Intel has supported three external displays on integrated graphics since Ivy Bridge in 2012.

I’m not sure what that has to do with it being a niche use-case or not.

Niche or not, being more than a decade behind the competition is gauche.

On one somewhat niche feature, on the lowest SKU in that particular product lineup.

I can pick areas where Apple is beating Intel. Different products have different feature matrices, news at 11.

They also don’t show any signs of catching up to the Raspberry Pi’s on GPIO capabilities.

They did with https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/series/... but sadly seem to have killed off that product line.

That was Intel, not Apple.

It does seem like a shame, though—Intel’s IOT department seems to try lots of things, but not get many hits.

Apple does not compete on checkboxes. If they deemed is necessary to remove, there’s a reason. Not saying I agree, just that’s how they operate. If there isn’t a need to support 3 displays then they won’t, regardless if the “competition” did it years prior.

>there’s a reason

they operate 100% on profitability, not what's technically feasible. They are extremely focused on making money. Yes, there is a reason after all.

Exactly my point. It’s technically feasible to do many things. Apple will do what Apple does. Try to upsell you into the higher tier hardware.

> there’s a reason. Not saying I agree, just that’s how they operate.

Almost always it’s maximizing profit margins rather than anything else.

If that were true Apple would have stopped bragging about battery life.

The longer battery life is genuinely useful to a wide range of people in a way that being able to connect 38 external monitors is not.

I recently went on a 5-day trip and forgot to bring the charger for my M2. The first day I thought I'd have to rush around and find one. By the fourth day I still had 8% and then finally realized I could charge it via USB-C instead of magsafe.

> connect 38 external monitors

Just 2 would be enough. Which seems like a basic feature their competitors are are capable of supporting for a very low costs.

They in fact are competing on checkboxes, specifically they are probably using this limitation to upsell theirs more expensive models.

Can you not connect 2 monitors on a Mac?

Not on those with a non-pro M chip.

Even if you use one of those Thunderbolt/USB-C expansion dongles?

Correct.

It has nothing to do with niche use-case or not. This is a regression compared to their own Intel Macbooks.

At a ~recent work place the entire floor of developers had (Intel) Macbook pros with dual 24" monitors.

Some of them were trying out Apple Silicon replacements, though I'm not aware of what they did monitor wise. Probably used the excuse to buy a single large ultrawide each instead, though I don't actually know. ;)

Which workplaces are these that buy low-end laptops for their employees but shell out for dual monitor workstations?

External displays can be used for multiple generations of laptop hardware. Unlike CPUs, displays are not improving dramatically each year.

MacBook Air is a world-leading form factor for travel, it's not "low-end". MBA can be ordered with enough storage and RAM to exceed the price of base MacBook Pro.

We’re still talking the low end of this product line. If you’re buying two monitors for your employees, I’m not sure you’re skimping on the cost between an M3 and an M3 Pro.

As stated, it's not about cost.

The travel form factor of MBA is not available for MBP, for any price.

What's Apple high end laptop product line?

> low-end laptops

Heh, that's not how I would describe MacBook Pros. ;)

Is a 1,599 laptop a low-end laptop? An M3 Macbook Pro 14" that costs $1,599 can only drive a single external monitor according to the spec. A $1,000 Dell XPS 13 can drive 4 monitors via a single Thunderbolt 4 Dock that also charges the laptop!

Honestly, I'm an accountant and everyone in my office uses 2-3 monitors with $1,200 business ultrabook.

I think this use case is probably not the majority.

So? Intel doesn’t seem have any issues supporting it regardless of that.

I am not sure how can anybody compare Intel and Apple. Apple is a vertically integrated system that has a CPU component, with a proven track record of making the right decisions. Intel is a CPU vendor with shrinking market share. As I pointed out, this use case is probably not that important because it represents a very small user segment.

> low-end laptops

you're saying they're low-end because Intel? if you've got your macbook connected to two monitors, you're not very concerned about battery performance.

So isn't Intel silicon competitive speedwise? I thought the M[0-4]s were OK but sort of hypey as to being better in all regards.

Not a chance. Moving from an Intel MacBook Pro to an Apple Silicon MacBook Pro was absolutely revolutionary for me and my very pedestrian ‘interpreted language in Docker web developer’ workloads.

I’d seriously consider not taking a job if they were still on Intel MacBooks. I appreciate that an arch switch isn’t a piece of cake for many many workloads, and it isn’t just a sign of employers cheaping out. But for me it’s just been such a significant improvement.

I have worked in plenty i5-i7 windows/linux laptops before and a macbook m1 air with 16gb of ram is miles better in everything. Nothing like them.

And even if you do not care about battery, you still care about throttling.

Honestly anyone who calls them hypey hasn’t actually used them and spends too much time arguing about geekbench on forums.

Real world, the M series chips are by far the best I’ve ever used as a software engineer and it’s not even close.

More like cheap out on monitors such that devs want two crappy monitors instead of one crappy monitor

I work at Motorola and we get M1 airs unless you specifically request a Linux laptop. I wouldn't call it low end though. Low end is an Intel i3.

What dev shop gives their engineers base model machines?

Where are you getting that impression from the parent post? Maybe they were on a 2, 3, or 4 year upgrade cycle and still had a bunch of Intel MBPs when Apple Silicon hit the market. That'd be extremely typical.

What dev shop immediately buys all developers the newest and shiniest thing as soon as its released without trialing it first?

Yeah, they were running Intel Macbook Pros because that's what everyone was used to, and also because production ran on x86_64 architecture.

At least at the time, things worked a bit easier having the entire pipeline (dev -> prod) use a single architecture.

Yeah, that was my experience. The early M1 adopters at my previous company definitely ran into some growing pains with package availability, etc.

(Overall the transition was super smooth, but it wasn't instant or without bumps)

We stuck with Intel MBPs for awhile because people needed machines, but the scientific computing infrastructure for Apple silicon took more than a little bit to get going.

Huh? He was talking about dual monitor situations being a problem.

If the company bought Pro or Max chips and not base models, it wouldn’t be a problem.

Doesn't need to be a dev shop. Go into any standard office and most productivity office workers will be running dual monitors now.

But with the general power of the base model Apple Silicon I don't think most dev shops really need the higher end models, honestly.

It’s a bit funny though that their competitors don’t seem to have any issues supporting this on pretty much all of their products.

Well the number with two screens would be zero, because you can't do it. That doesn't mean people don't want to do it because 0% of the laptops do it. They're just unable to.