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Use your iDevice as an extra display for your Mac

duetdisplay.com

51–60 of 119 posts

Re: Use your iDevice as an extra display for your Mac

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any chance this approach could eventually be used on a Linux distro or Windows?

The technology already exists in X11. The problem is getting devices to act as display servers.

I haven't seen examples of folks trying to use iPads (for example) as X11 displays, likely because it's outside my area of expertise. Do you know of any examples?

Re: Use your iDevice as an extra display for your Mac

#54
I've actually just downloaded their MacOS App and tried to install and launch it.

It now basically does nothing just blinking in the statues bar.

But I observe sudden CPU usage surge of this app from the activity monitor, not sure whether it is because of not pairing an iOS app or not

And also, my chrome feels significantly lagged.

Re: Use your iDevice as an extra display for your Mac

#55
I've been beta testing duet for about a month now. As a person that travels a lot, it's awesome. The developers have done an incredible job, and have been very responsive in fixing the bugs I've reported to them.

However, a couple of things to note. Firstly, this is lag free, but still not something you should play videos on. I'm not sure what the framerate is, but I'd be surprised if it's over 30fps. I believe this is probably a result of using USB.

Secondly, I never thought I'd say this, but retina is not your friend. On the new iPads, the OS X menu bar is maybe a centimeter tall. Obviously, you can change the resolution, but I like hi-res, and you just see so little when you bump it up (keep in mind the new iPad is only 1024 by 768).

The app is the best it can be, but what I'd emphasize is that most people should really get a second monitor, if that's what they're looking for. I understand you could save some money, but iPads just don't offer enough real estate.

Again, kudos to the devs for doing a great job on the app though.

Re: Use your iDevice as an extra display for your Mac

#56

I've actually just downloaded their MacOS App and tried to install and launch it. It now basically does nothing just blinking in the statues bar. But I observe sudden CPU usage surge of this app from the activity monitor, not sure whether it is because of not pairing an iOS app or not And also, my chrome feels significantly lagged.

mhm in my case once I opened the App it just disappeared. It moved itself to the Application directory, can't say I like this.

Re: Use your iDevice as an extra display for your Mac

#57
post #56

I've actually just downloaded their MacOS App and tried to install and launch it. It now basically does nothing just blinking in the statues bar. But I observe sudden CPU usage surge of this app from the activity monitor, not sure whether it is because of not pairing an iOS app or not And also, my chrome feels significantly lagged.

mhm in my case once I opened the App it just disappeared. It moved itself to the Application directory, can't say I like this.

will it slow something down?

Re: Use your iDevice as an extra display for your Mac

#58
post #5

I wonder how they achieve "Zero lag". I've been using similar software ( AirDisplay [1] ) and the lagging is awful. You have to be certified hardware manufacturer if you want to use the USB connection to transmit any data between the iPad and your Mac [2]. So my bet is they either use WiFi ( which can roughly get 60fps on retina resolution ) or Bluetooth 4. In both cases I think the refresh rate would not satisfy in…

My guess would be they're just using the shared documents area . There's a number of libraries on the desktop that let you access an API to write to the shared documents area. I'd guess they'd just be piping a mp4 feed to this and the iOS would just be reading from there.

> [...] shared documents area. I'd guess they'd just be piping a mp4 feed to this [...]

If this is the case I'd worry about the internal flash drive of the iPad. There must be a lot writes.

Re: Use your iDevice as an extra display for your Mac

#59
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most kids games won't run on it.

Mine is full of kids games. Admittedly I've run across one or two games that didn't work, but it's not like I've ever experienced a lack of available kids games.

Thanks, I will have to try it again.

Re: Use your iDevice as an extra display for your Mac

#60

Wonder how much bandwidth is required to drive this... My USB3.0 port is taken by an SSD hosting virtual machines, the other is hooked to a powered hub.

Assuming the video stream is compressed (MP4?) it shouldn't take too much. We're pretty used to streaming HD over the internet, so even USB2 should be able to handle it.
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