M1 Macs cannot support dual Extended displays through their Thunderbolt 3 ports
caldigit.com
caldigit.com
They are completely unsuited for multi-monitor workloads without an eGPU.
More specifically, the draw 30W of additional power that has to go somewhere. You can turn down the refresh rate, to say 10Hz or something, but it still has to use the discrete GPU. The cooling solution simply isn't handled to deal with it, as they have crammed as much processing power they can into the ultra-light chassis.
Meanwhile you can play World of Warcraft whilst drawing just 25W of power TOTAL on the M1 (estimate, I don't play WoW anymore). This is while the Intel Mac is drawing 70-100 Watts from the socket for just rendering a window to the secondary display.
It's got to the stage that I prefer to use my 13 inch M1 over a top of the line 16 inch provided by work. When M1 finally supports docker, I might even consider not using the 16 inch at all. It crashes due to thermals about twice a week due to the constant high temperature and eats through batteries!
If anyone has a solution to this, I'm all ears, but it feels like every nay-sayer of the M1 is dismissing just how many compromises Intel based laptops (not just Macs) have. I had just as many issues with the Dell XPS, where even basic video games would become unplayable after 15 minutes due to CPU throttling down to 0.8 Ghz.
The M1 has been the first laptop I have been truly happy with as a desktop user.
For docker I plan on using a pi 4 or another PC to just run stuff over the network.
2) free up memory on my mac. I’m working at home so using a networked computer isn’t a big deal.
I guess it would be better to wait for M2 or M3 rather than jump on a new system that has a work-in-progress developer ecosystem or un-optimised software (Even if it is faster on M1 than Intel Macs).
By the time that Apple Silicon software support is optimised, the M1 Mac would already be out of date and superseded by M2 or M3 Macs.
Docker and Virtualbox (this one is not coming) are the only two apps that do not work for me, and worked on Intel Mac. Sure, there are many apps that run in Intel mode, but the user won't notice, unless interested in that detail.
Intel at the time was shipping P4 Netburst CPUs. They had all the features, like multiple cores and 64-bit support, but also one huge disadvantage: they were power hungry, and it dissipated all that heat. Definitely not something you could put into laptops.
So the next generation, Core Solo/Duo, was not continuation of Netburst, but Pentium M, their mobile line which itself forked off P6 (Pentium Pro). They were released in January 2006, and were indeed 32-bit. The reason was time to market, they were basically throwing away their current arch and forking from an older branch; for the majority it was not a problem, most people were running 32-bit XP anyway, with PAE if you happened to have more than 3,5 GB of RAM (pre-SP2 XP supported that). Then, the 64-bit Core 2 Duo was released in July 2006.
The unfortunate part is, that Apple announced transition to Intel in mid-2005, and shipped the products across all lines in January-August 2006, i.e. hitting the window when only the 32-bit version was available. That means, that they had to define and maintain i386 ABI for their OS just because they ever shipped Core Solo or Duo machines. If they were able to ship C2D from the beginning, they could have skipped i386 and just use amd64 ABI from the start.
I also would be, if there were not some annoying bugs. Like external display flickering after waking up from sleep (interestingly, not when cold booted). Sometimes reconnecting the cable fixes it, but it is still an annoyance.
I have my problem with OWC TB3 dock and Dell P2715Q. I will try an older dock that I have in the office (Kanex TB2 Express; as the name says, it is TB2, thus extra dongle needed); but playing around with different TB docks can get expensive...
It also does not happen with Intel Macs, which use Intel TB implementation. With M1, the TB is brand new, so some issues are to be expected. I suspect that with sleep and wakeup, there is some state mixup with previous link training, so it doesn't talk to other side the way the other side expects. This might be - or might be not - fixed with firmware updates.
This might be the one: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204450
No, OWC Thunderbold 3 dock and Dell P2715Q.
I also have older, 2015 Macbook Pro, with Thunderbolt 2 and Apple TB2->TB3 adapter, connected to the same setup. This laptop does not flicker.
I've been using the preview beta of Docker on M1 for some time now. It works fine for me; some people have reported issues in the corresponding Docker Slack channel, but they usually stem from the particular images in use rather than Docker itself.
> It's got to the stage that I prefer to use my 13 inch M1 over a top of the line 16 inch provided by work.
I agree. It's really quite difficult to go back to x86 laptops. If they manage to fix the external monitor limitations with the next generation--and I'm sure they will--it will be really hard for me to justify spending money on anything else.
