My new cross platform setup

28 May 2016 by Nigel Sampson

These days I’m doing more cross platform mobile work at home and decided to try a new approach.

I’m using a Mac Mini for iOS / Xamarin work but having a dedicated monitor for it felt wasteful since it wasn’t used that often (it mostly functioned as a built server).

I’ve been hearing people lately raving about ultra wide screen monitors and thought I’d give it a go.

I picked up a Dell U3415W and so far am in love with it. While doing Windows & Android development I can give the full screen real estate to Windows, the Dell Display Manager that comes with the monitor lets me set up custom snap points for my windows. So far the one I like the best is two thirds for Visual Studio, then divide the rest of the horizontal space in two vertically for things like Powershell, emulators and the like. The total available resolution is 3440 x 1440.

Where it really steps up is doing iOS / Xamarin development, I can switch on Picture by Picture mode giving half the screen to the Windows machine and half to the Mac. The Windows machine is using HDMI and the Mac Display Port. This gives each device 1720 x 1440 to play with which is plenty.

Installing Synergy on both machines means I can use the same mouse and keyboard for both including copy & pasting. The whole thing is so seamless I occasionally find myself trying to drag windows from one side to the other.

It’s only been a few weeks so far but at the moment I can highly recommend it.