I just bought my 23″ Apple Cinema Display and connected my Macbook Pro, the first thing I opened up was eclipse and it has never looked better before. So much real estate, that you already feel so super productive, like crazyBobLee. Well, that’s just a feeling. Every tech company should have these, atleast for their core development team. (and give away the thinkpads with vista to the PMs). I still haven’t bought the wireless Keyboard (there’s one on the way) so I was looking for a way where I can use the entire Cinema Display as main monitor. Apparently, this is not possible according to many Apple forums. An article in Apple site says that you can do it but closing the lid of MBP and using a wireless keyboard but not with the keyboard of MBP (lid open)
You can however use both the screens simultaneously (a feature called “mirror” in Display settings). The problem with this display is the cinema display’s resolution is limited by the MBP’s screen resolution (1440 pixels. OR, you could use a dual display with real estate spanning both screens. The problem with this is, the menu/tool bar and start menu always lies in MBP’s screen, making it cumbersome to manipulate the toolbar functions of an app. (and the apps always pop up in MBP screen by default, you have drag it to cinema display).
So, how do you disable your macbook pro with lid closed or open and make your cinema display a main monitor, and continue to use your MBP as keyboard only device?
I don’t know how I got this but it was by trial and error. Here are the steps, you need to follow: -
1) While in dual display mode, in MBP, choose Sleep mode manually. Wait for both the screen to turn black. (or you could just close the lid)
2) Do NOT open lid but press the button (that opens the lid) for a few seconds until you hear a boot sound.
After a few seconds, you will see that your main display is turned on as main monitor. Now, even after opening the lid, it does NOT turn the MBP screen on, and the best part — you can continue to use it as a keyboard!
The only downside to this is that, if you need to see the MBP display again, you need to restart (or remove the DVI plug), I think it’s still better than not being able to use cinema display as main monitor at all.
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
9 Comments
Seems you’ve stumbled upon a work around, but I thought I’d let you know there’s a built in way to do what you’re asking.
Open up your displays system pref while both monitors are active (ie MBP open and connected to the external monitor). Go to the arrange tab where you can drag the two displays around, essentially positioning which one is on the left and which on the right. From this screen, you can see that one has the menu bar and one doesn’t. You can drag the menu bar to the other display, thus making it the ‘main’ display.
Once you’ve done that, you can use the trick of disconnecting your external monitor, putting your MBP to sleep, then connect the monitor and use your mouse or keyboard (not the MBP track pad or keyboard) to wake it up.
Viola! Your external display is now your main display. You may have to fix the resolution, but it works!
I’m using a 20″ Samsung SyncMaster widscreen with my 15″ MBP and it looks gorgeous.
Hope this was helpful!
Bryan
Yea Bryan that works bloody great. If you want to reverse the process either just put your MBP back to sleep or open up system preferences and go detect displays. The beauty about this is that you can watch a movie in Quicktime on full screen and blow it up to the full width/length of the external screen. gotta love macs, vista would probably shit itself trying to do this!
“You can drag the menu bar to the other display, thus making it the ‘main’ display.” — Not sure how you got this working, but I just cannot ‘drag’ the menubar. (hence the workaround)
Hi Guys, I don’t know how you can think this works “bloody great”!?!?I figured this out as well by trial and error because I use my MBP as my work computer with Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. I hate that you have to close the lid to put it to sleep then move ur mouse to wake up to get only the external screen to be enabled.
Every PC (vista or not) has a freaking button that you can switch between just Laptop screen, Extended screen, just external screen or mirroring. Why is this so hard to add for my $3000 macbook when a $300 PC laptop has a feature like that??? At least Apple, add a button in the display arrangement to disable screens!
Sorry for my temper but I have to deal with this every day!
Don’t you just love the steps you need to take in order to use you external display only? Apple says you can use your macbook in a clamshell mode, that’s cool, but in order to turn you mac on you need to open the lid. Ok, that’s seriously stupid, but acceptable. I open it, press the power button, close the lid and the system starts with an external display only.
