My $2.2k laptop can't drive two screens
notes.nokun.euThe reason why non-Pro-chip MacBooks can't drive three displays is very simple: Apple gives each display its own SRAM buffer to scan out from, separate from the main system RAM. The display controllers on Apple chips are literally larger than the CPU cores because of this.
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?
That isn't simple at all!
A) the device in question was provisioned by his employer, so it's not his laptop, ergo, the price is irrelevant. If he's not able to complete his work tasks on the device, then it's on him to communicate with his manager to procure a device that allows him to do so.
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'.
How does any of this detract from the absurdity that no MacBook Pro with the mainline M1/M2/M3 chips has been able to natively drive two external screens?
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.
You're just able to buy a MacBook Pro with a non-pro CPU. This capability is definitely primarily for market segmentation (the power drain isn't a realistic argument in this scenario, as the user will almost always have power available when plugged into a display)
>You're just able to buy a MacBook Pro with a non-pro CPU.
That doesn't strike you as misleading?
Nothing strikes me as misleading, because everything is misleading in today's world.
Counterpoint: driving two screens is something a $500 Windows laptop could easily do years ago so Apple offering a "pro" MBP that can't do this is a surprising choice especially when other MBP laptops have been able to do so in the past at similar price points. That this is because the "pro" laptop actually uses a mobile chip just means it's misleading advertising by using the established MBP brand to sell a completely different product.
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.
Absolutely agree with your first point. If this machine is such a detriment to OP's productivity, surely their time would be better spent communicating this with their IT/procurement team over making a public blog post.
The idea that you can't share an opinion on something unless you paid for it doesn't hold much water, for me.
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.
It’s an interesting question you’re making.
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.
It's not called a MacBook Standard Cohort though.
With tongue in cheek one could say it’s also not called Macbook 3D ;)
It's on Apple to not sell a substandard product with missing features, and it's on Apple fanboys to not buy them. Neither will realistically happen.
Nah. Apple tells you what you're getting for your money in plain old English in white and black. If you don't read it, that's on you.
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.
*stares at article*
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."
I mean, those are direct quotes from the current Apple.com website [1] under 'Tech Specs' about halfway down. The same information, in more wordy form is on the overview page (the default page for the MBP)
Correct
A better analogy would be American Airways deciding to make economy stand instead of sit. And then a bunch of brainwashed American Airways consoomers continuing to buy and support the company because they're really good at marketing.
What a stupid response. I imagine you were among those who flagged this post as well. "ergo the price is irrelevant" the price is relevant for other people considering purchasing macs. "then the onus is on him to have researched the device's full functionality prior to the spending any amount in any currency" god forbid he help others in their research. "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'." A subset maybe, but not a proper subset given nobody bar nobody reads every dot of fine print before every purchasing decision. What was the point of this comment?
The workaround that works very well for me: use DisplayLink. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38149233
This works perfect. Until you want to see Netflix or other DRM protected stuff.
So… perfect workaround for a work computer?
Depends on the work. The suggested solution may very well fall on its face with any media & entertainment work, which incidentally is one of the industries with the heaviest Mac usage.
Who can also buy more expensive model
Amusingly you can’t play some of our required LMS training through Displaylink
I don’t think it’s that Apple is so good but that the competition is so garbage that it makes anything halfway decent seem amazing.
The competition can run multiple displays. The competition has built in window tiling shortcuts. The competition has built in clipboard history. The competition doesn't open up your music player every time you connect your earbuds. The competition doesn't require carrying around HDMI and ethernet adapters everywhere you go.
Apple is garbage, Macbooks are garbage, Windows + WSL beats them for every development task and in general productivity.
Does any of the competition have a trackpad that compares to those on MacBooks?
I hate apple's huge trackpads and lack of buttons. Any competition that isn't trying to clone Apple is doing it better by not having Apple's trackpad.
So you actually enjoy a small trackpad with physical buttons?
Yes. Even, "Yes, of course".
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.
I'm not the person you replied to, but I enjoy a trackpoint. With buttons.
> The competition can run multiple displays.
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.
Yes surely any time they gimp a product it's because nobody needs the feature they removed. It's never just to save money because they know people will buy even if its inconvenient.
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.
> Yes surely any time they gimp a product it's because nobody needs the feature they removed.
