In Monday’s daily recap, we mentioned that developer Avatron had released Air Display 1.6,  the latest version of their universal iOS app that allows a device to become a wireless external display for a Mac. But what makes this release so special?

MacRumors is reporting further details on Air Display 1.6, the update released Monday from developer Avatron. Coupled with a free System Preference pane that enables support on the Mac OS X side, Air Display allows an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad to become a wireless external display -- perfect for road warriors using MacBook Air or MacBook Pros while traveling, especially if you’re used to having two displays back home.

With the arrival of the new iPad and its Retina Display, Air Display makes an even better companion thanks to its 2048x1536 resolution, which makes using the tablet as a wireless external display even more attractive. But as it turns out, developer Avatron didn’t stop there.

“If you have Mac OS X Lion and a Retina iOS device, now you can turn on ‘HiDPI mode,’” the company notes. “HiDPI is a built-in Mac OS X feature that makes UI elements render at double resolution. It's absolutely stunning on a Retina display. By default, Mac OS X disables HiDPI because until now, there has been no Mac display with high enough resolution. Air Display on a new iPad, with its 2048x1536 264-dpi Retina display, finally brings HiDPI to life.”

We’ve written about Air Display here on MacLife.com before, so we downloaded our free update on Monday (the app is $9.99 for new users), checked “Use Enable HiDPI resolutions” in the preference pane and updated our display preference for the new iPad to use HiDPI.

The results were stunning, with crisp, clean UI elements and text that made us want to use it as our main display. On the downside, moving windows created brief moments of choppy screen redraw as the app catches up, but these immediately cleared up when the movement stopped.

You’ll need a Mac running OS X Lion to use HiDPI mode, as well as updates to both Air Display for iOS from the App Store and the Air Display Connect for Mac, which is a free download from the Avatron website.

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(Image courtesy of MacRumors)