The Downfall of Brydge
Brydge, a once thriving startup making popular keyboard accessories for iPad, Mac, and Microsoft Surface products, is ceasing operations. According to nearly a dozen former Brydge employees who spoke to 9to5Mac, Brydge has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs within the past year after at least two failed acquisitions.
[…]
Those former Brydge employees largely attribute the company’s failure to mismanagement during growth, misleading statements from its two co-CEOs, and an overall hostile working environment that led to a high turnover rate.
[…]
The response to the first iteration of the Brydge Pro+ was mixed at best. At that point, iPadOS 13 didn’t offer native trackpad support, so Brydge was forced to rely on a workaround using Apple’s Assistive Touch accessibility feature. It was far from an ideal solution, and the early reviews made that clear.
[…]
Just three months later, Brydge was hit with a major surprise when Apple unveiled the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro, its first iPad keyboard accessory with a built-in trackpad. Alongside that, Apple released iPadOS 13.4 with native trackpad support without using the Assistive Touch accessibility feature.
iPadOS 13.4 did not make the full suite of trackpad capabilities offered by the Magic Keyboard available to third parties like Brydge, however. […] The sentiment among Brydge executives and employees was that Apple left them out to dry while giving Logitech special access to its software.
Previously:
- Private iPad Camera Multitasking Entitlement
- Brydge Pro+: iPad Keyboard With Trackpad
- The Many Setups of the 2018 iPad Pro
- Writing With an iPad and a Clicky Keyboard
