I tried to use the iPad Air as an external screen using Duet in a client meeting… it was a disaster.

First of all I couldn’t mirror my screen properly, so I was trying to control a second I couldn’t really see all that well.

Then whenever I tried to go into full screen mode into Sketch, the application would show the wrong part of the screen and I would be disoriented.

5 minutes in I excuse myself for the experiment, set the iPad aside and continued the meeting using my laptop. Whoops.

I also wanted to try using the iPad as a second screen on location. I had this theory that I could maybe use the iPad as a dual monitor setup. It might be helpful when doing frontend work, where the iPad shows what you are creating but you have your full Macbook screen for your code.

My iPad happened to only have 6% battery left. I tried to connect the iPad to the Macbook hoping that the charge on the Macbook would be enough to keep the iPad running – it wasn’t.

The iPad draws power from a 12V adapter. In practice you can’t use it over USB on a Macbook all day because it would eventually just die. So your only option is to connect both the Macbook and iPad to power separately, and then use an app that shares the screen over WiFi – like Air Display 3. This method is a bit slow.

I tried to use to get some work done but it just felt unnatural to have the iPad as a second screen. It’s a slightly different angle which is a bit bothersome. I ended up mostly ignoring the iPad while it sat idle alongside the Macbook. I noticed it again when I tried to use accessibility zoom in Mac OS with the iPad attached; for some reason my reason slowed down to a crawl. When I detached the iPad everything was fine again.

I was dealing with issues with Google Drive at the same time. You know that moment when you start hating computers? At that point I was kind of done with the iPad Pro for today. There should be room for experimentation, but if it starts to affect my work performance, that doesn’t really make me happy.

That’s it for the 2nd (!) blog post of today. I should count how many words I’ve already written about the iPad. Over and out!