Linking new 24"iMac with M1 chip to older Mac.

kevinverdon wrote:

Hi, I recently bought a new 24" iMac with the M1 chip. My previous Mac was a late 2023 21.5" model. With my old Mac, I could easily connect a cheap monitor and watch the footy, (I think that's 'soccer' to most of you), on the second monitor, whilst I worked on my spreadsheets on the old Mac.

But I can't seem to do this with the new iMac and its new super duper OS, Monterey. Shop assistants at the local Apple shop were no help. Is it possible? Ideally I would like my new iMac to connect to the old Mac which has a better screen and a hard drive. In my naivety, I thought I could just sling a cable between the two and I would have access to a second screen and the old hard drive. The old hard drive is mostly crap but has the occasional document/photo I might want to keep and transfer to the new iMac. All advice gratefully received - especially if it does not include lots of numbers with letters attached to them.

Thank you.

Kev

My wife has that same new M1 iMac as you do. It supports connection to external displays with either "extended display" or mirroring. With mirroring, the external display shows the same thing that is on the primary display. With extended display mode, you can do your main work on the primary iMac screen and show a streaming window on the external display (e.g. place the browser window there). That could be your football window, for instance.

These external displays need to be actual displays or monitors (e.g. Dell, LG, Samsung, various makes of TVs, etc.), typically connected via HDMI (but most have other options as well). The old iMac (2013 model? you said 2023 but that cannot be ...) cannot be used as an external monitor, as dialabrain already pointed out. External monitors are relatively inexpensive to obtain nowadays.

It is more the other way around… the old mac does not have the functionality to present itself to the world as a display. That was a nice thing we could do with a small family of imacs from about late 2009 to late 2011, I think.

On the other hand, you could simply use your old iMac by itself to watch football, while running your spreadsheets on the new mac. Yes, football the beautiful game that is actually played with a ball and using feet 😎

You can not use the old Mac as a monitor with your new Mac. I'm not sure why you think the old iMac has a better screen since the new iMac has much higher resolution and brightness, and is larger of course. To each their own I suppose.