Target Display Mode: ever coming back?

[davideotape]

is this ever coming back?? seems useful in covid-era wfh situations

for example, im eyeing up the new iMacs to *eventually* replace my 7yo trashcan/thunderbolt display setup but i really need Target display mode now more than ever in work-from-home scenario- where my work-issued computer is a macbook and i do hobby-level music/video editing on my home machine. my current setup is great, i just move my thunderbolt cable from one computer to the other (macbook with a 2>3 adapter) and plugging the lightning cable to the keyboard trackpad, it takes 10 seconds.

a new mac pro is overkill, and id rather put my $ into power vs portability so a mbp is not really appealing to me.

are there any other apps or hacks thatll give the imac that kind of flexibility?

 

[PieTunes]

is this ever coming back?? seems useful in covid-era wfh situations

for example, im eyeing up the new iMacs to *eventually* replace my 7yo trashcan/thunderbolt display setup but i really need Target display mode now more than ever in work-from-home scenario- where my work-issued computer is a macbook and i do hobby-level music/video editing on my home machine. my current setup is great, i just move my thunderbolt cable from one computer to the other (macbook with a 2>3 adapter) and plugging the lightning cable to the keyboard trackpad, it takes 10 seconds.

a new mac pro is overkill, and id rather put my $ into power vs portability so a mbp is not really appealing to me.

are there any other apps or hacks thatll give the imac that kind of flexibility?

Someone else could probably chime in with specific details, but it's my understanding that there's a physical hardware limitation. The single iMac 5K screen uses a custom single timing chip whereas "typical" 5K screens use 2 panels together and each is driven by its own timing chip. Since the iMac use this custom setup to drive the 5K resolution, there aren't any certified DisplayPort or HDMI cables that are able to do it. Or something along those lines. Whether or not it comes back is entirely up to Apple. Maybe some day.

 

[Amethyst1]

typical" 5K screens use 2 panels together and each is driven by its own timing chip.

This is how DisplayPort 1.2 (and Thunderbolt 3) do it. DisplayPort 1.4 can do 5K at 60 Hz via a single cable, so if at some point, the 5K iMac internally uses DP 1.4 and e. g. Thunderbolt 4 encompasses that, TDM could theoretically make a comeback.

 

[casperes1996]

I actually doubt it.

But for your use case, OP; after you plug your laptop into the iMac with Thunderbolt, you could just booth the laptop into target disk mode and boot the iMac from the laptop disk. Then you have all the data and OS and all set up exactly like on the laptop and ready to go immediately but you also have the power of the iMac in addition to the screen

 

[davideotape]

hm not sure im following, i need to use the machine itself for vpn to my work network, would that still work? Also it definitely wouldnt take the 10 seconds my current setup takes.
ill probably just wait until next year and see whats out there

 

[||\||]

Someone else could probably chime in with specific details, but it's my understanding that there's a physical hardware limitation. The single iMac 5K screen uses a custom single timing chip whereas "typical" 5K screens use 2 panels together and each is driven by its own timing chip. Since the iMac use this custom setup to drive the 5K resolution, there aren't any certified DisplayPort or HDMI cables that are able to do it. Or something along those lines. Whether or not it comes back is entirely up to Apple. Maybe some day.

Apple has used this as an excuse to remove target display mode. They didn’t have to, completely. The 1080 screens they have sold all long are perfectly capable of being compatible. We still didn’t get the option from 2015 on.

 

[drkknte]

I’m replacing my Late 2012 27” with the new 2020 27” base i7 and TDM would be awesome to have, even at a supported lower res from 5K....at least UHD.

 

[Fishrrman]

The question:
"Target Display Mode: ever coming back?"

My answer:
Doubtful.

Throughout Apple's history, it seems that they will introduce a new idea, run with it a while, and then unceremoniously drop it, never to be seen again...

