USB-C to DisplayPort -> DisplayPort to HDMI -> Monitor - doesn't work

USB-C to DisplayPort -> DisplayPort to DVI-D -> Monitor - doesn't work

USB-C to Ethernet - doesn't work

I'm actually planning to just go to Best Buy today and try to find anything that will let me plug this into my old monitor here even if it has to be the official USB-C to VGA cable from Apple since I don't have time to wait for shipping at this point.

I suppose this is my own fault but somehow I've never had this kind of problem in ~20 years of using a computer.

Edit: There are also currently very few resources about compatibility between all these new adapters and Apple hasn't done anything to help in their spec info so it's really just a guessing game right now.

If they had called the connector something distinct, like for example "Omnibus", then you could additionally specify the signalling required to make it work. So you could sell a device as being "USB via Omnibus plug", or "Displayport via Omnibus plug". Maybe even come up with little icons for each mode and place them on the host computers and peripherals to help people figure out what is going to work. Really just anything more than what they've done currently would be useful.

Now we have something like your "omnibus" port in USB-C, so you have potential incompatibility at the port level and at the cable level, and no good way to tell what will work and what won't. The good news is you only have one port, but the bad news is you don't really only have one port.

they have forgotten about poka-yoke (inadvertent error prevention) which is very remiss.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poka-yoke

http://www.mcelhearn.com/images/articles/20060828181525223_1...

I guess the USB-C plug is too small for gimmicks like this, though. Would've been nice to distinguish between USB-C and TB 3.1.

USB-C to DisplayPort -> DisplayPort++ to HDMI

But a DP++ device in a non-++ port won't work, and I'm not sure how anyone is supposed to know this.

Anyway, Google sells a bunch of high-quality adapters for about half the price of Apple's.

The graphics chipset will actually detect this and handle it as though you hooked up an HDMI cable.

People complained continually that Apple had gone USB/lightning/Thunderbolt instead of standard USB-C. Now they implement the standard and people complain that the standard is a clusterfuck...

This whole ranting start to look a bit unfair.

Sigh...

I've been watching old SJ presentations (1990-2003) lately and I long back to the time where general purpose personal computers, fully capable of tapping into the machine and creating with it whatever you want, was at the forefront of industry efforts. Updates twice a year. Moore's law in full force. Exiting times those were.

Touchpads generally work perfectly out of the box, with any Linux distribution that uses libinput instead of one of the older drivers. HiDPI screens also tend to work perfectly out of the box, though you may wish to tweak them to your tastes. (For instance, I don't want to treat a 1440p screen as 2x 720p, I want to treat it as 1440p with only slightly enlarged fonts.)

1440p represents the one case that integer scaling doesn't quite handle right, because you don't typically want it to scale 2x (showing the same amount of information as a 720p screen), you want it to scale roughly 1.33x (showing the same amount of information as a 1080p screen). So, on a 1440p screen, I disable the automatic high-DPI scaling (which does make the display readable, it just shows less information than I'd like), and use other mechanisms to scale by 1.3x.

For example, if you need more space on a 5K iMac than the default 1440p@2x, you can have macOS render everything at 1800p@2x off-screen, then downscale it to fill the screen.

The UI looks like this: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202471

I think it can be done with xrandr, but IMHO it should be a built-in option in GTK-based desktops too.

I don't think that would work well with Linux expectations for rendering, such as crisp edges for fonts; if you like Apple-style rendering of fonts and other UI elements, it may work better.

I'd rather see everything rendered for the display resolution I have, and just scaled at a non-integer factor.

your sibling comment said something totally different... (no mention of audio.)

I want to connect it to a 4k monitor at 60Hz via DP or HDMI 2.0. You have to find out how DisplayPort is done on the TB3 port (with USB-C plug) to know which adapter will work. The safest way seems to be to read Amazon reviews.

Thanks Amazon reviewers!

If your monitor supports Displayport then that is the route you want to use. The MBP 2016 supports USB-C displayport alternate mode, and quality cables exist. This is pretty much bulletproof if it's an option to you.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EZH7CKO/ are the cables I bought since they were available next-day, but Monoprice also makes a quality cable.

http://blog.fosketts.net/2016/10/30/2016-macbook-pro-usb-cth... is also a great resource to get started, if you haven't seen it yet.

All I want is a single TB3 plug that powers my laptop and hooks up 2x4k displays at 60hz. A USB port or 3 would also be nice. Apparently this does not (can not?) exist.

