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Comment by _ph_ | Hacker News Reader

The one thing I keep missing on my 5k iMac is some form of video-in. Would be great if I could connect my MB Pro to it and use the iMac as a display. Perhaps even in a window and all mouse and keyboard events to the window get passed to the connected MacBook.

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I researched why the 5k iMac doesn't have video-in, and it seems that the reason is that the display has so many pixels that it needs to pieces of hardware to drive it. Getting the timing and color calibration and what-not clearly wasn't going to happen externally, so rather than have a suboptimal experience they just took video-in out. There's also the issue that few video cards can drive that resolution.

https://www.quora.com/Why-cant-the-iMac-27-5K-be-used-as-an-...

Those problems are typically rectified in a year or so. Presumably the hardware should last longer. Perhaps the antiport faction got their way.

There are external 5k displays on the market, including one that Apple has sold.

Which external 5k displays are on the marked except the one that Apple has sold and alledgedly LG has discontinued?

Yeah my 2008 iMac had this functionality, and I was supposed/bummed to hear they got rid of it a few years later. I’d think Apple would keep the feature around, if only to make it easier for people to buy both a Mac laptop and Mac desktop. My wife would totally use one at work if it were easy, and I’d love to have one for us at home. But instead we just get laptops with fans that come on all the time, and SSDs that are far too small.

This one kills me. With COVID, I'm now stuck working from home. I literally spend all day staring at my work Macbook Pro's small screen with a glorious but unused iMac screen sitting five inches behind it.

Why don't you work on your iMac?

Many people are only able to work on machines provisioned by their companies. Even if you could get your home iMac provisioned during Covid, you may be wiping out all your personal data and now you are dedicating a machine you paid for to your company.

It's my personal machine and I can only use work-provisioned computers for (entirely reasonable) security reasons.

Cmd-f2 on your iMac (while plugged into your MacBook over usb-c), will allow you to use your iMac as an external display.

This doesn't work on iMacs after 2015 to my knowledge. Do you have any reference, that Apple brought the feature back?

Same here - using my MacBook Pro when working from home. I was very fortunate though to get me a Dell 2415Q in January. While not being quite as good as the iMac, it is a good "retina" screen. Can only recommend it.

Previously, I would sometimes use screen sharing to use the desktop of my MacBook onto my iMac, but due to its slow speed, that is only an emergency measure.

Any experience on 24" vs 27" for the same 4k resolution?

The large the screen, the less the resolution in ppi gets. I have seen a 28" 4k screen at a mac - much more fuzzy as the pixels get larger. Actually, to get the same ppi as in the iMac, you would need a 22" 4k screen. So the 24" works in scaled mode, which gives about 2300 horizontal points, this is still reasonably sharp.

I use Luna Display[1] for this. It is a bit laggy and some keyboard shortcuts are broken. But it let me use my 5K iMac (and it's keyboard) as a second display for the MBP.

It is a shame that iMac does not provide normal video input.

[1] https://shop.astropad.com/

This is the reason I went Mac Mini + LG 5k display.

It's much more expensive but I needed to be able to hook in my work laptop to a 5k display while working and switch easily to my home setup with a single cable when I want to.

Ended up being perfect! It's paying off big time with COVID and WFH.

I had a Mini before the iMac, but the Mini had the problem of the lacking GPU. Also, at the time I got the iMac (2015), the Mini was really falling behind. The iMac gave me a quad-core i7 and a GPU. I wished the Mini was available with hardware comparable to the 16" MB Pro. (8 cores, GPU)

If Apple only offered a desktop class Mac, I would even start thinking about the pro display.

In some ways the outlook for the Mac is much better today than it was a couple of years ago.

But I agree it does suck that you can't get a decent desktop that's not an all-in-one iMac. Users have been asking for it for years, and Apple's response was "Fine, you want upgradeability? Here's the entire kitchen sink with terrible base specs for $6000. Oh that's too expensive for you? Guess you're not a real pro after all so shut up and buy the consumer level products we sell you."

It's maddening. If they put an i9 and non-ECC RAM in an upgradable desktop, I wouldn't have built my PC. And as the other commenter said, I'd maybe even consider the new display.

Too bad for them. They're missing a huge chunk of the market.

Have you considered an external GPU?