This would be ok, I even ignored that with a closed lid your macbook heats up more and the fan is running more often. But working with closed lid make wifi (2.4GHz) and bluetooth interfere a lot. Don’t know why, but my wifi connection (internal network) drops to a 2MB/s from around 10MB/s when it’s closed. Furthermore it makes my bluetooth mouse unusable during the file transfer – it’s jumpy and reacting really slow.
Ok, fortunately I bought the Time Capsule (late 2009) which is dual band, so I can switch to 5Ghz network, I’m just around 10 feet away from the router, so it should work great. But no, it doesn’t. Most of the time 5Ghz network do not work at all or works with a max transfer rate of 0.2MB/s… it reported to apple by many people couple of month ago – no response.
Ok, back to 2.4Ghz network and wait! I can start the system with a lid closed and open it later on, great, that’s a workaround… but each time my macbook goes to sleep I have to close the lid, click the mouse/tap the keyboard and then reopen it. Otherwise it wake up with both screens on.
I spent a lot of money on my macbook, time capsule, magic mouse and it doesn’t even work like a cheap pc netbook. If you are wondering whether to get a mac – give it a good though. True, the design is remarkable and unique, but the products just do not work as they should and apple will tell you it’s not a flaw but a feature.
Mike: the reason why the wi-fi drops when the lid is closed is that the antenna is located on the lid. When it’s closed, the antenna is horizontal, which is usually not a good position to transmit.
Btw I ended up here looking for a way to DISABLE the feature of waking up from slip with the lid closed, and i’ve been looking for half an hour with no luck
To drag the menu bar and make your default screen the external monitor not the laptop you have to open up system prefs and click on the displays icon. then make sure your not mirroring. once that is done, click and drag the menu bar on the default screen within the displays prefs menu onto the image of the external monitor that is right ext to the image that you dragged the menu bar from.
if this doesnt make sense thats ok, allow me to make it easier because tech info can sometimes be to technical even for me! So here is the info for those who want a fix without all the stress!… Essentially you will need to open your display prefs and look at the two little blue screens that represent your laptop and external displays. now, one should have a white bar at the top, most likely the smaller of the two. click and hold you mouse button on that tiny little bar.
Now while holding down you mouse button drag the tiny white bar from the blue box it is currently on to the one it is not and let go of the button. Now you should see your menu bar on your external monitor, your dock will also have moved over to your external monitor! Good luck and enjoy your new awesome setup,also, thanks to bryan for mentioning that you could do this!
Ok, so the info i just gave was not as complete as it needs to be… Apparently even with this “workaround” i have just described apps still pop up on the laptop screen when you open them. i will attempt to make a fix so that the computer actually “fully” recognizes that the external display is the default for any and all functions.
in the mean time i would say a quick fix for say using final cut pro or and app or point in which you are using multiple window apps or just multiple apps click the box in display prefs that says show in menu bar or what ever it wants to call the menu bar. This will allow you to either access the gather all windows function from the dropdown menu or access that same function from within the displays prefs window in a more timely fashion than just dragging each window and fitting each on the screen so you can see them all at once(final cut pro/ logic).
If you are more computer savvy than the next person you could configure the apple script that system prefs runs to gather windows to work under a shortcut like the f5 or f6 buttor if you are using the new aluminum bluetooth keyboard as these two buttons by default have no function when using say, command + f5/f6, however you can use any shortcut you want and not nessicarily command + f5/f6. you can look up tutorials that will help you achieve this automated task by googling info on writing apple script (not nessicarily the exact wording convention) that will help you write a script.
If you really want to streamline your system install a copy of osx on a external hard drive that is formatted as a guid partition and download the mac developer package which is free and test out your scripts on that before implementing them on your primary system as if something can go wrong it very well could be destructive but that most likely will never happen if everything is done properly its not an issue.
anyways, like i said give me some time to have a good college go at it and i will see if i cant get a fix that is not destructive or invasive in any way and i will get back to you all!
where windows appear will change after a while once the computer figure out which screen you use more. also where apps open depends more on which screen your currently active/ selected window is on. good luck and post if you have issues! im watching this screen like an own that sees his dinner!
Post a Comment