3 ms·

Do the displays have to be Thunderbolt displays? Seems really expensive.

grecy 14y ago
I'm no expert, but I wonder if you could go: Air->Thunderbolt Dispaly->DVI Adapter->DVI display ? The way I see it, you can't daisy chain without having at least one thunderbolt display.
- jpxxx 14y ago
  Unfortunately no. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5219#dispnum http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5219#dispnum Thunderbolt only chains to Thunderbolt. But the port coming out of the Mac will gladly connect to one of anything.
  - teilo 14y ago
    Actually, yes you can, as long as your Mac supports multiple external displays. The only thing you can't do is plug a mini-displayport adapter directly into a Thunderbolt display. But, strangly, you can chain, say, a hard drive to a Thunderbolt display, and then plug the mini-displayport adapter into the hard drive, and that will work. http://www.macworld.com/article/1162365/first_look_apple_thunderbolt_display.html http://www.macworld.com/article/1162365/first_look_apple_thu...
jpxxx 14y ago
Negatory. The Thunderbolt port is really just passing through a DisplayPort signal - any DisplayPort monitor will do. Displayport degrades nicely into HDMI, DVI, or VGA with an adapter, so sky's pretty much the limit. The new MacBook Pro does also have a HDMI port which can do all the same.
- gaborcselle 14y ago
  I didn't know that. Since I have Cinema Display with DisplayPort, could I do MacBook Air > Thunderbolt > Cinema Display?
  - jpxxx 14y ago
    No sir. For (presumably) dumb (presumably) Apple Reasons, a non-Thunderbolt display cannot be involved in that chain at all. I'm not sure why. This is not gospel, by the way - I don't know if this was a limitation of the prior MBAir or else the signalling scheme in play. 1-800-APL-CARE can clarify.
    - veemjeem 14y ago
      As I mentioned in another post, non-thunderbolt displays cannot interpret packet data. When you use a dvi to thunderbolt adapter, it's simply translating the pins, not decoding packets. Your laptop's thunderbolt chip would realize you're connecting a normal display and send the usual display signals rather than packet data. If you put this normal display at the end of a thunderbolt daisy chain, it would be the responsibility of the last device on the chain to convert the video packets into signals, something I doubt intel would put into their specs, requiring all devices that implement lightpeak to also decode video. I think adapters are sometimes bad in this regard, people will think if the adapter fits, it should work the way they think it should. Back in the day when parallel ports and scsi used the same 25pin connectors, lots of people destroyed devices thinking they could hook their hard drives to their parallel port.
  - wmf 14y ago
    No, but there's been some discussion at Ars that you can do MacBook Air > Thunderbolt Display > non-display device > Cinema Display.
- mikeevans 14y ago
  Awesome. But you'd still need at least one Apple Display to chain the second one? Or are there ways to chain together two DisplayPort displays?
  - jpxxx 14y ago
    Ah, apologies, I was being a bit unclear. The only way to daisy chain any series of displays anywhere in the Apple universe is by plugging Thunderbolt Display into a Thunderbolt Display into a Thunderbolt port. Daisy chaining is not being demonstrated in this post's picture. (There is a limited and unsupported scenario where this not quite true, but it's not worth getting into.) Given adapters, you can plug basically any display ever made into a Mac and expect it to work. But it's got to be going straight into the Mac. (USB "DisplayLink" soft-displays break every one of these rules via special drivers)

grecy 14y ago

I'm no expert, but I wonder if you could go: Air->Thunderbolt Dispaly->DVI Adapter->DVI display ? The way I see it, you can't daisy chain without having at least one thunderbolt display.

jpxxx 14y ago
Unfortunately no. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5219#dispnum http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5219#dispnum Thunderbolt only chains to Thunderbolt. But the port coming out of the Mac will gladly connect to one of anything.
- teilo 14y ago
  Actually, yes you can, as long as your Mac supports multiple external displays. The only thing you can't do is plug a mini-displayport adapter directly into a Thunderbolt display. But, strangly, you can chain, say, a hard drive to a Thunderbolt display, and then plug the mini-displayport adapter into the hard drive, and that will work. http://www.macworld.com/article/1162365/first_look_apple_thunderbolt_display.html http://www.macworld.com/article/1162365/first_look_apple_thu...

jpxxx 14y ago

Negatory. The Thunderbolt port is really just passing through a DisplayPort signal - any DisplayPort monitor will do. Displayport degrades nicely into HDMI, DVI, or VGA with an adapter, so sky's pretty much the limit. The new MacBook Pro does also have a HDMI port which can do all the same.

gaborcselle 14y ago
I didn't know that. Since I have Cinema Display with DisplayPort, could I do MacBook Air > Thunderbolt > Cinema Display?
- jpxxx 14y ago
  No sir. For (presumably) dumb (presumably) Apple Reasons, a non-Thunderbolt display cannot be involved in that chain at all. I'm not sure why. This is not gospel, by the way - I don't know if this was a limitation of the prior MBAir or else the signalling scheme in play. 1-800-APL-CARE can clarify.
  - veemjeem 14y ago
    As I mentioned in another post, non-thunderbolt displays cannot interpret packet data. When you use a dvi to thunderbolt adapter, it's simply translating the pins, not decoding packets. Your laptop's thunderbolt chip would realize you're connecting a normal display and send the usual display signals rather than packet data. If you put this normal display at the end of a thunderbolt daisy chain, it would be the responsibility of the last device on the chain to convert the video packets into signals, something I doubt intel would put into their specs, requiring all devices that implement lightpeak to also decode video. I think adapters are sometimes bad in this regard, people will think if the adapter fits, it should work the way they think it should. Back in the day when parallel ports and scsi used the same 25pin connectors, lots of people destroyed devices thinking they could hook their hard drives to their parallel port.
- wmf 14y ago
  No, but there's been some discussion at Ars that you can do MacBook Air > Thunderbolt Display > non-display device > Cinema Display.
mikeevans 14y ago
Awesome. But you'd still need at least one Apple Display to chain the second one? Or are there ways to chain together two DisplayPort displays?
- jpxxx 14y ago
  Ah, apologies, I was being a bit unclear. The only way to daisy chain any series of displays anywhere in the Apple universe is by plugging Thunderbolt Display into a Thunderbolt Display into a Thunderbolt port. Daisy chaining is not being demonstrated in this post's picture. (There is a limited and unsupported scenario where this not quite true, but it's not worth getting into.) Given adapters, you can plug basically any display ever made into a Mac and expect it to work. But it's got to be going straight into the Mac. (USB "DisplayLink" soft-displays break every one of these rules via special drivers)