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Apple is not "intentionally limiting" anything. They simply didn't add MST support to OS X because their hardware doesn't need it. The physical Mini DisplayPort

by chx 11y ago

Apple is not "intentionally limiting" anything. They simply didn't add MST support to OS X because their hardware doesn't need it. The physical Mini DisplayPort connector on your Mac can operate in two modes, one is DisplayPort itself. In this mode, you can connect a single 4K 60 Hz monitor to your Mac. Or, you can use it in Thunderbolt mode where the displays use the Thunderbolt bus which has two DisplayPort signals multiplexed into the stream and each monitor gets one signal out -- but it's DP 1.1a so 4K 30 Hz or Full HD 60 Hz.

WorldWideWayne 11y ago
Your four responses on the stackexchange question and here really convinced me. There is just no way that Apple would ever limit the customer's choice by doing (or not doing) something! Apple's intentions are always pure and I know this because... reasons. It's kind of like the App Store (on iOS) - they are not intentionally limiting you to one app store, they just didn't add support for other company's app stores.
- threeseed 11y ago
  Apple is not limiting customer choice. They ship the MBP with 2 x mini DP so you can use dual monitors. And nothing is stopping anyone running their own App Store on OSX. Mac Update has a sort of one already.
- chx 11y ago
  Uh don't take me for an Apple apologist ... I am well aware and often advocate of how their business model leads to unfortunately limiting everyone's freedoms. But this one is not one of those, I think. You shouldn't have bought a Mac in the first place, of course but that cause is seemingly lost. People are not listening to Cory Doctorow so why would they listen to me?
makomk 11y ago
When you plug in one of those 4K 60 Hz monitors, you're probably using MST - most of them are designed to appear to the host PC as two separate monitors daisychained over DisplayPort MST, with some extra metadata to tell the OS they're actually two halves of the same monitor, and OS X supports this on newer hardware. Which means Mac OS X has code somewhere to detect if you're trying to actually daisychain non-Apple monitors and disable MST.

by chx 11y ago

WorldWideWayne 11y ago

Your four responses on the stackexchange question and here really convinced me. There is just no way that Apple would ever limit the customer's choice by doing (or not doing) something! Apple's intentions are always pure and I know this because... reasons. It's kind of like the App Store (on iOS) - they are not intentionally limiting you to one app store, they just didn't add support for other company's app stores.

threeseed 11y ago
Apple is not limiting customer choice. They ship the MBP with 2 x mini DP so you can use dual monitors. And nothing is stopping anyone running their own App Store on OSX. Mac Update has a sort of one already.
chx 11y ago
Uh don't take me for an Apple apologist ... I am well aware and often advocate of how their business model leads to unfortunately limiting everyone's freedoms. But this one is not one of those, I think. You shouldn't have bought a Mac in the first place, of course but that cause is seemingly lost. People are not listening to Cory Doctorow so why would they listen to me?

makomk 11y ago

When you plug in one of those 4K 60 Hz monitors, you're probably using MST - most of them are designed to appear to the host PC as two separate monitors daisychained over DisplayPort MST, with some extra metadata to tell the OS they're actually two halves of the same monitor, and OS X supports this on newer hardware. Which means Mac OS X has code somewhere to detect if you're trying to actually daisychain non-Apple monitors and disable MST.