15 ms·

I'm on macOS High Sierra for the spontaneity. Every morning, I go to wake my Macbook Pro with two 4K USB-C connected displays and external keyboard and mouse. W

I'm on macOS High Sierra for the spontaneity. Every morning, I go to wake my Macbook Pro with two 4K USB-C connected displays and external keyboard and mouse. Will one display turn on? Both? Neither? Who knows!

driverdan 9y ago
That's not a new problem. My 2012 rMBP w/ 10.11 has the same issue. OS X has always had issues with multiple displays.
- jey 9y ago
  Do you get kernel panics too if you don't follow the right sequence of "first wake from sleep then connect external monitor"? I can't believe this is still so broken. 2017 13" TouchBar MBP running 10.12.6
  - colanderman 9y ago
    For some reason those panics stopped happening to me after a year or so (2014 15" running 10.10.5 here). Now it just panics if I plug a DP cable in cockeyed.
seanp2k2 9y ago
Store the screen layout using serials from the EDIDs. Why it doesn’t do this and “tries” to guess their position somehow is beyond me. I use the OWC TB3 dock with dual Asus PA328qs with the latest firmware. Because of apparently some lame design decisions, in order to run dual external monitors over a single TB3 port, you need the dock, which has one DisplayPort output, then a TB3-> DisplayPort (via USB-C alt mode IIRC) dongle plugged into the dock. This is idiotic, but I wouldn’t mind so much if it actually worked consistently. This is not the case. Half the time, when I go into work and plug in, I get 30hz sync on the monitor plugged into the dock. This is when it works at all, without having to guess if the laptop is actually on, because it’s the rMBP which has no power indicators despite having a useless oled screen across the top of the keyboard. So, plug in, wait 5-30 seconds, nothing, open laptop, nothing, unplug dock, nothing, hold down fingerprint reader (the idiotic power button on the rMBP) until...nothing happens, then wait a random amount of seconds, stab it again, wait another 5-10 seconds for the Apple logo to appear, macOS boots into recovery (reset credentials screen, because it assumed that since I couldn’t log in during a boot that I need to reset my password I guess), restart, wait for disk decryption screen which doesn’t work with my wireless keyboard plugged into the dock, type in that password on the laptop keyboard, wait another few seconds for it to log in, ensure that WiFi is enabled as my normal network connection is via LAN via the dock which isn’t plugged in at this point, log in, wait for everything to start, close lid and pray that I don’t have to repeat this, wait another 5 seconds for it to actually sleep, plug dock in, mash random keys until it wakes up, log in again, rearrange monitor layout as it’s usually swapped L/R, one monitor doesn’t work, or they both don’t work again, fix that by power cycling monitors / dock, then finally maybe do some work if it’s not yet lunch time. For a ~$6k setup, it’s awful. It’d be awful for $1k. About 10 years ago, I had a Dell D830 running Fedora and later, early versions of Gnome shell. The dock powered the laptop and a mouse, keyboard, external drive, and two monitors. It was a single (albeit proprietary) connector, and the dock was fairly expensive (~$200 IIRC). It worked damn great, nearly every time, even with sleep States in Linux on a laptop 10 years ago. Why is this suddenly harder than putting a Tesla on Mars? Why don’t we have good real wireless HD displays by now? The current state of affairs with Apple laptops and docking is just sad to me. I’m almost bothered enough by it to switch jobs to go there and work on fixing it.
- feifan 9y ago
  > Store the screen layout using serials from the EDIDs What does this mean/how do you do it?
  - chx 9y ago
    OP is suggesting Apple should have stored the layout based on the EDID serials.
  - 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
    EDID is a little EEPROM inside virtually all modern monitors with a standardized format, which can be read over the display cable [1]. It essentially enables "plug and play" for monitors, as opposed to the bad old days when you needed either an .INF file to install in Windows or the supported sync ranges to type into your XFree86 configuration if you wanted anything above 640x480. It contains data like the vendor, model number, physical screen dimensions, and supported display modes. There is a field for a serial number; parent is proposing using this to identify individual monitors. However, errors in EDID are quite common, e.g. using incorrect units for the physical dimensions or leaving placeholder/OEM data for vendor and model number that don't match the finished product's advertised vendor or model number. I imagine there are a lot of monitors out there with bogus EDID serial numbers, since it isn't important for getting the display modes right. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Display_Identification_Data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Display_Identificatio...
    - iforgotpassword 9y ago
      Yes the pain working with that is real. One of the funnier instances of edid messup was when we discovered there is at least one dell screen model out there that has DEL as their vendor string. They misspelled their company name. The usual problems were missing mode lines that were actually supported (and needed) and incorrect dimensions.
- malchow 9y ago
  The 30 Hz/60 Hz refresh roulette is something I have, too.
notadoc 9y ago
Sounds fun! Every day is workstation roulette!
jordache 9y ago
Or how about it crashes your computer and you'll have to hold down the power button ?
codezero 9y ago
I am always baffled by these reports. I’ve had nothing but success with external monitors on my last three MacBooks. What is your setup out of curiosity? Monitor brand, connection type, cable brand etc. I’m assuming I’m an outlier because I see this in almost every thread that mentions MacBooks and I am real curious how it manifests. Edit: reading further comments it sounds like possibly the monitors use the same edids? Wonder if you can check that easily. I’ve almost always used Dell monitors fwiw.
- ghostcluster 9y ago
  > I am always baffled by these reports. You shouldn't be. This is an actual GIF from the Ars Technica review of High Sierra: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Sep-23-2017-12-41-55.gif https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Sep-2...
- afandian 9y ago
  There's a certain amount of selection bias. I've had over the years a 2005 PowerBook G4, three 2010ish MacbookPros, a 2014 MacBook Air and a 2016 MacBook Pro. All have occasionally hung on a blank screen after lid open. The latest routinely forgets Dell screens (two identical ones at once) and I have to replug them. Otherwise, no issues (except random kernel panics). Like brains, I'm astonished that they work at all, let alone work so well. Of course I'd like something bulletproof, but Apple doesn't seem to be able to make one.
- bluedino 9y ago
  The LG 4/5k monitors Apple had in their own stores didn't work half the time
  - dawnerd 9y ago
    I do think the monitors are partly to blame. They seem to want to go into low power mode right before the computer sends a signal.
invisible 9y ago
Literally all of my issues revolve around display issues. I honestly don’t understand how developers at Apple don’t fix these things... If I am getting up/down from my desk throughout the day and plugging in and unplugging a monitor, sometimes my screen is just _stuck_ black and requires a hard reboot. Other times, it shows the login screen on both monitors. Yet other times, it decides it didn’t actually detect that monitor. Most folks on my team have the same deal to differing amounts. We don’t use any special software.
dawnerd 9y ago
Don’t forget it randomly picking what device to send audio to. Every day it’s a lottery for me. Is it the left or right monitor? The built in dac in my elgato dock? Or maybe it’s the laptop in clamshell mode. Then there’s the case of it getting an ip from the docks ethernet. And all of that is assuming the thing even wakes up.
qzervaas 9y ago
Same here, but 2x LG 5K monitors. 1. Stopped using clamshell mode (laptop lid closed) and that has helped. 2. Downloaded the LG firmware update for the monitors. Updated both monitors, also seems much more reliable. (10 day uptime, up from about the usual 12 hours)

