Yup. That choice occurred to me. It certainly is much more elegant than my 3 4K displays plus MBP display. However my workflow and my eyes need the pixels, and each 4K display by itself has more pixels than an ultrawide like that has.
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Why do people use clamshell mode?
- Thread starter LiE_
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Yup. You are sitting, while I am at a home built stand-up desk; 44" to suit my standing height. I unplug the MBP and put it in my lap when I want to sit, or I sit and put BT keyboard and mouse in my lap and look up at the displays (usually only do that with websites or video).
On the flip side with 4K screens you pretty much have to use DPI scaling. You gain sharper text/UI but lose on desktop space. 1440p (or their ultrawide/superultrawide brethren) work best at 100% scaling. Worse text but ample desktop space. I run my superultrawide in Picture by Picture mode so it's more like a regular ultrawide + a side monitor setup, each with their own virtual desktops.
I have been considering replacing it with a 32" 4K screen plus the LG DualUp oddball 16:18 2560x2880 vertical screen.
I'd really love to see more 5K+ options on the market but refuse to buy the overpriced Studio Display.
Yup. I scale on two of my three 4K displays. The third display I use for images at full 4K resolution (and use cheater reading glasses if I need to read text on that display). I locate image palettes on one of the other displays with larger resolution. PiP is a good idea for your setup.
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I dock my work 16" MBP on my desk. On my desk I have a triple screen setup - 2xDell U2722Ds bracketing an LG 32UN650-W (thank you displaylink for one of the sides), a mechanical keyboard, and a good webcam. When at my desk I want that real estate from my externals, I don't need the built in display too. I enjoy the built in display when I'm not at my desk though
I use Clamshell mode because one of my MacBook Pro Retina Mid-2012's was in a house fire and the screen and keyboard melted off, but the unit still boots and runs fine in Clamshell mode. Coincidently the only key that was left "intact" after the other ones fell off like popcorn, was the power button! This machine I imagine will run Mojave when I need access to legacy applications, connected via Thunderbolt/Mini-DP to a Dell 27" LCD. If my logic board ever dies on my main MacBook Pro running Catalina, I will probably move the Mojave drive into a bootable USB enclosure and transfer the logic board over to the unit that isn't burnt. So I'm good for the long haul, either way, with this model. So far, its been through hell, and still works. That is quality to me.
Crazy that it still works!
My friend once dropped his iPhone 8 into a cistern for hours and it worked fine until he upgraded years later.
it doesnt but the built in keyboard and trackpad can be distracting...i find it i dont close it i accidentally use the “wrong” keyboard. In orinciple that shouldnt matter but it always slows me down/wastes time in oractice
I'm actually quite interested in replacing my one 32" 4K with two of these DualUp 2560x2880 displays (presuming they play nicely with macOS). I just wish there was some place I could get some eyes-on time with them. There are no retailers near me that have them. I could always buy from Amazon and send them back, but I hate doing that just to test a product.
Well you see….
Back in the old days when laptops were invented…
Computer companies understood that laptop screens were not big enough for desktop users.
So when mobile workers came back to their desk they wanted to connect to a bigger screen.
So at first they had these laptop docking stations.
You slid the laptop into this big dock and it converted the laptop into a desktop computer.
But that was silly.
Users wanted to just put the laptop on the desk without sliding it into a pizza box dock.
Thus clamshell mode became normal.
Then there is the point about memory resources.
One external screen uses less VRAM than external screen + laptop display.
So for most users only using the external screen meant all the VRAM was used by only one display.
Unified Memory helps give users more VRAM than ever before…
…but you still have to practice memory allocation efficiency.
If you are using an app like Blender or big 3D game, you want to be in clamshell mode because all those texture maps gobble memory.
Cute, but quite inaccurate. It was much easier popping a Duo into a dock than it is decades later hooking up cables to drive a large display from a modern laptop.
We slid Duos into a dock to get VRAM driving a large display, mass storage and connectivity that the small Duos could not carry on board. It was really quite slick for the tech of that time frame, not silly in any sense, because mass storage and large screen display tech at the time would not fit into the Duos' sub-notebook sizing.
Users wanting to put the laptop on the desk without sliding it into a dock was not why "clamshell mode became normal." Those of us who used Duos loved them; and it took a long time before laptops got clunky and hot and capable of driving external displays by themselves.
Duo docks were very slick. I would love to be able to buy such a dock today and slide my MBP into it instead of needing to attach four TB connections every time I move the MBP back and forth. Now that I have three 4K displays I would tolerate the loss of screen real estate that docking entails.
Also note the point of this thread, that many of us consider clamshell mode a waste of screen real estate, not normal.
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“Cute”, but let me tell you a story before you go online telling people they are inaccurate fact check yourself.
Duos and other slide in type docks left marks on the laptops.
Unavoidable. One surface rubs against another surface it leaves marks. On ebay they are all scratched up.
So no, not neat for plastic laptops and would be even uglier sight on metal laptops.
Fact check yourself next time.
And don’t use words like cute against strangers when you can’t get some basics right. You will save precious energy and time.
Nonsense. I used a Duo and Dock daily and had a team of consultants working for me also using them, so I know what you call the basics from substantial real world experience. None of us ever whined about wear marks; they were tools not sculptures. FYI our Nikons were also tools not sculptures. The Nikons and the Duos all had wear marks on them that we considered badges of honor.
Obviously you are just hypothesizing and have never actually used Duos in real work. Your cutesy stories are just that: made-up stories.
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Yeah that's an interesting option and I've even seen a few 3x DualUp setups on Reddit's Battlestations subreddit. I don't need that much desktop space and want a 32" 4K monitor with high refresh rate and good HDR, which the DualUp does not provide. As a side monitor I think it will work well tho.
