Synergy between iPad Pro and Mac OS

My old MacBook Pro gave up on me, so it’s time to think about replacing it. It’s really old. So it’s been stuck on OS 12 or 13 or something.

I use shapr on an iPad Pro, is there any screen sharing capability that would be useful? Even if it was only to have the sidebar menu on the MacBook Pro, that would be something. I hear there are updates coming to iPad OS that might be useful-

Also, I like the pencil and the touch interface on the iPad, but a larger screen would be good too, does the benefit of a larger screen suggest that a return to a Mac and a mouse might be better? Given that an external monitor would provide an even larger work area?

If anyone has an opinion on this I’d appreciate hearing it-

If you connect your iPad to your MBP via a lightning cable, you are currently able to use your iPad as a secondary monitor, or even just mirror your screen. This means you can use your iPad like a drawing tablet while connected to your mac.

iPadOS 16 will be a big upgrade, as it will be able to use the external monitor not as a mirror of the iPad’s screen, but as a full secondary display, if you have an M1 iPad or newer. For now, Sidecar should work, but it still has some bugs sometimes.

How will that work exactly with Shapr3D and Apple Pencil? The pencil will only work on the iPad surface. What would be on the external display and how would you get it there and back from the iPad screen?

That’s a good question, we will have to wait and see, so far on the demos they only showed how it worked with touchpad, which is basically like on mac, you drag and drop windows from one screen to another.

Thank you - wait and see, I suppose

Still haven’t committed to a MacBook Pro. It’s a difficult time of the year, the next apple event might announce a new M2 16” MBP. Or it might not.

So for those of you modeling on a Mac, what input device do you recommend? I have a Logitech trackball mouse, but that’s so last year…

Also a Magic Mouse