Intel & AMD MacBook Pro had better monitor support than M-Series MacBooks

[pshufd]

Thanks to you both for the replies. Was all set to order the new M2 Air thinking it would be able to drive two external screens however was surprised to see this wasn’t the case.

The MacBook Pro would be overkill for my basic office application needs.

I thought about a Mac mini as a possibility but then wouldn’t have the portability to move between offices.

If I can get a used Intel 2020 MacBook Air for around $600-$700 would that be worth it? If not then back to the drawing board.

Performance, thermals and battery life are just so superior to the Intel model that dual monitor would have to be far more important than the other stuff. It is very easy to become spoiled by Apple Silicon that I think that the vast majority overlook the monitor support issue. You could also use a USB to HDMI/DisplayPort adapter to get a second monitor off of it.

I am running three monitors off my M1 Mac mini (2x4k + 1xQHD) using an open source project and it works quite well. I'm using an old 2010 iMac for the third display. I have tested 4k and plan to test 5k.

 

[MiamiBeach]

Performance, thermals and battery life are just so superior to the Intel model that dual monitor would have to be far more important than the other stuff. It is very easy to become spoiled by Apple Silicon that I think that the vast majority overlook the monitor support issue. You could also use a USB to HDMI/DisplayPort adapter to get a second monitor off of it.

I am running three monitors off my M1 Mac mini (2x4k + 1xQHD) using an open source project and it works quite well. I'm using an old 2010 iMac for the third display. I have tested 4k and plan to test 5k.

Thanks for the follow-up. I think I’ll hold off for now on the Intel MacBook purchase.

I am indeed very impressed with the performance of the M1 MacBooks. I may even just buy a wide screen monitor to have close to the same real estate as two 24” screens and run the one widescreen display externally with the M1/M2.

 

[darngooddesign]

I thought about a Mac mini as a possibility but then wouldn’t have the portability to move between offices.

The Mac mini looks really portable; its thicker but smaller than a laptop. Just keep a power cable, mouse, and keyboard at both offices.

On an aside, here's the dual OS Mac/iPad laptop people want.

 

[jav6454]

Thanks to you both for the replies. Was all set to order the new M2 Air thinking it would be able to drive two external screens however was surprised to see this wasn’t the case.

The MacBook Pro would be overkill for my basic office application needs.

I thought about a Mac mini as a possibility but then wouldn’t have the portability to move between offices.

If I can get a used Intel 2020 MacBook Air for around $600-$700 would that be worth it? If not then back to the drawing board.

Yes, it's a bummer the M2 is so limited in terms of display support.

 

[MrGunny94]

Yes, it's a bummer the M2 is so limited in terms of display support.

It's really the only negative about these entry-line chips. If the M2 would have supported dual 4K displays, I'd might had gone with that if the price didn't increase as much.

 

[HiVolt]

Remember when Apple used to gimp out the iBooks and iMacs to only support mirroring via external displays and not extended?

They've been doing it for a long time now, so its nothing new.

 

[pshufd]

Remember when Apple used to gimp out the iBooks and iMacs to only support mirroring via external displays and not extended?

They've been doing it for a long time now, so its nothing new.

Were those resolve in later operating systems?

 

[Wokis]

I too thought it was some kind of odd oversight of M1 and that they'd fix it. But now I'm wondering if they could just change their driver to get it working, and choose not to.

They just found a sweet spot where not enough people care to cause an uproar but enough people switch to paying for the Pro-level chips instead.

I'm going to stay with 2560x1440 monitors for the foreseeable future so DisplayLink will be the workaround for me.

 

[pshufd]

I too thought it was some kind of odd oversight of M1 and that they'd fix it. But now I'm wondering if they could just change their driver to get it working, and choose not to.

They just found a sweet spot where not enough people care to cause an uproar but enough people switch to paying for the Pro-level chips instead.

I'm going to stay with 2560x1440 monitors for the foreseeable future so DisplayLink will be the workaround for me.

They're also happy to sell you an Intel mini if you want triple-monitor support.

 

[jav6454]

It's really the only negative about these entry-line chips. If the M2 would have supported dual 4K displays, I'd might had gone with that if the price didn't increase as much.

Alas, there is little to do. Also, Apple has been known to purposely gimp some products.

 

[MrGunny94]

Alas, there is little to do. Also, Apple has been known to purposely gimp some products.