driverdan 9y ago

That's not a new problem. My 2012 rMBP w/ 10.11 has the same issue. OS X has always had issues with multiple displays.

jey 9y ago
Do you get kernel panics too if you don't follow the right sequence of "first wake from sleep then connect external monitor"? I can't believe this is still so broken. 2017 13" TouchBar MBP running 10.12.6
- colanderman 9y ago
  For some reason those panics stopped happening to me after a year or so (2014 15" running 10.10.5 here). Now it just panics if I plug a DP cable in cockeyed.

seanp2k2 9y ago

Store the screen layout using serials from the EDIDs. Why it doesn’t do this and “tries” to guess their position somehow is beyond me. I use the OWC TB3 dock with dual Asus PA328qs with the latest firmware. Because of apparently some lame design decisions, in order to run dual external monitors over a single TB3 port, you need the dock, which has one DisplayPort output, then a TB3-> DisplayPort (via USB-C alt mode IIRC) dongle plugged into the dock. This is idiotic, but I wouldn’t mind so much if it actually worked consistently. This is not the case. Half the time, when I go into work and plug in, I get 30hz sync on the monitor plugged into the dock. This is when it works at all, without having to guess if the laptop is actually on, because it’s the rMBP which has no power indicators despite having a useless oled screen across the top of the keyboard. So, plug in, wait 5-30 seconds, nothing, open laptop, nothing, unplug dock, nothing, hold down fingerprint reader (the idiotic power button on the rMBP) until...nothing happens, then wait a random amount of seconds, stab it again, wait another 5-10 seconds for the Apple logo to appear, macOS boots into recovery (reset credentials screen, because it assumed that since I couldn’t log in during a boot that I need to reset my password I guess), restart, wait for disk decryption screen which doesn’t work with my wireless keyboard plugged into the dock, type in that password on the laptop keyboard, wait another few seconds for it to log in, ensure that WiFi is enabled as my normal network connection is via LAN via the dock which isn’t plugged in at this point, log in, wait for everything to start, close lid and pray that I don’t have to repeat this, wait another 5 seconds for it to actually sleep, plug dock in, mash random keys until it wakes up, log in again, rearrange monitor layout as it’s usually swapped L/R, one monitor doesn’t work, or they both don’t work again, fix that by power cycling monitors / dock, then finally maybe do some work if it’s not yet lunch time. For a ~$6k setup, it’s awful. It’d be awful for $1k. About 10 years ago, I had a Dell D830 running Fedora and later, early versions of Gnome shell. The dock powered the laptop and a mouse, keyboard, external drive, and two monitors. It was a single (albeit proprietary) connector, and the dock was fairly expensive (~$200 IIRC). It worked damn great, nearly every time, even with sleep States in Linux on a laptop 10 years ago. Why is this suddenly harder than putting a Tesla on Mars? Why don’t we have good real wireless HD displays by now? The current state of affairs with Apple laptops and docking is just sad to me. I’m almost bothered enough by it to switch jobs to go there and work on fixing it.

