Testing Duet — an OS X display extender app for iPad

You’ve prob­ably seen the online hype around Duet — an OS X dis­play extender app for iPad. Basic­ally it’s sup­posed to allow you to extend your cur­rent desktop screen to an iPad — just as if you had an extra mon­it­or. Oth­er apps already do this, but Duet’s claim to fame is it will extend your desktop in a way that’s lag free. So if you’re watch­ing movies or anim­a­tion and mov­ing ele­ments between mon­it­ors, you’ll not notice lag.

Duet’s unique fea­ture that allows this is that Duet con­nects to your Mac using the USB port and either 30 pin con­nect­or or Light­ning connector.

I’ve pre­vi­ously used sim­il­ar apps, Air Dis­play and Dis­playPad, though both have util­ized WiFi to link your dis­play to the com­puter. Also, both sup­port Win­dows or OS X. Cur­rently, Duet does­n’t sup­port Windows.

Duet also does­n’t sup­port the ori­gin­al iPad, where the two oth­er apps do — a con­sid­er­a­tion if you have an older ori­gin­al hanging around, as I do.

Duet has been get­ting mixed reviews on the iTunes App Store, but that may be related to the high CPU usage needed to render out a ret­ina dis­play to a ret­ina iPad — there’s a lot of work going on. If you’re using a new com­puter, or have a lower res­ol­u­tion iPad, then you may not encounter this issue.

Regard­less, I’ll take a look at the app and report back when I’ve been able to give it a workout.