I regret getting a Mac

[iHorseHead]

I wish you and others would stop all this noise about Apple's specs. It doesn't contribute anything and it's irrelevant to the OP's problem

Thank you. There was one very helpful person here who helped me get it fixed. You see the issue might have been the pram. You need to shut down your Mac for a longer period of time ( at least 5 minutes as I read) and then it resets it.
That has seemed to fix it and everything seems to be working normally again.
I can connect several displays and use all of the USB devices.

It looks like as of right now, you need to install a beta version of the DisplayLink driver package to have support for Monterey at all, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are issues anyways.

I did that as well. My issue is resolved now. I hope it won't persists any longer and my Mac the way I'd like to for awhile at least.

Thank you so much for being such an amazing person and so understanding. You are really nice and such an amazing person. I wish you all the best!

I'll copy paste what you've written to my notes as it is one of the things I could try in the future if I'll have this issue again. ( I hope I won't, but better safe than sorry).

 

[usagora]

There's no limit being pushed. All you people cluttering up this thread with this nonsense should just stop, you don't know what you're talking about.

Sure there is. Apple says the machine supports only ONE external display. That's a limit. If you attempt to connect more than one external display, you are therefore pushing the limit by definition. That's not "nonsense"; that's facts. The issue people are having is the OP is trying to blame Apple for their woes instead of the third party who has devised a means to go beyond the machine's specs. That's backwards.

 

[iHorseHead]

Sure there is. Apple says the machine supports only ONE external display. That's a limit. If you attempt to connect more than one external display, you are therefore pushing the limit by definition. That's not "nonsense"; that's facts. The issue people are having is the OP is trying to blame Apple for their woes instead of the third party who has devised a means to go beyond the machine's specs.

Excuse me sir, how difficult it is to understand that the issue still persisted with one display? How difficult? Tell me how difficult?
Do I have to write this in bold? Let me try:

NONE OF THE USB DEVICES WERE WORKING EVEN WHEN THERE WAS ONLY ONE DISPLAY OR NO DISPLAYS CONNECTED. I CONNECTED IT TO WINDOWS PC AND IT IMMEDIATELY WORKED. ON A MAC EVEN MY LAVA LAMP DIDN'T WORK NOR MY HEADPHONES CHARGED.

THE ISSUE IS RESOLVED NOW. I DON'T KNOW WHY IT WORKS, BUT IT DOES NOW AND I BELIEVE ONE USER'S THEORY THAT M1 MACS RESET PRAM AUTOMATICALLY WHEN THEY'VE BEEN SHUT DOWN FOR AWHILE.

This thread has turned people mad. My dear lord, I just wanted some help and I posted this question before but only got one response, which was "This is a well known issue with macOS 12" and I had unbelievably awful day yesterday and I've been dealing with so much stress lately and I'm honestly exhausted. Of course I wanted my docking station to work again on macOS, because it did before. I tried USB Hubs and those didn't work either. Displays work fine and yes, even one display works fine but no USB devices were working at all, but they worked on Windows PC. I went to purchase cheap USB Hubs to test it out and saw that GreenCell USB Hubs are pretty cheap, so I could just test this out.
Display worked, USB devices didn't and I was so excited for macOS 12.1 thinking it'll fix my issue, but it didn't.

I read this: macOS Monterey Users Report Connectivity Issues With USB Hubs , soo…Right? Makes sense? I started facing issues after upgrading, so I thought it was the OS.

Now everything works normally and I don't know why it works.

My dear lord… This thread has turned into a complete war zone.

 

[usagora]

Excuse me sir, how difficult it is to understand that the issue still persisted with one display? How difficult? Tell me how difficult?
Do I have to write this in bold? Let me try:

NONE OF THE USB DEVICES WERE WORKING EVEN WHEN THERE WAS ONLY ONE DISPLAY OR NO DISPLAYS CONNECTED. I CONNECTED IT TO WINDOWS PC AND IT IMMEDIATELY WORKED. ON A MAC EVEN MY LAVA LAMP DIDN'T WORK NOR MY HEADPHONES CHARGED.

