desktop software has existed for some time, meaning Astropad has well-established rivals like Jump Desktop, RustDesk, AnyDesk, Parsec, VNC-based solutions, and many more.
But Ronge suggests that those weren’t designed for the specific needs of using remote desktop software to keep tabs on AI agents. With Workbench, it’s easy to check on the status of logs to see your AI agents’ progress in order to spot issues, restart stalled jobs, and make other changes, but what’s more, you can do this from your iPhone or iPad.
“We’ve been doing iPad stuff for years — it’s been, like, our whole company for the past 10 years. So we have a lot of experience in making good iPad apps,” Ronge says. “We know how to make good iOS apps…so we did that, and then we also added a voice model.”
The tech uses Apple’s voice model so you can talk to your phone and direct your AI agent to do something with a press of the microphone button.
“It’s a very natural way to work with agents. That’s the kind of feature that existing remote desktop [apps] just don’t have — they’re built for more traditional, enterprise-style remote desktop.”
As a new release, there will still be some bugs and polishing needed, but the team is continuing to work on the product. Next up, they plan to launch Windows and Linux support and refine the iPhone app.
The new software runs on macOS 15 and up and iOS 26, and is available as a free download offering 20 minutes of access per day. For unlimited access, the cost is $10 per month, or $50 per year.
Astropad, a bootstrapped and profitable small tech business, has over 100,000 customers, including those who have bought its iPad hardware accessories and its software. With Workbench, Ronge believes the company has the potential to reach both AI enthusiasts and businesses as remote support for AI agents becomes more common.
“I totally think businesses are gonna buy it. I mean, just the productivity gains I’m seeing from it myself — this is totally headed to businesses. It’s just too powerful,” he notes.
Tech
Snap gets closer to releasing new AI glasses after years-long hiatus
Snap has announced a new partnership between its AR-glasses-focused subsidiary, Specs, and chipmaker Qualcomm, as the company revs up for the release of its wearable later this year.
The Snapchat creator has been teasing the release of the glasses — dubbed Spectacles, or merely Specs — for a long time and, earlier this year, it spun off a new company to specifically focus on the business venture. In February, the company abruptly parted ways with Scott Myers, its SVP of Specs, over a reported “blow-up” between himself and Snap CEO Evan Spiegel.
The newly announced partnership with Qualcomm shows signs of life for the project. Specs will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR platforms, which are its systems-on-a-chip designed to power augmented and virtual reality devices, a press release states.
The two companies will develop “on-device AI, cutting-edge graphics, and advanced multiuser digital experiences” as part of a multi-year strategic agreement, a press release claims.
“Our work with Qualcomm provides a strong foundation for the future of Specs, bringing developers and consumers advanced technology and performance that pushes the boundaries of what’s possible,” Spiegel said.
The saga of Specs has been a long one. Snap originally began developing the product over a decade ago. The last consumer-facing version of the glasses was released in 2019. Since 2024, the glasses have been a developer-only product — giving Snap the opportunity to work on seeding new kinds of programs that the company hopes will draw users to it upon launch.
Tech
PSA: If you use the Meta AI app, your friends will find out and it will be embarrassing
Meta released its new Muse Spark AI model on Wednesday as part of a major overhaul of its AI efforts. It’s do-or-die time for Meta — the company cannot afford investing billions of dollars again into something that doesn’t pan out, like the metaverse. Well, maybe they literally can afford it, but it’d be pretty damaging, not to mention embarrassing.
Speaking of embarrassing: Imagine a bunch of your friends, family, and strangers you met once in college getting a notification that you use the Meta AI app. I have lived this humiliation, and I am here to warn you that it could happen to you, too.
Meta’s Muse Spark model might be new, but the Meta AI app is not. It came out last April, and at the time, I wrote an article about the app’s launch. As one does when reporting on an app, I downloaded the app. I used it.
At some point, Meta started sending people Instagram notifications about which of their friends were using the Meta AI app, presumably to encourage them to download it. It has been almost a year. I continue to get texts from my friends in which they alert me that Instagram told them I am on the Meta AI app. This is generally considered to be uncool behavior.
In its first month and a half in the App Store, only 6.5 million people had downloaded the app, market intelligence provider Appfigures told us at the time. That’s a lot of people, but not for a company that counts an estimated 42% of the entire world as daily users of at least one of its apps.
Perhaps that’s why in the early days of the Meta AI app, I stuck out on my friends’ Instagram notification feeds. (Yes, your friends will get a whole notification devoted to your use of the app, displayed as prominently as a new follower.)
Things are looking up for the Meta AI app, though. It is seeing a spike in downloads after releasing its revamped chatbot, now charting at No. 5 on the U.S. App Store, up from No. 57, per Appfigures. That’s also why I must warn you now about the horrors you may face if you use this app and Instagram tells your friends.
As much as I don’t want people to know I installed an app with an AI-generated “vibes” feed, this issue runs deeper. Meta’s apps are so interconnected that it’s hard to keep up with what data we’re sharing, where, and with whom. Why would I think that my Instagram mutuals would know I’m on the Meta AI app? (At least X didn’t tell people that I used Grok’s anime waifu — which was also for work.)
In order to access the Meta AI app, you have to log in with a Meta account — so, I joined using the same account I’ve had since I was a teenager, which connects to my Instagram and Facebook. Meta will continue to use whatever I do on Instagram, Facebook, and yes, now even the Meta AI app, to show me targeted ads. So, if I were to confide in Meta AI about an issue with my menstruation, Instagram might show me ads for period panties.
The Meta AI app never asked permission to notify people about my use of the app, nor has it asked if I want my AI chats to be used as advertising fodder. But it doesn’t have to, because I probably implicitly opted into it in some terms of service agreement that I never actually read. I mean, I also learned via Instagram that my brother was weirdly invested in Eurovision last year, since we can all see each other’s liked Reels. We all know too much about each other, and yet, Meta knows even more.
In a sense, I’m lucky that the only thing that people knew about my Meta AI usage was that I was on the app. Some users had unwittingly shared much more incriminating information about themselves: their AI chatlogs.
As a grizzled veteran of the Meta AI app, I can tell you that back in my day (over the summer), Meta experimented with a Discover feed on the app. Meta did not account for the fact that a lot of boomers use its app, and they are sometimes bad at using technology. Combine that with the fact that, since AI is not real, people will use chatbots to discuss things that they find too intimate or embarrassing to share with others. Then, you have a disaster on your hands.
Soon, people like a16z partner Justine Moore began to notice that the Meta AI discover feed was mostly filled with older users who didn’t realize that they were sharing their AI conversations with the world.
Sometimes, these shared conversations were benign: at the time, I encountered a man with a Southern accent who asked, “Hey, Meta, why do some farts stink more than other farts?” In other cases, we saw people share their personal home address, information about medical issues, and intimate concerns about their marriage.
To give Meta some credit, these users did have to manually press publish on these chats. But enough people seemed to accidentally share private information that, clearly, there was a design issue to address. (Meta has since removed this Discover feed.)
At least if using the Meta AI app turns out to be a hot new trend, I will get to rub it in my friends’ faces that I was there first. But I would not bet on that future. There is still that “Vibes” feed, after all.
Tech
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