feifan 9y ago
> Store the screen layout using serials from the EDIDs What does this mean/how do you do it?
- chx 9y ago
  OP is suggesting Apple should have stored the layout based on the EDID serials.
- 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
  EDID is a little EEPROM inside virtually all modern monitors with a standardized format, which can be read over the display cable [1]. It essentially enables "plug and play" for monitors, as opposed to the bad old days when you needed either an .INF file to install in Windows or the supported sync ranges to type into your XFree86 configuration if you wanted anything above 640x480. It contains data like the vendor, model number, physical screen dimensions, and supported display modes. There is a field for a serial number; parent is proposing using this to identify individual monitors. However, errors in EDID are quite common, e.g. using incorrect units for the physical dimensions or leaving placeholder/OEM data for vendor and model number that don't match the finished product's advertised vendor or model number. I imagine there are a lot of monitors out there with bogus EDID serial numbers, since it isn't important for getting the display modes right. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Display_Identification_Data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Display_Identificatio...
  - iforgotpassword 9y ago
    Yes the pain working with that is real. One of the funnier instances of edid messup was when we discovered there is at least one dell screen model out there that has DEL as their vendor string. They misspelled their company name. The usual problems were missing mode lines that were actually supported (and needed) and incorrect dimensions.
malchow 9y ago
The 30 Hz/60 Hz refresh roulette is something I have, too.

notadoc 9y ago

Sounds fun! Every day is workstation roulette!

jordache 9y ago

Or how about it crashes your computer and you'll have to hold down the power button ?

codezero 9y ago

I am always baffled by these reports. I’ve had nothing but success with external monitors on my last three MacBooks. What is your setup out of curiosity? Monitor brand, connection type, cable brand etc. I’m assuming I’m an outlier because I see this in almost every thread that mentions MacBooks and I am real curious how it manifests. Edit: reading further comments it sounds like possibly the monitors use the same edids? Wonder if you can check that easily. I’ve almost always used Dell monitors fwiw.

ghostcluster 9y ago
> I am always baffled by these reports. You shouldn't be. This is an actual GIF from the Ars Technica review of High Sierra: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Sep-23-2017-12-41-55.gif https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Sep-2...
afandian 9y ago
There's a certain amount of selection bias. I've had over the years a 2005 PowerBook G4, three 2010ish MacbookPros, a 2014 MacBook Air and a 2016 MacBook Pro. All have occasionally hung on a blank screen after lid open. The latest routinely forgets Dell screens (two identical ones at once) and I have to replug them. Otherwise, no issues (except random kernel panics). Like brains, I'm astonished that they work at all, let alone work so well. Of course I'd like something bulletproof, but Apple doesn't seem to be able to make one.
bluedino 9y ago
The LG 4/5k monitors Apple had in their own stores didn't work half the time
- dawnerd 9y ago
  I do think the monitors are partly to blame. They seem to want to go into low power mode right before the computer sends a signal.

invisible 9y ago

Literally all of my issues revolve around display issues. I honestly don’t understand how developers at Apple don’t fix these things... If I am getting up/down from my desk throughout the day and plugging in and unplugging a monitor, sometimes my screen is just _stuck_ black and requires a hard reboot. Other times, it shows the login screen on both monitors. Yet other times, it decides it didn’t actually detect that monitor. Most folks on my team have the same deal to differing amounts. We don’t use any special software.

dawnerd 9y ago

Don’t forget it randomly picking what device to send audio to. Every day it’s a lottery for me. Is it the left or right monitor? The built in dac in my elgato dock? Or maybe it’s the laptop in clamshell mode. Then there’s the case of it getting an ip from the docks ethernet. And all of that is assuming the thing even wakes up.

qzervaas 9y ago

Same here, but 2x LG 5K monitors. 1. Stopped using clamshell mode (laptop lid closed) and that has helped. 2. Downloaded the LG firmware update for the monitors. Updated both monitors, also seems much more reliable. (10 day uptime, up from about the usual 12 hours)