From the Pluggable site: "Connect two uncompressed 4K 60Hz (4096 x 2160) displays (one via a DisplayPort++ port and the other via the 2nd USB-C port)"

Why can't I just have two real DP++ ports on the dock?

They do make one, but it's windows-only: Thunderbolt 3 DisplayPort Dual-Display Adapter for Windows (Plugable TBT3-DP2X)

Is there something about the new MBPs which prevents them from sending 2 HDMI or DP signals out over a single TB3 port? It seems like a huge step backward to now require a network of dongles, adapters, docks, and special cables just to replicate ports which other normal laptops have.

http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MJ1K2AM/A/usb-c-digital-av...

  > "You can't expect an off-brand USB-C adapter"

As an educated techie I understand that this isn't true because:

  - Some cables may be counterfeit/non-compliant
  - The nomenclature "USB-C" encompasses a multitude of differing standards
  - The differing standards are rarely identified or clearly explained at point-of-sale.

This is kind of the point. I have to carry this, plus an offbrand HDMI adapter to hope to have greater than 50% chances of it working.

As far as I'm aware there is no reliable USB-C -> HDMI adapter on the market that works with the MBP 2016. If there is another someone knows about, I'd be happy to buy one for testing and let folks know the results.

>"As far as I'm aware there is no reliable USB-C -> HDMI adapter on the market that works with the MBP 2016"

, do you exactly mean the broader statement (I've reworded what I thought you mean) :

>"As far as I am aware there is nothing that plugs into a MBP 2016 that gives a reliable HDMI port that I can connect with a simple HDMI cable to any output device that takes HDMI (screens/projectors/TV's/etc)"?

Is that what you meant? In other words, there is nothing you can carry around, together with an HDMI cable, that let's you plug the MBP 2016 into anything from a TV to a screen to a projector etc (as long as they take an HDMI input) without a chance that it won't work?

http://blog.fosketts.net/2016/11/26/beware-usb-c-hdmi-adapte...

Note that it ends saying "The Good News: DisplayPort Works

I purchased a couple of USB-C to DisplayPort adapters from Monoprice and am pleased to report that they both work just fine. As hoped, these simple adapters natively and passively attach Alternate Mode DisplayPort from the MacBook Pro’s integrated AMD GPU through the Intel Thunderbolt controller and connect perfectly with the monitors I’ve tried."

I then Googled "active displayport hdmi converter" (to find one with a little chip inside, that actively really outputs true HDMI.)

I found this page:

https://www.startech.com/eu/m/AV/Displayport-Converters/Disp...

Which says "Connect an HDMI® monitor to a DisplayPort® Video Source".

Since it's active, the Mac should see it as a DisplayPort device. The device then takes that signal and outputs HDMI. So while the resolution might not be perfect, I would expect this combination to work and let you connect your Mac to any HDMI device, period.

Since it sounds like you have this problem a lot, if you did end up buying that device I'd be keen to know if it worked! (email in my profile.)

Thanks.

I went through 2 adapters before I got one that actually worked with the new 2016 MacBook. Which was incredibly annoying.

That said, Dell did have a USB-C dock, the TB15, which was plagued by a lot of the same things I hear about USB-C from the Macbooks with USB-C. Wifi and other components stop working intermittently, and on the dock, it flickered intermittently when connected at 4k[1]. Dell just released a new dock, the TB16, and there's a BIOS update for my XPS 15 that says it fixes some docking issues.

1: I seem to recall someone mentioning this was related to the firmware in some connected peripheral, but I'm not sure.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EZH7CKO/

Whether your particular device does is not a given, though. the 12" MacBook definitely does, the specs specifically call out the native support:

http://www.apple.com/macbook/specs/

The specs for the MacBook Pro also purport DisplayPort capability:

http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/

USB-C to HDMI -> HDMI to VGA -> Monitor

This forced me to buy a separate "USB-C to VGA" adapter. But with that, I cannot connect my USD laserpointer any more. It's a mess.

Also, why does your laser pointer need to be connected to your laptop. If you mean USB presentation remote, you need more than one USB port.

I mean, a bunch that just have the no-name plastic-bag packaging probably slip by on Amazon, but I would assume the lawyers wouldn't let you brand your cable "thunderbolt" without some official licensing fee process.

You just made this up. As already clarified in this thread, Apple doesn't own Thunderbolt and Apple gets zero (0) licensing fees. There is no "cut".

Even when there's no money in it, Apple uses whitelists in some places, like which SSDs get TRIM and which displays work and get the HiDPI checkbox:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206587

Who owns a standard doesn't seem to matter at this point.

