4 ms·

External monitor fiasco? Limitations on monitor count by CPU?

by nusl 3y ago

gigatexal 3y ago
non pro versions of the M chip only support one external monitor... which is just silly
- nusl 3y ago
  Yeah it's pretty silly. I guess Apple looked at their market and figured something out that met the majority of use cases, but not having that freedom is very frustrating.
  - lproven 3y ago
    I think it's instructive to consider the history of the M1 Macs here. In many ways they are essentially a sort of iPad with a keyboard and a USB port or 2 instead of an iPad or Apple Lightning connector. The GPU is very closely coupled to the CPU inside the SoC, as is the RAM and the soldered-in flash nonvolatile storage. You can't just boot them off USB. You can't just plug in extra drives. You can't add more memory or bigger SSDs without extremely elaborate desoldering of BGA parts. These are not "PCs with an Arm ISA chip". They're a whole computer, disks and all, in a single closed package, without all the buses and connectors of COTS x86 kit -- which is _why_ they are so much faster.
- fragmede 3y ago
  You can choose to complain that it so doesn't support it natively, or you can just buy the aftermarket hardware that does support it and get on with your dual-head, non-pro life. Or upgrade your monitor to a single curved 5k ultra wide monitor, which is better than dual-head, imo.
  - gigatexal 3y ago
    What are these hardware hacks you suggest?
    - lproven 3y ago
      Add a USB display, broadly. https://www.macworld.com/article/675869/how-to-connect-two-or-more-external-displays-to-apple-silicon-m1-macs.html https://www.macworld.com/article/675869/how-to-connect-two-o... https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/463371/how-to-support-multiple-external-displays-on-apple-m1-silicon https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/463371/how-to-supp... DisplayLink is a standard for connecting GPUs over USB. It's slow but it kinda sorta works -- I have an ancient DisplayLink 7" USB display. Works great on Windows, and I could have a tiny second screen with a console prompt on it, or Task Manager or something, when working on the move on a laptop.
      - fragmede 3y ago
        over USB-3 it's a lot better than "slow but it kinda sorta works", like drive a 4k display reasonably well kind of good.

External monitor fiasco? Limitations on monitor count by CPU?

by nusl 3y ago

External monitor fiasco? Limitations on monitor count by CPU?

gigatexal 3y ago

non pro versions of the M chip only support one external monitor... which is just silly

nusl 3y ago
Yeah it's pretty silly. I guess Apple looked at their market and figured something out that met the majority of use cases, but not having that freedom is very frustrating.
- lproven 3y ago
  I think it's instructive to consider the history of the M1 Macs here. In many ways they are essentially a sort of iPad with a keyboard and a USB port or 2 instead of an iPad or Apple Lightning connector. The GPU is very closely coupled to the CPU inside the SoC, as is the RAM and the soldered-in flash nonvolatile storage. You can't just boot them off USB. You can't just plug in extra drives. You can't add more memory or bigger SSDs without extremely elaborate desoldering of BGA parts. These are not "PCs with an Arm ISA chip". They're a whole computer, disks and all, in a single closed package, without all the buses and connectors of COTS x86 kit -- which is _why_ they are so much faster.
fragmede 3y ago
You can choose to complain that it so doesn't support it natively, or you can just buy the aftermarket hardware that does support it and get on with your dual-head, non-pro life. Or upgrade your monitor to a single curved 5k ultra wide monitor, which is better than dual-head, imo.
- gigatexal 3y ago
  What are these hardware hacks you suggest?
  - lproven 3y ago
    Add a USB display, broadly. https://www.macworld.com/article/675869/how-to-connect-two-or-more-external-displays-to-apple-silicon-m1-macs.html https://www.macworld.com/article/675869/how-to-connect-two-o... https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/463371/how-to-support-multiple-external-displays-on-apple-m1-silicon https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/463371/how-to-supp... DisplayLink is a standard for connecting GPUs over USB. It's slow but it kinda sorta works -- I have an ancient DisplayLink 7" USB display. Works great on Windows, and I could have a tiny second screen with a console prompt on it, or Task Manager or something, when working on the move on a laptop.
    - fragmede 3y ago
      over USB-3 it's a lot better than "slow but it kinda sorta works", like drive a 4k display reasonably well kind of good.