Only looked briefly at it. Combining the tiny Mini with a huge external GPU seems a bit off, and unfortunately, for all the size, they don't integrate any storage space. Also, currently the Mini doesn't offer good CPUs. Anyway, I will wait now with my next purchase till there are good Apple Silicon offerings.

For me, the eGPU setup is not worth the benefits. I am also waiting for Apple Silicon to streamline my setup.

I have a MacMini + eGPU. Every time I (re)boot the machine I have to remember to remove the remove the eGPU: Otherwise I cannot enter the filevault password. This is super annoying since the machine seems to have crashed every time I want to use it (even without an eGPU).

Previously I used the eGPU with an 13” MPB and the experience was annoying in different ways: Simply unplugging the eGPU kills the programs using it. Every time I wanted to “undock” the MBP I had to remember to click to remove the eGPU from the MBP: otherwise half the programs running are killed/not responsive.

re/ the Mac Mini + eGPU + File Vault = no reboot... Really? Brutal!

I was just yesterday looking at a new Mac Mini and a couple of LG 5K monitors (and, thus, the Apple Store eGPU). And I use File Vault. Because Apple.

So is this a known reboot problem? I want to run this Mac Mini as an always-on server for home media when logged out.

Any Apple support links on this?

There you go: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208544

> 1. If you have a Mac mini (2018) with FileVault turned on, make sure to connect your primary display directly to Mac mini during startup. After you log in and see the macOS Desktop, you can unplug the display from Mac mini and connect it to your eGPU.

It might not be more expensive in the long run because now if your Mac Mini needs an upgrade you can only switch the Mac Mini and keep the display which is cheaper than a new iMac.

You know, there are a few key features about macs that have made them much better computers.

Target disk mode. Target display mode. Boot from an external drive using option. Boot from the network.

And you know the "decision makers" don't understand how much nicer it makes the computers to administer. (understand in the sense they would defend them for real in a feature-cutting meeting) Instead we get dongles.

sigh.

Can't you boot from an external drive (time machine backup) using option, on Catalina? I was under the impression booting from external USB was how you would format the mac.

I don't know about time machine. I suspect you might.

To be clear, I wasn't saying they were taking out the option boot-picker.

I was saying these lesser known features - although they will never be used by a general audience - make the mac significantly easier to administer for people who have been using macs for years and know what they're doing.

I will say I'm glad you can upgrade an older system to a new usb-c style thunderbolt machine using target disk mode - but the dongles/cables to achieve this feat are ridiculous.

Yeah, and once something goes wrong with the iMac you could still use it as a monitor.

I had one of the appropriate era, and ultimately, the display went.

(After roasting several drives, thermal management was not a high point on those machines)

oof, that is brutal. I just ordered one and assumed it would support it. My imac from way back in 2012 supported it and with connectivity only improving since then it never crossed my mind that it wouldn't support it.

I think that went away with the jump to 5k. I remember some intent to readd it when possible, but I haven’t seen it yet.

Apple brags about their custom timing controller a minute into the original 5k iMac intro vid:

https://youtu.be/6vBEiPaegjM?t=60

This is most certainly why video input does not exist. What's ridiculous is they clearly figured it out to support the LG 5K display which is the exact same panel and over TB3 which the iMac fully supports.

More likely Apple dont supply it since it ruins the aesthetic of the back having so many ugly ports. I mean, they've also done questionable things for aesthetic reasons like putting the USB port at the back, the power button at the back, the headphone jack at the back. All these ports need to be facing the user, not behind the screen (I have an iMac 2014, so this is speaking from experience). I honestly believe that an artist determined that iMac cannot be used as external monitor.

Just say "No" to the product. I'm not making the same mistake again.

Actually, my research shows that the 2009 iMac was the last one that offered this functionality, which is described in 2009 as "27-inch models also support input from external DisplayPort sources (adapters sold separately)."

This matches my recollection that my 2008 iMac had this feature, and the one my wife got in 2012 did not.

2009 Tech Specs: https://support.apple.com/kb/sp696?locale=en_US

2010 Tech Specs: https://support.apple.com/kb/sp588?locale=en_US

It made sense on the original 5k because display port at the time didn’t support enough bandwidth for 5k output.

Right. But now that all Macs support even 6k output, there is no longer a justification. Also, they could have allowed target display mode in a lower resolution or in a window on your iMacs desktop, if they had tried hard enough.

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