If it’s useful: It’s fine here including reasonable loads on the video card, like a lot of GPU-accelerated terminals and pretty heavy use of a tiling window manager and Exposé window swishing. Or, say, Sketchup in a browser? Plus a pretty serious IntelliJ setup with the JVM’s stops pulled out, running ReasonML and C++ source compilation, and use of Docker.
It is sensitive to setup, and I can get it to spin its fans up. Docker is especially prone to wasted cycles. And I did seem to have to do some SMC resetting at one point because the fans were a little eager to get going. I also think it makes a bit of difference if I charge through the right-side ports rather than the left.
But the main point I’m attempting to make: I do think your case is solvable.
That said, I have felt that Apple are losing their way in some respects. The fact that there are fan issues with some machines and that it’s not clear how to solve them is a problem with these machines.
I think they're referring to the thermal throttling, and not the MBP forcing the discrete card when an external monitor is connected. As far as I know, there is no way around using the discrete card for external monitors (on my 2015MBP at least, I'm pretty sure the HDMI port is wired direct to the M370X).
I've solved the thermal issues by using an eGPU (like GP suggests)
When it works, its great which is about 50% of the time. When it doesn't and for no apparent reason, it will often reboot a couple of times (just when plugging in the displays).
Sometimes the banding issue that the M1 Mac owners have described appears on one or both of the displays.
A pretty frustrating experience.
Already running discrete graphics all the time so no auto-switching.
Switching apps is often plagued with at least noticable up to utterly annoying lag. Starting even optimized apps sometimes feels surprisingly slow. If the CPU is even under the light load (20 % reported by Activity monitor), these issues happen more frequently and overall responsivness gets much worse. It is not due to the low memory which I try to spare on Mini.
Yeah, Safari is fast, even faster than on the iPad Pro. But I am developer, often use multiple browsers, many docker containers, might spin up IDE and I am certainly not the one who they made it for.
For reference, I just opened every application that's installed on my M1 MBP (16GB) and was able to switch between them with basically no lag.
I wonder why you believe that everyone’s ignoring the issues you experience? Could it be some local phenomenon, instead?
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096
This was considerably slower on the M1 Mac Mini than my 2017 iMac.
If you have an external SSD, you could potentially try a fresh install on it and see if the problem persists, then try to drill down to the offending driver/application.
I for one, have had no issues, but that's not to say they don't exist. Could be a process that is blocking or anything.
Conspiracy? Or...something up with your setup.
I use an Intel MBP13 inch with two external monitors and it works pretty well. What am I missing?
So whatever a “multi-monitor workload” is (video editing or something?) — it’s certainly not universal.
When I'm on a video call, the CPU fans are consistently on at what I believe is the lowest RPM.
I would classify that as 'not breaking a sweat'. I suspect you might as well. I'm not sure if OP expects to be able to use all of GPU memory using only passive cooling, or if they have something else is going on.
And it's not terribly bad, just that I pretty much draw the full 92W the power adaptor supplies and get the mentioned thermal throttling much sooner than without.
Running a bunch of docker containers, slack, and general everyday workflow. Doing all the good stuff like ad-blocker and checking process monitor.
Our solution isn't the most lightweight, but still the end result is that plugging in an external monitor (1080), my productivity goes down dramatically which is the opposite of how multiple monitor setups are supposed to work. :-)
I'm excited that the M1 is good, also- that it seems fast with everything, even the old Intel-specific code via Rosetta. I don't subscribe to Apple NIH[1] philosophy, but what they have made historically, barring the problem I mentioned above and a few macOS and iOS issues over the years, has been awesome. The M1 seems to follow Jobs' philosophy of making the best product.
Does it suck? Yes. Are fans only $10 to save a $2000 machine? Yep. Apple simply doesn't design their kit to run hard and run often. It's like those internet services that sell higher speed than they can actually give every customer. They depend on you not using it all.
FWIW I use catalina on a 2009 core 2 duo mac mini hooked up to a 1440p monitor in native mode, and the fan remains at idle when just clicking around the desktop.
I can't recall, but I never could finish Persona 4 on my XPS. :( 9350.
Agree 100% w/ 16" MBP.
I think Dell must hijack those TurboBoost power limits as a way to massively underclock the processor and try for better advertised battery life.
My solution was to dump Apple laptops entirely (which I know a lot of people won't want to do). This Asus G14 has no issues powering 2x 4K displays without even breathing hard. No throttling in games or videos, and it supports 40GB of memory on top of a replaceable NVMe SSD.
