27" imac display acting as two displays

Can seem to find the answer to this, results lead to howtos on a dual monitor setup.
I'd like to know if I get a 27" imac can I have the monitor act as a dual screen setup. Essentially, I would like my windows to load and act the way they do given my dual screen setup that I currently have with my macbook pro.
I know I can resize windows and get it to mimic a dual monitor setup, sort of, but I'm trying to avoid this every time I open something new.
Does anyone know if is this is something that I can do easily with expose and spaces?
Thanks

Welcome to the Apple Discussions!
If I understand your question correctly then yes, the iMac display can be toggled back and forth between the two computers with F2. When the iMac's display is being used by the PC it is in Target Display Mode. The issue is that the iMac can only use mini-DisplayPort input from an external video source. So you would need a PC with m-DP output or a very expensive converter to convert your PC's current video output to m-DP. Then you connect the converter to the iMac with a simple m-DP to m-DP cable. These converters which are fairly new start at about US$150.
Dah•veed

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IMac display jumps 1 pixel left and right

Has anyone ever heard of this before, it seems crazy to me.
My iMac display started acting up two days ago.
When the cursor crosses the screen from side to side, the screen jumps 1 pixel to one side!
Specifically, moving the cursor from left to right, the screen jumps 1 pixel left (as if it is panning over to that side) and and the reverse for the reverse direction.
The 'extra' column of pixels appears normal (ie not simply black).
The picture is a little fuzzy.
At lower resolutions, the screen looks terribly fuzzy like the anti-aliasing has become overactive (maybe this is a known issue for this video card) but doesn't jump.
I've repaired permissions, rebuilt things, etc (using Onyx and also applejack) but no change.
After my previous mac died prematurely I was sure to get Applecare for this iMac and need to take it back anyway (the dvd-burner has predictably failed) but I I was surprised I'd never heard of my pixel jumping problem before.

More than likely somehow 'Zoom' got turned on.
To disable Zoom, open System Preferences->Universal Access preference pane and disable Zoom.
Mac OS X 10.4 Help: Setting zoom options for viewing your computer screen

Intel imac display glitch and involuntary restart

Just want to know if anyone else has experienced this specific problem, there are plenty of complaints about intel imac displays but I can't be bothered to sift through them all trying to find a match for my problem.
A couple of months ago I was watching a video in quicktime and noticed that my screen was glitching and flashing fragmented diagonal lines - like a commodore 64 loading type thing. Then the spinning-ball came up and a force quit didn't do anything so I had to force shut down. I started up and it occured again. Then the screen went blank/black, but still lit up, and restarted without me doing anything. It also got stuck during start up the second time this occured. I panicked and ran out to buy a 500GB external drive, backed up all of my work and then re-installed mac osx from disk, archive and install job. This seemed to sort it and for the following two months it seemed OK. No sign of any problems.
Since then I have updated from 10.4.7 to 10.4.10 (which I have suspicion that it screwed the firmware in my motu 828 firewire audio interface, costing me a £130 repair - but that's another painful story).
It happened again tonight (the screen thing, not the motu). And the ball came up and I couldn't do anything. Force shut down, restart - screen glitching again. Then I had 2 unexpected restarts, one getting stuck in startup. Then a successful startup but accompanied by the glitchy graphics, mainly red/pink pixellated diagonal lines flickering in and out. I ran a disk first aid - no problems. Did a disk permission repair. Shut down and ran a hardware test, the first few minutes of the test the screen was still at it but then stopped glitching, hardware test found no errors (it was an extended test too). Now I'm back on it and it's all OK.
Any suggestions/similar stories?
When it occured 2 months ago I had the original ram that came with the imac. Now I have 2x1GB sticks of crucial ram.

That's it! Well, that's what I have. Unfortunately, I don't know about the cause, but I don't ever recall having it prior to an update going back about a year ago. I recall an update, and that update being immediately followed by some sort of Apple Graphics something-or-other. I feel pretty certain that's when I first noticed this. I just had my LCD replaced for another reason, but I think you'll agree, it's not an LCD issue. In my case, browser activity, scrolling up or down in a page, seems to be the most common trigger. I've also seen "pieces" of the torn page, on the screen when minimizing the browser to the dock (usually Firefox, but I think I've seen it with Opera and Safari too). Is there a way to find update packages installed somewhere? I'd know it if I saw it, and I'd definitely try removing that suspect package/update.
Message was edited by: geekboy2000 - corrected OS

IMac display with second computer?

Is anyone driving the 27" iMac display with a second computer? If so, can you switch between the iMac and the second computer to see what is happening on each machine?

