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$ pacman -Si god error: package 'god' was not foundTake that, theists!
Do you have multiple monitors?
Yes - Don’t buy a mac
No - Still don’t buy a macI mean, yeah, don’t ever buy a Mac, but what’s up with the multiple monitors? Do they struggle with it?
The base model chips only supports 2 monitors. The Pro, Max, and Ultra chips all support multiple monitors.
The base model chips only support 1 monitor.
Apple artificially limits the base model chips to only support 1 monitor FTFY
EDIT: revised statement based off my learning about frame-buffers below:
Apple intentionally builds base-level MacBooks without adequate frame-buffers to force users to buy upgraded and more expensive products.
They all support two monitors (one internal and one external for macbooks, and two external for desktops). It’s not an artificial restriction. Each additional monitor needs a framebuffer. That’s an actual circuit that needs to be present in the chip.
TIL, thanks! 🌝
I use a Plugable docking station with DisplayLink with a base-level M1 MacBook Air and it handles multiple (3x 1080p) displays perfectly. My (limited) understanding is that they do that just using a driver. So at a basic level, couldn’t Apple include driver support for multiple monitors natively, seeing as it has adequate bandwidth in practice?
Sigh. It’s not just a fricking driver. It’s an entire framebuffer you plug into a USB or Thunderbolt port. That’s why they are more expensive, and why they even need a driver.
A 1080p monitor has one quarter of the pixels of a 4K monitor. The necessary bandwidth increases with the pixels required. Apple chooses instead to use the bandwidth they have to support 2 5K and 6K monitors, instead of supporting say 8 or 10 1080p monitors. That’s a design decision that they probably thought made sense for the product they wanted to produce. Honestly I agree with them for the most part. Most people don’t run 8 monitors, very few have even 3, and those that do can just buy the higher end model or get an adapter like you did. If you are the kind of person to use 3 monitors you probably also want the extra performance.
Thank you for taking the time to reply, and for further sharing your expertise to our conversation! I understand different resolutions, that the docking station has its own chipset, and why the Plugable is more expensive than other docking stations as a result. I now have a more nuanced understanding of frame-buffers and how DisplayLink interfaces with an OS like MacOS.
Allow me to clarify the point I tried to make (and admittedly, I didn’t do a good job of expressing it previously). Rather than focusing on the technical specs, I had intended to have a more general conversation about design decisions and Apple’s philosophy. They know that consumers will want to hook up a base tier MacBook Air to two external displays, and intentionally chose not to build-in an additional frame-buffer to force users to spend more. I sincerely doubt there’s any cost-saving for the customer because Apple doesn’t include that out of the box.
Apple’s philosophy has always been that they know what’s best for their users. If a 2020 M1 MacBook Air supports both the internal 2K display and a single external 6K display, that suggests to me it should have the horsepower to drive two external 1080p displays (that’s just a feeling I have, not a known fact). And I’ll acknowledge that Apple has improved this limitation for the newer MBAs, which allow you to disable the built-in display and use two external displays.
My broader point is that Apple “knows what’s best” for their users: they want customers to buy an Apple display rather than to just stick with the 1080p LCDs they already own, because they’re not Retina®. Which do you honestly think is a more common use-case for a MacBook Air user: wanting to connect to two monitors (home office, University classroom system, numerous board room settings I’ve worked in, etc), or to connect their $1200 MBA to a $1600-$2300+ Studio Display? For that, anyone with an iota of common sense would be using a MBP etc since they’re likely a creative professional who would want the additional compute and graphics power for photo/video-editing, etc.
I don’t disagree with your explanation of the thought-process behind why Apple may have made this hardware decision for MBAs, but it is effectively an arbitrary, non cost-saving decision that will certainly impede customers who expect two displays to just work, since they can do that on their 10-year-old Toshiba Satellite or w/e.
Thanks, and have a great day
I have a Mac with multiple monitors. It handles them a hell of a lot better than my PC at work.
I know it’s a joke, I hate to be that guy. But this meme feels old and obsolete now. I can’t remember the last time I had to tweak my Linux. The fun is gone
Cool! Maybe I can challenge you. Can you help me figure out how I can get my Hyprland session back on my Arch install? I have a Radeon 7700 XT and I recently installed an RTX 4070 to assist with some compute tasks. With both cards installed GDM doesn’t populate the Hyprland option. If I remove the 4070 everything goes back to normal.
(This is also a joke, you don’t need to help me troubleshoot this.)
(Unless you actually know how in which case I can pay you $20 for your time)
Hyprland session
Wayland compositor
RTX 4070
Nvidia GPU.
For real. I recently had to swap my window manager to xmonad just to feel something again.
