I would love to target iOS with all kinds of hobby software, but actually developing on that platform is such a fucking miserable experience that I avoid it at all costs. I really cannot emphasize enough how unpleasant it is to deal with limited number of installs, expiring apps, and the lack of support for OpenGL. The people calling the shots over there are truly unrepentant assholes.

One thing that discouraged me from tablets was how fast they went deprecated. I bought an iPad and a Samsung Galaxy Note around 2012. The Samsung Galaxy stopped having updates about 2 years after I bought it, and the iPad, although it still runs, it stopped receiving updates around iOS 9 and its only current use is as PDF viewer (not even Kindle works in it). A Lenovo Thinkpad I bought from that same year is still up and running and very useful whenever I need it.

I’m on a VPN all day for work that doesn’t allow split tunneling (nothing on my local network is accessible when I’m on the VPN). Would an iPad work as a secondary display in this setup? Or does it require a local network connection?

Edit:

Looks like wireless requires network connectivity between the Mac and iPad. But USB presumably does not.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102597

For Windows folks who want to use iPad as a second display, Luna Display is wonderful: https://astropad.com/product/lunadisplay/

I bought an iPad to use as a secondary portable Windows display and got a lot of mileage out of it. Though I honestly get even more mileage as a device for taking video calls.

That being said I agree with claims that the M4 is overpowered for my use. I was sold on more on the ‘just works’ nature of it, lightness, and screen size/quality. I just upgraded to an M4 entirely for that beautiful OLED.

I'm so envious sidecar works for him.

For the time I tried it my success rate was around 3 times in 5 attempts. The macbook also wasn't strong on reconnecting to standard external displays (screen stayed black about 1 in 15~20 times), but sidecar was really hit or miss in comparison. And it requiring to be on the same Apple ID was less than ideal when the coupling is between a work machine and my personal iPad.

TBF the Surface Pro is also not 100% working on the laptop -> surface pro setting, but it's more around once in 20 or 30 times, and there's no account setup to fret over.

Overall this feels like an unsolved problem, and I kinda understand why lenovo would ship dual mode tablets that straight act as a display when needed, instead of trying to hack it in software.

"Apple could do something good with it, but since they aren't I turned mine into a monitor".

Classic. I bought a monitor for $80, plugged it in and 'It just worked'.

Here you have a hacker, watches one too many apple ads/marketing/astrotrufing doomscrooling, buys an ipad, and... makes a monitor out of it.

I suppose that is the second best thing you can do after being manipulated. I would have just resold it.

Does this article have a point or am I missing something? Looks like it's incomplete.

I've been using Spacedesk on Windows with two old Android tablets. They're Samsung Note 2014s, super cheap, old enough that YouTube has stopped working, but they're 10" at 2560x1600 with good color.

With good wireless, the setup is reasonably performant, fast enough to move the mouse and type fluently. Certainly slower than USB monitors, but ideal to put some reading material on one screen (PDF or a browser window), and a text editor on the other while still using the main screen.

I also use them in portrait orientation 10:16, which is nice. Cheapest and most portable triptych setup there is, I guess.

I have an old android tablet. It's good for media consumption. I'm using it for comic books and pdf (epub also but ereaders are better for that). I could use it for video too, but I don't watch video too often and either use my phone if the size screen don't matter or my computer if it matter.

I like mine because I can write on it. I do a lot of mathematics and it’s either dragging a pad of paper and pens or a whole computer that does a load of other stuff with me. So the computer wins.

Also it’s the only thing that works on plane tables properly without being too big, at a stupid angle or utterly impossible.

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