My $2.2k laptop can't drive two screens
notes.nokun.eu
notes.nokun.eu
The reason why they do this is because it lets them run system RAM at lower power or suspend it entirely without affecting the displays. Which saves a good chunk of power - AFAIK after Asahi added support for the display coprocessor firmware (which implements this trick) they got a few extra hours of battery life.
My main complaint is that you can't turn off the primary laptop display to get an extra external display back. That's probably why most people need >2 display controllers in their laptops. Though AFAIK this may have been fixed in the M3?
B) if the device was purchased by him, then the onus is on him to have researched the device's full functionality prior to the spending any amount in any currency.
C) "What Apple is doing is trying to squeeze even more profit out of all users who didn’t read the fine print."
Sounds a bit to me like the author of this blog is feeling a little guilty and self conscious about being apart of this subset of 'non-fine-print-readers'.
Being able to use two external screens is practically an expectation of any laptop at this point. I can understand the OP's point that this is ridiculous.
That doesn't strike you as misleading?
You should generally assume your customer is an idiot and while it is legal to take advantage of customers being idiots, it's still deliberately abusive and not something Apple is known for doing given its reputation.
His criticism is valid: this is not a product matching what customers are used to from the MBP product line and it's even labelled as "pro" suggesting more capabilities not fewer (though of course this is technically correct relative to the non-pro version of the same model). He doesn't feel "a little guilty and self conscious", he feels scammed and taken advantage of. Was it a scam? I don't think so, but it was (deliberately or unintentionally) misleading advertising.
Sure, he can bug the IT department for a different one.
Is he allowed to write about it if he got it as a gift? 20% off open box?
TFA lays out a ton of reasons why this is a particular problem beyond personal griping, ex. the cheaper MBA has a workaround that was promised to also land for the MacBook Pro, months ago, and it still hasn't.
If I’d got a 85” TV as a gift, should I complain about the fact it has 2 HDMIs instead of 6 I require? Such TVs are usually expensive so I could argue it should have 6 ports but then there’s some kind of compromise design is making.
I’d argue that having 2+ external monitors is not a standard cohort of users, and I’d check support before buying (in fact, numer of HDMI ports is one of the main parameter I check in TV contest). Yes, it doesn’t support that, it’s not a secret though.
Should it support? I, personally don’t care. Some people care. For those who care it’s design flaw, for those who don’t it’s not.
M3 Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at 1 billion colors and: One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz
M3 Pro Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at 1 billion colors and: Up to two external displays with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt, or one external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt and one external display with up to 4K resolution at 144Hz over HDMI One external display supported at 8K resolution at 60Hz or one external display at 4K resolution at 240Hz over HDMI
M3 Max Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at 1 billion colors and: Up to four external displays: Up to three external displays with 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt and one external display with up to 4K resolution at 144Hz over HDMI Up to three external displays: Up to two external displays with 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt and one external display with up to 8K resolution at 60Hz or one external display with 4K resolution at 240Hz over HDMI
See also: American Airways absolutely refused to fly me first class when I only bought a cattle-class ticket. No, I didn't read any of the fine-print, but my ticket cost a load of money. American Airways need to fix their substandard product.
I think Apple may have said something else.
*clicks "promised months ago"*
"Apple has confirmed to 9to5Mac that a software update for the 14-inch MacBook Pro will gain the ability to drive two external displays with the lid closed. The feature will work identically to how it works with the new M3 MacBook Air."
Apple is garbage, Macbooks are garbage, Windows + WSL beats them for every development task and in general productivity.
I enjoy being able to feel where the button is and is not without looking or guessing. It's such a huge thing that it's worth putting tape on my Framework touch pad just to make a tactile demarkation to seperate the left button area from the right button area from the I-wish-this-were-not-a-button area, and also make the button area no longer sensitive so it doesn't move the pointer or register 2 fingers when one is on the tape. (actually I mostly just never use that garbage Apple-wannabe touch pad when I can possibly avoid it)
I enjoy unambiguous clicking only when I intended and never when I didn't.
I enjoy being able to rest my palm and thumb on the table and front of the machine without either unintended clicks or unintended pointer movement.
I enjoy only having to move my finger a small distance instead of my whole hand and wrist, or even my entire arm.
I enjoy unambiguous and immediate single motion drag-while-click more than error-prone and multi-step tapping gestures.
Replacing buttons with gestures was never a usability upgrade, it was a cost and appearance (for certain pathological extremes of appearance) upgrade to replace hardware with software. All the added flexibility that software allows over hardware is still available with or without the buttons so that is not a gain.
That’s a fair point, but also a narrow need. If that’s your need, then absolutely, look elsewhere. But the reason that it isn’t a major problem for Apple is that it isn’t a very common need—the laptop’s screen plus one external display is probably what the vast majority of people—even pros—need.
