Share one screen and Bluetooth peripherals between two Mac Minis

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Level 1

71 points

Share one screen and Bluetooth peripherals between two Mac Minis

G'day :)

My daughter has a Mac Mini (2005), with an LG screen (same age) and current Bluetooth Magic Mouse and Apple keyboard. She also uses a USB graphics tablet. This older Mini runs 10.6.

Since she wants to start editing video with Final Cut Pro, I have just bought her a current Mac Mini (10.7: listed below this question). She still needs to use the older Mini, because she has an old version of Photoshop (CS2, which apparently won't run on Lion), and because she wants to go on using its CD/DVD drive. The new Mini doesn't have one,

Both machines will be directly connected to our LAN via a hub (gigabit Ethernet).

How would you recommend she use her peripherals with both machines, without having to unplug-replug-unpair-repair?

I gather two options are:

1. Screen sharing: is it fast enough to play movie DVDs from the old Mini to the new one, or to edit video from the new one to the old one?

2. Create a 10.6 partition on the new Mini and buy a CD/DVD player: this is more expensive but concentrates all the resources in the new Mini.

I would appreciate your advice. :)

Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.7.2), Mid 2011, 2.7GHz, 16GB/750GB

Posted on Dec 26, 2011 12:59 AM

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Answer 1

softwater

Level 5

5,556 points

Dec 26, 2011 2:48 AM in response to Clytie

Sure, you can share devices and screens. Speed for DVDs should be OK. I did it with a very old 2004 iBook G4 and my current Mac and it was a little bit choppy (but not much). I'd expect a more recent iMac to be able to handle that no problem.

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Answer 2

dwb

Level 7

32,920 points

Dec 26, 2011 3:16 AM in response to Clytie

I have a fully decked out iMac in my downstairs office as well as a MacBook Pro which has most, but not all, of the same applications. Due to foot surgery I was unable to negotiate the stairs so I used screensharing a lot for about 6 weeks and it worked quite well. But Photoshop wasn't one of the applications I tried to use that way and I'm not sure it would be a viable long term solution.

The newest Mac mini shipped with Lion and generally it isn't possible to install an older version operating system that the one the Mac shipped with. However I have read reports of people successfully installing Snow Leopard on their 2011 minis. Assuming it is possible, this is the solution I'd choose. A generic USB optical drive won't cost much and the older mini can be sold to offset that cost.

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Answer 3

Dec 26, 2011 11:11 AM in response to Clytie

In this instance I've found it easier to go all-USB rather than switching bluetooth around; use a cheap KVM switch and you can go back and forth instantly from machine to machine using the same keyboard, mouse and monitor. Set up the older machine to share its DVD drive over your LAN and you're good to go.

Another solution that works really well is to use Teleport by abyssoft.com. It's a pref pane that automatically shares your BT devices between different Macs. For example, f I have my laptop set up next to my iMac and both running the software. I'm using a wired keyboard and BT mouse. If I move the cursor to the left of the iMac's screen it automagically jumps to the laptop's screen, and I continue working on the laptop with the same keyboard and BT mouse. It even will carry across clipboard items from one machine to another. Super cool, and works especially well if both computers have their own monitor (if both share the same monitor you would still have to either run one headless with screen sharing, or use a hardware monitor switch (BTW, some monitors can take two inputs and use a button to switch say between VGA and HDMI, or even switch automatically. Maybe you're lucky enough to have one of those).

Rob

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