THE ISSUE IS RESOLVED NOW. I DON'T KNOW WHY IT WORKS, BUT IT DOES NOW AND I BELIEVE ONE USER'S THEORY THAT M1 MACS RESET PRAM AUTOMATICALLY WHEN THEY'VE BEEN SHUT DOWN FOR AWHILE.

I wasn't replying to you, and you need to calm down. If your issue is resolved, then why are you so upset? Just go on with your life. I'm talking to someone else about a specific point. And you did indeed blame Apple instead of the dock manufacturer - at least in the beginning (maybe you've change your tune since?). Third party device manufacturers need to ensure their products work with specific operating systems, which requires consistent updates and testing.

 

[iHorseHead]

I wasn't replying to you, and you need to calm down. If your issue is resolved, then why are you so upset? Just go on with your life. I'm talking to someone else about a specific point. And you did indeed blame Apple instead of the dock manufacturer - at least in the beginning (maybe you've change your tune since?). Third party device manufacturers need to ensure their products work with specific operating systems, which requires consistent updates and testing.

But you were talking about me. So why I shouldn't be upset?
Why the heck would I blame the dock manufacturer when it works on everything else? WHY WOULD I BLAME THE DOCK MANUFACTURER WHEN NONE OF THE USB HUBS WORKED?!??! WHY?!
WHY WOULD I BLAME DELL IF THERE ARE NEWS LIKE THIS OUT THERE: macOS Monterey Users Report Connectivity Issues With USB Hubs

 

[usagora]

But you were talking about me. So why I shouldn't be upset?

Because what I said about you was true. The fact that the same docks that didn't work on macOS 12 worked on Windows is irrelevant. Those dock manufacturers failed to ensure compatibility with macOS 12.

Since you seem so heated about this and your problem is solved anyway, I will leave this conversation at that to avoid further drama. Bye.

 

[throAU]

Whenever I can, I wait for 3 "dot-releases" of a new version of MacOS or about 4-6 months after release; this is generally enough time to fix the unintended negative side-effects of a new release.

Probably sensible.

I don't but I know I'm running the gauntlet and will revert if I have to (I like living on the edge, used to run developer betas).

If you're using the machine to make money and need apps prone to compatibility problems (i.e., anything not in use by like, 95% of the population) it likely pays to wait and let others deal with the fall out.

 

[throAU]

WHY WOULD I BLAME DELL IF THERE ARE NEWS LIKE THIS OUT THERE: macOS Monterey Users Report Connectivity Issues With USB Hubs

Because Apple neither supplied nor provides support for the hub?

 

[iHorseHead]

Probably sensible.

I don't but I know I'm running the gauntlet and will revert if I have to (I like living on the edge, used to run developer betas).

If you're using the machine to make money and need apps prone to compatibility problems (i.e., anything not in use by like, 95% of the population) it likely pays to wait and let others deal with the fall out.

Yeah, I should have done the same and it's a lesson learned for me. With PCs I'm not upgrading to Windows 11 yet and I don't know any companies that are upgrading to Windows 11 just yet. It's probably the same with macOS.

 

[iHorseHead]

Because Apple neither supplied nor provides support for the hub?

Remember when people were laughing at Vista because their old printers etc didn't work? Have you been on "Alternatives to Mac" section of this forum? If everything is always Microsoft's fault then how come this cant be Apple's fault? macOS12 is what screwed things up for many people as what I've read. But for real, my issue is resolved. I don't know why it works now and maybe it's better not to question it.
Let's not argue. For real. There's no point of arguing. I am so tired of it and I am exhausted in general. I've got enough problems in real life. Let's just not argue anymore. This forum is pretty much all I've got and I love the community. We've already argued about this and to be honest, I think this was the first time ever I've had difficulties with replying to people that I wanted to reply to. I even forgot the username of the user that actually bothered to help me (there were several of them, so thank you very much). The issue has been resolved.

 

[Ethosik]

Yeah, I should have done the same and it's a lesson learned for me. With PCs I'm not upgrading to Windows 11 yet and I don't know any companies that are upgrading to Windows 11 just yet. It's probably the same with macOS.

