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iDisplay Mini extends your desktop to iPhone and iPod touch
Popular screen-sharing app iDisplay is now available in a new version designed specifically for extending your Mac's desktop onto your iPhone or iPod touch. Called iDisplay Mini, the US$0.99 app works as a client to the iDisplay Desktop program and can be configured in three ways: to extend your desktop, to mirror your desktop or to display a single application window on your mobile device. The desktop application is capable of saving configurations based on each device that connects, so the next time you run iDisplay Mini on your iPhone or iPod touch the screen layout will be just as you left it. It also includes the ability to send specific applications to the secondary display with a single click, which is handy for frequently used items such as media player controls. iDisplay is also available as a universal app for $4.99. That version includes support for iPad, but if you only intend to use your smaller device for extending and/or mirroring, this new option gives you the ability to save $4 while retaining all other functionality.
iDisplay now ready to turn your Android device into a secondary display
While iPhone and iPad users have been able to use iDisplay to turn their device into a secondary display for some time now (with at least some degree of success), Android users have unfortunately been left to their own devices -- until now, that is. The folks behind the app have finally made an Android version available as well, which is apparently compatible with all Android smartphones and tablets running Android 2.1 or later, and works in both portrait and landscape modes. As with the iOS version, it's also compatible with both Windows and OS X, and it'll set you back the same $4.99.
hacksugar: Using your iPad as a second monitor
Looking for a novel way to put your iPad to work? How about using it as a second monitor for your desktop? Last week, I got a first look at iDisplay. It offers a system hack that extends your desktop space onto your iPad or iPhone. One big problem: although clever, the app remains at pretty much at alpha release. It's buggy, it's slow and it's not going to be ready for day-to-day use for a while. So readers asked if I could hunt down some alternatives. After spending some time researching the issue, I stumbled across Screen Recycler. Patrick Stein, its developer, was kind enough to send me a promo license to test it out and you can see it running in the screen shot at the top of this post. Screen Recycler provides the same kind of desktop space expansion that iDisplay is aiming for but pulls it off in a completely different way. Instead of using a dedicated application, you can use Screen Recycler with any VNC client. The system extension installed by the application transforms incoming VNC connections into virtual screens. That means you can use Screen Recycler with any platform that supports VNC, including any spare Windows and Linux systems as well as iPhones and iPads as shown here. Like iDisplay, Screen Recycler can be slow, at least on the iPad. Stein recommends that you disable compression in the application settings to speed up response time on the external monitor. He writes, "Speed is mostly limited by the VNC client. You can get decent speeds even wireless if you are using a good VNC client." You can also set different degradation levels. You'll still need to take into account that you're working with slow updates. On the iPad, limit your second monitor use to items that you want to read or that update fairly slowly like IM chats and Twitter clients. You can use the system Display preferences to arrange your monitors and menu bar once the extra virtual monitor is added. For some reason, I ended up having to move my main screen back to the left and re-set its menu bar. It only took a few seconds, but be aware that this might happen. For Starbucks use (the gold standard of the iPad set), I found Screen Recycler to be handy and easy to use. I ended up using Mocha VNC Lite, a free iPhone application, on the iPad to test this out and found it worked very well. I'll be testing a few other VNC clients as they become available on the iPad but if you want to get started testing Screen Recycler (there's a free 20 minute test mode), Mocha offers a good way to try the system out before you buy. Screen Recycler costs $30 and can be ordered from its website.
iDisplay: the best concept, most horrific execution award goes to...
We have just looked evil in the face. Its name is iDisplay. Based on an incredibly promising concept, iDisplay purported to extend our Mac's display onto an iPad or an iPhone, over the magic of WiFi. In reality it threatened to destroy our very lives. The application, after installation, tells your computer that it has two displays running concurrently (even when the program isn't open), and limits your main display to a lower resolution -- either with blurry pixels or letterboxing (the latter is shown above). This of course eliminates the purpose of extending a display almost entirely. Add in the fact that we couldn't even get the iDisplay application to open on our Snow Leopard Mac, and we can't imagine recommending this $4.99 combo to a single soul on earth. Even the uninstall process was harrowing. Please, for the sake of your children and your children's children, stay away from this app. Update: Okay, so we've tried it on a few more machines, and while we managed to make it work in a more reliable way without black bars -- hint, turn off mirroring! -- it's still not particularly usable. Refresh rates are incredibly low, the touch interaction is laggy, and the server app on the desktop is pretty crashy. We really want to love you, iDisplay -- let's work this out, okay?
iPad roundup: iDisplay extended desktop, plus Kindle and Time reader apps
Say what you will, the past couple of days have been littered with signs of a rapidly expanding set of functions that the iPad can perform. Latest on the block is the iDisplay desktop extender, which will turn any of your iPhone OS devices into a WiFi-connected second monitor, allowing you to finally unchain your Mac OS (Windows version forthcoming) desktop and take it on the move. Introductory price is $4.99 and you'll find an early hands-on experience at the TUAW link. Next up we have the Kindle for iPhone app contracting its name to just Kindle and making the expected jump to iPad compatibility with version 2.0, which comes with iBookstore-like page turning and, best of all, won't cost you a thing. We've also got word of Time Magazine pricing what's free on the iPhone at $4.99 per issue on the iPad, with the excuse being that you can "experience Time in a revolutionary new way." Good luck with that, we say.
First Look: iDisplay
iDisplay is one of those apps that you receive as a press release in your inbox and just when you're about to move on, it suddenly hits you exactly what that app does. And you go "Oh man! Yes!" In this case, iDisplay transforms your iPad or iPhone into a second monitor for your Mac. I haven't had a chance to play with it yet (I already downloaded the software but haven't received my iPad) but I am so looking forward to using it. It works like this: you install an extension on your OS X desktop system. (A Windows version is in the works, as well.) That extension looks like a monitor to the underlying operating system, which begins to send data through the extension to any attached device. The data is sent over Wi-Fi to the iPad (or iPhone, if you're using an iPhone, as it's a universal application), which acts as an extra monitor. It's not just a one-way connection. The on-device keyboard generates shared events for OS X, and the screen allows you to treat your second monitor as a multi-touch input device.
iPad apps: defining experiences from the first wave
There are now over 1,348 approved apps for the iPad. That's on top of the 150,000 iPad-compatible iPhone programs already available in the App Store. When Apple's tablet PC launches, just hours from now, it will have a software library greater than that of any handheld in history -- not counting the occasional UMPC. That said, the vast majority of even those 1,348 iPad apps are not original. They were designed for the iPhone, a device with a comparatively pokey processor and a tiny screen, and most have just been tweaked slightly, upped in price and given an "HD" suffix -- as if that somehow justified the increased cost. Besides, we've seen the amazing potential programs have on iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and webOS when given access to a touchscreen, always-on data connection, GPS, cloud storage and WiFi -- but where are the apps that truly define iPad? What will take advantage of its extra headroom, new UI paradigms and multitouch real estate? Caught between netbook and smartphone, what does the iPad do that the iPhone cannot? After spending hours digging through the web and new iPad section of the App Store, we believe we have a number of reasonably compelling answers. Update: Now includes Wormhole Remote, TweetDeck, SkyGrid, Touchgrind HD, GoToMeeting, SplitBrowser, iDisplay, Geometry Wars and Drawing Pad.