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.
Yeah, that's going to come down to personal preference. I find using a Mac to be a much more productive / enjoyable experience, especially for creative work. There are apps to address all of those software issues (having to install noTunes is kind of annoying for sure). And I will say, I prefer my OS to _not_ jam ads and tracking down my throat.
But to each their own.
> especially for creative work
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).
> The competition can run multiple displays.
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.
With the USB-C Mac’s, the MagSafe adapter is wonderful. It’s been driving me toward adopting USB-C more and more. I selected my current eReader partly because of USB-C support.
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.
The "not as capable" Windows laptops still aren't gimped to only run one display.
If that is the most important feature for a laptop for you to have, then you should buy whatever “not as capable” machine suits your needs.
For me it’s like the least most important feature
I recently came across this fact of Apple's display limits after Vision Pro came out. I thought that it would be great for virtual desktop/productivity use, but sadly limited only to a Mac I don't have. I found that the amount of monitors able to be shown was limited to those supported by a mac, to support 2 displays, you needed a Pro, and for 3 a Max. Wait, what?
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).
Well, if there is another laptop that runs something suitable for development (Fedora is fine), has 10-12 hours of battery time, lightweight, and with a hi-DPI display... oh, there are none. Sorry. No manufacturer in the world ever could make it, for some reason.
Vote with your wallet
Apple gives you two weeks to return hardware with no questions asked.
A user can't be blamed too much for assuming a $2k+ laptop with Pro in the name supports multiple external displays. A 2013 MacBook Pro can drive two external displays. But the base M1 and M2 MacBook Pros can not. The base M3 apparently can with specific hookups and a specific connection procedure requiring you to close the MacBook's lid but can't use standard docks with DisplayPort MST like other laptops can.
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).
Meanwhile my Intel i5 Macbook Pro 13" from Early 2020 which was around 1.8K when bought new in 2020 CAN DO IT! So it has been better in the past!
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).
Is Gnome on Fedora as polished as he says, or is that just frustration talking?
I've been using MacOS for ~2 years, and GNOME in various forms for ~10 years. I'm even typing this comment from a Mac.
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 know your reply will be something along the lines of "shouldn't need to do this" but if you're constantly annoyed by the animations there's a terminal command to change the setting so they run very fast or not at all. I have a script to run after a fresh install of macos that speeds up the animations, fixes keyboard repeat, and a bunch of other tweaks to make it more to my liking.
My understanding was that required disabling MacOS's SIP... But a quick search shows me I was mistaken. I appreciate the reply, I'm going to go give it a try.
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.
An update, it seems very few of the recommendations floating around out there work :( The only thing it seems I can change is the dock appear/disappear speed.
There's several things I don't like about the Mac (Settings is now an umitigated disaster, for example), but it's IMHO the best of the bunch, with Windows some way behind, and Linux (anything running Linux) some significant way behind that.
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".
This is my impression as well.
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.
My main system is Proxmox and a Linux VM + GPU. Every couple of weeks I try out different distros. No problems here. Right now I'm on Bazzite (KDE 6) and evaluating if I replace SteamOS with Bazzite on the Steam Deck.
Is this expected? I’m able to drive a 2nd 4K screen no problem on my MacBook Air m2. It’s at the cost of some battery life though. Also my machine is fully specced out - 24g memory, 1tb hard disk.
I have the same laptop. I am able to run two monitors plus my internal screen without display link. The trick is to use ALT mode on one. This is dependent on at least one of the monitors supporting ALT mode.
Buy laptop stand. Put laptop screen next to external screen. Look, two screens!
Also you aren't frying the hardware by running it in clamshell mode (was a worse problem with earlier, warmer running hardware)
i hate windows and refuse to use it, but this is also the most annoying thing apple does outside not allowing real third party browser support in ios. it's 2024 and the robots are having human conversations with us and rockets are landing themselves. i think apple could make this work just fine if they wanted to
Honestly: * It’s not two, but three displays (title is wrong in the original post) * differences between chips are clearly explained in comparison page https://www.apple.com/it/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/14-m3
could not use the HDMI and USB-C port at the same time
the “base” M3 chip is essentially an overclocked iPad chip put into a computer, and it does not have two display controllers.