Posted on Jun 9, 2008
Dual Mac Setup using Growl and
If you're like me, you're into screen real estate, application organization and technology working effortlessly in harmony. Who isn't, really?
This is my late night setup. This is how I roll at 3AM when I'm usually plugging away at something. In the photo above, you can see I'm rocking Twitterific to keep up with my tweets and iTunes to provide some passive entertainment -- in this case, Firefly.
In addition to those, I usually have NetNewsWire over there, Adium or iChat, and sometimes reference material specific to what I happen to be working with over on the main display.
To prop the MacBook Pro up and create a fluid eye-level transition between monitors, I use the handy iCurve 2 ($39.99 from Amazon).
Of course, on the Power Mac desktop I do the actual work. So I'm running Photoshop, Textmate, CSS Edit, Final Cut Pro and all the rest of the nonsense to get things done.
Using this 2-Mac setup is really helpful for several reasons. Not only does it feel like I have a lot more desktop space but that space is also running on 2 different machines using isolated CPU, RAM and disk access resources. When working with huge files -- especially video in Final Cut Pro -- this really comes in handy.
SynergyKM
This is all good but the whole setup might not be worth it if I had to actually reach up and manipulate the laptop. That's where SynergyKM comes in.
SynergyKM is a GUI wrapper around the synergy command line tool that lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers. You can even use it with Windows and Linux, although I currently don't.
SynergyKM was a life saver for my setup. I have my Power Mac desktop running as the host and my MacBook Pro connecting to it in order to grab keyboard and mouse info. This allows me to just shoot across to the laptop and perform tasks as if I was working with a simple dual-monitor setup.
Both my desktop and laptop are running on wifi from an Airport Extreme. The 802.11n network never misses a beat -- even with torrents cranking (no shit, important benchmark info!) -- so I don't experience any lag issues with the mouse or really fast typing. I'm not sure if there would be issues on other networks but I can't imagine there's much data to keep up with. The packets transfered are relatively low.
Combine this with some disk sharing and you've got a nice almost seamless system.
Growl
So we've got our 2 Macs and we can effortlessly travel between them. However, there's one more piece of the puzzle which I think brings things together in command-center-like integration. Growl.
Growl is a notification system for Mac OS X. It allows applications that support Growl (which is most of the everyday ones) to send you notifications. Most of the more poweruser level Mac addicts already use it.
The notifications are basically little popups that can be styled the way you like. These could be new songs playing in iTunes, a buddy in Adium sending you an IM, a file transfer completing in Transmit, etc. There's really a ton of apps that support it these days.
Now, the great thing about Growl for this setup is that it allows you to push the notifications to a host from a remote Mac. Perfect.
I have my MacBook Pro sending my vital Growl information over to my Power Mac. There's no lag and it's just like the events were happening on the local machine -- again, contributing to that dual-monitor feel. This allows me to focus on my primary Apple Display on the desktop and know if something semi-important happens (like my friend's Tweet -- damn right that's important!) I'll get a shiny new Growl notification.
You can of course choose what notifications you'd like to receive and from which applications. Your 500-friend twitter list might not be so appealing.
So that's pretty much it. SynergyKM+Growl= ...Synergy. I guess. I'm really into this setup now. I feel like things are working in harmony. That's what owning Mac hardware is all about, right?
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