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Lordy does that multiple monitor thing grind my gears. I just want to display on 3 screens. But the base model is the only one that corporate IT will buy. So I

Lordy does that multiple monitor thing grind my gears. I just want to display on 3 screens. But the base model is the only one that corporate IT will buy. So I have to buy a DisplayLink adapter to do what the Intel macbooks did with zero problem.

dangus 3y ago
It’s not on Apple to make sure their cheapest consumer-targeted computer is good enough for enterprise use. To me it’s not really relevant what the old computer models used to do. You have to evaluate what is available today and choose accordingly. Like it or not Intel chips had different strengths and weaknesses. It’s a different design entirely. I’m split on whether this is a dirty price segmentation trick or a legitimate design limitation where adding more display support is expensive in terms of die size. Doesn’t matter though, because companies doing serious work are supposed to know to buy the business versions of laptops. They don’t buy Dell Vostro consumer grade PCs, they buy Dell Precision/Latitude/XPS business systems. Apple tells you right in the name of their system: Pro. If you’re a professional you buy the Pro model. If it’s too expensive then buy something else.
- wubrr 3y ago
  I work on a m2 pro and the external monitor issues don't end.
- organsnyder 3y ago
  Only the M2 & M3 Max chips support more than two external monitors[1]. Those start at $3200, and are overkill for the vast majority of use-cases. There's no excuse for a $2000+ machine to not support more than two external monitors. DisplayLink on MacOS is far from ideal, either: it works alright, but it has to use the screen recording functionality in the OS, which causes anything with protected content to freak out. [1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/101571 https://support.apple.com/en-us/101571
  - dangus 3y ago
    Sure, but most people don’t use more than two external monitors. Most people don’t use more than one. The people who complain about specs per dollar were never Apple’s customers. “Why buy an Audi when a Dodge Neon SRT4 costs half as much and goes faster?” It has been this way for 40 years now. This just isn’t how they operate. When they design a product they don’t start from the specs, they start from how people use the product. There are much cheaper ways to own a Max system if that specific spec is something you’re desperate for. For one thing, Apple themselves is selling the current model for $2700 refurbished. $500 off and it’s the exact same system with a brand new battery and full warranty. Also, you should never buy a Mac without the student discount at the very least. Anyone can get it. Finally, a used M1 Max system will cost you under $2000 and is barely 3 years old. Keep in mind that if you were buying a MacBook Air in 2010 you were paying over $1800 in today’s money.
    - wubrr 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - dangus 3y ago
        Well, what PC people do is they hyper-focus on one specific spec like number of displays supported or price per GB of RAM but can’t see the forest for the trees beyond that. If I just do the same thing with Macs I can win arguments just as easily. Find me a laptop with the kind of performance per watt specs as the M3 systems. Find another laptop of the same size/weight/power draw that can match the M3 Max’s performance at anything close to the same battery life. Find me a completely fanless Intel/AMD PC that performs as well as the MacBook Air and gets the same or better battery life. Find me a PC laptop where you can feed a RTX 40X0 mobile GPU with over 100GB of RAM. Find me another laptop that uses TSMC’s most advanced chip lithography. PC spec monkeys will basically say it’s not a real laptop because it can’t support 800 external monitors and there’s no print screen key and it doesn’t have a parallel port etc etc. These are all specs that don’t matter to 99% of users. Hell, if you’re the kind of person who has a triple or quad external monitor setup, that means you’ve spent around $1000 on just displays. That probably means you can afford $3,000 for a MacBook Pro with a Max chip or maybe pay $2,000 for a used one. And if you didn’t spend $1000+ on those displays, that means those four displays are probably so bad that you’re better off looking at one 4K display or two decent quality ultrawide displays.
- ben-schaaf 3y ago