I am curious about the other "USB to PCIe cards" though. I know there are NVMe to USB (non TB) adapters these days but I think that's largely due to the NVMe protocol being transport agnostic not that PCIe is actually interacting over the USB connection.
I think several will trade their M1 laptops due to the memory, architecture limitations creeping up after long-term usage and realizing they're compromising their previous workflow's productivity benefits. The excellent performance (CPU/power) and surprisingly well built Rossetta 2 has overshadowed potential limitations with memory and IO in the reviews.
Lightning fast opening of apps is great, but it's not much use to people like me who don't close their apps at all! I keep at least 3 browsers(for different projects) with several dozen tabs(with hibernation), Note taking apps, IDE and a VM with a browser open in it. So what's important to me here is the memory, at least 32GB is bare minimum.
They'll trade them for new M1 Macs that don't have those limitations, which are estimated to be released this year. This obviously isn't a "forever" limitation. And Apple will release Apple Silicon Macs with more memory long before any other Laptop maker releases a laptop that can compete with all the advantages of the M1.
I've had the following in my life
* Pentium 4
* 21.5" iMac
* 27" iMac
* Another 27" iMac
* Self built 2700K Intel
* Dell XPS 9560
* Self built 2700X Ryzen
* 2015 15" Macbook Pro
* M1 Macbook Air
For my work PCs, I had a Dell Desktop, a Asus Laptop and 2 Macbook Pros.
If selecting a PC for work, I would never go for a Windows PC nowadays. You'll get the cheapest option available, filled with all the corporate crap you don't want, and locked down to oblivion.
Macs have a minimum quality bar, and don't tend to get hamstrung quite as easily by company policy. It's just not worth it unless you know for a fact you'll get to choose the machine and software yourself.
As for at home, I'm flexible, but I wouldn't go for Mac if I wanted to game, and now in 2020, I wouldn't go x86 if I needed battery life.
Well there's your problem. Don't define your choices by what you're coerced into using at work where you only go because they pay you. Define yourself by what you choose freely as a person.
It sounds like you've self built before, so why not again? It'll be far more compatible and with fewer proprietary bits than using something from Apple.
The problem is the vram using full power.
The only solution I’ve found under OSX is using an eGPU. I have both the Core X and the Core X Chroma, and the Chroma works fantastically both as a fully fledged docking station and keeping the output wattage / fans at bay. I’m almost exclusively using my 16” stationary with an external display.
Another solution, albeit expensive, is buying the 16” MBP with the 5600m graphics. That card uses HBM2 memory which uses around a 4th-5th of the wattage of the GDDR6 memory of the 5500m. Around 4w instead of 19w.
I don't understand why people insist on trying to convert laptops into desktops.
I finally bought a desktop again over Thanksgiving after a decade of having a laptop that functioned as a desktop. It's been a great experience.
I don't do anything taxing, so I just got a little Intel NUC i5 with a 24" monitor. Having an actual desktop setup is just head and shoulders better than the "laptop as desktop" I'd been living with.
The laptop only needs to drive the display(s) so anything made in last few years should suffice. Currently using a surface go.
They want to have just one computer without worrying about synching or other coordination.
I can imagine that when it came to configure the machine the decision was `Put more RAM in it, he's a web-dev, doesn't need a fancy graphic's card!`
Which I don't as I'm not going to gaming on my work PC, but if that 15W is pushing it above the thermal limits of the chassis, then that would have been a decent upgrade.
I'd prefer it without a heavy-lifting graphics card in that case, but that doesn't seem to be an option.
Serious Q: Have laptops ever been decent for gaming?
I don't game much, but I think the form factor would seriously crush thermal capacity.
I have a 15" MBP and it's fine for most dev work save Node and Typescript occasionally cause the fans to spin up for extended periods of time. Getting rid of VSCode in favor of more memory/ CPU friendly editors helped a bunch.
Does your work involve a lot of 3D or graphics?
HP, Dell/Alienware, Lenovo, all of them have had overheating CPUs for over a decade. GPUs are fine half the time, surprisingly.
Their testing is garbage, what they call normal use seems to be completely different from what power users call normal use. And I'm talking about "workstations", not cheap consumer laptops.
Oh, but the design constraints, you'll say. OK, that's forgivable for Ultrabooks/thin-and-light laptops. Not workstations. And before the thinness fad, they were still overheating. And not because of design constraints.
