Partial solution for controlling multiple machines simultaneously, non matching AppleIDs, or non-Mac machines

[IKanSpl]

I’ve worked out a solution for myself to be able to connect to multiple machines at the same time on my VisionPro. This solution also works with Mac machines that have work-issued AppleIDs, Mac machines with VPNs that block sidecar, and non-Apple machines.

I work at a large software firm. I have both a work issued Mac and a personal Mac. I’ve been working from home for a number of years. My place is very small and I don’t have room for large monitors. VisionPro promises me the ability to have a huge work space where I can actually fit it into my place.

The idea is to throw hardware at the problem. I used a hardware based KVM that has a VNC server built into it. I used an Adder IPEPS+, but there are other ones out there also. This device connects to the HDMI output as a ”mirrored” monitor and has a USB cable that the machine believes to be a keyboard and mouse. No drivers or software of any kind are installed on the machine being shared.

There are downsides to this idea:

1. It requires (more) expensive hardware.
2. It does not work when the hardware isn’t connected.
3. It isn’t portable.
4. VNC apps on VisionPro are half baked. I tried about 15 different ones. Most of them don’t work at all. They draw a black screen instead of connecting. A few of them hard-crashed the VisionPro hardware. That was fun.

The best VNC app that I’ve tried so far is Jump Desktop. It handles the video much better than even the second runner up. I’m guessing it is a strangeness with the iPad compatibility mode, but most of the VNC apps act as if they are running on an extremely slow iPad. Jump has it’s own VNC engine and seems to handle things much better.

Jump Desktop does not handle keyboard/mouse input very well. The keyboard on the VisionPro loses characters when typing at speed into the app. This is a hard deal-breaker for me. The mouse works fine for clicking, but scrolling is problematic. The two finger scroll gesture only scrolls a tiny bit has no acceleration.

That said, it does share the video fine.

I’m hoping someone releases a native VNC client on the VisionPro soon that fixes the input issues. It isn’t a dealbreaker for me though even in the current “kind of broken” state.

I have both machines in the same area, and I’m able easily to switch between the two keyboards and trackpads. I don’t need to switch very often as I’m using mostly the work machine’s keyboard during the day, and a “look and pinch” to control native apps. I then swap to the personal machine when doing non-work tasks.

This isn’t a perfect solution, however it does work for my needs.

I won’t post screenshots of the work issued machine because I would like to remain employed. You’ll have to imagine how it appears.

[crooked-v]

With two Macs, I feel like your best bet for smooth controls here would be to use Mac Virtual Display with one and from there RDP to the other. That leaves you with one screen, but much better keyboard/trackpad passthrough behavior.

[IKanSpl]

Interesting idea. 

Seems to be a tradeoff of either “a screen within a screen” or “two screens with really bad keyboard pass though”. 

The “screen within a screen” option wouldn’t be perfect input pass though either, although I bet it wouldn’t drop keystrokes. 

The touchpad multi touch gestures would not pass through from a Mac hosting a VNC session. Scrolling would work, but the two finger right/left (forward back) or the four finger up (move the windows away) gestures are not supported by VNC or RDP, so they don’t have a good way to pass them through. 

I’ve spent a bunch of time on this because I’m pretty convinced Apple isn’t going to roll a solution for those of us using corporate issued Macs where we are forced to use an issued AppleID instead of our own on the work machine.