In corporate IT, it is not uncommon for updates to arrive very slowly for this specific reason. I used to be in charge of test benches and we would sometimes delay the monthly Windows Update for an extra few months while we tested things out. Just recently, I know several businesses that just moved passed Windows 10 1809. That is a September 2018 build of Windows 10. Three years later they updated passed it to a more recent version, but still not the latest as more testing needs to be done.

If you use your system for business, always hold off on major updates specifically.

 

[Bandaman]

Remember when people were laughing at Vista because their old printers etc didn't work? Have you been on "Alternatives to Mac" section of this forum? If everything is always Microsoft's fault then how come this cant be Apple's fault? macOS12 is what screwed things up for many people as what I've read. But for real, my issue is resolved. I don't know why it works now and maybe it's better not to question it.
Let's not argue. For real. There's no point of arguing. I am so tired of it and I am exhausted in general. I've got enough problems in real life. Let's just not argue anymore. This forum is pretty much all I've got and I love the community. We've already argued about this and to be honest, I think this was the first time ever I've had difficulties with replying to people that I wanted to reply to. I even forgot the username of the user that actually bothered to help me (there were several of them, so thank you very much). The issue has been resolved.

None of that is Microsoft's fault either. Third party companies not updating their firmware or drivers for an updated OS is never the fault of Microsoft or Apple.

 

[AZhappyjack]

I wish you and others would stop all this noise about Apple's specs. It doesn't contribute anything and it's irrelevant to the OP's problems. Apple's hardware specs also include USB ports, and their software specs include official APIs by which third parties can provide device drivers which consume a USB device and provide a display output - which is what's happening here. This isn't some unsupported hack.

It looks like as of right now, you need to install a beta version of the DisplayLink driver package to have support for Monterey at all, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are issues anyways. Where does the blame for this lie? Be careful where you point that finger - a legitimate criticism of Apple in recent times is sweeping changes to driver APIs with poor documentation and short notice. I happen to think they're right in their motivations for making these changes, but wrong in failing to provide adequate support for developers who are affected by them.


There's no limit being pushed. All you people cluttering up this thread with this nonsense should just stop, you don't know what you're talking about.

It's NOT "noise". It's fact. As @TiggrToo points out, the OP is using non-Apple parts to try to extend his options beyond what Apple has stated to be the limits of the machine. Not "noise"... and whether you want to admit it or not, the OP is suffering the effects of a self-inflicted malady.

DisayLink is a third party driver. Apple have nothing to do with it.

If the OP is using DisplayLink and then having issues then that's all on them and not Apple.

Exactly correct.

 

[Bandaman]

It's NOT "noise". It's fact. As @TiggrToo points out, the OP is using non-Apple parts to try to extend his options beyond what Apple has stated to be the limits of the machine. Not "noise"... and whether you want to admit it or not, the OP is suffering the effects of a self-inflicted malady.

Which he refuses to understand, which makes helping someone like this painful. This is a helpful forum. There has been helpful advice in this thread. People have put their time and experience into trying to help the OP. He couldn't care less.

 

[throAU]

Remember when people were laughing at Vista because their old printers etc didn't work? Have you been on "Alternatives to Mac" section of this forum? If everything is always Microsoft's fault then how come this cant be Apple's fault? macOS12 is what screwed things up for many people as what I've read. But for real, my issue is resolved. I don't know why it works now and maybe it's better not to question it.
Let's not argue. For real. There's no point of arguing. I am so tired of it and I am exhausted in general. I've got enough problems in real life. Let's just not argue anymore. This forum is pretty much all I've got and I love the community. We've already argued about this and to be honest, I think this was the first time ever I've had difficulties with replying to people that I wanted to reply to. I even forgot the username of the user that actually bothered to help me (there were several of them, so thank you very much). The issue has been resolved.

I've run windows since 1992 (and am paid to work with it) and macOS since 2007, so yeah I'm familiar with the alternatives and the windows world.

Not arguing, just pointing out that whining at Apple regarding something not working that they did not supply and is not supported by the vendor as working with macOS is a stretch.

May as well complain about a Magic Trackpad not working well with Windows.

 

[mr_roboto]

DisayLink is a third party driver. Apple have nothing to do with it.

If the OP is using DisplayLink and then having issues then that's all on them and not Apple.