As an example, I'll bring the Elitebook 8760/8770w/ZBook 17 G1/Zbook 17 G2 series, all of which have the same internal design and layout.
All were overheating after a while, due to thermal paste going bad (and being shit from the factory, but I digress).
With the ZBook G2 it got very, very bad. Those Haswell chips with FIVR were mini nuclear reactors. HP realized they weren't "just overheating", but "extremely overheating".
Their solution? The same heatsink with an extra heatpipe. Just like that, poof, problem solved. One extra heatpipe!
That can't cost more than $2 in the factory. I don't know any buyer who wouldn't have paid an extra $5-10 to have a proper working $4000 workstation.
Whoever is saving money on copper and screws in these companies needs to be fired and banned from ever working in companies making hardware.
I'm not even going to talk about Apple, everyone knows their stuff has a ton of problems. But they're selling people on design and software, not quality engineering.
And they actually solved the heat problems by going in the opposite direction with the M1 (ultra low power usage while maintaining performance instead of a good cooling system).
I do watch Louis Rossmann about Macs, and how terribly they are designed, but this is universal across many devices.
I had so many issues getting low latency audio to work on my 2 year old XPS, I just plain replaced it with a 5 year old mac and had better performance and stability out of the box.
No company is perfect, but Apple does get consistently close. I'm glad they don't focus on the specs and focus on experience. Who really needs a 4k screen on a laptop?
Ok, this is more or less what I thought.
This does seem solvable, but also seems like the sort of thing the bean counters would cut early.
From what I recall, pre-Dell Alienware did a decent job at it.
I certainly didn't fancy a gaming laptop that's all compromises and no upsides just to play mindless AAA titles.
But the problem with the XPS is they jammed as much processing power as they could. It's great in theory having a Nvidea card as well as an i7, but it just can't handle both running at above half capacity.
I also tested an HP G2 Dock [1], because its dual-DP ports gave me more options, only to find that macOS can only use those two ports as Mirrored to each other.
Apparently [2], this is because the HP G2 implements its two DP ports as DP1.4 MST (Multi-Stream) on a single link, and in that mode macOS will only support a Mirrored configuration. It cannot (as of Big Sur 11.1) use them as separate displays.
I'm told you can also use the HP G2 with separate displays by plugging one monitor into one of its USB-C outputs, kind of like how I'm using the CalDigit TS3. I tried the one labeled USB-C (DP), and that stayed mirrored, but apparently I should've tried the Thunderbolt downstream port instead. I returned the dock before I knew or could try this.
All this to say, I'm disappointed by the mess of an ecosystem that Apple has built around Thunderbolt 3. But I can't say I'm surprised.
[1] https://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/hp-thunderbolt-dock-120w-g2
[2] https://medium.com/@sebvance/everything-you-need-to-know-abo...
[1] https://www.amazon.com/OWC-Thunderbolt-3-Dual-DisplayPort-Ad...
MST isn't necessarily great because over an HBR2 link it doesn't have the bandwidth for dual 4k60, and there's still a lot of stuff that doesn't support HBR3 links. And MST + hotplug is still a mess. So you're just trading for a different set of confusion.
Just my experience. Hope other haven’t had those issues.
I just started with this configuration two days ago, so we'll see. It's not completely glitch-free yet: I noticed the mouse (also plugged into the TS3+) glitched a bit yesterday, and once one of the monitors couldn't be detected from the XPS once and required reboot. XPS also shows a low-power charger warning in tray when plugged into it, which I wish I could disable but oh well. Still, it's worked way better than I'd expected so far with no hassle. Completely replaces my desktop setup and hot-swaps are generally seamless.
I haven't noticed any major CPU or power spikes. Fan isn't doing anything weird. But I'll look out for it.
If you like tiling window managers, you can get a very similar experience (in terms of using the whole screen and being able to flexibly throw things all over the place) with this kind of setup.
What you can't have is focus follows mouse, however. Moom gets me everything else I want.
You can buy 20 full-hd gaming screens for the same amont of money. Or 12 4K screens. And while they may not look as nice, they have a much better frequency. 60Hz feels laggy.
What _does_ "refresh" is the backlight in the sense that the brightness is controlled by PWM. However, there are many monitors that use PWM frequencies in the several hundred Hz range, or don't use PWM at all.
I do agree that a single monitor is more comfortable.
1440p monitor has like a fifth of the pixels a 6k monitor has.
- The parent-parent comment suggests that a single high resolution monitor is a good solution for people in general. I am suggesting that a 1440p monitor at 27-inch is a better choice than a 6k monitor, for people in general, taking cost into account.
