I got bit by this on my 13-inch first gen M1. I have a three monitor set up, and didn’t check the specs because I assumed basically any laptop worth it’s salt today would support that. It’s honestly a pretty shitty product choice in my opinion. Will definitely hold off on upgrading until it natively support more displays.
Which is a compromised option with considerably worse GPU performance on that screen, possible compression artifacts and it's more expensive than just a USB C dongle or a HDMI cable.
I think it is mostly to differentiate the air from the pro. Evey professional needs 2 display monitors and the air can't do that. The air is however perfectly capable of handling day to day coding tasks. If it supported 2 monitors, it would have effectively cannabalized the pro line.
I'm surprised too. Built in + one external is what I've had most of my career. For a brief period I had two external and it was hell because OSX would switch them round on every wake from sleep.
I've been coding professionally since 1996 and I've used external screens for maybe 24 months of that (mostly pre-2000). Almost all of it has been single desktop screen or laptop.
I had a moment in my career using 5 screens for development.
Then I learned how to use virtual desktops and never even looked for a second monitor since.
Same, I can't stand multiple displays, and I spend a good amount time trying to adjust to it. I would always rather a single display to having to move my head around all the time.
I do think for many folk laptops have a piss poor screen res so I can understand using an external display if you have the option in such a case, but still not two for software dev.
I used to drive three external displays (3x24", 1920x1200@60hz) on my almost four years old dell latitude 7390, using the integrated intel uhd 620 chip.
it's incredible that a modern macbook costing likely twice as my old work laptop (the latitude 7390) can only do so little... Oh and the latitude had a ton of ports.
So the M2 MacBook Air has 2x the resolution, can drive a studio display as well (6.4x the pixels to drive as your external display, or around ~2x the pixels of your three display example) and that's a billion colours (/s lolololol marketing :D). The point it is driving substantially more pixels than your example even if those "aren't separate displays" - I'd be generally curious how many 6k/60hz displays your dell could drive as that would be a fairly good counter here.
Otherwise your reference laptop comes in at 0.7" vs 0.44", which I suspect also limits the sockets on the laptop, even without Apple's hatred of ports. I'm looking at the clearance of the usb-c ports vs the non-usb-c ports (ignoring the huge power one) and then looking at clearance on the usb-c ports on the new Air, and I'm not sure that there is the clearance for them.
Two external monitors is still the exception, one external monitor is the exception.
Why should apple be increasing the cost of hardware, or reducing the feature set, of hardware for everyone to support niche users? The more I read, the more I suspect that supporting 6k@60fps _requires_ that much hardware in their display controller. "Can drive any screen you plug in" is better than "Can drive a pair or two of low-mid end screens" as a feature to communicate with end users.
Don't get me wrong, I get that some people use multiple external screens, and you _can_ get the bigger MacBooks (that support 2-3 6k@60Hz screens) or some cheap pc laptop - though that means sacrificing the over a billion colors (/s). But if your price sensitive windows machines continue to exist, and if the cost vs features favors lower price[] for you that's probably where you should go.
* Let's be honest, game studios still target windows+consoles first, then maybe linux for some reason, and finally macOS. Also they apparently write so much assembly ARM isn't feasible (they do not).
External screens are not the exception in our office, or any other office I've ever seen.
The hardware vendors is there to handle a certain number of pixels at a certain refresh rate. If it wasn't, then they couldn't support even one external 6k@60hz monitor.
The problem is that Apple is making an arbitrary decision here that they don't care what resolution of external monitor you have, but whatever it is, you can have only one.
They are the exception in almost every office that I have ever worked in, but you are also not paying attention to what I just said. Apple's display controllers are huge, I'm guessing a non-zero part of that is supporting 6k60, which they felt was necessary.
Given that constraint, they chose not to make the machine presumably quite a bit more expensive to support what is a niche use case.
Saying it's an arbitrary decision is nonsense, they made a trade off, that doesn't work for your particular use case. Presumably market research would have fed into the decision making process, and that market research presumably said something like "dual monitor use with (apple?) laptops is negligible" or maybe something more nuanced "dual monitor use with something below high/max cpu count (apple?) laptops is negligible".
Engineering is about tradeoffs, it's not arbitrary - if you look at the twitter thread the display controller is bigger than multiple cpus, adding an additional one would presumably mean fewer CPUs increasing the price/cpu for the much more common people for whom the second display controller is useless, so they now get a slower machine for the same price; or it increases the price of the machine by needing a larger die with an additional display controller, that still isn't being used, and so remains useless. I would assume a larger die+additional display controller would also use more power even though it's not being used, so you'd get a battery life reduction as well.
