Apple Keynote: combining mirroring and Presenter Display

By -

This blog post describes a new setup for presenting with Apple’s Keynote app that I’ve experimented with. It involves:



  • A Mac running Keynote

  • An iOS device (iPhone or iMac)



The wish

For presentations, mirroring the laptop’s display with the projector’s is perfect, because:



  • It is easy to do interactive demos (e.g. switch to a REPL, run some JavaScript code).

  • You can use the cursor as a virtual laser pointer (there is a preference under “Slideshow” to show the cursor in that mode).


But there are several pieces of information that would be nice to have while presenting:



  • The next slide, for smoother segues

  • Remaining time (countdown)

  • Presenter notes (I don’t use them, but many people do)


Therefore, many people don’t mirror displays and Keynote’s Presenter Display. But then you lose the previously mentioned advantages.


The best of both worlds

It’d be cool to have mirroring plus extra information displayed somewhere, but I don’t even know how exactly that would work.


Non-solution: Keynote Remote

Keynote Remote displays presenter information on an iOS device. The information stays in sync with the currently displayed slide. However, there are several problems:



  • You need Wi-Fi, laptop and iOS device need to be on the same network. Some sources on the internet say, Bluetooth works, too, but I couldn’t get it to work. You can turn your laptop into a hotspot, but then you can’t access the internet and everyone can access the hotspot (it’s public)!

  • Needs to be restarted if you take Keynote out of full screen. The work-around is simple:: restart the slide mode from the iOS device. But it’s one more thing to remember.

  • Limited configurability: you can’t configure the presenter information much.


Solution: turn your iOS device into an external display

Duet Display lets you turn an iPhone or an iPad into an external display. It does so via a wire, so there is no finicky Wi-Fi or Bluetooth involved.


Now you have three displays:



  • Your laptop

  • Your iOS device

  • The projector


And now the kicker: in your Mac’s Display preferences, you can alt-drag one display on top of another one so that only two of the three displays are mirrored. Thus, the projector mirrors your laptop, while your iOS device can show the presenter information.


Tips:



  • On the presenter display, you can rearrange the location and size of everything (especially useful for clock and timer).

  • You can tap on the iOS device to click.

  • Keeping track of time: unfortunately, the timer is reset whenever you leave the slide show mode. That leaves the current time as the better alternative.


Further tools


  • Attach your iOS device to your laptop’s display via Ten One’s Mountie.

  • Simulate a projector via an iMac:

    • Turn your Mac or PC into an AirPlay receiver via AirServer Universal. Alas, I couldn’t get this solution to work with partial mirroring (all-display mirroring worked).

    • Use your iMac as an external display via Target Display Mode.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Steve Lopez and the Importance of Newspapers

By -
Image
It has been one year since I cancelled my subscriptions to The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times . In that time, I continued to read both publications online. My assessment of this experiment is that reading newspapers and journalism online is vastly inferior to the hard copy thrown on my porch each morning. So I restarted my subscription to the Los Angeles Times and I have made it a point to buy The New York Times as often as I pass one of those coin boxes or my local news stand. The catalyst for this re-evaluation resulted from catching the film, The Soloist on cable last week. I liked the movie, although the scenes I found most interesting were the ones that showed columnist Steve Lopez at work. I realized the book was sitting in my “to-read” stack, so I pulled it and began reading. The book, as I expected, is better than the film. Lopez clearly addresses the revolution occurring in journalism, and worries about his future with the paper even as he researches and writes...
Keep reading

Ideas for fixing unconnected computing

By -
I traveled quite a bit recently and got exposed to a negative aspect of current technology: Things work well if you have a solid internet connection with no traffic limits and are plugged into a power outlet. Otherwise, things do not work well at all. This blog post describes the problems that arise and suggests solutions. Managing data traffic Cell phones are quite good at conserving traffic, laptops much less so. This becomes a problem when your laptop has a mobile connection (e.g., via tethering or in a hotel with data caps). I once accidentally started iTunes in such a situation and immediately used up my daily allowance of traffic. Similarly, mobile email is frugal with traffic (only the current folder is updated, attachments are only downloaded on demand, etc.), desktop email is usually not. How can this be handled better? I’d like to see three traffic modes for all operating systems: “full”, “restricted”, “minimal”: In full traffic mode , all data transfers are allowed and happe...
Keep reading

Omar to kill me

By -
Image
  The sentence “ Omar m’a tuer ” is unintelligible French, as if it had been written by an illiterate person. At first sight, Mme Ghislaine Marchal —the author of those words in blood—seems to be saying that she had been killed by Omar in her villa at Mougins (Alpes-Maritimes). But why would that dying French lady have used such poor grammar? On that flimsy evidence, in 1991, the Moroccan gardener Omar Raddad was condemned and jailed. But he persisted non-stop upon his innocence. In 1998, he was liberated, and now lives in Morocco. A recent analysis of DNA specimens from the scene of the crime provides new facts. Four males, none of whom was Omar Raddad, have left traces of their presence. Will the real murderer be identified at last?
Keep reading