My New Mac Mini Setup - Portable Power! By Tausif Hussain

Okay, so you have a Mac mini and an iPad lying around prepare to have your minds. Blown like mine was like legit. What is up guys? My name is Joseph main, and today we're talking about how to make your Mac mini, pretty much portable enough to use anywhere around the house. How to turn your iPad into the only monitor, you're gonna need for your Mac mini and number three, how to use macOS and all the other macOS software, such as even Final Cut Pro on your iPad, all that and more now, let's unpack and know for those of you guys who are like. Oh, this is just sidecar. No, this is not sidecar like you can't do this stuff with sidecar it's too limited, and for those also wondering yes, you can do it with both intel and m1.

So, if you're anything like me, I've always used like a laptop, pretty much docked to my editing station back. There enter m1 season, and you know all these new macs have got me super intrigued. So I got I picked up. The Mac mini- and I hooked it up, and I loved the fact that you know there was something just there always hooked up, but I craved that portability, so I started looking into different options, and then I got reminded I made a video on something like this about like a year ago or something like that enter Luna display. So Luna display is basically like a hardware solution that you kind of just plug into your Mac, and you can either wirelessly through Wi-Fi or through USB connect one mac to another or a mac to an iPad or something like that to basically just do some screen, sharing or screen mirroring or anything like that, but there's some cool things you can do with this.

They have something called headless mode where you can connect your Mac mini to your iPad, and you don't you don't need to like a secondary, monitor or anything like that. You can literally just have the iPad as your primary editing, monitor or primary monitor. It has super low latency, so it's like 16 milliseconds or something like that. So it's really quick like there's. Barely like you can't even notice any lag now caveat here in order for it to have super low latency, you have to have a solid Wi-Fi connection, if you don't, then, probably just better off keeping it plugged in because it works fantastic when it's plugged in all times.

Actually you know what I'm so excited. I'm I'm not gonna film like this. Let me show you right now: okay, so I've already gone through like the whole setup and everything already, so I'm just going to show you how seamless it works uh. Let's just do it right now. So now I'm going to do is go into the Luna display app.

So that's opening there. Now, I'm going to take this dongle um, and I'm going to plug it in. If I can find it boom plugged in um, let's just shake the mac up, make sure it wakes up, and we wait boom right there, people you saw how quick that was. If you see how like the mouse and everything works, fine I just entered in my passcode boom there, you have its folks. This is your macOS.

It's literally just running on that one screen which is so cool okay, so one of the issues that I've actually been having is during, like the evening time when my Wi-Fi gets awful and, like a bunch of people like start using Wi-Fi now um my thing starts getting laggy right and that's when I just connect it through USB, and it just works perfectly fine. So that's what I'm going to do right now, if I can do this offhandedly, okay and boom. Now we have like a super seamless experience. You see that, like no leg at all, I can open up like anything like I'm just moving around windows. It works perfectly.

Just like any monitor. Uh generally would um, let's go to YouTube and see how well something uh functions: we're gonna watch, Chris's video! You see how it's so clean, I'm going to put the volume down, so I can talk, it is so clean. It runs fluid like there are like zero issues uh in terms of how it runs, especially when you're plugged in so as you can see. Now I don't have the USB connection on it like it's all through Wi-Fi, and you can see like it's its usable like you know, it's not that it's not that laggy right like I just want to copy this color grade over to this one paste like this is very editable. I could edit off this no issues and like you can hear see like sometimes it's just a little choppy over here, but for the most part like this is perfectly fine to edit with, and you can see now like.

I can actually like to scrub through my timeline and everything like that. So it's like you can actually use touch inputs for uh. You know macOS, which is kind of cool like I can go here. I can like do stuff move stuff around. Basically, your finger becomes like a cursor.

If you want more precise control, you can even just use your uh Apple Pencil. Uh everything is controllable. With your finger, you can go into like control center, do whatever you need to do um, but yeah, it's pretty cool! Okay, so, as you guys saw that's how you can have your Mac mini pretty much plugged into the iPad as your only primary monitor, you can even use your iPad anywhere around the house. As long as you have a strong enough Wi-Fi connection uh, you can just basically mirror your Mac and just use that for editing on final cut or whatever you need to you can access all the hard drive everything of your Mac mini because you're, essentially just replicating your Mac mini desktop. So that is pretty cool.

Another neat thing is whatever keyboard or mouse that you have connected to your iPad. You can also use with uh Luna display, so you could have like the magic keyboard, for example connected, and you can have the trackpad support the keyboard support and all of that to use in macOS uh on your iPad. Now, you're probably wondering to see. If can't you do some of this stuff with sidecar. Why should I go pay for like Luna display when I can just get it for free with sidecar? But there are several things you can't do with sidecar that you're going to need something like Luna display for, for example, if you want to use your Mac mini with your iPad as your only monitor, so you don't need to have your Mac mini docked in or plugged into a secondary, monitor at all times, then you need Luna display, because that's the only way it's going to work.

Also, there's no touch input like you can't actually touch the screen when you're using sidecar, but with Luna display. You can actually use the touch screen as well and basically use touch with macOS and last but not least, Luna display works with a lot older mac models and a lot older iPad models, as well and on previous iOS and previous macOS versions as well. So it's just a little more flexible when it comes to something like that. Now, there's a couple downsides that I also wanted to mention. If you don't have a strong enough Wi-Fi connection, you are going to have some screen issues where it's just going to be a little jittery and if you're like playing back something or anything, then you're going to notice that little of jitter.

Secondly, it does take up an USB or a display port. You can get either a version connection on your Mac, mini uh or your any mac for that matter of fact uh, but you can't plug it into an adapter. Basically, so you have to use up a port. That's on your Mac. Last but not least, is the price and coming in at about 80 bucks.

USD this thing is pretty hefty for a screen share feature um, albeit yes. It does it in a good way, and it has a few nice party tricks up its sleeve, but 80 is pretty hefty. So you got to really see if this is something that you want to build into your workflow and if you can see this being built into your workflow, like let's say, for example, you travel around, and sometimes you want to have the option of just taking your Mac mini and just plugging into your iPad and just using it portable somewhere. Then this is a pretty cool option, so, basically, at home saying is you got to know that you're going to use this as part of your workflow or if you just want to see something cool, then sure get it and just check it out and see if it works, for you, that's pretty much it from my end. I hope you found this video interesting, beneficial and informational, and I brought some sort of value to your life.

If I did then make sure you guys go ahead and crush that like button down there, if you like content around tech, gadgets, filmmaking and lifestyle go ahead and check out that sub button down there, you guys know what to do turn on the notifications and all that stuff, but appreciate it. It's been a pleasure I'll, see you guys on the next one peace.

Source : Tausif Hussain