  Celerons from 10+ years ago support 3 monitors and 32GB of RAM. There is no excuse.
  - paulmd 3y ago
    there are AMD chips being sold right now that don't even support HDMI Org VRR let alone AV1 decode. and those skylake laptops are stuck on HDMI 1.4b, so they top out at effectively 1080p60, but sure, you get three of them. And the DP/thunderbolt tops out at 4K60 non-HDR with crappy decode support, and you get at most like 2 ports per laptop. the grass isn't always greener, there's lots of pain points with x86 hardware too. heck, those celerons you're so fond of are down to literally a single memory channel by this point. is a single stick going to be enough raw bandwidth for a developer that wants to be compiling code etc?
    - ben-schaaf 3y ago
      HDMI 1.4b does 1440p75 or 4k30 and HDMI 2.0 was brand new at the time. > the grass isn't always greener, there's lots of pain points with x86 hardware too. heck, those celerons you're so fond of are down to literally a single memory channel by this point. is a single stick going to be enough raw bandwidth for a developer that wants to be compiling code etc? What a weird argument; no shit a bargain bin CPU from 10 years ago is worse than a brand new mid-range chip. That's the exact point I'm making. That Celeron was bad 10 years ago. 10 years of progress, billions of dollars of investment and you get the same maximum RAM capacity, less external monitors at a much higher price.
      - paulmd 3y ago
        And you’re ignoring all the things that the apple will do that your chip won’t, or the things it’s massively better at. It has 2x the bandwidth of a Radeon 780M and runs at 35w, it has as much bandwidth as a PS5. there are pluses and minuses to doing it both ways, but, detractors only want to look at the handful of areas where traditional chips have an edge.
- goosedragons 3y ago
  "Cheapest" but not cheap. A $400 Steam Deck can do 3 external monitors with an inexpensive MST hub and has a single USB C port. The MBA is an extremely close competitor to the Dell XPS line too. And "Pro" doesn't even guarantee you more monitors. The $1600 M3 MBP is just as limited as the "consumer" Air.
  - dmitrygr 3y ago
    > extremely close competitor to the Dell XPS line Only if you ignore the shitty finger trackpad tracking on dell, windows (shit UX) or Linux (shit battery life and shit sleep/wake), and in general the real life battery duration in real life use cases.
- ffgjgf1 3y ago
  > It’s not on Apple to make sure their cheapest consumer-targeted computer is good enough for enterprise use. Except they crippled it on purpose as a form of market segmentation. Claiming anything else is beyond absurd.
  - dangus 3y ago
    We really don’t know. Personally I’m not surprised that a chip that came from a smartphone has difficulty with multiple monitors. I’m guessing that the Pro and Max chips need a much larger die area dedicated to that functionality.
ponector 3y ago
Few years back I had a MacBook pro 2019 and an old ultra wide LG screen with resolution 25:9 and HDMI only input. Apparently, official Apple's USB to HDMI connector cannot handle screen resolution 2560*1080 at that time. Thing that was possible at 300$ windows laptop cannot be done on 2500$ machine with 60$ connector.
- nine_k 3y ago
  Because if you agreed to pay $2500 anyway, you can agree to pay for an upgrade! Apple is in the business of selling you hardware, specifically premium hardware. Think car dealership.
  - ponector 3y ago
    And Dell is not in that business? Or Lenovo? People agree to pay ridiculous prices for memory or apple connectors - why not to charge them maximum?
- filoleg 3y ago
  I had a 2019 MBP, and it worked fine with my LG 5K ultrawide at full resolution (5120x2160). I would check your HDMI cable (not all hdmi cables support the resolutions you want), but mine worked perfectly fine using a USB-C thunderbolt 3 cable, as well as an USB-C to DisplayPort cable.
firecall 3y ago
I was amazed to see the new Air models support dual external displays! > Apple unveils the new 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with the powerful M3 chip The world’s most popular laptop is better than ever with even more performance, faster Wi-Fi, and support for up to two external displays — all in its strikingly thin and light design with up to 18 hours of battery life EDIT: mmmm... no. >Support for up to two external displays: MacBook Air with M3 now supports up to two external displays when the laptop lid is closed FFS Apple. I guess it's something of an improvement at least :-/