USB 3.1 in general is a mess. The spec allows for Alternate Modes, where the port is hardwired on the Motherboard to be able to be switched to deliver DisplayPort, HDMI, MHL, Thunderbolt, and damn near anything else you can figure out how to mux over the port's pins and cheaply demux on the other end of the cable. The best part is no one will actually list what Alternate Modes their laptop or motherboard supports. So if I want a laptop that supports, DisplayPort Alternate Mode with dual monitors, I'm opening support tickets with manufacturers asking "Does your USB-C port run this?"

Apple and Intel simply followed along what with what was already a mess.

Interesting point. Got me thinking about how the iPod was not the first MP3 player, and how the iPhone was not the first smartphone. I believe the philosophy was "don't be the first; be the first to get it right."

It's a little disappointing that they haven't been so magical lately.

More likely than using any sort of standard port would be Apple inventing yet another new proprietary port.

False. USB 1.

Apple rarely goes proprietary with their ports. The original 30-pin iPod port. Lightning. ADB in the mists of time.

All of which were I believe better than what was available.

They are better, but we also have a situation where the only port on an Apple device is proprietary with the latest iPhone.

If we put the iPhone 6S model aside (because the -S models generally do not adopt a significant change in features), the only model released since USB-C is the iPhone 7.

Given the short lifecycle of phones, adopting lightning rather than postponing until USB-C has given several generations of phones with a superior connection.

Should the iPhone 7 have adopted USB-C instead of lightning? Perhaps, but USB-C support isn't exactly widespread (and it might in fact be Apple which ends up pushing USB-C support to the point of widespread adoption).

Is the lightning connection superior to USB-C?

Well, it's size is smaller: 6.7mm x 1.5mm (vs 8.4mm x 2.6mm for USB-C); a 42% reduction in height, and a 20% reduction in width.

For devices like mobile phones, I can see how the size of connector can be more important than bandwidth or compatibility. I'd like lightning to be a standard, but it's definitely an improvement over micro-USB, and in terms of size, it's better than USB-C.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_(connector)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_Type-C

Of course, the one huge flaw is that now their phones and laptops use different connectors.

But don't dare buy a low-cost adapter from eBay or be damned for 10 generation.

So yeah it's a closed environment but is it so far worst than the jungle outside?

Among the problems is you can have a cable that can't support a particular alternate modes, or can't support adequate power. The USB-IF hasn't defined a set of standard icons (not that there's much room for them -- they'd be microscopic).

Also the MacBook Retina has USB 3.1 v1 so supports just ordinary USB 3.0 & HDMI. The MacBook Pro supports several more alternate modes.

At least to Apple's credit, AFAICT all four USB ports are identical. Even that isn't required by the spec.

  The two right-hand ports deliver Thunderbolt 3 functionality, but have reduced PCI Express bandwidth [1]

I can't find any official document which clearly states the speed of the reduced-functionality ports, but Apple also state this:

  All late-2016 MacBook Pro models deliver USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) performance on all Thunderbolt 3 ports [1]

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207256

Perhaps in the scope of large scale manufacturing, having multiple (redundant) connector styles is a low hanging fruit for cost reduction.

But it seems that there would be increased user confusion and technical support required. Very strange.

  > "they prioritized standardizing the connector but not the rest of the details"

Apple might have taken advantage of it, but it's the USB-IF who decided to make the standard rather more variable.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_Implementers_Forum

Think they'll wise up and change any of it on the next model?

That year was the first appearance of the Thunderbolt port on a Macbook Pro. You could have theoretically removed every legacy port outside of the MagSafe port and only had a bunch of TB ports to handle the I/O of peripherals. Yet Apple left the USB, FW800 (on the 15/17, maybe the 13 too) and SD reader instead of making people buy dongles to make up for the slack.

TB2/mDP can't carry power. It was physically a much larger port, which means they couldn't scale down the size of the machine. And, ultimately, mDP is a much less useful port than the universally standard USB-C.

TB1/mdp is larger than USB-C - in 2011 terms though, it'd be considered small. The mdp port is smaller than regular USB, ethernet and FW800 - all ports available on early 2011 MBPs.

TB1 should carry some power. I don't have my 2011 MBP any more, but I'm near certain that I was able to run a thunderbolt capable seagate external 2.5" hard drive without providing additional power. I also had a Kanex TB-> USB3.0 adapter, and I could swear it was able to power a USB 2.5" external also.

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/124485/can-a-thunde...

