Here’s my ideal setup:<\/p>\n
Here’s my computer situation:<\/p>\n
Until recently, I used the work laptop at work using the Thunderbolt Display and at home I used the iMac. This meant that I had to maintain two configurations and try to keep them in sync as much as possible, which as anyone with any experience knows, ends up being a constant annoyance. Recently I\u00c2\u00a0spent some time\u00c2\u00a0coming up with an approach that allows me to achieve my ideal setup given the above set of devices. Here’s how it works.<\/p>\n
The Work Setup<\/strong><\/p>\n The work setup is pretty easy. Since I don’t have to share my computer with my family at work, I just\u00c2\u00a0connect the Thunderbolt Display to the MacBook Pro\u00c2\u00a0using using the\u00c2\u00a0monitor’s Thunderbolt Cable and use Bluetooth to connect the keyboard\/trackpad to the MacBook Pro and I’m done.<\/p>\n The Home Setup<\/strong><\/p>\n The home setup is trickier, because I\u00c2\u00a0want to use my laptop for the purposes of “same computer always”, and I want to use the iMac’s big display, but when I’m not using the iMac, I want my family to be able to use it as a normal computer.\u00c2\u00a0The iMac has a feature called Target Display Mode<\/a>, which lets you use the iMac as a display for your laptop, but there’s a problem -\u00c2\u00a0I can’t easily connect the keyboard \/ trackpad to the MacBook Pro because they’re already connected to the iMac. And you can’t just\u00c2\u00a0disconnect them from your iMac because you need to trigger Target Display Mode from the keyboard. And once you trigger Target Display Mode, you can no longer use the iMac GUI to turn off Bluetooth!<\/p>\n