Yes you are. The two machines I use are mini displayport. Thunderbolt must hook to Thunderbolt. I wasn't thinking of the new iMac 27". Old timers moment.
Captfred

IMac display problems (twice now)

I am wondering if anyone has run into the problems I have dealt with.
I bought an iMac Core Duo 20inch two weeks ago. I got home, set it up and immediately noticed 7 dead pixels. I called up apple and complained to four different reps until they finally offered me up a replacement.
Yesterday my replacement came, and no dead pixels. This time the display was "uneven". One half of the screen is way brighter then the other half, basically making so a desktop background appears as two different colors, depending on which part of the screen you look at.
I called back again to complain about my REPLACEMENT, and they are having me jump through the hoops of FedEx'ing it back to California.
Plus the first MBP I bought had a blown speaker and I had to return it.
Is this normal for Apple's Quality Control? What the heck is going on here, I am beyond frustrated, I've never seen anything like it in all my years of computing (PC AND MAC).

Wow...well I hope the will get you all squared away......and I hope new people comming to Macs will not run into this problem.
The new iMac Core Duo....lets not have the same issue as the iPod mini did.

IMac Display stretched and out of focus

My iMac display is not right. It is slightly enlarged and out of focus. I have already tried the display settings and holding the control key and scrolling down. I also tried restarting. Nothing is working. Last night I tried configuring my router for wireless. I supposedly made it secure with a password, which I had to use to connect to my network. The screen thing happened after that. This morning I checked the connection again and the little lock icon was no longer there. Could the two be related? Please help! I am obviously not very apt with computers, but I'm trying.

This resolved my issues:
Preferrences > Accessibility > Zoom
then, uncheck Zoom and uncheck Zoom follows keboard focus.
Wait a few minutes. You can rechec them again but it won't go back to the stretched and out of focus look. I don't know why.

How do you know the best iMac display size

how do you know the best iMac display size
Only on them fits in the screen window and that makes the font so tiny. The others are too wide or too tall. I usually view at 150 - 200% for vision issues.

You say it's better to do the Media Browser? I'm fairly new to movie, dvd and garage band. How would I go about using the Media Browser instead of straight to iDVD?
Select Your project - go up to Share - Share to Media Browser and as Large (Not HD)
In iDVD select a nice theme - click on Media button - click on Movie - Select Your movie.
NOW - Save as a DiskImage - and test this before burning DVDs - if this Plays OK then either burn the Image by using Disk Util tool (and set down burn-speed to x4) - or burn via iDVD (will take more time)
I want to keep as much quality as I can.
Then don't use iMovie'08 or 09 or 11 - as they all discard every second line resulting in less quality on the DVD. I use iMovie HD6 or FinalCut any version.
Also...I tried to split my project in iMovie...but couldn't find a way. I wound up just making a copy and then deleting out a handful of scenes from the copy...I still have the original at 4:12hrs. Is there a way in iMovie to split a project?
I would make a copy and cut away a bit from the end - calling this Part 1 and from start of the other copy Part 2.
OR - there are other programs that can squees in more to a DVD e.g. Roxio Toast™ - BUT this has two cons.
• It costs - to me it was well spent mony as it can so much more e.g. back engineer a DVD to an editable form
• Squeesing in more on a DVD - costs in QUALITY - and as You want as much as it can be - then 90 minuts portions encoded with Pro-Quality encoding and full quality interlasced material from a video-editor that delivers this is the way to get 100% of what DVDs can do.
DVD is as standard only SD-Video - HD not possibly. Then You need Blu-Ray. (also Roxio Toast™)
Yours Bengt W

Is it possible to turn off imac display while mirrored display plays video?

I've set up a new 21.5" imac for my parents use in their living room and have connected their 52" lcd tv to the imac as a mirrored display.
One issue that i can't find a solution to is to find a way to turn OFF the imac display when they're watching content on the lcd tv. If they want to watch a film from the imac out to the LCD TV, they want to dim the lights and watch it, but the imac display being on in the dark room is distracting.
Is their any way (3rd party software??) to turn off the imac display while still being able to have the mirrored display running?