- You could get five 1440p monitors for 1/6 the price of this 6k.
- As resolution increases you get diminishing returns.
- 1440p, 27-inch is a sweet spot, imo.
Your information is 2-3 years out of date.
In what way? If it's just discomfort using it for long periods of time, there's a 95% chance, you need to turn on the lights in your room or turn down your monitor brightness.
> Can you please recommend a VA panel that is good for text sharpness, too?
Some subpixel arrangements might require you to change the font smoothing (Windows ClearType), but any monitor with high pixel density will do, really. I'm not an expert on specific models so I won't recommend one.
I do not face the same eye fatigue after hours of sitting in front of a VA panel compared to sitting in front of an IPS one.
27" 1440p, IPS panel with wide viewing angles, 165 hz and FreeSync 2, DCI-P3 color gamut. RTINGS describes it as "excellent response time" and "outstanding low input lag."
https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/dell/s2721dgf
You get the typical IPS tradeoffs: it doesn't win any prizes for contrast, HDR, or black uniformity. I'm very happy with mine.
Also, installed an app to allow for more resolution flexibility and 120 hz “feels” so nice but at least my setup only supports 120 hz at max 4K iirc.
Not defending Apple, it's a pretty clear hardware failing.
27 inch 2K or 43 inch 4K are the sweet spots.
Here's how you can check if your monitor needs scaling:
- Find out the DPI of your existing monitor and your desired monitor. For example, 24" 1080p is 91.79, and 27" 4K is 163.18
- Calculate the ratio: 91.79/163.18 = 0.5625 (this means that on the 27" 4K monitor everything is 56% of the size of the 1080p)
- Now take a screenshot of your monitor (at 100% scaling) and resize it to 1920x1080*0.5625 = 1080x607. View the resized image at 100%. That text will be the same physical size as on a 4K 27" monitor set to 100%.
Without scaling, most people would find text too small on both 27" at 32". You would need a display as big as 40" to get the same density as 1440p on 27" (~110 DPI). For most people, 27" requires 150% scaling and 32" requires 125%.
Also, your DPI calculation are Windows and Linux specific - they assumed 96 dpi at @1X scale. Mac started with 72 dpi for @1X, so @2X is 144dpi. 27" 4K is slightly above that, thus perfectly usable at @2X scale. For Windows and Linux, it is better to use 150-175%.
Thanks for catching that. The rest of the comment still remains.
27" 2K is gross. Compared to 4K, it looks so pixelated that I feel like I'm back in the 90s. 27" 4K at native resolution is far too small for me to read, but it looks great at 150% scaling, or even 200% for some things.
The problem is once you start scaling up you're losing real estate. 4k at 200% scaling gives you same real estate as 1080p. Sure the picture will look better but you're not gaining any improvements in being able to open and see more things at once. That and some apps can't handle scaling properly.
Personally I find 25" 1440p at native scaling to be a good balance of real estate, sharpness and ease of reading anything comfortably (even low contrast status bars).
With that set up you can open 4x 80 char side by side code windows in Vim, VSCode, etc.. You can also grab a really good 25" 1440p IPS panel monitor for around $300. I wrote a huge guide on picking monitors for developers at https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-pick-a-good-monitor-fo....
Depending on what you're doing, that might be exactly what you want. I use my 27" 4k display to read PDFs zoomed in to fit two pages side-by-side onscreen. That way, the clarity of the rendering is good enough to be an alternative to print.
I agree 100% about the real estate issue. Physically larger monitors with equivalent real-estate don't make much sense for me personally.
I wish there were more 27" screens available since 25" looks too small to me and 32" requires some neck movement which I don't like.
I would love a 5K 27" screen at a reasonable price. :(
It does, but is hidden behind dconf key; except maybe Ubuntu 20.10. It works nice for Wayland applications, but X11 ones are blurred (as in upscaled from @1X). X11 includes Chrome and all the Electron apps, so I it would not be a popular choice... hence it is hidden by default.
If you want to try it, it is `gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['scale-monitor-framebuffer']"`
I don't know, that sounds a little embellished at first read. Either you sit way closer than ergonomic norms or you have irregular vision.
Should you be able to notice a difference? Yeah that's plausible. To see pixelation at 1440p doesn't sound right however. Claiming it is like the 90s borders on absurd.
My next monitor probably will be 40" 4K but sitting a bit further away.
