Geek Posted April 11, 2012 Posted April 11, 2012 <div class="KonaBody"><p><img src="http://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/mac-air-display.jpg" alt="Mac with Air Display on iPad" title="mac-air-display" width="620" height="393" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-29301" style="border:1px solid #999;" /></p> <p>If you saw our <a href="http://osxdaily.com/2012/04/02/ipad-hidpi-retina-mac-air-display/">Air Display review</a> you’ll know it’s a pretty awesome app that lets you turn an iPad into an external display for a Mac or PC (<a href="http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=uO47tEUahH8&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fitunes.apple.com%252Fus%252Fapp%252Fair-display%252Fid368158927%253Fmt%253D8%2526uo%253D4%2526partnerId%253D30" target="itunes_store">$10 on the App Store</a>). If you bought it and haven’t figured out what to do with it yet, here are eight of our favorite ways to use Air Display as an auxiliary screen.</p> <ol> <li><strong>Dedicated Music Player</strong> – Listening to music while you work is a must for many of us. If your favorite music client is in OS X than why not offload the app to the external iPad display? iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, Rdio, whatever you use, you’ll save valuable screen real estate and have an easier time switching through songs</li> <p><img src="http://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/spotify-for-mac.jpeg" alt="Mac Spotify client" title="spotify-for-mac" width="584" height="259" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-29302" /></p> <li><strong>App Launcher, Tool Panel, & Dock Holder</strong> – Move the OS X Dock and apps tool panels over to the iPad screen and you can save some screen real estate, this is especially helpful for smaller laptop screens</li> <li><strong>Dedicated RSS Reader</strong> – News junkies can never miss a beat by throwing their favorite RSS reader onto the Air Display screen, this lets you keep a constant eye on the latest posts from your favorite publications without cluttering up your main screen or having to switch windows on the Mac</li> <li><strong>Twitter Monitoring</strong> – Twitter has a myriad of uses beyond tweeting that Instagrammed picture of your breakfast. It’s one of the best ways to monitor brands, sports, news, sentiment, pop culture, your favorite people, and a million other things. Follow some worthwhile Twitterers (starting with <a href="http://twitter.com/osxdaily" target="_blank">@OSXDaily</a> of course) and throw your Twitter client on the Air Display to stay in the loop.</li> <p><img src="http://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/twitter-mac.jpg" alt="Twitter for Mac" title="twitter-mac" width="600" height="340" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-29303" /></p> <li><strong>Dedicated Chat Screen</strong> – Whether it’s Messages, iChat, FaceBook Messenger, or IRC, if you spend a lot of time talking online, pushing that window to another screen is a great way to free up your main display real estate while still keeping active in chat</li> <li><strong>System & Resource Monitoring</strong> – GUI utilities like <a href="http://osxdaily.com/2010/08/15/mac-task-manager/">Activity Monitor</a> and command line tools like <a href="http://osxdaily.com/2011/05/06/htop-for-mac/">htop</a>, <a href="http://osxdaily.com/2012/01/20/monitor-disk-activity-in-mac-os-x/">iotop</a>, and top are excellent ways to keep an eye on system resources. This is most useful for advanced users, but it also just looks cool to have a screen full of crazy terminal stuff flying around</li> <p><img src="http://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/htop-in-mac-os-x.jpeg" alt="htop for OS X " title="htop-in-mac-os-x" width="615" height="368" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-29304" /></p> <li><strong>Watching Logs</strong> – Open Console app and watch local system logs, or use the Terminal with <a href="http://osxdaily.com/2011/04/20/console-logs-command-line-mac/">tail -f</a> to follow other logs and files as they update live. This is probably most useful to advanced users, but you can also pretend to be very busy while daydreaming at work or school by having a screen full of active system logs</li> <li><strong>All of the Above</strong> – Mix and match a few of the options up top to get the best of everything. Throw an htop window at the top and a slim iTunes window at the bottom, or whatever other combination of auxiliary screens you can come up with</li> </ol> <p>You’ll notice anything graphics intensive isn’t mentioned in this list because Air Display has to transmit all data through wi-fi. That connection doesn’t provide for precision tracking or smooth playback of video, so we chose things that work perfectly given the apps limitations. If you have any other ideas or uses for Air Display and the iPad, let us know in the comments.</p> </div> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/pE8XLymW_YvXiPLD4ihn3Q4yWDw/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/pE8XLymW_YvXiPLD4ihn3Q4yWDw/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/pE8XLymW_YvXiPLD4ihn3Q4yWDw/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/pE8XLymW_YvXiPLD4ihn3Q4yWDw/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=zwQ4wesy-Zk:hrX69SJm6o8:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=zwQ4wesy-Zk:hrX69SJm6o8:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?i=zwQ4wesy-Zk:hrX69SJm6o8:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=zwQ4wesy-Zk:hrX69SJm6o8:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?i=zwQ4wesy-Zk:hrX69SJm6o8:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=zwQ4wesy-Zk:hrX69SJm6o8:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=zwQ4wesy-Zk:hrX69SJm6o8:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/osxdaily/~4/zwQ4wesy-Zk" height="1" width="1"/> View the full article
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