- Simple to use. Install the drivers on Mac, run the program on your iPad, and go.
- Acts like any another monitor. You can adjust orientation with other monitors and resolution. Different choices in performance. Adjust vertical orientation on iPad and screen just updates.
- Very responsive, if not always very performant. No lag or jitter in image/sound, but graphics performance can be slower (lower FPS). You can play video games on it, but I wouldn't do it for a living.
- Sometimes you just want to sit down in a coffee shop and have a second monitor handy. This does that.
- Touch screen triggers mouse input, if that's useful for you.
Cons:
- Your CPU is doing all the graphic card duty. On my i7 at retina resolution, you'll chew 50% of a core. This will eat battery and your machine will run warm. But not hot, like a video game.
- Odd graphic issues when you also have a secondary monitor plugged in through HTML. Works just fine, in general, but sometimes it will loose track of what to refresh or update on the monitors. Disconnecting and reconnecting always clears this up. Most often happens when I lock the computer.
- Sometimes, it just gets confused about connecting. Again, stop and restart the app on iPad fixes it.
It's not perfect, but it works well enough that I certainly don't regret getting it.
Agree with all posted above. I also notice that unless it's connected to the MBP's USB 3 directly, for example if I plug it into the thunderbolt display instead, I get extreme mouse latency in the display.
It's a neat idea but I think I only kept it running for maybe a few weeks, then took it down again.
It's also worth noting that OS X is not optimized in any way for touch input, so using any of the controls is pretty rough.
Seems like the "Ex-Apple Engineers" is prominently used as a marketing. Some review online goes on saying "Made by Ex-Apple engineers and it shows"
But who were they at Apple and what did they do there ? Does Apple endorse them in some fashion, do they have privilege access to some technologies ? In what fashion is that relevant ? Outside that branding, there is nothing in there that back that claim with anything concrete.
There is nothing wrong and the application can be indeed great, but this marketing tactic raises all my alarms. Without the positive comments here on HN, I would not even have considered trying that product at all.
I figure it's meant to be more of a hint hint 'we know the architecture we're programming for from the inside'
Now, what position they held definitely will make a difference. But the reason they're not specifying it could be to avoid any violations of employer agreements they had at Apple.
For example, saying "I've worked on the mac desktop interface team and know the architecture and worked with the codebase for X years so I can implement the same (proprietary) architecture" would cause trouble, Obviously they won't be as blatant as this, but it is better to occupy the vague corner and still reap the ex-apple recognition.
I agree with you on that. It probably is a great product but that marketing point makes it seem sketchy. I found the video looked suspiciously like Apple's late ads too.
This is very obviously trying to feed off Apple's fanbase.
It made me do a double-take when I saw the Windows logo in a screenshot as Apple would never market that, not that it is a bad thing, just that the branding of this app's marketing strikes too close to Apple's.
This is also by far the #1 killer feature for me in Windows 10 Anniversary Update.
You can now use other Windows 10 PCs as wireless displays and project to them in any display configuration as long as they're on the same local network. It can also reroute audio output from the host to projected PCs, and even reroute input (mouse, keyboard, touchpad, touchscreen(!), pen(!), etc) from projected PCs back to the host.
From my experience so far it has worked impeccably well. There is a bit of input lag and the occasional compression artifact, so hardcore gaming is definitely out of the question, but it's more than good enough for regular media consumption and browsing.
I really can't wait to see something like this land in more OSes.
Yeah it is not really networked in the TCP/IP sense. It is Miracast, and thus use raw wifi frames on a point to point connection.
Similar leveraging of raw wifi has been done for Bluetooth, where it would coopt the wifi radio to do bulk data transfers. Not sure how many devices support it, particularly after wifi direct was released.
I just wish wifi direct had something akin to OBEX that Bluetooth bundles. Makes sure that two devices can talk to each other in a meaningful manner.
How is this different than Air Display (http://avatron.com/applications/air-display/)? That's been out for a few years and as of iOS 8 supports connections over USB. I use it daily and it works quite well. Same pros/cons as cdumler mentions above.
I tried this about a year ago with the hopes of finding a use for an old iPad (was planning on leaving Dash running on the iPad. A dedicated "doc screen").
I found that there is a noticeable latency for older iDevices with 30-pin connectors. This latency seemed to disappear when I substituted a current iPad Air 2.
Just something to keep in mind for anyone interested in using Duet.
I would greatly support a kickstarter for an upgraded replacement logic board for the original iPad and/or iPhone 4S, similar to the N900 project in spirit...
I am very curious as to how this works. Is this just using RFB protocol? Would love to create something like this for the Raspberry Pi. I am guessing it needs Apple's blessing given that it connects via a lightning cable.
I did a bit of a dive on it a while back - it works via peertalk (https://github.com/rsms/peertalk), which in turn works by connecting to local sockets provided by `usbmuxd`.
I haven't tried to reverse it but it's definitely not plain RFB, performance is too good even on an iPad 3 (about the lowest CPU-to-pixels ratio of any iPad ever made). The latency is noticeable enough to be annoying for primary use but it's great for documentation, chat window, etc.
Really like Duet Display, though I wish the output quality was a bit higher (there's a quality slider in settings, but even on maximum there're lots of JPEG-like artefacts on the iPad display, especially around text).
I set it to the highest resolution it gave me (2xxx x 13xx, can't remember), and it is working great. Maybe it's on the notebook end? I also switched my NVIDIA driver to be used instead of the onboard Intel GPU for Duet.
I wonder if the $19 price is making up for sales volume lost to sticker shock. That's expensive for an iOS app.
I've got a pile of old iPads that would be nice to resurrect as displays. I downloaded the Mac app but balked and left at the double-digit price. (not to mention the unknown in-app purchase)
This is available for Windows as well. Besides, that not my point.
