DisplayLink contacted Apple to make it aware of the bugs, but there’s no word yet on when they might be fixed. We’ve e-mailed Apple ourselves, but we haven’t heard back yet.
There is also a separate performance problem in DisplayLink’s driver that can be fixed by DisplayLink itself. “The performance issue was due to the way our driver has to register with the OS for resources in 10.9 and will be a problem with v2.0 and 2.1 beta,” Roose told us. The stable DisplayLink 2.1 release, due out by Nov. 5, should reverse that performance decline.
As we noted earlier, the more severe problems described by DisplayLink must wait for a fix from Apple. (From what Roose told me, I think my choppy mouse movement is caused by the DisplayLink driver’s own troubles rather than Apple’s interface regressions.)
Another company that makes drivers, Plugable, identified similar problems and advised users of multiple monitors to hold off on upgrading to Mavericks.
A repeat from Mountain Lion
DisplayLink’s driver for Macs allows any Intel-based Mac to connect up to four monitors over USB. This isn’t the first time a new version of OS X has resulted in trouble for some users.
In the case of Mountain Lion, some of the DisplayLink bugs existed until OS X 10.8.5, which came out more than a year after the initial Mountain Lion release. DisplayLink’s support article for Mountain Lion shows that it can take a while to get everything right:
- Kernel panic when using Bluetooth devices. Fixed by Apple in 10.8.1.
- Screensaver may start running unexpectedly. Fixed by Apple in 10.8.2.
- Kernel Panic on USB 3.0 with DL-3000 devices. Fixed by Apple in 10.8.2.
- Safari browser crashing. Fixed by Apple in 10.8.2.
- The login screen is missing. Fixed by Apple in 10.8.3.
- Applications flickering on DisplayLink screens. Fixed by Apple in 10.8.3.
- Finder or other applications can crash or not able to launch. Fixed by Apple in 10.8.3.
- DisplayLink Audio not working on USB 3.0. Workaround is to use a USB 2.0 cable if audio is required. Fixed by Apple in 10.8.5.
Hopefully everything will get fixed a little quicker this time around.