I've got a hacked version of rectangle.app giving me 3x2 tiled windows. Some stuff will be in 6ths, some will be in full height 3rds. And occasionally, I'll get a spreadsheet that needs full screen.
Web browsers tend to run at normal res, terminal and emacs are using Anonymous Pro 14pt. At that size, terminal is 157x122 when running in a full height third. Works pretty well for my aging eyes.
I switched from a larger monitor to a smaller one with the same resolution and not having to turn my neck any more was rather pleasant.
The big advantage over an ultrawide for me is that I have a lot of vertical space, which is great for code. It's basically 4x 1080p displays in a 2x2 grid.
I love it. Particularly excellent for photo editing (it's so huge I have to zoom out sometimes) and programming. There is a slight visual oddity on the very outside 1/2px caused by the viewing angle of the pixels out there, which I think they'd only solve by curving it - personally I only even noticed it because a reviewer mentioned it. I also wish all the HDMI ports were 60Hz (2 are, 2 are 30Hz) but that's just a nitpick.
I play games on it too and it's generally very enjoyable. It has un-advertised FreeSync support, interestingly, which I find works well with my AMD card under Linux, but it does have a very limited range of like 60-70 I think. There's a different setting on my Linux drivers whose name I can't remember that basically means as long as you're over 60FPS you'll never see any screen tearing, which I can attest works for me with it.
The stand is very solid, and the speakers are decent too. I love that it comes with a remote for operating it. It's so much better than using the nubbin under the display.
The input splitting modes are really quite good, surprisingly. Being able to display 4 inputs in a 2x2 grid is awesome, although I use a tiling window manager so I don't really use it much. If you were feeling particularly adventurous you could attach 4 inputs from a single machine and it'll recognise it as 4 separate displays :D
Having a curved ultra wide display is much better than 2 smaller displays. I can put my main windows right in the middle of my field of view, and put my reference windows off to the side.
For the games with HUDs stuck to the sides, I just turn down the horizontal resolution and have black bars on the left and right. But for games like FS2020, using the full display makes the game that much better.
Now if only macOS notifications for important meetings weren't in the top-right corner...
I use Moom to create three screen regions (there's an undocumented command-line switch to allow a 36-based zone, which I broke up 11-13-11), and it resets everything when I plug in or out. I do have to juke the text magnification for that, which I have on macro keys on my Ergodox.
Now if only I could get focus-follows-mouse, everything would be perfect... I've only been complaining about that for fifteen years though, so I'm sure it'll happen one of these days.
These wide monitors are really not very good for watching logs, or other status displays. Rotating a second monitor and dedicating it to showing lots of logs or several rectangular monitoring screens tiled vertically hugely reduced the amount of window management I had to do.
In fact I kind of wonder why all my monitors are horizontal again. Probably because horizontal works better for personal computing, or I have my monitors arranged wrong, or both.
Even now, my laptop defaults my 4k display to 1080p Retina mode. So I get 5 more lines of terminal on my old display, but the text is not as easy to read. I get the same number of lines on the new display if I go down one font point, and it's still more legible. But I'd really love to be able to scroll logs in an 180x160 terminal window, instead of 200x75.
1. The Mac mini form factor officially supports two external displays. One must be DP/TB3, the other must be HDMI. However, I would argue that the Mac mini is the least enticing form factor in the new line unless you have very specific requirements, and the need for two different protocols is both annoying and confusing.
2. Sidecar works just fine. This is my current solution of choice.
3. You can configure a Raspberry Pi to act as an AirPlay display. The software I attempted had a hardcoded resolution, and any attempt to change it failed.[0] You can see from that issue debugging is still a work in progress, but it's fairly tedious, and I haven't made much progress since my last reply--all of my attempts have failed to produce meaningful info. However, if you have a screen with a very common 16:9 resolution officially supported by lots of Apple devices, this will likely work quite well.
4. You can use an Apple TV as an AirPlay display target, provided your monitor is one of the supported 16:9 resolutions. 1920x1080 is a safe choice.
5. You can get an AirPlay-capable display. I haven't really looked into this, as it seems like a fairly limiting criterion. I suspect my options would be limited to projectors and overpriced TVs. I could be wrong--again, I haven't checked.
6. Some people have reported being able to get DisplayLink working.[1] I plan to try this, but I haven't gotten around to figuring out which of my adapters support DisplayLink. I'm hoping I'll be able to get this to work with the adapter plugged into my CalDigit TS3+ dock so I only need one cable.
