iPad Pro Looking to buy a mac mini, would iPad be able to virtualize the desktop to become a mac?

[cis4life]

should be natively supported functionality given the cost and ecosystem

Agree with you 1000%, but Apple is gonna be Apple! 😅

 

[FrozenDarkness]

I have a M4 Mini at my desk for work, but when Im traveling, I just use my M4 iPad Pro 13. The trick to getting the best results with Jump is to…

1.) Install Jump Desktop Connect onto your Mac / Windows Machine. Setting up Jump Desktop Connect will supercharge your connection and fix you resolution issues and keeps your latency as low as possible.

2.) On your desktop machine, I run it in headless mode with a 4k Dummy adapter plugged into the HDMI. This makes the host machine believe a monitor is plugged into it and thus will properly resolve to your iPad display properly.

3.) Make sure your host machine is HARDWIRED to your modem or router. This makes a LOAD of difference as your going to maintain a much stronger connection with your up and down connections by being HARDWIRED to your network. Wifi is great, but not so great for the host machine.

I’ve been running this way for a few years now with 0 issues. I always hear about people talk about what if you don’t have internet, this is true, but I know with what I work on, if I don’t have internet, work is pretty much a no go also as almost everything we work on is in the cloud to some degree.

I work as a full time software architect and this works great. At home, I work on my (now) M4 Mini, but if I go out or travel (such as this week with Thanksgiving) I just take my iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard, and I’m good to go.

Just my personal experience as someone who has used this mobile setup for literally years.

Attached an image of my M4 Mini from my iPad Pro M4 13”

Do you have recommendations for the dummy hdmi? that part might have lose me a little bit

 

[cis4life]

Do you have recommendations for the dummy hdmi? that part might have lose me a little bit

Yes.

I run my mini in headless mode attached to my network via hardwire. The HDMI dummy plug makes the mini think a monitor is attached and thus when I use jumpdesktop via the fluid protocol by using jump desktop connect, everything resolves in full screen nicely and latency is low. These dummy plugs are only a few dollars but work well. Get a 4K one so you can get the best resolution from jump desktop. I use this one from Amazon… I also attached an image of my setup.

BUYMINERS.CA 4K HDMI Dummy Plug - Virtual Monitor Display Emulator, Headless Display Adapter Supports up to 3840x2160@60Hz, 1080@120Hz DVI EDID Emulator (Single)

a.co

 

[dzankizakon]

However, I did spend like $1500 on my iPad and I dont' want to turn it into a netflix machine. I'm tempted to buy a $500 mac mini m4 that's on sale at costco because I already have a monitor and essentially turn my iPad into a virtualization machine.

Instead of turning your iPad into a netflix machine, you would turn your iPad into a bad monitor.

Cut your losses, sell your iPad and buy a MacBook. Sorry.

 

[xxFoxtail]

Do you have recommendations for the dummy hdmi? that part might have lose me a little bit

Not the other poster, but I used Luna Display. This was my set up with it -

Headless Mode - Luna Display - Astropad

Use your iPad as the main display for Mac mini or Mac Studio. With Headless Mode, you get the processing power of a Mac with the Retina display of an iPad.

astropad.com

I was also using it with a shortcut (on my iPad) called Mac Maestro. It's an older shortcut, but still worked with what I was trying to use it for roughly a year ago. Specifically the Wake on LAN and Open Application commands. Open Application being used if for some reason Luna Display crashed or wasn’t running.

https://www.reddit.com/r/shortcuts/comments/9sssys

And then I used that with BetterTouchTool. Say the Mac was turned on, but Luna Display just wasn’t working at all. BTT has an iPad app that will let me have access to the Mac's menu bar. With that, I'd open any random app with the Mac Maestro shortcut, and go to the Mac's menu bar via BTT on the iPad and click into "Move to iPad." This will start a Sidecar session on the iPad and I'd figure out why Luna wasn’t working. (MacStories has since posted a better way of starting Sidecar from this article https://www.macstories.net/stories/...ng-sidecar-to-turn-an-ipad-into-a-mac-display)

It wasn’t exactly a seamless thing to do every time I wanted to control my headless Mac mini. It worked for me because it was pretty uncommon when I needed to actually use the Mac for something. At some point I wanted to finish a development project I started many years ago, and this set up (nor Shadow PC) was really cutting it for me anymore. That project is finished now, I kind of wish I kept those devices instead of trading both of them for a MBA. I still have my Luna Display dongle in case I ever go back to this someday. Though I kind of wish Apple would just make it a native feature.