Comment on Intel's new Thunderbolt Share provides file and screen sharing without hurting network performance
Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Freaking finally. How wasn’t this a thing before? By this point I’d expect a wireless version lol. But looks amazing and can’t wait to get it
ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Yeah, this sounds amazing. It also sounds like it’s being limited, unfortunately, and will require additional license fees from the OEM on top of the Thunderbolt 4 ports. Hopefully, that’s just for the launch and it opens up soon.
Apple has had “target disk mode” for a long time where you boot one computer into a special mode but that’s basically just for transferring files and not anything like as advanced. I know iPads (and I assume Android tablets) can be a second screen over wireless using third party software but it’s not uncompressed video with disk access last I checked.
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 5 months ago
The video compressed (how much depends on your network speed, it’s only noticeable on low bandwidth connections). And it’s far more than just video - you can copy files over the connection. Keyboard/mouse/touchscreen/stylus inputs are sent over it, and video camera/microphone data can be streamed in real time as well.
And it’s not just iPads, I do it all day every day between my desktop and laptop Mac. iPhones and Apple TVs can do it too.
It works best over thunderbolt but it’s usually done with wifi — always a direct wifi connection that bypasses your router because the amount of bandwidth required is so high that if you sent it to a router and then to a computer… your wifi would collapse under the load.
Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Yeah, I’ve used third party software to get tablets as wireless monitors, but it has mostly sucked. Hopefully it’ll be opened soon. Tho if they started with it closed, that’s how it’ll remain. Apple has the target disk mode, but doesn’t the laptop need to be shut down for it to work? Besides, APFS or whatever they use is useless when compared to literally anything else
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Modern Macs can’t do Target Disk Mode. If you had the right cables (thunderbolt or firewire) it was really fast, just as quick as a high end internal PCIe SSD.
It’s been replaced with “Mac Sharing Mode” which operates while the Mac is running normally and is nowhere near as quick or reliable.
zelifcam@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Target disk mode is performed during boot and was first introduced in 1991.