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Comment by rllearneratwork | Hacker News Reader

yes. Has been possible since at least M1.

Buy M-based iPad, nice monitor, keyboard and mouse. Connect mouse and keyboard to monitor via USB. Then iPad via USB-C/Thunderbolt to monitor. Everything "just works" and you can handle surprisingly high amount of work this way

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Can you share more about this experience please? To me, you're still left with apps that are designed for a touchscreen and consumption.

If you are using an iPad as a second screen - you get the same app you have on your mac (obviously, iPad just acts as a second screen: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102597).

If you are using an external keyboard and a mouse with it - you will get the same touch UI, yes.

Many apps are missing many keyboard shortcuts that you may be used to if you’ve used the equivalent on the desktop. You’ll need to keep the iPad screen accessible to tap on UX elements. There’s also the issue that shortcuts that do exist may be hard to discover because there’s no menu bar to look in.

> Many apps are missing many keyboard shortcuts that you may be used to

This is true. To see the ones that are available, hold down the command ⌘ key to get a scrollable list of all of the shortcuts for the app you’re currently using, and use Fn-m or globe key-m to see a list of the system shortcuts.

Specs show that Pro models got Thunderbolt and Air only got USB-C.

Very vague specs.

Can iPad Air USB-C deliver 4k 120hz or how much bandwidth that USB-C got?

It's been possible since the iPad 2.

I used to code HTML/CSS that way back in... 2011?

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