Side note: despite the limitation, I got a CalDigit TS3+ just to dock my M1 MBA. My Intel-based MBP had four TB3 ports, which meant I could connect it to my dual-monitor KVM with three cables (2x DisplayPort + 1x USB) and still have one for power. However, even with only one DisplayPort cable, there still aren't enough ports on either the M1 MBP or M1 MBA. It works great, aside from the fact that I'm wasting a monitor.
[0]: https://github.com/FD-/RPiPlay/issues/138#issuecomment-74523...
It works, and it's the only option, but you won't like it.
Other than that I’m all set for M1. My 2018 MacBook Pro needs power 2-3 times a day no matter how much I try to weed apps. Something remotely strenuous happens fans take off.
Hopefully they fix it in the next iteration.
At best on the market there are hubs that give 1 extra type c input for power.
Daisy-chaining had to be supported. From the host point of view, a hub is barely any more complicated. Why was it optional?
If that's right, then even without mixed signals you could have a pure-thunderbolt hub, and you could have a device with several thunderbolt ports and several USB 3 ports. And it should be straightforward to combine them into dual-purpose ports. The rules for passing through alternate modes don't matter because you're not passing through, you're not a USB hub, you have your own USB root.
I guess the biggest benefit of USB 4 hub is that allows the hub to have more than 2 Thunderbolt ports (the upcoming OWC Thunderbolt hub has 1 upstream and 3 downstream) and no longer have to worry about unplugging a device breaking a chain (usability problem).
https://superuser.com/questions/1381139/why-cant-i-find-a-us...
You’ll notice pretty much all the “hubs” on Amazon just take a type C port and turn it into a bunch of old USB A ports and other non type C ports. At best it would replace the type C port it takes up with a power delivery only type c port.
I think OWC is about to release one that takes 1 thunderbolt and turns it into 3, but it’s large and seems to need external power.
What becomes important is if this constraint it carried forward into larger machines. I cannot believe the M series chips are constrained on how many ports they can support as that usually is all in the external chipset. The real issue I think people are looking at is memory expansion, will it always be what you buy it all you get or will there be user expansion available?
They added the touchbar to the 'low end' 13" MBP but it just happens to have better performance than the Intel 13" MBP because the Intel one hasn't been replaced yet - it's still the "low end" model.
The only one I'm missing is the Mini -- I'm not sure how many TB ports it had in the past or has now.
I've heard a lot of stories of people who bought them not expecting to replace a 15" MBP or even iMac with a MacBook Air. Then once the bits hit their shiny new CPU they went whole hog.
https://www.google.com/search?q=m1+usb+speed&oq=m1+usb+speed
Apple used to be one of the vendors, that bothered to put better wifi in their products than competitors; now they fell back to mediocre 2x2 that all the PC vendors use.
That said, I wouldn't necessarily expect the 16" MBP to have 3x3 either. Last time I checked, laptop oriented wifi6 3x3 chipsets didn't exist (though something may have shown up in the last few months)
Though you might have a point with 3x3 wifi6 chipsets, I didn't do any research whether there are any. Given the way the market went with wifi5 ones - with majority of vendors just using 2x2, this is something I should have expected.
I found some interesting Apple documentation on this: https://support.apple.com/en-hk/guide/deployment-reference-m...
When transferring tens of gigabytes over network, one definitely notices when the network speed is less than what it is supposed to be.
With my MBP the fans turn on when it does anything other than look at the 4K desktop.
Some of this conversation confuses me. Since the M1 MacBooks came out, all of a sudden people are talking like every MBP version prior is junk. Top-of-the-line MBP that can't run dual monitors? Where were these conversations about poor MBP performance 6 months ago?
FWIW, the last MBP I had was a 2015 i5, and I used a single 4k monitor and no had zero issues in regular usage.
The 15/16" MBP is certainly capable of supporting 4K displays without issue (posting from one now). Most likely some people have something screwed up in their setup and didn't realize it until they moved to another system.
With the new MacBook Air, they won't even know their setup is screwed up because there won't be any fan noise. It'll just slowly degrade over time.
Offhand, I've been blaming Electron and Docker for Mac/Windows, but maybe there's something more fundamentally wrong?
Also, I think the 16" MacBook Pro in particular was way, way, way overrated because people desperately wanted a story arc where Apple comes to its senses and builds great laptops again.
I found a whole bunch of YouTube videos of people using DisplayLink adapters such as various docks from Targus or smaller single adapters from StarTech (brands likely don't matter but this happens to what people are testing in these videos). They all show good results. Comments all say "DisplayLink is faking it and it's gross" but the people making these videos say "Sure, but it's not gross. It's working almost perfectly."