Actually it does because operating the M1 Air, Mac Mini or others that are outside spec (running three monitors on something that only supports one or two) is OUT OF SPEC. Meaning you cannot be guaranteed it to be working 100%. It is not in spec, not supported by Apple, therefore you are playing your own game if it works or not. Its not Apple's fault here. Apple labeled it within spec only one external monitor is supported. Hacks, or unsupported means are just that....unsupported. Nothing to do with Apple here. I am 0% surprised this was a problem for the OP because it is not supported.

It's like you guys didn't even bother reading my post before shouting more about "OUT OF SPEC".

It's not. The spec merely informs users how many monitors the M1 MBA can drive by itself. Since the M1 SoC supports two video outs, and one is used up by the internal display, you can drive one external monitor.

BUT (and this is a very important but, so please stop ignoring it) the M1 SoC also provides general-purpose USB4/TB ports which can communicate with an extremely wide variety of external peripherals. By Apple's intent and design, this includes third party peripherals which Apple did not design or write drivers for.

DisplayLink chips are simply USB connected peripherals which provide additional video outputs. Apple's driver APIs provide all the necessary interfaces to permit a DisplayLink driver to exist, so there's nothing fundamentally weird or unsupported going on here.

So please just stop. The M1 MBA spec merely documents the limits of the MBA's built-in video output hardware. Somehow you've reinterpreted it as moral law so you can shout at users who connect external video-out peripherals as if they're revolting, disgusting perverts for daring to violate the ONE EXTERNAL DISPLAY COMMANDMENT. It's silly, that's not what the hardware spec means, you aren't actually making a good point.

And to cut off the other angle: Sure, the OP asked their question in a needlessly abrasive way, but treating their problem as if it's entirely their fault isn't helping anyone.

Some similar things apply to another thread topic, USB hubs. Any hub which complies to the relevant usb.org specifications should function on a Mac with no drivers. If it doesn't, it's either a defective unit or Apple's fault. It's fair to bring up that cheap offbrand hubs frequently fail at specifications compliance, but people really should not be so eager to proclaim that the problem can only be the hub. Apple isn't perfect, sometimes they fail to live up to their side of the interface "contract" defined by usb.org specs.

 

[Ethosik]

It's like you guys didn't even bother reading my post before shouting more about "OUT OF SPEC".

It's not. The spec merely informs users how many monitors the M1 MBA can drive by itself. Since the M1 SoC supports two video outs, and one is used up by the internal display, you can drive one external monitor.

BUT (and this is a very important but, so please stop ignoring it) the M1 SoC also provides general-purpose USB4/TB ports which can communicate with an extremely wide variety of external peripherals. By Apple's intent and design, this includes third party peripherals which Apple did not design or write drivers for.

DisplayLink chips are simply USB connected peripherals which provide additional video outputs. Apple's driver APIs provide all the necessary interfaces to permit a DisplayLink driver to exist, so there's nothing fundamentally weird or unsupported going on here.

So please just stop. The M1 MBA spec merely documents the limits of the MBA's built-in video output hardware. Somehow you've reinterpreted it as moral law so you can shout at users who connect external video-out peripherals as if they're revolting, disgusting perverts for daring to violate the ONE EXTERNAL DISPLAY COMMANDMENT. It's silly, that's not what the hardware spec means, you aren't actually making a good point.

And to cut off the other angle: Sure, the OP asked their question in a needlessly abrasive way, but treating their problem as if it's entirely their fault isn't helping anyone.

Some similar things apply to another thread topic, USB hubs. Any hub which complies to the relevant usb.org specifications should function on a Mac with no drivers. If it doesn't, it's either a defective unit or Apple's fault. It's fair to bring up that cheap offbrand hubs frequently fail at specifications compliance, but people really should not be so eager to proclaim that the problem can only be the hub. Apple isn't perfect, sometimes they fail to live up to their side of the interface "contract" defined by usb.org specs.

Is the driver to support more than one display provided by Apple, inc? No....therefore, it is not officially supported by Apple. I can write malware on macOS, does that mean Apple supports such practice? Third party developer writes a driver to create something that is not intentional (displays are meant to be driven by GPU not CPU and USB). Apple is not involved in this AT ALL.