Yeah honestly for me the only downside of the current M1 Pro / M1 Max is the battery efficiency at 10 hours. If can ever get that between 13-14h it would be great.

Curious to see if the M2 Pro / M3 Pro can land these type of optimisations especially with 3nm on the line.

 

[pshufd]

Yeah honestly for me the only downside of the current M1 Pro / M1 Max is the battery efficiency at 10 hours. If can ever get that between 13-14h it would be great.

Curious to see if the M2 Pro / M3 Pro can land these type of optimisations especially with 3nm on the line.

I did timings on my M1 Pro MacBook Pro and it extrapolated to 14 hours. This watching YouTube and doing office stuff. I generally don't need more than eight hours at a time and I have a really small and light USB-C charger that could probably power and charge it while I'm using the laptop. It would certainly be enough for an overnight charge.

 

[jav6454]

Yeah honestly for me the only downside of the current M1 Pro / M1 Max is the battery efficiency at 10 hours. If can ever get that between 13-14h it would be great.

Curious to see if the M2 Pro / M3 Pro can land these type of optimisations especially with 3nm on the line.

You can thank the Efficiency to Performance core ratio going towards performance for that.

In my mind, I’m pretty sure Apple could do standard 4 efficiency cores across the line and have battery life extended on all devices.

 

[MrGunny94]

You can thank the Efficiency to Performance core ratio going towards performance for that.

In my mind, I’m pretty sure Apple could do standard 4 efficiency cores across the line and have battery life extended on all devices.

I still think they should have done M1 Pro with at least 4 effiency cores and kept Max fro the performance you know?

 

[pshufd]

You can thank the Efficiency to Performance core ratio going towards performance for that.

In my mind, I’m pretty sure Apple could do standard 4 efficiency cores across the line and have battery life extended on all devices.

I'd love to see such a device. The M1 Pro and M1 Max are definitely skewed for performance but they get great battery life anyways. It would have been interesting to see a model with 6 efficiency cores and then an option to turn off 1-n performance cores.

 

[jav6454]

I'd love to see such a device. The M1 Pro and M1 Max are definitely skewed for performance but they get great battery life anyways. It would have been interesting to see a model with 6 efficiency cores and then an option to turn off 1-n performance cores.

Performance cores are always power gated when not in use if I'm not mistaken.

 

[jav6454]

I still think they should have done M1 Pro with at least 4 effiency cores and kept Max fro the performance you know?

The M1 Pro had potential for 4 efficiency cores. I get it's a more performance packed chip, but it's no reason not to.

 

[theorist9]

I think it's the opposite. With dual screens, you have two separate spaces, and you can use maximized windows or full-screen apps in them. If you have one big screen, you have to resize windows and place them side by side. Even after all these decades of computer use, I'm still not big enough power user to do that comfortably.


That's exactly what happens when you are using a single monitor. You switch apps, you lose the context, and your productivity suffers.

I'd recommend SizeUp from https://www.irradiatedsoftware.com. I have CMD-left arrow and CMD-right arrow programmed to have the active window fill the L and R half of the screen, respectively. And CMD-up arrow for full screen. Plus I programmed the G4 and G5 side buttoms on my Logitech G502 gaming mouse to execute the L-screen and R-screen commands. So I can put windows where I want with a touch of my thumb.

Having said that, I myself also need more than one large monitor, because I often need to view multiple large spreadsheets simultaenously. But I don't like a two-monitor setup, because I don't want my view to be split down the middle. I thus instead use thee large monitors, with the 27" 5k on my iMac as the central monitor. Horses for courses....

 

[pshufd]

I'd recommend Size-Up. I have CMD-left arrow and CMD-right arrow programmed to have the active window fill the L and R half of the screen, respectively. And CMD-up arrow for full screen. Plus I programmed the G4 and G5 side buttoms on my Logitech G502 gaming mouse to execute those commands. So I can put those windows where I want them with a touch of my thumb.

Having said that, I myself do need more than one large monitor, because I often need to view multiple large spreadsheets simultaenously. But I don't like a two-monitor setup, because I don't want my view to be split down the middle. I thus instead use thee large monitors, with the 27" 5k on my iMac as the central monitor.

I like 27 inch monitors over wide-screens as it provides flexibility in my setup and for others that may need a monitor or two permanently or temporarily. I have been going back and forth between four and five monitors for the past year and am using four right now. I was using five two weeks ago. Fewer monitors are needed if one or two computers support more monitors.