You should actually NOT use mirroring, although it would work OK on the 21.5-inch iMac because the screen resolution is identical to 1080p HDTV.
In System Preferences Displays pane Arrangement tab, turn mirroring OFF. This makes the HDTV screen extend the iMac's Desktop. In the diagram on that pane, it shows how the two screen arranged. The edge where they touch is where you can move your mouse cursor from one screen to the other. You can move the two screen around in the diagram, to match how the iMac and HDTV are located in the real world.
In System Preferences Displays pane Display tab, there will be a window for each screen. The 21.5-inch iMac's screen should be set to 1920x1080. The HDTV's screen should be set to 1920x1080 also, if it is a "1080p" HDTV.
To watch video content on the HDTV, first show the video playing in a window. Drag the window to the HDTV screen so that it is completely on that screen. Give the full screen command (usually Command-F). The video will play in full screen mode on the HDTV screen. In most video playing applications, such as DVD Player, QuickTime Player, iTunes, etc., the other screen (the iMac's screen in this case) will go black. It's not OFF, but it will display black.
Note: Some video playing apps have a preference setting for which screen gets the full screen. When playing video content in a browser window (such as YouTube or Hulu), when you go to full screen mode by clicking the +full screen+ button, the other screen will not go black.
As far as I know, there is no way to turn off the iMac display, even with mirroring turned OFF.

Calibration: iMac displays grey as white

I bought a hardware calibration tool (Spyder 3 Express) to adjust my Mac's monitor (iMac 27" 2011).
Everything looks fine, but yesterday I saw a photo of me on another monitor and noticed a greyish background. My iMac displays pure white and I didn't see the grey. It looks pretty unprofessional :-(
With Photohop's eyedropper tool I can see it is not white but about 248 250 251
So, how can adjust it? Is the iMac able to display this fine grade of grey? I hope so, the other monitor was a LG for 150$

The slider was on the left.
Here is a screenshot of a photo. The left photo is how it looks on my Mac. The other two are how the photo looks on other monitors.

IMac display Mirroring to a MacBook

Hi everyone,
I am looking to mirror my iMac display to my macbook, as i need the extra screen space. I just got a thunder bolt cable to connect the two but i can not seem to connect them through target mode. Has anyone found a way to do this or does it only work the opposite way around?.

Target Display mode only works to display another device's screen on an iMac. Use a product such as ScreenRecycler over a network.
(122619)

RECALL on 27" iMac Display due to Dimming?

Following is a copy of a message I sent to Apple about my iMac. I am very frustrated about this issue and I seriously think it warrants investigation, I have found many cases of this online, anyone else have this problem here?
I have had an issue with my 27" iMac display for quite some time, because I thought it was a software issue with the "auto dim" I did not notify anyone about it. however, I brought it into the Apple Store in the Domain in Austin Texas at the end of January to have the hard drive replaced under the recall. While there I mentioned to the young lady at the Genius Bar that my display would dim just slightly, and I thought it was a setting issue, she said they would look at it, but most likely it would be resolved with the replacement of the Hard drive. Ok, new hard drive, new OS, makes sense. When I returned to pick up my computer, the rep said they ran diagnostics on it and could find no problems, however when I got home, it was still happening, I took it back to the Apple store on Feb 16 and was told there was a problem with the displays and it needed to be replaced for approximately $520.00, because it was out of warranty by 134 days. Upon further research I have found that this is not a random occurrence, and there are MANY MANY cases of this exact problem scattered throughout the forums, and Ironically they all seem to be on the left side of the screen. I find it hard to believe that a computer that costs almost $2000.00 can have a display go out in a little more than a year. I think that you should look seriously at the issues these displays are having, this should be a recall, at the very least voluntary. There is no reason that a display should fail in this amount of time. I want you to understand, I am an Apple guy, I was born and raised on windows, but became a die hard Apple guy after I received my first MBP as a hand me down from a friend. I have owned every single iPhone there is, Have two Mac Book Pros, iPad, six iPhones, and this 27"iMac. I am a pro photographer and this is seriously a problem. PLEASE look at this issue, I will not buy another Apple product until this is resolved. There are way too many failures out there for this to not be a defect.

I understand your frustration; however, these forums are user to user only - no Apple employees here. If you wish to contact Apple, either use any of the contacts on this page:
http://www.apple.com/contact/
or use the feedback method:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/

Imac display input suggestion

It would be nice to see some input's on the imac display.
I would like to hook my game consoles into the display and play them if I wanted. Even if it was an option at purchase time I think it would be great.
Right now I have to decide ..new tv? or new imac.... Yes it would be splendid if I was able to afford both but the reality is that I can't afford both.
How many other people would find this a useful option?

