I remember when thunderbolt came out there was a lot of discussion of how it had interesting magical bi-directional capabilities.
Does that mean there is a way to use an iMac Retina 5K as an external, secondary monitor for a recent MacBook Pro?
MacBook – Can you use iMac Retina 5K as external monitor for a MacBook Pro
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Related Solutions
You can not use your MacBook Pro as a second monitor for your iMac without additional software.
ScreenRecycler claims to allow you to expand your desktop across multiple computers.
As an alternative approach, Synergy (previously open source at synergy-foss.org) claims to lets you combine multiple computers into one. It will let you use both computers from a single keyboard and mouse.
HT5219 Thunderbolt ports and displays: Frequently asked questions (FAQ) says the 13" Retina Macbook Pro will happily run with two Thunderbolt displays.
Although I have not used it first hand, I would not expect you to have performance issues running the two extra displays. The main retina display is actually drawing 4 times as many pixels as the external displays, and then scaling the image down, so a Thunderbolt display is not going to make much of a difference.
As to the scrolling performance, I believe that was fixed in a software update
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Best Answer
According to Apple, no. The iMac Retina 5K does not support Target Display Mode.
You can see it here.