Perhaps more to the point, you're right -- Apple doesn't deserve to be lauded for removing something that was a dumb restriction in the first place. But it is interesting considering this is the most popular laptop in the world.
Restriction implies they made the deliberate decision to withhold or break functionally. Limitation is probably more accurate, because they didn't put the extra work to make it work properly.
Limitation is probably more accurate
I don't think there is anything interesting
From a consumer standpoint? Apple sells about six million Macs per year and the Air is their best-selling computer and anecdotally it is popular with the HN crowd. So it is objectively impactful. I would call that therefore "interesting" but at that point we're splitting semantic hairs so whatever.
Comparing the port count/capabilities of the two isn't a fully fair comparison though. The Apple Silicon Macbook Air models are likely 1) much faster than that corporate-issued laptop (even if it's workstation class), and 2) much smaller and quieter (no fan noise even under load).
Though I'm not sure why all the griping about how many monitors an Air can support; users can buy a Macbook Pro if they want more monitors? I don't understand the logic behind buying a tiny, thin laptop only to dock it as a workstation.
as if $500 isn't money to you. Maybe it indeed isn't, but that is a lot of money to many people.
FYI Intel Macbook Air has supported dual external monitors 2018-2020, and same for base Macbook Pro 2012 (Retina) - 2020.
The restriction I am most annoyed with these days is the lack of external GPU passthrough. I’m not even sure the asahi Linux folks have gotten that working yet.
So folks are probably just happy they’re not having to deal with as many compromises and tradeoffs (they get to have their PC that works almost just like a smartphone but does more things their intel machine could now). That’s totally understandable.
Ah, yes, "poor Apple couldn't find a way".
Except it did for the more pricey models.
Nonsense, Celeron 600, 1c/1t CPU from 25 years ago could drive multiple monitors just fine.
> more gpus
Nonsense, you just need more VRAM and guess what? DVMT was a thing 15 years ago.
> and more IO hardware on chip.
If you can use the external monitor with the either USB port then you have all the IO needed. Nonsense.
You needed an agp video card of some kind. You're making a false comparison. Once again they clearly made tradeoffs to get the best balance for product experience, cost, and their own supply chain considerations (for entry level laptops, tablets, phones).
You needed a video card of some kind. You can stick multiple PCI cards in one PC just fine, alongside one AGP card. And this is the time when the usual gaming video card had a whooping 32-64Mb of RAM. There is absolutely no reason a computer can be limited in amount of displays it can drive. And if 20+ y/o PCs could drive multiple monitors there is no reason the top notch tech company couldn't do that.
> You're making a false comparison
No, you are just trying to justify the greedy corporation habits.
> Once again they clearly made tradeoffs
No, they segmented their products and their fanbois are not only drunk their koolaid but eagerly defend it too.
You're really showing off your ignorance here, and you're assuming a lot around my defending of greed etc. My view's on Apple's pricing are pretty irrelevant here, and I have nothing to say for or against them because I frankly don't care and don't know the logistics behind them.
All the times I've worked on projects that involve shipping an operating system, hardware, etc I've found that there are a lot of tradeoffs especially when you're doing something a little bit different. This is the case with M# silicon and also the case with Windows on Snapdragon systems.
They aren't starting with expandable hardware built for running desktop PCs, they (apple, Qualcomm) are starting with highly integrated SoCs that have some really narrow goals around power and battery life. Their systems are more designed for running phones and tablets than for entry level laptops.
> No, they segmented their products and their fanbois are not only drunk their koolaid but eagerly defend it too.
Don't like it? Don't buy one. But fact is, their more narrow model for how a PC can be built is selling really well and very few regular people miss their second monitor because of it.
Ah, yes, Mr. Highhorse.
> This is the case with M# silicon
Except there are two Thunderbolt/USB4 ports on M2 Macs which can drive 40Gbit of data and supports DP2.0 Alt Mode.
There is no limitation on what port you should use for external display, each one would work.
Which means that the hardware is fully capable of running whatever amount of the external displas you want.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/109523
> Don't buy one
Yes, but don't sell me "Apple M* is da best" shit, okay?
> and very few regular people miss their second monitor because of it
Ah, yes, lack of a second monitor is freedom. Koolaid in it's finest.
Here’s a good rundown of display controller blocks from marcan: https://www.reddit.com/r/AsahiLinux/comments/w32hjn/comment/...
I’d take marcan’s word over yours if I have to be completely frank.
> Yes, but don't sell me "Apple M* is da best" shit, okay?
I never did, once again you’re assuming a lot. I originally chimed in to mention that people like these machines and others (like the newer windows on snapdragon systems) because they strike a good balance between mobile phone and desktop systems.
> Ah, yes, lack of a second monitor is freedom. Koolaid in it's finest.
Once again you’re assuming a lot. What straw-man are you trying to beat up here?
>> DisplayLink of course works, but it's an ugly virtual screen thing using compressed data over USB3, not a true directly connected external display.
From marcan himself. So yes, they just didn't want.
> I never did
>> get the best balance for product experience
> Once again you’re assuming a lot
Let me remind you of your words, because looks like your forgot what you wrote:
>> their more narrow model for how a PC can be built is selling really well and very few regular people miss their second monitor because of it.
They’re not going to ship that, knowing their engineering team they’d probably consider it a huge hack. They probably also have considered how proficiently their gpu can drive two versus 3+ 6K studio displays under varying circumstances.
It’s actually probably possible to get this going on asahi via usb a display link. Good thing no ones forcing anyone to run macOS on this hardware.
> Let me remind you of your words, because looks like your forgot what you wrote:
There’s nothing controversial in what I wrote. They clearly have grown Mac marketshare by building computers using their more restrictive phone hardware.
That’s not my opinion, that can actually be measured from the increase in web traffic from WebKit.
And I have certainly not talked about any other platform, which usually uses multi-chip approaches.
The M3 MacBook Air relaxes this restriction by allowing two external displays.
The addition is the ability to have two external when closed; likely this could have mainly been done in software if they cared.
(You can get more than one external on a laptop with the screen open if you go up to the Max or Pro or whatever.)
It's easy to deduce that it's a big deal for macbook air users because it wasn't possible before.
It's easy to deduce both from the article and from other comments here, which presumably you read if you're going through the trouble of responding to someone else's comment.
I typically despise this type of question, where you're obviously trying to make a point but playing dumb and playing it off as if you have no clue what you're talking about.
This type of question is used all over the place and super obnoxious.
I'm not American, genuine question, why is it a big deal that you're getting free healthcare? I've had free healthcare my whole life, shrug.
As a European, genuine question. Why is it a big deal that Biden wants to forgive student loan? I've gotten free education my whole life, shrug.
As an apple user, why is it a big deal that Dell is extending it's warranty to 2 years? My apple device gets updates 4 years later, shrug.
Just for clarity, it's so far from novel in the world of windows laptops that it's genuinely confusing why that would be an advertised feature.
I must have struck a nerve with you after my objection to the format of the question.
My only mistake here was not saying those were oversimplified made up examples, thought it was obvious but apparently not.