  > TB2/mDP can't carry power

  > > TB1 should carry some power. 
  > > I was able to run a thunderbolt capable seagate external 2.5" hard drive

All data is essentially energy/power, right? Isn't all communication, a change in energy state? Therefore, all data is essentially a transfer of energy/power.

Even the older standards - serial, firewire, USB 1, USB 2, USB 3, etc - carried some power, although (in general), a fairly small amount. I've used external USB-2 drives without a power source, except that provided by the USB-2 cable.

The maximum power-draw of a USB device is documented in the standards, but generally, USB 2 is permitted to draw 500mA, at 5V: 2.5W.

The power of TB2/mDP wasn't limited by the plug, but rather by the specifications of the standard/protocol.

USB-C is intended to provide significantly more power. All USB Type-C cables should support 60W. High-power cables should support 100W.

The older standards can (just about) provide enough power to spin a hard-disk, but the newer standards can power and charge a laptop.

The analog is that in 2011 TB was a new, multi-purpose plug that can do just about anything (and USB-C is that thing in 2016, and it benefits from 5 additional years of progress, so yes, of course it can do more than TB). IIRC, Apple bragged about how great TB was when they announced it.

TB can provide 18V/10W/550mA. That's enough for what most people used USB 2 for in 2011 (Apple didn't introduce USB 3 until the 2012 MBP, IIRC).

At the very least Apple could have chosen to create a similar situation where TB could replace all the MBP's data ports that mattered in 2011 (in the same way they dropped all ports in late 2016) and force everyone to use a dongle for backwards compatibility when they introduced the early 2011 MBPs. But Apple didn't. Probably because they knew people would be unhappy. If Apple had the #courage to drop the USB and FW ports back then, people would have already been living the #donglelife for 5 years. Nobody would have even blinked or complained in the transition to USB-C.

And it also really doesn't matter that TB couldn't charge a Macbook Pro in 2011. Nobody would have cared, as everyone was still deeply in love with MagSafe (and many still are).

>> All USB Type-C cables should support 60W.

That might be true, but even Apple doesn't make it that simple, because they made a 61W charger (yes, I see that the charger's 1W over the 60W limit) that's incompatible with a bunch of previous cables designed for 29W chargers and you have to read the serial number on the cable just to be sure you're using the right one (I suspect a lot people won't know to do that).

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201700

There is no such thing as a "Thunderbolt 3-only device". Support for USB 3.1 is a part of the Thunderbolt 3 spec, and in your example the Windows machine and the device would talk to one another over USB 3.1.

If you can plug it in, it will work: every device with a standards-compliant USB-C port will work with any other device with a standards-compliant USB-C port. The only question is which underlying protocol will be used; in the worst case, it will be USB 3.1, and if both devices support Thunderbolt 3, it will be something fancier.

Unfortunately, this hasn't been my experience. As an example, I have a display-port-based Apple cinema display, and I bought this adapter to try to connect it to a new macbook pro 15":

  http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMEL2AM/A/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-to-thunderbolt-2-adapter

If I remember correctly (and I might not), the apple store page for this adapter didn't originally carry a warning about this, but instead had text that made it easy to misunderstand whether this would work. The text on the page has changed.

As a weaker example, I have an LG 27UD88 Monitor. The USB-C connection from it works, but only carries 60W of charging "oomph," and the 15" macbook pro needs 85W of charging. So, even though the menubar icon on the mac signals that charging is happening, the battery is actually depleting over time. (Yeah, this one is more caveat emptor than the other, but still.)

TB3 is an "alternate mode" signaling over USB-C. As such, every TB3 port is a USB-C port, but not every USB-C port is a TB3 port. Same goes for DisplayPort over TB2. Every TB2 "native" port allows DP, but not every DP port does TB2. TB3 doesn't however carry DP signaling as before though because a cable is either TB3 over USB-C, or DP over USB-C, not both. TB3 and DP both use the "same" alternate-mode signaling. This was my only complaint with the 12" rMB, having only one port, you couldn't plug in a hub, then hub to monitor, because the hub wouldn't kick in the alternate mode signaling required. This required the monitor to always be first device. Now with the rMBP having multiple ports, not a problem anymore.

As mentioned before, USB-C also has an alternate mode for DisplayPort. That's how your LG 27UD88 (fantastic monitor btw!) gets the monitor signal. Buying a TB3 to TB2 adapter is the wrong way to adddress hooking up a DP monitor, despite it being a semi-logical conclusion for even most tech geeks. The right combo is to get a USB-C to DP adapter.

