Dual Mac Setup using Growl and SynergyKM
by in The Lab on Sunday, June 8, 2008
If you’re like me, you’re into screen real estate, application organization and technology working effortlessly in harmony. Who isn’t, really?
This is my late night setup. This is how I roll at 3AM when I’m usually plugging away at something. In the photo above, you can see I’m rocking Twitterific to keep up with my tweets and iTunes to provide some passive entertainment — in this case, Firefly.
In addition to those, I usually have NetNewsWire over there, Adium or iChat, and sometimes reference material specific to what I happen to be working with over on the main display.
To prop the MacBook Pro up and create a fluid eye-level transition between monitors, I use the handy iCurve 2 ($39.99 from Amazon).
Of course, on the Power Mac desktop I do the actual work. So I’m running Photoshop, Textmate, CSS Edit, Final Cut Pro and all the rest of the nonsense to get things done.
Using this 2-Mac setup is really helpful for several reasons. Not only does it feel like I have a lot more desktop space but that space is also running on 2 different machines using isolated CPU, RAM and disk access resources. When working with huge files — especially video in Final Cut Pro — this really comes in handy.
SynergyKM
This is all good but the whole setup might not be worth it if I had to actually reach up and manipulate the laptop. That’s where SynergyKM comes in.
SynergyKM is a GUI wrapper around the synergy command line tool that lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers. You can even use it with Windows and Linux, although I currently don’t.
SynergyKM was a life saver for my setup. I have my Power Mac desktop running as the host and my MacBook Pro connecting to it in order to grab keyboard and mouse info. This allows me to just shoot across to the laptop and perform tasks as if I was working with a simple dual-monitor setup.
Both my desktop and laptop are running on wifi from an Airport Extreme. The 802.11n network never misses a beat — even with torrents cranking (no shit, important benchmark info!) — so I don’t experience any lag issues with the mouse or really fast typing. I’m not sure if there would be issues on other networks but I can’t imagine there’s much data to keep up with. The packets transfered are relatively low.
Combine this with some disk sharing and you’ve got a nice almost seamless system.
Growl
So we’ve got our 2 Macs and we can effortlessly travel between them. However, there’s one more piece of the puzzle which I think brings things together in command-center-like integration. Growl.
Growl is a notification system for Mac OS X. It allows applications that support Growl (which is most of the everyday ones) to send you notifications. Most of the more poweruser level Mac addicts already use it.
The notifications are basically little popups that can be styled the way you like. These could be new songs playing in iTunes, a buddy in Adium sending you an IM, a file transfer completing in Transmit, etc. There’s really a ton of apps that support it these days.
Now, the great thing about Growl for this setup is that it allows you to push the notifications to a host from a remote Mac. Perfect.
I have my MacBook Pro sending my vital Growl information over to my Power Mac. There’s no lag and it’s just like the events were happening on the local machine — again, contributing to that dual-monitor feel. This allows me to focus on my primary Apple Display on the desktop and know if something semi-important happens (like my friend’s Tweet — damn right that’s important!) I’ll get a shiny new Growl notification.
You can of course choose what notifications you’d like to receive and from which applications. Your 500-friend twitter list might not be so appealing.
So that’s pretty much it. SynergyKM+Growl= …Synergy. I guess. I’m really into this setup now. I feel like things are working in harmony. That’s what owning Mac hardware is all about, right?
I envy your setup. I’m still stuck in the Windows world because of some very important apps that I used which only runs in Windows. Been wanting to get a Mac though. I just don’t trust Parallels (virtualization) yet to run my Windows app. Once I upgrade my server. I’ll probably get a Mac as my laptop is getting old.
Same here. Stuck with Windows XP and dreading the shift to Vista, but may at that point of time shift to Mac.
I’m still in the XP world. Unfortuately, my laptop and desktop are fairly high-end, so it will be a while before I can make the switch.
Thanks for the tip on SynergyKM, very handy.
Hey, great post! I actually wrote an article a while back showing how to use synergy along with some other programs to create an ultimate workstation (of course it’s Windows XP, which I’m going to stick up for since I never seem to
have any of the problems anyone else says they have:).
http://www.randyjensenonline.com/blog/?p=242
It sounds like it’s sleeting, but every time I turn on the outside light & look, nothings happening.
Somebody seems to have hijacked my name … hmmm … The previous comment wasn’t mine.
@Randy Jensen — Looks like a cool setup. I’m going to checked that out.
xeldec, how can that happen? I am intrigued!
@nicole – I don’t know how it’s done but the intent is to change the link for my website. Whoever is doing it is changing my website address to some Russian site.
Yes, that is very important the things to be in harmoney. Then the things go perfect.
That is one beautiful set-up. Now if only I could get something like that…
Wow. I wish i had enough cash to do stuff like that lol. I only have a desktop
That is a beautiful set up you got there. I am am a Mac user at home, but the office runs on PC. I am trying to convince them to change over, but the partners are sticklers for the old ways.
sweet, firefly’s on.
This is really great, and I am trying to do the same thing with my MacBook and my MacPro. I am wondering if you had any problems with the setup. I am running 10.5 on both machines, and when I run SynergyKM, both the server and the client just sit there looking for each other and never find each other. I am wondering if you are running OSX and if you had any problems with setting this up?
Thanks so much for your help
You guys do realize that synergy is available on the pc, right? The SynergyKM is just a wrapper for the mac utility, but its actually much faster on a pc. I use both mac & pc at work side by side, its much easier to use one keyboard, and I prefer to type on aftermarket PC keyboards. Synergy will map out the correct position of the mac keys (control, option, command) in the proper order on a pc keyboard, unlike plugging a PC keyboard into a mac (you end up with control command option, which sucks).
…it’s also much faster running the server on my PC and having my mac pro (8 core) as the client… I’ve used it the other way around, and synergyKM lags with the mouse and mouse wheel.
Xeldec, this hijacking of one’s nickname is still carrying on, I am busy researching it, and came across your post here during the course of my endeavours. It seems that reposting with your own URL resets the links in the top commentators list to yours again.
Wow thats truly amazing, I would love to do the setup in my office my only concern is how it would effect the response times
How do you switch between the two machines with SynergyKM? I use spaces in much the same way, but having two machines working would be even better since you get the extra resources of the second machine.
SyneryKM did not work for me, QSynergy worked right away thought, as a client.
Chester, you just move your mouse over the edge of one screen to the other :) its that simple :)