So....now follow me here, having something NOT SUPPORTED BY APPLE failing is NOT SURPRISING......AT ALL. Even on Windows, we used to use DisplayLink at work several years ago until we had major issues with it. You know what our Dell rep said? Its not supported by us, we can't help.

 

[iDron]

I think one problem with this thread is it’s still not clear what your issue really is.

I think the issue is sitting in front of the screen.

 

[mr_roboto]

I can write malware on macOS, does that mean Apple supports such practice? Third party developer writes a driver to create something that is not intentional (displays are meant to be driven by GPU not CPU and USB). Apple is not involved in this AT ALL.

I can write a word processor app on macOS, does that mean Apple supports such practice?

Well... yes, they do. English isn't a totally unambiguous language. In this case, "support" means whether Apple intends to allow third party developers to do a certain class of thing, not whether Apple provides end-user support for the resulting software and hardware.

And I maintain that there's nothing wrong or unintended when a third party uses Apple APIs to write a USB device driver which provides services through a non-USB part of macOS. Apple's USB device driver API is literally designed to support that use case. Don't believe me? Here's a similar class of device, sold through Apple's own storefront:

The Belkin USB-C to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter

The Belkin USB-C to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter provides internet connectivity when wireless is unreliable or inconsistent. Buy online now from apple.com.

www.apple.com

So here we are: you're yammering on and on about DisplayLink drivers as if they're basically malware, even though they've done nothing inherently bad and have been a part of the Mac ecosystem so long it's inconceivable that Apple hasn't pushed them away if Apple thinks their products shouldn't work on macOS. (You can download DL drivers for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard!)

 

[Ethosik]

I can write a word processor app on macOS, does that mean Apple supports such practice?

Well... yes, they do. English isn't a totally unambiguous language. In this case, "support" means whether Apple intends to allow third party developers to do a certain class of thing, not whether Apple provides end-user support for the resulting software and hardware.

And I maintain that there's nothing wrong or unintended when a third party uses Apple APIs to write a USB device driver which provides services through a non-USB part of macOS. Apple's USB device driver API is literally designed to support that use case. Don't believe me? Here's a similar class of device, sold through Apple's own storefront:

The Belkin USB-C to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter

The Belkin USB-C to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter provides internet connectivity when wireless is unreliable or inconsistent. Buy online now from apple.com.

www.apple.com

So here we are: you're yammering on and on about DisplayLink drivers as if they're basically malware, even though they've done nothing inherently bad and have been a part of the Mac ecosystem so long it's inconceivable that Apple hasn't pushed them away if Apple thinks their products shouldn't work on macOS. (You can download DL drivers for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard!)

Gigabit ethernet is data which USB is designed for. Video over USB is not part of the design, the GPU is meant to drive the displays and NOT CPU. Why do you think performance is so horrible with DisplayLink vs true GPU rendering?

 

[bgillander]

This thread has turned people mad. My dear lord, I just wanted some help and I posted this question before but only got one response, which was "This is a well known issue with macOS 12" and I had unbelievably awful day yesterday and I've been dealing with so much stress lately and I'm honestly exhausted. Of course I wanted my docking station to work again on macOS, because it did before. I tried USB Hubs and those didn't work either. Displays work fine and yes, even one display works fine but no USB devices were working at all, but they worked on Windows PC. I went to purchase cheap USB Hubs to test it out and saw that GreenCell USB Hubs are pretty cheap, so I could just test this out.
Display worked, USB devices didn't and I was so excited for macOS 12.1 thinking it'll fix my issue, but it didn't.

I read this: macOS Monterey Users Report Connectivity Issues With USB Hubs , soo…Right? Makes sense? I started facing issues after upgrading, so I thought it was the OS.

Now everything works normally and I don't know why it works.

My dear lord… This thread has turned into a complete war zone.

Sorry, I'm coming late to the party, but I am curious if you had the dock installed when you did the actual Monterey upgrade. I've held off the upgrade as I'm in no rush and I don't really want to deal with early issues these days, but would be interested to hear what the lead-up to your bad day was, prior to my eventual attempt!