 

[theorist9]

I like 27 inch monitors over wide-screens as it provides flexibility in my setup and for others that may need a monitor or two permanently or temporarily. I have been going back and forth between four and five monitors for the past year and am using four right now. I was using five two weeks ago. Fewer monitors are needed if one or two computers support more monitors.

I wouldn't mind a single curved widescreen if one were wide enough to give me the same real estate I get from my current setup, which is two 27's plus a 24. And if I needed to view 6 docs simultaneously (which I sometimes do with my three monitors), I could probably program one of these window managers to place them using shortcuts like ^1, ^2, ^3, ...etc.

But the reason a widescreen won't work for me is that I've found I need a Retina display for text to look sharp*, and there is no widescreen Retina. Indeed, there are only three Retina externals, period: The 27" LG 5k, the 27" Studio 5k, and the 32" XDR 6k. [*I can tolerate non-Retina side displays, but I need my central display to be Retina, so that's what I have now.]

Having said that, if my 2019 iMac could drive a third external (which it can't, at least according to Apple's specs), I'd be tempted to add a fourth monitor, which would go on an arm and hover over my iMac. There are days when I have to consult so many windows simultaenously that I'd love a full six-monitor battlestation....

 

[pshufd]

Having said that, if my 2019 iMac could drive a third external (which it can't, at least according to Apple's specs), I'd be tempted to add a fourth monitor, which would go on an arm and hover over my iMac.

One benefit of the 2017 iMac Pro was the ability to support 4 external displays though I don't know how many you can support at 5k. My current setup is 2x4k, 1x2k, 1x5k. I have additional 4k and 2k monitors but they are sitting on tables or on the floor in the basement right now. The 4k monitors run at native resolution. I keep an eye out for cheap 5k iMacs for use as potential monitors.

 

[Zest28]

The biggest downside is that it cannot run Windows natively.

Windows has completely transformed my 13” 2020 Intel MacBook Pro, it is just as snappy and responsive as my 16” M1 Max MacBook Pro in Mac OS, which just shows how bad Mac OS really is.

I have also set up my Intel MacBook Pro as a server now (on Windows) and it actually is much more responsive than when I am using my 16” M1 Max MacBook Pro as a server. Seems to be a Mac OS issue again.

Apple got great hardware, but it is being held back by bad software.

I’m now thinking of buying a high-performance Windows machine and have it run Linux natively, which should be even better than Windows.

 

[theorist9]

Let's be clear about it, this isn't cost cutting. It costs nothing for Apple to support 2 external displays.

It's feature rationing.

Chromebooks with Celerons less than $150 support dual external displays.

Sure seems that way. Even the GPU in the M1 is more than powerful enough to drive three displays (the internal plus two externals). So it appears they just limited the I/O channels.

 

[theorist9]

The biggest downside is that it cannot run Windows natively.

Windows has completely transformed my 13” 2020 Intel MacBook Pro, it is just as snappy and responsive as my 16” M1 Max MacBook Pro in Mac OS, which just shows how bad Mac OS really is.

I have also set up my Intel MacBook Pro as a server now (on Windows) and it actually is much more responsive than when I am using my 16” M1 Max MacBook Pro as a server. Seems to be a Mac OS issue again.

Apple got great hardware, but it is being held back by bad software.

I’m now thinking of buying a high-performance Windows machine and have it run Linux natively, which should be even better than Windows.

I'm not surprised to hear that Windows is a lighter OS than MacOS, since Windows needs to be able to work with some pretty low-end machines. At the same time, MacOS is (at least for me), a far nicer OS to work in— and I prefer a situation in which the OS is stressing the machine instead of me.

Also, except for booting, the delays I most notice aren't from the OS, but rather those occurring within applications.

 

[theorist9]

One benefit of the 2017 iMac Pro was the ability to support 4 external displays though I don't know how many you can support at 5k. My current setup is 2x4k, 1x2k, 1x5k. I have additional 4k and 2k monitors but they are sitting on tables or on the floor in the basement right now. The 4k monitors run at native resolution. I keep an eye out for cheap 5k iMacs for use as potential monitors.

I was able to drive four displays with my 2014 MacBook Pro (the internal plus three externals, including one 4k), even though that exceeded Apple's stated specs. So I suppose it's possible I could drive a third external on my 2019 iMac by splitting one of the TB3 outputs...