I think their assumption is that if you’re the kind of pro that needs that many monitors, you’ll upgrade to the better chips they sell.

But it’s a frustrating limitation and remains one of the only areas their old intel based laptops were better at.

An assumption they are so unsure about, that they kind of force that decision on their users.

For the past 3 years, including with the latest laptops, "better chip" means 14" M* Pro starting at $1,999. $1,299 M1/M2 or $1,599 Macbook Pro does not support that. When you can find support for dual external display on $600 Windows laptops, or Intel Macbooks since at least 2012. By any standard this is an embarrassment and a regression.

Having 2 monitors isn’t even that ‘pro’ these days. I see receptionists with three sometimes.

I mean they are physical things and you can look at how big they are. But sure the rest of how that factors into cost and sales is harder to figure out, yes.

It’s a money thing. Apple wants to upsell. The production cost would be negligible, but now you have to buy the next level of the product.

The CEO is a supply chain guy. They've been optimizing their profit margins ruthlessly since he took the helm. I don't think any savings are too small, particularly if comparatively few users are affected and it motivates upselling.

I think it's weird though how far people go to defend Apple. It's objectively making (some) users worse off. Apple clearly doesn't care and the people defending them also clearly don't. But the affected users do care and "but money" isn't really a good excuse for them. It also doesn't solve their problem of not being able to use two external monitors anymore without spending significantly more money.