dangus 3y ago

It’s not on Apple to make sure their cheapest consumer-targeted computer is good enough for enterprise use. To me it’s not really relevant what the old computer models used to do. You have to evaluate what is available today and choose accordingly. Like it or not Intel chips had different strengths and weaknesses. It’s a different design entirely. I’m split on whether this is a dirty price segmentation trick or a legitimate design limitation where adding more display support is expensive in terms of die size. Doesn’t matter though, because companies doing serious work are supposed to know to buy the business versions of laptops. They don’t buy Dell Vostro consumer grade PCs, they buy Dell Precision/Latitude/XPS business systems. Apple tells you right in the name of their system: Pro. If you’re a professional you buy the Pro model. If it’s too expensive then buy something else.

wubrr 3y ago
I work on a m2 pro and the external monitor issues don't end.
organsnyder 3y ago
Only the M2 & M3 Max chips support more than two external monitors[1]. Those start at $3200, and are overkill for the vast majority of use-cases. There's no excuse for a $2000+ machine to not support more than two external monitors. DisplayLink on MacOS is far from ideal, either: it works alright, but it has to use the screen recording functionality in the OS, which causes anything with protected content to freak out. [1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/101571 https://support.apple.com/en-us/101571
- dangus 3y ago
  Sure, but most people don’t use more than two external monitors. Most people don’t use more than one. The people who complain about specs per dollar were never Apple’s customers. “Why buy an Audi when a Dodge Neon SRT4 costs half as much and goes faster?” It has been this way for 40 years now. This just isn’t how they operate. When they design a product they don’t start from the specs, they start from how people use the product. There are much cheaper ways to own a Max system if that specific spec is something you’re desperate for. For one thing, Apple themselves is selling the current model for $2700 refurbished. $500 off and it’s the exact same system with a brand new battery and full warranty. Also, you should never buy a Mac without the student discount at the very least. Anyone can get it. Finally, a used M1 Max system will cost you under $2000 and is barely 3 years old. Keep in mind that if you were buying a MacBook Air in 2010 you were paying over $1800 in today’s money.
  - wubrr 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - dangus 3y ago
      Well, what PC people do is they hyper-focus on one specific spec like number of displays supported or price per GB of RAM but can’t see the forest for the trees beyond that. If I just do the same thing with Macs I can win arguments just as easily. Find me a laptop with the kind of performance per watt specs as the M3 systems. Find another laptop of the same size/weight/power draw that can match the M3 Max’s performance at anything close to the same battery life. Find me a completely fanless Intel/AMD PC that performs as well as the MacBook Air and gets the same or better battery life. Find me a PC laptop where you can feed a RTX 40X0 mobile GPU with over 100GB of RAM. Find me another laptop that uses TSMC’s most advanced chip lithography. PC spec monkeys will basically say it’s not a real laptop because it can’t support 800 external monitors and there’s no print screen key and it doesn’t have a parallel port etc etc. These are all specs that don’t matter to 99% of users. Hell, if you’re the kind of person who has a triple or quad external monitor setup, that means you’ve spent around $1000 on just displays. That probably means you can afford $3,000 for a MacBook Pro with a Max chip or maybe pay $2,000 for a used one. And if you didn’t spend $1000+ on those displays, that means those four displays are probably so bad that you’re better off looking at one 4K display or two decent quality ultrawide displays.
ben-schaaf 3y ago
Celerons from 10+ years ago support 3 monitors and 32GB of RAM. There is no excuse.
- paulmd 3y ago
  there are AMD chips being sold right now that don't even support HDMI Org VRR let alone AV1 decode. and those skylake laptops are stuck on HDMI 1.4b, so they top out at effectively 1080p60, but sure, you get three of them. And the DP/thunderbolt tops out at 4K60 non-HDR with crappy decode support, and you get at most like 2 ports per laptop. the grass isn't always greener, there's lots of pain points with x86 hardware too. heck, those celerons you're so fond of are down to literally a single memory channel by this point. is a single stick going to be enough raw bandwidth for a developer that wants to be compiling code etc?
  - ben-schaaf 3y ago
    HDMI 1.4b does 1440p75 or 4k30 and HDMI 2.0 was brand new at the time. > the grass isn't always greener, there's lots of pain points with x86 hardware too. heck, those celerons you're so fond of are down to literally a single memory channel by this point. is a single stick going to be enough raw bandwidth for a developer that wants to be compiling code etc? What a weird argument; no shit a bargain bin CPU from 10 years ago is worse than a brand new mid-range chip. That's the exact point I'm making. That Celeron was bad 10 years ago. 10 years of progress, billions of dollars of investment and you get the same maximum RAM capacity, less external monitors at a much higher price.
    - paulmd 3y ago
      And you’re ignoring all the things that the apple will do that your chip won’t, or the things it’s massively better at. It has 2x the bandwidth of a Radeon 780M and runs at 35w, it has as much bandwidth as a PS5. there are pluses and minuses to doing it both ways, but, detractors only want to look at the handful of areas where traditional chips have an edge.
goosedragons 3y ago
"Cheapest" but not cheap. A $400 Steam Deck can do 3 external monitors with an inexpensive MST hub and has a single USB C port. The MBA is an extremely close competitor to the Dell XPS line too. And "Pro" doesn't even guarantee you more monitors. The $1600 M3 MBP is just as limited as the "consumer" Air.
- dmitrygr 3y ago
  > extremely close competitor to the Dell XPS line Only if you ignore the shitty finger trackpad tracking on dell, windows (shit UX) or Linux (shit battery life and shit sleep/wake), and in general the real life battery duration in real life use cases.
ffgjgf1 3y ago
> It’s not on Apple to make sure their cheapest consumer-targeted computer is good enough for enterprise use. Except they crippled it on purpose as a form of market segmentation. Claiming anything else is beyond absurd.
- dangus 3y ago
  We really don’t know. Personally I’m not surprised that a chip that came from a smartphone has difficulty with multiple monitors. I’m guessing that the Pro and Max chips need a much larger die area dedicated to that functionality.

