Imaginary Mac Dock

If You Must, You Must

2008-03-18

Some people like to come home and "dock" their laptops to a desktop-type setup. There is no such thing for a Mac, not in the way that the Dell users of the world might imagine it. However, there are two ways to accomplish the same features. The first involves another Mac, the second does not.

The first, and conceptually more complicated method relies upon two features that Macs have had as long as I can remember using them. Upon booting, a Mac (laptop or desktop) can act as an external hard drive case for the drive inside. Simply holding down T will start this mode. Now, we can plug this Mac into another and use this hard drive as the boot drive. Simply hold down the Option key when booting the "base", desktop Mac. The desktop will boot the hard drive in the laptop. If you have an Intel Mac, the computers can be connected with a USB cable or a Firewire cable. If you are using a PowerPC Mac, a Firewire cable must be used.

The second method is far more simplistic. Apple (and many other companies) offer bluetooth keyboards and mice. Simply plug in an external monitor and use the bluetooth built into most Macs for the keyboard and mouse. With one physical cable you have essentially the same setup as all those "dock" users.

There are many reasons why a user might wish to do this but, the most obvious reasoning includes a larger screen on a monitor, a full-sized keyboard, and a more functional mouse (though I prefer the touchpad for scrolling).