I usually find it safest to do the upgrade without any peripherals installed and then do a couple of reboots of the new OS prior to adding any peripherals, just to make sure the OS is fully installed and "settled" before getting into extra drivers. Sometimes it does seem like it takes multiple full shutdowns before everything appears to be installed, especially with multi-purpose docks, I would guess because the various ports are bridged over USB so I expect the OS has to recognize the USB device, then the sub-devices, and on down the chain.

I have a cheap dock for my M1 Air and it didn't seem to work with my Steinberg dongle even under Big Sur. I bought a different dock that was on sale one day just to see if it happened to work and was happy to find it did. And then it didn't when I tried it again. At which point I discovered the original dock would work with the dongle, too, but the dongle license software seemed to lock the port, so if I restarted the software I would have to unplug the dock and plug it back in to get it to recognize the dongle again, even though the USB-A port appeared to be working correctly. So, this USB on USB stuff doesn't seem to be perfect, but I was happy just to figure out the pattern with mine, and I'm glad to hear that your dock appears to be fully working for you now. I hope it continues to work well for you!

 

[mr_roboto]

Gigabit ethernet is data which USB is designed for. Video over USB is not part of the design, the GPU is meant to drive the displays and NOT CPU. Why do you think performance is so horrible with DisplayLink vs true GPU rendering?

Why is a data bit something USB is designed for if it is part of an Ethernet packet, but not something USB is designed for if it is part of a video stream? There's nothing magical about video; to engineers (which I am one of btw), bits are bits.

Video streams do tend to require a very high data rate, and USB can be a significant bottleneck, but that's why video compression was invented. DisplayLink uses some form of it to make their technology work.

Performance is bad, but also fit for purpose. Lots of people just need another monitor where their email client or a PDF doc always lives - reference material they're glancing at while doing their main work on another display. When the image is mostly static, it hardly matters whether performance is bad. And "bad" is relative; DisplayLink is good enough for office productivity apps like word processors. That's the niche market which DisplayLink lives off of, and given that they survived as an independent company for over 15 years before being acquired by Synaptics, it's a healthy niche.

Apple's own engineers have designed something quite similar. If you buy an Apple Lightning video output adapter for use with your iPhone, what's actually going on under the hood is that the iPhone compresses a video output stream using a lossy codec (H.264, probably), transmits it across USB 2.0 to the adapter (the actual signal on the Lightning wire is usually USB 2), and inside the adapter there's an Apple-designed SoC which decompresses the video stream and uses it to drive either VGA or HDMI, depending on which model of adapter you bought. If all that sounds familiar, it's because it is very similar to DisplayLink. The only substantial difference is that IIRC DisplayLink's tech was at least traditionally based on a compression scheme similar to VNC rather than a lossy codec such as MPEG or H.264. (Now that so many systems include a hardware H.264 encoder somewhere, I wouldn't be surprised if recent DisplayLink SoCs support it, at least as an option.)

 

[Fomalhaut]

FFS WHEN WILL PEOPLE LEARN
displaylink software on macOS is 100% garbage.
buy a real dock from owc or caldigit and your problems are over
until displaylink can learn to actually write software that works on macOS avoid that **** like the ****ing plague.

I've had zero issues with monterey on my 3 apple silicon macs using a caldigit ts3 plus dock, which also works great with my windows laptop.

Maybe, but I don't think a better dock is going to overcome the "one external screen" limitation is it? I also have the CalDigit TB3 Plus and it works very well with my M1 Mini. I don't think it would allow the OP's MBA to connect to more than one external display though...unless the Thunderbolt connection can be daisy-chained somehow.

 

[opeter]

In my personal opinion many people make living on their computer and seeing how people complain about Windows all the time I thought to show them that Apple isn't perfect either. When I asked for help in this forum all I got was: "This is a well known bug in macOS 12."
Do you have any fixes for that?

Well, I am not complainig about Windows, because I am using it daily and it does, what it should.
There are things, that works better than on macOS.

 

[iHorseHead]

Which he refuses to understand, which makes helping someone like this painful. This is a helpful forum. There has been helpful advice in this thread. People have put their time and experience into trying to help the OP. He couldn't care less.

I already got help from a user on here and on this very same thread. So stop it. Everything works now.