I don't know what the USB-IF folks were thinking, but clearly we need some of whatever they were smoking as this is going to be a mess for years to come i bet.

As to your last point about 60W vs 85W USB-PD, technically you are very correct, but in real life not exactly. The distinction comes to play with how hard you are working the machine. If CPU/GPU are maxed, you'll drain a little battery, but under normal load you'll see a very very slow charge. Same thing happened before with Magsafe2 when you used a 65W power cord on a 15" MBP (that normally used an 85W adapter).

It actually loses battery being charged @ 60W? I can't imagine the MBP 15" is actually pulling that much current over the long term... If this is the case, that means it's simply not using the power delivery whatsoever which seems utterly insane.

I've plugged in my 15W phone charger to my 15" MBP, and I was fairly certain at the time my battery was going down less than it was previously. This could of course been placebo.

Ugh, what a silly rollout if so. Plus Apple shipping USB-C 2.0 cables with their chargers in an effort to save... $1? On a $3,000 laptop? Just ridiculous.

Not having a viable USB-C -> HDMI adapter at launch has to be the biggest oversight/wtf for me though. I don't know many users of MBP's that don't do presentations/toss some code up on a projector/etc. from time to time. This is now genuinely hard to impossible. I have to carry 2 HDMI adapters in my bag, as some TVs work with one, some the other. And some not at all.

I'm all for the move to USB-C - but it's like they put zero thought into the transition. You can't cripple a generation of hardware like this.

I know most of these problems will be solved both in software and in third party support - but man this product feels like some manager pulled 4 different groups together and said "you guys have had 3 damn years, release what you have now" and they tried badly at integrating it all together in a couple weeks.

Then you get into actual day to day usability issues like the touchbar lacking the completely in-your-face-obvious feature of haptic feedback making it almost useless... Like how was that not the first thing the first UIx tester who used the escape key said? Just amazes me.

  > Not having a viable USB-C -> HDMI adapter
  > Many users of MBP's…toss some code up on a projector

Joking aside, my "presentation" adapter is Thunderbolt(2) -> VGA, because VGA is the only thing I can be fairly certain that almost every projector will support.

That said, I've ended up with a bunch of adapters, as a fallback in case that doesn't work. I'm definitely not expecting to plug into a projector with USB-C any time soon!

I've seen this, very rarely, when getting power via a 27" Thunderbolt Display, and keeping multiple cores busy.

It's the worst-case scenario: adapters/connectors that appear identical, but behave differently.

this is completely false, because alt-mode exists and alt-mode doesn't have to support a fallback to USB-C. Google sells a usb-c to hdmi adapter in their store. If you connect it to a Nexus 6P, nothing happens, because the phones don't support hdmi alt-mode.

https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/03/2016-macbook-pro-thunderbolt-...

Not if there aren't drivers written for your OS it won't. Unless you are the type of person who can roll your own drivers.

Sure, if there's no driver, the user will be out of luck, no matter what. But that's at least a clearer, separate problem, from incompatible adapters or cables, and whether they correctly support the device.

USB should be one thing and one thing only; a Universal Serial Bus. Can you send video over a serial connection? Great, let's do that instead of using the same physical connector for 85 different incompatible video cable designs that may or may not work with any given device.

USB 1.1 was about the right level of complexity. Maybe a bit too high. Since then, we have gone off the rails. It's no longer reasonable to suspect that anything except super-high-end devices will even bother to support a majority of the things in the USB spec. How many laptops actually support most of the charge profiles? The MacBooks do, but none of my friends' non-mac laptops do. It's a mess.

The speed we have now is great. Let's keep that. But let's also erase all the cruft and bring USB back to the simple, universal protocol it was supposed to be.

Other: Alienware, Dell, HP, etc all have laptops doing it. I don't have the link handy that lists ten windows laptops supporting it last Spring, but I'm sure Google can find it for you and there's likely dozens more now.

HDMI you should just give up on though...

200\* Apple became one of a few models choices, each designed to (for something of a premium) deliver a consummate experience within its niche.

Apple buyers -- both professionals and premium-paying consumers -- want something that "just works", and works well.

For Apple to foist the Emotibar on them, before solving these other problems... Back-asswards.

This isn't a new issue and USB-C is far, far from being the first port type to be ambiguous in this manner.

Thing is that displayport over thunderbolt used half the bandwidth of thunderbolt to carry displayport signals (raw, not coded on top of thunderbolt). This similarly to how you can use USB-C alternate mode to carry displayport. Thus using thunderbolt over USB-C alternate to carry displayport is superfluous to the extreme.