Every single person at my large software company uses at least 2 displays + laptop, that's the standard setup. It's just objectively better for productivity to be able to look at multiple things at once without having to cram them into a single monitor.
Terminal, Slack, IDE, and browser each deserve their own monitor ideally. Personally, 2x vertical monitors side by side is a nice to have for programming so one can be for IDE and the other for reading docs/articles.
You're tilting at windmills here—nobody claims that nobody needs it. Just that it's an engineering trade off, of who needs it.
> Every single person at my large software company uses at least 2 displays + laptop, that's the standard setup.
That's pretty cool. The standard for my medium software company is... not that.
> It's just objectively better for productivity to be able to look at multiple things at once without having to cram them into a single monitor.
I agree with you there. I'm pretty happy with 2 screens—and getting an extra wide monitor for my second screen was also a step up in a lot of ways.
But to each their own.
There you go. That has always been their strong point, everything else is secondary, including their own development tools. MacOS Developers have to hoop through multiple hoops periodically, and some will tell you they're very intuitive hoops but you're using them wrong(TM).
So can quite a few Mac models on the Apple website. Pretty sure that “the competition” has a model or two in its product line up that is not as powerful or capable as another model it sells.
As for all of those other things you said…I have tiling shortcuts on my Mac via a lovely little program called rectangle that does so much more than Windows ever could. I have literally never ever wanted or needed a clipboard history but there are plenty in the App Store if I did. My Mac doesn’t open up my music player when I connect my earbuds (took about 15 seconds to disable that in settings)…and fun fact, my earbuds move between my iPad, Mac, and iPhone pretty much seamlessly which is really nice. I do carry a decent USB-c hub that weighs about 2 oz, so your right about that…but the power adapter that I use that can charge my Mac, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, and earbud case weighs about a tenth of what my wife’s Windows laptop power brick weighs and fits in my pants pocket, so I don’t mind that extra 2oz in my bag.
But hey, you buy the machine you want for the reason you want.
Going in, I bought an Apple silicon Mac that supports multiple displays because I knew I’d want/need that. Wasn’t an issue. I spent less than $2,000 on it.
I’d also add to this that I have not yet found anything that can’t be done on macOS via native CLI, Homebrew (or analogues), or in containers, that can be done in WSL. Nothing that isn’t Windows-specific anyway.
I have never had macOS open Music when connecting earbuds. Some devices yes, which I tend to disable, but not my earbuds. I have a pair of Powerbeats Pro.
For me it’s like the least most important feature
As someone that has been using 3-6 displays for the past 20 years, I really don't get how or why this is hard for Apple to figure out. They're the only ones that haven't.
While Apple can't figure out how to show more than physical supported displays virtually, 3rd party Vision apps such as Immersed have, making proper apps that can render I think up to 5 displays. Over wifi or even usb-c, it'll never be as good as DisplayPort or other hard-line connection, so compromise is necessary regardless. It is "good enough" for these others like Immersed, and far better than anything Apple is giving.
The only company I hate more than Apple is Meta, but I'll probably buy a $500 Meta Quest 3 + my already suitable PC before I ever do Vision Pro + Mac for some $10k, and get far more functionality (and available apps).
And I say this as someone who bought and uses a used M1 MacBook Air and knew about the display limitation when I purchased it (and almost went with a used Mac Mini instead due to that limitation).
Apple downsized in regards to multi-monitor support so that you were forced to buy an M1...M3 Pro CPU which costs substantially more for only being able to drive more than one monitor.
A shame that they did not fix the clamshell mode on the basic M3 Macbook Pro yet.
Hopefully Apple wakes up with Qualcomm X Elite chips soon flooding the Windows laptop market (and they can all drive at least 3 external monitors).
For me, the biggest thing is that MacOS has lengthy sigmoidal animations, and no ability to move windows between desktops ("spaces") with a keyboard shortcut.
Those animations are a source of constant friction, and the limited multi-desktop functionality makes single and dual monitor setups very frustrating.
GNOME has neither of these problems, so for these two issues alone, I think it far outshines MacOS's desktop environment.
I'm sure familiarity has a lot to do with it, and I'd argue KDE and Pop! OS's custom GNOME are more polished than base GNOME, but I wouldn't attribute OP's statement to frustration.
I don't mind needing to disable the animations, I know it's a useful UI language that most people appreciate. Even on GNOME, Android, Windows, etc. they are on by default.
Every now and then I'll fire up a VM and install Linux. Try some stuff, and think "nope, still not the year of the desktop on Linux".
MacOS being far from ideal for a power user but sadly the best of a bad bunch.
My current solution is to use the Mac as a thin client as much as possible.
Also you aren't frying the hardware by running it in clamshell mode (was a worse problem with earlier, warmer running hardware)
the “base” M3 chip is essentially an overclocked iPad chip put into a computer, and it does not have two display controllers.