I have a Mac. 1K+ is not throwaway money to me. I don't see a way to evaluate it. If there's no way to know if it'll work for me before putting down the money, then forget it.
I am out of work, but the gains from a second monitor for my PC, and to make use of my iPad Pro was a no-brainer for me.
I grew up poor, so believe me, I can understand watching my pennies. I have to figure if you're on HN, and you've got a pile of old iPads, $19 bucks should not be that bad for what it gives you.
Now when I am on the road I can have two displays too.
Great app!
I have already saved myself time in the few hours I have used it not having to switch screens, or download files to my iPad. It will pay for itself in one day at most.
I downloaded the Mac app clicked the "don't forget to download the iOS app!" link, saw $18.99 - and deleted the download.
(I realise $20 is actually a low price for a piece of software, but I don't _need_ this, and $20 is more than I wanted to spend out of curiosity.)
One other complaint for me - it proudly states "All iPads!" than says "iOS7.0+", which leaves out my still working original iPad which can't upgrade to 7.0... That was kinda frustrating.
pretty sure the experience would not be great on the original ipad. Low resolution and probably to slow to properly decode the video stream in realtime.
I'd happily settle for the old-school 72dpi screen resolution, and I'd happily settle for very slow screen update rates (it'd still be useful to me to have irc/email/slack/notifications sitting next to my monitor at even 2 or 3Hz refresh rates instead of 60+fps... I don't need it for playing fast-twitch first person shooter games...)
The disappointment of reading "All iPads" and thinking "Awesome, that's a great use for my old iPad!", then having them say "Except for you, Ah ha!" underneath was a little galling...
Can my iPad Pro now be used to draw in Clips Studio Pro on my PC notebook, or is it only as a secondary display with touch, but no Apple Pencil support?
Downloading now...anxiously had to ask, since the download is 129 MB!
Everyday I wake up there is some new tech I was wishing for yesterday ;)
I did, but I use a Linux/Win 8.1 notebook, not Mac. Plus the wireless connection can't be faster than a USB Lightning can it?
BTW, the Pencil works, but no pressure sensitivity in CSP, Clip Studio Paint, the old Manga Studio Pro. And, I can't pinch zoom, which is weird, since I am using it on my Sony VAIO Flip 15, which has a touch screen, and I can pinch zoom on it.
Oh, well, it is good for notes, and a second display and for my OSC music projects.
I've used this for quite some time on an unused iPad mini. Perfect for the terminal when out in coffee shop. Resolution is low, but that's on the iPad's end and have nothing to do with Duet. I like it.
I tried Air Display once. It had the issue that on a dual GPU MacBook pro the Mac display would jank and flicker every time the GPUs switch which in my workflow is extremely often.
Does Duet do any better?
To test reboot. Run Duet. Start Chrome. Go to google maps. Your machine should start in integrated GPU mode then switch to discrete. Close the maps tab and a few moments later it will switch back to integrated. Each of those switched is usually seemless but with Air Display was janky in the same way some monitors are janky when switching resolutions. Curious if Duet had the same issue
Not sure I'd go as far as "good" though it's been a few years since I used it, but iDisplay (http://getidisplay.com) is either what you want or a starting point to see if there are any better options out there these days. At one point it was seeing few updates, but at least based on their website it's got Windows 10 support so it's updated since last time I looked at it.
It also has Mac and iPad support.
The biggest problem may be that (at least on the website) it only lists compatibility up to Android 4.4 but it may be worth checking on newer versions - that may just be a failure to update the site.
When I was playing with it it was functional and reasonably stable, but ended up not being all that useful to me because I was used to working on a single laptop screen most of the time anyway.
I've used Duet to send out a presenter display when rehearsing presentations, and it works great for that task. The quality for day-to-day use is a bit choppy, however, I'm not sure I'd use it as a primary display.
I wouldn't use it as a primary display either - I use it as a secondary display to dump IRC, Slack, LINE etc onto. That stuff isn't moving so quickly so it's not very taxing for the CPU to keep updated, and getting it out of the way helps me concentrate.
This has been out for years now yet the title is written as if it were just released. Is this just blatant promotion or is there something I'm missing about this story?
Ten years ago a friend and I (both with little technical knowledge) made an extra display on our flat wall using an old overhead projector and the lcd display from a busted sattelite pro laptop.
A decade later achieving a similar thing using more recent technology is so difficult that it is noteworthy.
I dont have a point. It just seemed an interesting comparison.
Is that really a comparison though? This seems more like taking one of those ubiquitous x86 Windows tablets (to form an analogy to an iPad) from years ago and using it as a second display.
Pros:
- Simple to use. Install the drivers on Mac, run the program on your iPad, and go.
- Acts like any another monitor. You can adjust orientation with other monitors and resolution. Different choices in performance. Adjust vertical orientation on iPad and screen just updates.
- Very responsive, if not always very performant. No lag or jitter in image/sound, but graphics performance can be slower (lower FPS). You can play video games on it, but I wouldn't do it for a living.
- Sometimes you just want to sit down in a coffee shop and have a second monitor handy. This does that.
- Touch screen triggers mouse input, if that's useful for you.
Cons:
- Your CPU is doing all the graphic card duty. On my i7 at retina resolution, you'll chew 50% of a core. This will eat battery and your machine will run warm. But not hot, like a video game.
- Odd graphic issues when you also have a secondary monitor plugged in through HTML. Works just fine, in general, but sometimes it will loose track of what to refresh or update on the monitors. Disconnecting and reconnecting always clears this up. Most often happens when I lock the computer.
- Sometimes, it just gets confused about connecting. Again, stop and restart the app on iPad fixes it.
It's not perfect, but it works well enough that I certainly don't regret getting it.