Yes, I'd like such an option. In particular, I'd like a DVI input so that I could use the iMac display as a monitor for another computer.
I used to have my iMac at the office, and my G5 with a Dell 2405 at home, but I decided I'd rather have the bigger screen at work, so swapped the two systems. That worked great--until the first time I remembered that I have a Windows PC under my desk for gaming at home. The Dell has multiple inputs, so it was no problem, but with the iMac at home, if I want to game on the Windows box, I've got to go borrow the monitor from my server in the other room. Ugh!
PowerMac G5 1.8 GHz single CPU, iMac 20" Intel, PowerBook G4 1.5 GHz 17" Mac OS X (10.4.6)

IMac display turns off but computer doesn't sleep.

After upgrading to Mavericks I've noticed a problem where my iMac display will turn off but the computer will never enter into actuall sleep mode, I know this because I can constantly hear the fan humming. I have the Energy Saver settings set to sleep the display after 10 minutes and sleep the computer after 15 minutes. However even well after 15 minutes of inactivity (and the display long having turned off) I can still hear that the computer is not sleeping due to the fans still being on.
I decided the troubleshoot the problem using a Terminal command and I was able to narrow it down to single potential cause. According to "PreventUserIdleSystemSleep" the problem stems from a "URLConnection in progress" issue. How does one go about determining what is causing the URL Connection so I can kill the prompt and see if that solves the sleeping issue?
Here's a screen shot of the Terminal output:
Also, if I choose "sleep" from the Apple Menu, the iMac will go to sleep as normal (fans and harddrive sleep).

Reset the SMC and the PRAM.
Reset the SMC
• Shut down the computer.
• Detach the computer's power cord.
• Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
• Release the power button.
• Reattach the computers power cable.
• Turn on the computer.
Reset the PRAM
• (Re)start the computer
• Immediately press & hold the CommandOption+PR keys
• Wait for two startup chimes
• Release the keys and allow the computer to boot.
Dah•veed

Putting iMac display to sleep, when using TV as a screen.

I have just connected my iMac to my 42" Panasonic 1080p TV, the connection was easy and is working fine. My questions relates to putting the iMac display to sleep when using the TV as a monitor, if I am watching You Tube, Sky Player or a DVD, I intend to use my TV as the monitor. Is it possible for the iMac to puts its display to sleep, whilst leaving the TV on. I played around with this today, however was unable to manage this.
Regards Craig

Hi Craig
There is no way to independently sleep either the iMac's Display or an attached Display/TV. However if in the Display Arrangement Preferences you set the attached Display or TV to be the Main Display and turn Mirroring Off, then FrontRow and the Full Screen Mode app's like, DVD player, QuickTimePlayer, etc. will black out the unused iMac display.
Dennis

User Contributed Tips in Intel-based iMac Your Intel-based iMac Display

*The following User Contributed Tips are located in the Intel-based iMac > Your Intel-based iMac Display forum:*
a brody - Using a second Mac as a display for a first
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1587927
Publish date: July 7, 2008
*The following related tips are located in other areas of Apple Discussions:*
See also User Tips Library

My 20" 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo had become almost useless due to freezes and crashes- with NO crash reports in the logs.
They were often preceeded by video glitches, so I assumed it was a bad video card- unfortunately soldered to mother board.
Apparently, from forum postings, this is not an uncommon problem. The computer would run longer if the day was cooler, but rarely more than 10 minutes, so I suspected it was aggravated by heat.
Then I found this post from Bodomann on an Apple Support forum:
"Following up on my previous posting regarding my son's late model 2006 iMac that required a $900 logic board replacement:
Turns out the problem is apparently related to a bad CPU temp sensor. I installed 'iMac Fan Control' (Google it) which reported the CPU temp always at 32 degrees Fahrenheit (obviously incorrect). The same software allowed me to adjust the CPU fan manually. After multiple trials I set the CPU speed to 2800RPM after which the system would run forever - never freezing with the dreaded grey box 'reboot me' screen. I tried several times reverting the software to default speeds and the system would always crash within 10 minutes. "
I downloaded free Fan Control 1.2 for Imac from Derman Enterprises (they have an Intel iMac and a Mac Book/Pro version). It installs as a system preferences control panel. I cranked up all three fan speeds. The fans sped up noticeably. Horizontal lines have gone from screen (so far), no color artifacts and no crashes yet. I may have a real computer back! Hope Apple checks this out-
The control panel also gives the temps sensors are reporting at the CPU, hard drive and DVD drive. The CPU sensor reports the CPU temp as 32 degrees F- which is clearly wrong, unless Apple has been installing little refrigerators inside.
So thanks to Bodomann for posting- Hats off and three cheers to Derman and Cristoph for source code.
http://www.derman.com/iMac-Fan-Control
http://www.lobotomo.com/products/FanControl/index.html

27" imac display acting as two displays

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