Again, it's not arbitrary, it's trade offs that you don't agree with.
(I tried to see what the max display resolution for high end pc laptop gpus, and just found recommended resolutions which seemed unhelpful)
It's not more expensive. They just want to force people who want to use two external monitors to buy a more expensive machine.
I say this as a MacFanatic since December of 1983, when I saw a closed-door/by-invitation-only demo of a prototype of the original Mac, before the official announcement during the Super Bowl in January of 1984. Five minutes of playing with the only two applications that existed at the time (MacWrite and MacPaint, because the Calculator had not been written yet), and I was convinced that this was the future of all modern computing. I became a Mac owner in the 512k "FatMac" days, and have owned many, many Macs and other Apple devices ever since.
I also did a six month contract for Apple Retail Software Engineering, the group that develops and supports all the software used to train and otherwise assist all the employees in all the stores.
I have literally been there and done that, for decades.
Apple clearly wants to make a distinction here, because otherwise there would be no justification for the "pro" name in "MacBook Pro". If the baseline MacBook could do two external monitors, and cost hundreds of dollars less, then that would sorely hurt their profit margins.
Apple makes money by selling you stuff at a significantly higher price for each step up than it actually costs them to make. They make much more profit on the more expensive items, and that's what they want to upsell you on. They've been doing that for decades.
I have literally put my money where my mouth is. Thousands and thousands of dollars of it. I know what they're doing and why.
And yet, I still buy those more expensive machines, because they're the ones that give me the features I want. But that doesn't mean I have to be happy about what they're doing and all the extra thousands of dollars of money I've had to shell out over the years.
The other incredibly annoying fault with Apple M1 and external displays is that you cannot control the volume of a high resolution display connected via USB-C.
eg Philips Brilliance 499P a fantastic Ultra-wide display that I bought because I could not connect my previous 2 monitors.
I have two external Dell monitors, one M1 air mac bought in 2021, so only one works. I bought a dual HDMI plug but it's not supported.
What cheap device (displaylink hub port?) would you suggest people like me to buy to connect the second monitor? At
Or you could look at the link, and see that you're talking out of your ass.
For whatever reason Apple's display controllers are huge - bigger than multiple cores - and clearly there isn't random left over space on the die for another one without sacrificing something else. I get many people on HN hate the idea of Apple existing as a company, but it turns out it is possible for things to not be "Apple is evil, and everything that they do is malicious".
Something like the studio supports multiple displays because - afaict - it's multiple complete SoCs glued together, so presumably also has the display controllers from each complete SoC it has.
Isn't it because they are optimized for energy efficiency, and the more external display the more Watt you need (20W/display)?
If you build a laptop, why optimize it for many external displays, that doesn't make sense, i want it to be optimized for laptop use, wich is what they did
Obviously every feature you add to a chip consumes some power while it's in use, but I don't think that's the reason why Apple only put two outputs on the M1/M2. It's more likely to be cost and market segmentation.
Well, yes - most people buy products based on price, and from the thread it's obvious that additional display controllers would could far more would be reasonable given the overwhelming majority of laptop users don't connect 1 external display to their laptop, let alone two.
What you're saying is not dissimilar to saying the reason that some machines have a single small budget low speed intel cpu & iGPU yet others have 4 Xeons and dual full-size discrete GPUs is market segmentation. It's technically accurate, but implies a malevolent removal of features to create a product.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 63.7 ms ] thread"Because Apple's display controllers are so fancypants that the M1 Max has more silicon dedicated to display controllers than CPU cores."
or later in the thread:
"One display controller is larger than 2 PCPU cores with enough to spare to cover the ECPUs too."
I do think for many folk laptops have a piss poor screen res so I can understand using an external display if you have the option in such a case, but still not two for software dev.
it's incredible that a modern macbook costing likely twice as my old work laptop (the latitude 7390) can only do so little... Oh and the latitude had a ton of ports.
Otherwise your reference laptop comes in at 0.7" vs 0.44", which I suspect also limits the sockets on the laptop, even without Apple's hatred of ports. I'm looking at the clearance of the usb-c ports vs the non-usb-c ports (ignoring the huge power one) and then looking at clearance on the usb-c ports on the new Air, and I'm not sure that there is the clearance for them.
The big hi-resolution monitors are damn bloody expensive.
Two external monitors, each of which have half the number of pixels, are still less expensive together than the laptop itself.
