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Comment by ak217 | Hacker News Reader

I don't know, the flipside is that Thunderbolt delivers genuinely cutting-edge interconnect capabilities. I can run two 4K60 displays and a dozen peripheral devices, and charge my laptop, all via a single cable off of my $100 Thunderbolt 3 dock. There is no other technology that comes close to this capability at this price point.

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At the same time, I have no idea if the cable I have is a thunderbolt or usb-c cable. There is no standard marking.

Thunderbolt cables generally have a lightning bolt mark, and are expensive and short and thick+inflexible. And because of that, you likely don't have any except for the one coming out of a thunderbolt dock or external GPU enclosure etc.

My apple cable I believe is thunderbolt but I'm not sure. It's white with no marking.

If there's no lightning bolt marking, it's just a charge & USB 2.0 cable, not thunderbolt. Genuine Apple Thunderbolt cables are marked, and the one you got with your MacBook for charging isn't one.

Does it have frayed rubber isolation around connectors and randomly along the cable? If yes, then it is a genuine Apple (tm) cable. If it has solid isolation ad looks good then it's probably a Chinese knockoff. :)

You either have a fake cable or a USB 2.0 charging cable

You might not know in advance which is a problem but it seems pretty trivial issue. Just test it and see if it works, if it doesn't return it and get a different one. Then repeat the process until you get the one you need.

Or you could look at the cable from the getgo and read a simple marking and not have to do this song and dance.

Your Thunderbolt cables don't have the lightening bolt logo on them? I didn't think it was a 'requirement' but every TB cable I've seen always has the thunderbolt icon.

Not my apple one.

Then it's either not genuine Apple or it's not Thunderbolt. This is what an Apple Thunderbolt cable looks like:

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD862LL/A/apple-thunderbo...

That's not a USB-C cable. The discussion is about USB-C cables capable of thunderbolt. Not the older, dedicated thunderbolt cables.

Correct link: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MQ4H2AM/A/thunderbolt-3-u...

Good catch - still has a lightning bolt on it though.

Which made me realize…a lightning bolt symbol could just as easily be interpreted by laymen as “charging only”!

What a mess…

So…. with a lightning bolt then.

The standard MacBook charger that comes with any Apple laptop is not thunderbolt.

do those screens need to be 'thunderbolt' as well? or can they just take a usb-c connection (but ... not be thunderbolt?)

I have a 2019 MBP 15". Every 'dock' I've looked at seemed to indicate that "you will see mirrored screens on multiple displays" - which is not what I'd want.

Perhaps all of this is because I'm 'only' using a 2 year old MBP, and this is somehow all Apple's fault?

Would love to know what specific $100 thunderbolt 3 dock you have. It seems to be a confusing mess of half-information whenever I go to shop for stuff.

> and this is somehow all Apple's fault?

Unfortunately yes. Apple (or MacOS specifically) doesn't support DisplayPort MST, which allows using multiple displays over a single DisplayPort connector. Since non-thunderbolt usb-c video is just DisplayPort, that means many usb-c docks with multiple display outputs don't work. Now why MacOS supports multiple video outputs over Thunderbolt and doesn't support MST is beyond me, but everything else does.

No, the displays don't need a Thunderbolt controller (and I do get 3 separate displays - mirroring would be pretty useless, I agree).

I use this dock: https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-Thinkpad-Thunderbolt-Dock-40AC...

After updating the dock to the latest firmware, I can run two 4k60 displays, although it requires a specific configuration: one display on one of the DisplayPort lanes, and one on an active USB-C to DisplayPort cable hooked up to the dock's unpowered Thunderbolt port.

I've done this setup multiple times with this dock model, and it has worked with every Thunderbolt 3 MBP I've used.

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