ponector 3y ago

Few years back I had a MacBook pro 2019 and an old ultra wide LG screen with resolution 25:9 and HDMI only input. Apparently, official Apple's USB to HDMI connector cannot handle screen resolution 2560*1080 at that time. Thing that was possible at 300$ windows laptop cannot be done on 2500$ machine with 60$ connector.

nine_k 3y ago
Because if you agreed to pay $2500 anyway, you can agree to pay for an upgrade! Apple is in the business of selling you hardware, specifically premium hardware. Think car dealership.
- ponector 3y ago
  And Dell is not in that business? Or Lenovo? People agree to pay ridiculous prices for memory or apple connectors - why not to charge them maximum?
filoleg 3y ago
I had a 2019 MBP, and it worked fine with my LG 5K ultrawide at full resolution (5120x2160). I would check your HDMI cable (not all hdmi cables support the resolutions you want), but mine worked perfectly fine using a USB-C thunderbolt 3 cable, as well as an USB-C to DisplayPort cable.

firecall 3y ago

I was amazed to see the new Air models support dual external displays! > Apple unveils the new 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with the powerful M3 chip The world’s most popular laptop is better than ever with even more performance, faster Wi-Fi, and support for up to two external displays — all in its strikingly thin and light design with up to 18 hours of battery life EDIT: mmmm... no. >Support for up to two external displays: MacBook Air with M3 now supports up to two external displays when the laptop lid is closed FFS Apple. I guess it's something of an improvement at least :-/