I think I read some report that had issues with DPI scaling on these that were solved by using BetterDisplay to make MacOS think it's a HiDPI monitor. MacOS display handling being a pile of crap as usual.
You know you can pick up a TB or USB3 dock that provides power and hook up everything with one cable, right? My laptop docks to a TS3+, one cable… it’s much easier to deal with than a massive dock that the machine locks into
If you really want one there’s actually more than a few docks you can just drop the machine into like Brydge’s, which are even slicker if that’s your thing, and way more reliable than docks like the duo had, probably is what fits what you’re hoping for
As for extra vram/etc we *did* have the option of TB GPUs until the AS move, I’d bet Apple hasnt restored that capability because 1) they’re confident in the abilities of their GPUs (right or wrong) and 2) there simply wasnt enough demand because it’s not as necessary today
I was Army everything was Static IPs and later 25 megabit fiber! Later in Network Center Cisco Catalysts and huge routers connected to the GE satellite side! I did Network like that for 25 years aftyert the Army! Most so called ISPs still on copper lines are still rocking a network from 1996! That's why I despise ISPs so bad in hurts some times, That's why DOD dropped Verizon and rolled there own fiber base to base on Huge fiber line themselves!
You better use Al Dente for this, and even sets up a schedule or something for when you know you leaving the house. I'm trusting Optimised Charging and it doesn't work very well...
Either way, I'd rather always have it at 100% because I never know when I'm randomly leaving the house for hours and need to keep working when I'm away.. Sometimes business trips are like 10 mins before a Teams call early in the morning.
But I'm not really going to use my MBP 14" other than clamshell, so I rather have it keep battery at 80% always.
Is Optimized Battery Charging function really so limited it does not hold charge at 80% while machine is in sleep mode?
That will make clamshell use very frustrating if I need to pull cables off every time I'm not using it to prevent battery going back to 100%. Also even if not doing that it would cause constant everyday 100% > 80% > 100% battery use, so it would increase easily one charge cycle every 5 days even not actually meaning to use it on battery. Do you really need additional app to prevent this from happening?
Yeah that's an interesting option and I've even seen a few 3x DualUp setups on Reddit's Battlestations subreddit. I don't need that much desktop space and want a 32" 4K monitor with high refresh rate and good HDR, which the DualUp does not provide. As a side monitor I think it will work well tho.
Once I got my clustermess of displays and dongles and docks working well I stopped wasting time on it, but it does require plugging in all 4 TB ports and it sometimes takes several minutes for the displays to settle down.
B) (Pricey) eGPUs work very very well on the right laptops/workflows. It is unfortunate that Apple stopped allowing the process. They probably did so to force folks like me into maxing out the high end MBP rather than getting a midrange box plus a third-party eGPU. Admittedly, maxing out Apple's highest end MBP does have the benefit of the power being fully portable, which an eGPU is not.
C) Brydge apparently only drives two 4K displays. And docks like Brydge are nowhere near as slick as the Duo Dock setups were. With the Duo one just stuck the closed Duo into a slot like a VCR and the Dock sucked in the Duo and made the connection. Sweet.
We never had any reliability issues and once in the Dock the Duos were also networked into the Filemaker database I built. The whole process was incredibly slick for the time period. Today Filemaker no longer facilitates users like they did then; instead today Filemaker is only about maximizing the scraping of dollars from users.
True. I wonder why Apple, with some of the best software engineers on the planet, fails to pay reasonable attention to display handling? E.g. the post here with an M2 buyer about to return a brand-new M2 because it will not drive a single external display that is well within the advertised capability of the M2 box. Unfortunately that experience is not an anomaly: Mac OS display handling is a pile of crap.
A) Yes, USB-C docks seemed like a perfect idea. I have several such docks, none from the very latest TB generation. I never found one that would drive all three 4K displays from a single USB-C connection so I just use them for all the ancillary stuff.
Once I got my clustermess of displays and dongles and docks working well I stopped wasting time on it, but it does require plugging in all 4 TB ports and it sometimes takes several minutes for the displays to settle down.
B) (Pricey) eGPUs work very very well on the right laptops/workflows. It is unfortunate that Apple stopped allowing the process. They probably did so to force folks like me into maxing out the high end MBP rather than getting a midrange box plus a third-party eGPU. Admittedly, maxing out Apple's highest end MBP does have the benefit of the power being fully portable, which an eGPU is not.
C) Brydge apparently only drives two 4K displays. And docks like Brydge are nowhere near as slick as the Duo Dock setups were. With the Duo one just stuck the closed Duo into a slot like a VCR and the Dock sucked in the Duo and made the connection. Sweet.
We never had any reliability issues and once in the Dock the Duos were also networked into the Filemaker database I built. The whole process was incredibly slick for the time period. Today Filemaker no longer facilitates users like they did then; instead today Filemaker is only about maximizing the scraping of dollars from users.
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I do not use clamshell mode, but optimized charging works perfectly well in sleep mode, which is the way I usually leave the displays when I walk away from my desk. And it seems to work fine with the display simply closed but not attached to external connections except the charger.
Because of the limitations on the M1P machines I have 2 displays directly hanging off my TS3+, one on displayport and one off a USBC port with an HDMI adapter, and a third on a displaylink adapter hanging off the TS3.
BTW I dont own one so I could be wrong but I think Brydge’s docks just pass through the connection so you can hang things like a TS3+ off it out of view. In fact, if I’m right, with a M1X machine that would let you drive 3 displays directly just by docking .
as far as which kind of design is more slick I guess that’s personal taste, I would find something like what the duos did clunky and space consuming today.
Never works for me in the weeks that I have been working from home 100% of th time… Al Dente is really your best option mate trust me