Same number of pixels being pushed, but not supported on the hardware.
That's a shame.
Why should apple be increasing the cost of hardware, or reducing the feature set, of hardware for everyone to support niche users? The more I read, the more I suspect that supporting 6k@60fps _requires_ that much hardware in their display controller. "Can drive any screen you plug in" is better than "Can drive a pair or two of low-mid end screens" as a feature to communicate with end users.
Don't get me wrong, I get that some people use multiple external screens, and you _can_ get the bigger MacBooks (that support 2-3 6k@60Hz screens) or some cheap pc laptop - though that means sacrificing the over a billion colors (/s). But if your price sensitive windows machines continue to exist, and if the cost vs features favors lower price[] for you that's probably where you should go.
* Let's be honest, game studios still target windows+consoles first, then maybe linux for some reason, and finally macOS. Also they apparently write so much assembly ARM isn't feasible (they do not).
The hardware vendors is there to handle a certain number of pixels at a certain refresh rate. If it wasn't, then they couldn't support even one external 6k@60hz monitor.
The problem is that Apple is making an arbitrary decision here that they don't care what resolution of external monitor you have, but whatever it is, you can have only one.
Given that constraint, they chose not to make the machine presumably quite a bit more expensive to support what is a niche use case.
Saying it's an arbitrary decision is nonsense, they made a trade off, that doesn't work for your particular use case. Presumably market research would have fed into the decision making process, and that market research presumably said something like "dual monitor use with (apple?) laptops is negligible" or maybe something more nuanced "dual monitor use with something below high/max cpu count (apple?) laptops is negligible".
Engineering is about tradeoffs, it's not arbitrary - if you look at the twitter thread the display controller is bigger than multiple cpus, adding an additional one would presumably mean fewer CPUs increasing the price/cpu for the much more common people for whom the second display controller is useless, so they now get a slower machine for the same price; or it increases the price of the machine by needing a larger die with an additional display controller, that still isn't being used, and so remains useless. I would assume a larger die+additional display controller would also use more power even though it's not being used, so you'd get a battery life reduction as well.
Again, it's not arbitrary, it's trade offs that you don't agree with.
(I tried to see what the max display resolution for high end pc laptop gpus, and just found recommended resolutions which seemed unhelpful)
I say this as a MacFanatic since December of 1983, when I saw a closed-door/by-invitation-only demo of a prototype of the original Mac, before the official announcement during the Super Bowl in January of 1984. Five minutes of playing with the only two applications that existed at the time (MacWrite and MacPaint, because the Calculator had not been written yet), and I was convinced that this was the future of all modern computing. I became a Mac owner in the 512k "FatMac" days, and have owned many, many Macs and other Apple devices ever since.
I also did a six month contract for Apple Retail Software Engineering, the group that develops and supports all the software used to train and otherwise assist all the employees in all the stores.
I have literally been there and done that, for decades.
Apple clearly wants to make a distinction here, because otherwise there would be no justification for the "pro" name in "MacBook Pro". If the baseline MacBook could do two external monitors, and cost hundreds of dollars less, then that would sorely hurt their profit margins.
Apple makes money by selling you stuff at a significantly higher price for each step up than it actually costs them to make. They make much more profit on the more expensive items, and that's what they want to upsell you on. They've been doing that for decades.
I have literally put my money where my mouth is. Thousands and thousands of dollars of it. I know what they're doing and why.
And yet, I still buy those more expensive machines, because they're the ones that give me the features I want. But that doesn't mean I have to be happy about what they're doing and all the extra thousands of dollars of money I've had to shell out over the years.
The answer here is so much simple than that.
Pay more and you get more external displays, pay less and you get less external displays.
For whatever reason Apple's display controllers are huge - bigger than multiple cores - and clearly there isn't random left over space on the die for another one without sacrificing something else. I get many people on HN hate the idea of Apple existing as a company, but it turns out it is possible for things to not be "Apple is evil, and everything that they do is malicious".
Something like the studio supports multiple displays because - afaict - it's multiple complete SoCs glued together, so presumably also has the display controllers from each complete SoC it has.
If you build a laptop, why optimize it for many external displays, that doesn't make sense, i want it to be optimized for laptop use, wich is what they did
What you're saying is not dissimilar to saying the reason that some machines have a single small budget low speed intel cpu & iGPU yet others have 4 Xeons and dual full-size discrete GPUs is market segmentation. It's technically accurate, but implies a malevolent removal of features to create a product.