 

[davideotape]

its just weird that if you want a standalone desktop your options are a generally entry level mac mini, or... a mac pro. otherwise youre locked into a screen on your desk that cant be used for literally anything else, or a laptop you just resign to pay too much for even though it never leaves the house

like id love the specs of an iMac in a mac mini, thats not something that exists, right?

 

[||\||]

its just weird that if you want a standalone desktop your options are a generally entry level mac mini, or... a mac pro. otherwise youre locked into a screen on your desk that cant be used for literally anything else, or a laptop you just resign to pay too much for even though it never leaves the house

Capitalism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[casperes1996]

its just weird that if you want a standalone desktop your options are a generally entry level mac mini, or... a mac pro. otherwise youre locked into a screen on your desk that cant be used for literally anything else, or a laptop you just resign to pay too much for even though it never leaves the house

like id love the specs of an iMac in a mac mini, thats not something that exists, right?

The infamous xMac. In this community and many other Apple-oriented societies, the xMac has been fabled for time immemorial. The beast unleashed, a desktop Mac, not a Mac Pro with Xeon or a mini with no GPU and laptop parts, but like a 27" iMac, it would have power inside, yet BYODKM - We pray the saviour will come - upgradability too would make it oh so fun - but the xMac is yet not to be, towards the future of Apple we see; Our hope and blissful glee, may we be lost in despair or art thou xMac still, possibly, in that Cupertino lair. Amen

 

[davideotape]

ill take that as a “no” i guess

 

[topcat001]

I actually doubt it.

But for your use case, OP; after you plug your laptop into the iMac with Thunderbolt, you could just booth the laptop into target disk mode and boot the iMac from the laptop disk. Then you have all the data and OS and all set up exactly like on the laptop and ready to go immediately but you also have the power of the iMac in addition to the screen

This is a great idea! Does it work without any issues?

 

[casperes1996]

This is a great idea! Does it work without any issues?

Target Disk Mode is changing a bit with Apple Silicon so may not be bootable from then-on, but on all Intel Macs it works pretty well I'd say

 

[fuchsdh]

Someone else could probably chime in with specific details, but it's my understanding that there's a physical hardware limitation. The single iMac 5K screen uses a custom single timing chip whereas "typical" 5K screens use 2 panels together and each is driven by its own timing chip. Since the iMac use this custom setup to drive the 5K resolution, there aren't any certified DisplayPort or HDMI cables that are able to do it. Or something along those lines. Whether or not it comes back is entirely up to Apple. Maybe some day.

It was at the time, but there are cables that can do it no problem now.

It was always a niche feature, and the issues with the 5K iMacs was probably what killed it dead. Few people were using it and Apple didn't see the need to keep supporting it.

 

[filmgirl]

I’m not saying it won’t happen, but I personally wrote target display mode ever coming back six years ago. And that was reaffirmed to me a few years later when Apple stopped selling Thunderbolt displays and instead decided to push the terrible LG 5K display (and I stand by terrible; I’ve never paid so much money for such a mediocre product, I bought and returned two of them).

The XDR is great, I'm sure, for the class of users with $5000 to spend on a display (and although I’m almost that user, I’m just not — $2000 is the upper limit of how much I can budget for a display and my current secondary display was $600), but all of Apple's actions over the years are a real shift away from this kind of consumer/prosumer edge case.

Like I said, I won't say if won't happen, and man, it would be great if it did — but I’m just not counting on this. After all, the move to DisplayPort 1.3/1.4 made a single cable 5K solution possible. Thunderbolt 3 offers the same bandwidth as the custom TCON on iMac so that was an option too. When it wasn’t part of the iMac Pro, despite that machine having double the number of TB3 ports and potential for a DP 1.3 graphics card — not to mention a fairly significant redesign over the standard iMac — I further accepted that I will never be able to use my amazing giant computer as a 5K monitor.

(Just for fun, I found my notes from my review of the OG 5K iMac in 2014 and I see that a significant portion of my conversation with the people at Apple was over Target Display Mode (RIP) and the clever way the engineers got around the bandwidth limitations of DisplayPort with a custom timing controller.)