Not all Macs are made equal. Many these days can extend their display and even support multiple monitors, however there was a time when the Mac you bought could only mirror the display externally. For those Macs such as an iMac G5 or an eMac G4, there is a piece of software known as Screen Spanning Doctor.
The project started out as a way to enable extending your desktop on an iBook G3 in Mac OS 9, and turned into this patch once Mac OS X came around. Download, install, reboot, should be good to go.
Software download link right here on Low End Mac: Screen-Spanning-Doctor-v0.3.3.zip
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See: The Low End Mac software index
(Above: How to span/extend display on an iBook/iMac/eMac… by Tech for PC & Mac)
To quote the original maker of the app: “I assumed that the ATI driver reads the value of a variable defined in the Open Firmware and decides, depending on the value of that variable, whether to limit the external screen to mirroring..”
“…the key was to find that variable and to change it to a value that would cause the driver to allow the dual head feature. I was lucky and found the variable and came up with a firmware script that changes this variable every time you turn on your iBook.”
See More on the original website: Use an extended dektop with your iBook, iMac or eMac
(Above: Credit goes to Tech for PC & Mac from YouTube.)
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