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New iPad Pros driving external monitors question

roguefury

roguefury

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 5, 2010
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Looking forward to the update, but I'm curious about the external display capabilities. Is this only to run external video?

Will this have additional 'functionality'? Can we, for example, move safari over to a monitor to view content, surf? I understand the lack of a 'pointer' may be an issue, but can't the two finger scrolling feature of the onscreen keyboard solve for that?
 
roguefury said:
Looking forward to the update, but I'm curious about the external display capabilities. Is this only to run external video?

Will this have additional 'functionality'? Can we, for example, move safari over to a monitor to view content, surf? I understand the lack of a 'pointer' may be an issue, but can't the two finger scrolling feature of the onscreen keyboard solve for that?
Click to expand...

From what I gather, it's just screen mirroring of what is on your iPad's screen.
 
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There are so many possibilities for screen out and your post just reminded me of that. And I imagine this could be part of their long term strategy for iPad to compete with Mac. Picture it

Capabilities for iPad has grown dramatically over the past couple years to the point some people don’t see the need for a laptop at all. Those capabilities will only grow to reach parity with Mac but imagine if in time it worked like this:

While out and about and to be mobile, you use the iPad just as the iPad. But when you wanna a bigger work area and to do more “pro” work, you do what people do when they clamshell mode their laptop

Hook it up to an external display with some peripherals and go to town. The display issues can be worked on but then it comes down to keyboards and pointing devices. What if we could use a trackpad for limited uses? Like editing text or something. Maybe a part of the iPad screen could be used as a Magic Trackpad.

Or maybe I’m reaaaaally high. But it’s a good thought
 
Ghost31 said:
There are so many possibilities for screen out and your post just reminded me of that. And I imagine this could be part of their long term strategy for iPad to compete with Mac. Picture it

Capabilities for iPad has grown dramatically over the past couple years to the point some people don’t see the need for a laptop at all. Those capabilities will only grow to reach parity with Mac but imagine if in time it worked like this:

While out and about and to be mobile, you use the iPad just as the iPad. But when you wanna a bigger work area and to do more “pro” work, you do what people do when they clamshell mode their laptop

Hook it up to an external display with some peripherals and go to town. The display issues can be worked on but then it comes down to keyboards and pointing devices. What if we could use a trackpad for limited uses? Like editing text or something. Maybe a part of the iPad screen could be used as a Magic Trackpad.

Or maybe I’m reaaaaally high. But it’s a good thought
Click to expand...
It's a great thought. Similar to Samsung's DeX functionality. It would be awesome. They wouldn't even need to change the UI much, just add trackpad support and voila.
 
richpjr said:
From what I gather, it's just screen mirroring of what is on your iPad's screen.
Click to expand...
It seems to be ‘smart screen mirroring’. One of the examples in the keynote was editing video. The iPad screen had the full UI, with controls plus the video-out. The attached screen just showed the video, full screen, with no UI.

This is pretty much ‘business as usual’, though, just with the 4K output.
 
richpjr said:
From what I gather, it's just screen mirroring of what is on your iPad's screen.
Click to expand...

AceFernalld said:
So far just mirroring, but additional capability could certainly be added in iOS 13 or 14
Click to expand...

It’s actually more than just screen mirroring or playing video - and it’s actually been possible since the original iPad (via 30 pin to HDMI adapter way back with iPhone OS 3.2 I think).

The difference now is the ability to drive a 4K display and doing it over USB-C.

Anyway, like @danmart mentioned, apps can be designed specifically for use with external displays (like the one shown during the keynote where they were editing video and the external monitor was showing the final product). This has always been possible though. Gaming was another example of it too, controls on the iPad and the game up on the external display.
 
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I think this will be just like AirPlay, except without needing to rely on an Apple TV, a reliable Wifi and Bluetooth connection to display video and audio

The apps should follow what their AirPlay code say (eg mirror or separate display) and display accordingly
 
roguefury said:
Looking forward to the update, but I'm curious about the external display capabilities. Is this only to run external video?

Will this have additional 'functionality'? Can we, for example, move safari over to a monitor to view content, surf? I understand the lack of a 'pointer' may be an issue, but can't the two finger scrolling feature of the onscreen keyboard solve for that?
Click to expand...

I have my worries about this as well. Primarily during the Keynote Running on External Displays was briefly mentioned. And shown its was from a distance and Did not fill the Who Aspect Ratio of the screen. Which is troublesome. The iPad was used itself as a interface device. This will be helpfull for Business Presentations. And Video out to 4K TVs. But not much else.
 
jazz1 said:
Thanks for the information. I'm worried that there would be some kind of screen resolution mismatch and the resulting screen picture would look weird.
Click to expand...
Actually, that’s a great point. I believe in general the mirrored UI will be scaled down to be viewable on the external display. It might not be a perfect downscale, as you’d need a display with a resolution that’s a clean multiplier from the iPad’s resolution. I’m not sure how the iPad handles that. It turns out that the new iPads support 4K and 5K displays, but in order to drive it at 5K you need USB 3.1 type C, and I’m not sure if it’s the same for 4K. Can anyone else chime in on this? It’s discussed briefly in this article: https://appleinsider.com/articles/1...-connectivity-to-an-external-4k-or-5k-display
 
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