Anyone here have any experience or thoughts on this?
I'm not gaming or needing to do high level graphics or video editing on a 2nd or 3rd display. Just basic dev stuff and window management.
DisplayLink is definitely suboptimial, but it's the only option. There is noticable input lag (my guess is around 100ms) that makes mouse and keyboard input feel sluggish. Showing a moving image on the screen pegs the DisplayLink Manager process to 100% of one core while it's playing. DisplayLink does not currently support rotation on Big Sur, though it probably will in the future. However, the image itself is pixel-perfect, so it's fine for secondary apps like chat or monitoring.
But having to plug your computing device into a monitor and keyboard to do any work is just a downgrade from a laptop that always has a monitor and keyboard. It's a bizarre portability trade-off that's even less exciting as laptops become thinner, lighter, and more powerful.
I'm typing this comment on a phone connected to a standard monitor, running a desktop-like experience [0] and it's surprisingly usable!
Hardware - Samsung S8 (2017), generic USB-C to HDMI adapter, bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
When we upgraded monitors at work I took several of the old ones to see how many monitors I could connect. I got up to 5 I believe (with one being a new ultrawide). It was impossible to use them all productively. At best they could serve as live status for some Jenkins job. Two monitors are useful, but now you can just use one ultrawide (I like to use two cables since it makes Window management easier, but you can use software for that too). I like to have one extra in addition to an ultrawide, but it's often unused.
If the OS believes the ultrawide is actually two 4:3 monitors, you'll get one such snapping range right in the middle.
If you connect the monitor with one cable, the OS believes it's one single 21:9, but if you connect them with two cables, the OS believes it's two smaller monitors.
I don't know anyone with an ultrawide so I can't try this myself.
You could always take up trading:
https://library.tradingtechnologies.com/trade/ttd-managing-a...
> ... productively.
Oh well.
That's a big if. Mac OS X only supports AMD cards and AMD didn't provide a Radeon driver yet for the M1. It's not clear what is going on, we know the amdgpu driver works an arm64 just fine https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20404547 and that contains the most hairy bits namely starting the bastard so I can't see what the hold up can be.
I think it's because resolutions have gotten better. 2010 I was running one screen for editor, one screen for browser, and one screen for everything else.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210107044419/https://www.caldi...
It loaded in just over three minutes (yes minutes) for me, with these timings according to Firefox dev tools:
Request Timing
Blocked: 31.73 s
DNS Resolution: 1 ms
Connecting: 155 ms
TLS Setup: 31.57 s
Sending: 0 ms
Waiting: 2.43 min
Receiving: 107 ms
[0] WAVLINK USB C Laptop Universal Docking Station 5K (up to 5120x2880@60Hz) / Dual 4K Ultra HD video, 2x HDMI and DisplayPort, 6xUSB3.0, Gigabit Ethernet, Audio, Mic, Supports Windows, XP, Mac https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B082SR6GMB/
Since then I've also bought a TB one and it works flawlessly. The DL one sits on my desk at work as a glorified charger now.
From the article:
" It connects to a computer via a single Thunderbolt port, and can drive up to two dual 4K displays or a single 5K, 6K, or 8K display. " "
- Use a quality DisplayLink adapter that will give you an additional display over the USB bus. It's unsuitable for gaming or video, but it's perfectly suitable for coding, web browsing, and office work.
- Use the internal display while using a single external monitor. People seem to not understand this often.
too scared about the warehousing and the complexity to do it myself but its probably something I'd pay $5 a month for just for the peace of mind and freed up space.
Based on the history of display standards, you will be waiting a while.
Displayport was meant to be the magical works-for-everything standard... then the various versions of Displayport started showing up.
Because people want to use 4k@120hz+ or 5k+ displays. Which require more bandwidth
This lasted right up until multiple DP versions started showing up, and then it became transportable over Thunderbolt and then USB-C, but with the version of DP dependent on the chipsets on both sides, and... suddenly everything is terrible again.
USB-4/TB3 _may_ become the next "it fixes everything!" standard... until people want 8k screens.
Example (screenshot of half my screen):
I sit about 45 cm away. Quite comfortable. Loving the Dell 4K.
By the way, can I convert the MiniDisplayPort Thunderbolt port on an old MacBook Air into a USB 3.2 gen 2 host port to connect an M.2 NVMe enclosre?