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MacBook Pro second display

C

computermilk

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 10, 2008
274
16
I have not seen anyone discussion the potential for serious lag using the MacBook Pro second display feature.

What signal do you think it uses ? Just an AirPlay like signal? If that’s the case the response rate may not be very good.

AirPlay always ends up a gimmick like feature for me. I’ve literally never used it for work or any practical applications even movie watching , never used it. The response rate is just not good enough to use as a second monitor


So if I’m on my Vision Pro and bring up a MacBook Pro screen and I’m using a mouse and keyboard even, if there’s even a second of lag when using the mouse and seeing the mouse pointer drag a little bit I don’t think it will be usable.
 
I didn’t get the impression it was a second display. Apple changed the name of it from Side Car to Mac Virtual Display. So that’s clearly a differentiation as a result of the behavior.
 
Just one display, not an additional. I'm fine with this because we literally can't pull off more (and can hardly do this) with today's tech.

It's not going to be the smoothest because we just don't have the networking tech to *actually* do what's pitched without compression or occasional lag. High res, lag free, compression-artifact free video transmission is extremely hard to do. This is the only reason we're not seeing this feature highly fleshed out with multiple monitors etc, they're not "saving it for next year" until we have a new codec (AV1, but not even M3 Max can *encode* av1 on hardware) and a better wireless standard to pull this off with. Quest 3 just gained wifi6e and av1 which largely made the wireless PCVR experience better but you need at least an RTX 4070/4080/4090 to hardware-encode av1 with low latency, and for the computer to be hardwired over gigabit ethernet.

I would personally love for some breakthrough proprietary chip from Apple that handles this like H2-to-H2 does for the new AirPods Pro 2 USB-C when used with Vision Pro, but video is just such a hard nut to crack as the data moving around is so much larger.
 
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fs454 said:
Just one display, not an additional. I'm fine with this because we literally can't pull off more (and can hardly do this) with today's tech.

It's not going to be the smoothest because we just don't have the networking tech to *actually* do what's pitched without compression or occasional lag. High res, lag free, compression-artifact free video transmission is extremely hard to do. This is the only reason we're not seeing this feature highly fleshed out with multiple monitors etc, they're not "saving it for next year" until we have a new codec (AV1, but not even M3 Max can *encode* av1 on hardware) and a better wireless standard to pull this off with. Quest 3 just gained wifi6e and av1 which largely made the wireless PCVR experience better but you need at least an RTX 4070/4080/4090 to hardware-encode av1 with low latency, and for the computer to be hardwired over gigabit ethernet.

I would personally love for some breakthrough proprietary chip from Apple that handles this like H2-to-H2 does for the new AirPods Pro 2 USB-C when used with Vision Pro, but video is just such a hard nut to crack as the data moving around is so much larger.
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Trade offs. The monitors could send only updates. My other monitors are hold mostly static images like an IDE
 
Timo_Existencia said:
I'll be curious to know if when I am displaying my MacBook Air in the AVP, will the keyboard of my laptop work in the windows for the other apps that I have displayed?
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I think so… how else would you be able to use it? If they can interact with your macbook presumably the keyboard is similarly useful… the AVP is just showing what would otherwise be on your mbp.
 
moonlight does a great job provided that you have good enough wifi. Once I switched to wifi 7 I could do 120 4k fps wirelessly and game with it (very low latency)
 
AdonisSMU said:
I think so… how else would you be able to use it? If they can interact with your macbook presumably the keyboard is similarly useful… the AVP is just showing what would otherwise be on your mbp.
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There is a virtual keyboard included with the VP.

There's a video of a YT reviewer that shows how it works.
 
What I wonder is, why do you need a display INSIDE the AVP (dont get me wrong, having the screen cast inside the display has a lot of cool uses). Just look at your mac display while using it. That way, the AVP could also do cool HUD overlays on your work even if you have multiple displays.

You could have a 'focus' mode where only your email is in normal mode but it dims the rest of the screen. You could pinch and zoom on a spot on the screen and it could zoom in. You could set up virtual keyboards and screen cast controls around your screen that control your mac! Lot of cool stuff to be done augmenting the mac while wearing the headset.

That said, reproducing your screen through the goggles will be resampling at low resolution. It's going to be so interesting to use this.
 
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The bar is EXTREMELY low for this feature. If it even successfully connects 4/5 times I'll be super impressed, before we even get into latency and fidelity. I expect it to work about as well as connecting a device to my Apple TV via Airplay or trying to get the Airpods battery status sheet thing to pop up every time on my iPhone. I am simply amazed that people who use Apple products regularly think this Mac mirroring feature is going to work well.
 
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f1vespeed said:
The bar is EXTREMELY low for this feature. If it even successfully connects 4/5 times I'll be super impressed, before we even get into latency and fidelity. I expect it to work about as well as connecting a device to my Apple TV via Airplay or trying to get the Airpods battery status sheet thing to pop up every time on my iPhone. I am simply amazed that people who use Apple products regularly think this Mac mirroring feature is going to work well.
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There's no chance this feature is going to be reliable. Multiple times a week I'll put the AirPods into my ears before realizing the Mac/iPhone didn't recognize the pairing, and I'll have to take them out of my ears, put them back into the charging case, close the lid, take them out and put them back into my ears and hope they sync this time. Same thing with trying to cast to an AirPlay-enabled screen. Gotta try multiple times and restart the process each time because there's no explicit button to connect. Gonna have a lot of fun opening and closing the lid of my MacBook trying to get the Vision Pro to discover the Mac to pair to it. I hate how unreliable Apple's "automatic" solutions are.
 
EyeRiseCardioPhoneMount said:
There's no chance this feature is going to be reliable. Multiple times a week I'll put the AirPods into my ears before realizing the Mac/iPhone didn't recognize the pairing, and I'll have to take them out of my ears, put them back into the charging case, close the lid, take them out and put them back into my ears and hope they sync this time. Same thing with trying to cast to an AirPlay-enabled screen. Gotta try multiple times and restart the process each time because there's no explicit button to connect. Gonna have a lot of fun opening and closing the lid of my MacBook trying to get the Vision Pro to discover the Mac to pair to it. I hate how unreliable Apple's "automatic" solutions are.
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Don't know how it will work, but this is from the guided tour.


Screenshot 2024-01-26 at 11.33.46 PM.png
 
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