Lordy does that multiple monitor thing grind my gears.

I just want to display on 3 screens. But the base model is the only one that corporate IT will buy. So I have to buy a DisplayLink adapter to do what the Intel macbooks did with zero problem.

It’s not on Apple to make sure their cheapest consumer-targeted computer is good enough for enterprise use.

To me it’s not really relevant what the old computer models used to do. You have to evaluate what is available today and choose accordingly. Like it or not Intel chips had different strengths and weaknesses. It’s a different design entirely.

I’m split on whether this is a dirty price segmentation trick or a legitimate design limitation where adding more display support is expensive in terms of die size.

Doesn’t matter though, because companies doing serious work are supposed to know to buy the business versions of laptops. They don’t buy Dell Vostro consumer grade PCs, they buy Dell Precision/Latitude/XPS business systems. Apple tells you right in the name of their system: Pro. If you’re a professional you buy the Pro model. If it’s too expensive then buy something else.

Only the M2 & M3 Max chips support more than two external monitors[1]. Those start at $3200, and are overkill for the vast majority of use-cases.

There's no excuse for a $2000+ machine to not support more than two external monitors. DisplayLink on MacOS is far from ideal, either: it works alright, but it has to use the screen recording functionality in the OS, which causes anything with protected content to freak out.

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/101571

Also note that 'support multiple external monitors' here actually means 'kinda support some monitors sometimes'. Just google and read the hundreds of threads about external monitor issues on M2 pros.

The only issue I have with external monitors on my M2 Pro – and it’s admittedly annoying – is that unless I turn everything on in a specific sequence, the primary monitor’s energy saving kicks in and turns off the screen before the Mac has synced video. It essentially bootloops.

This only happens on my Acer Predator, and only if I’m using DP —> USB-C. The secondary LG doesn’t care, nor does the Acer if it’s over HDMI.

The fix I’ve found is to wake up the Mac first with the external keyboard, then turn the Acer on and wait for sync, login, then turn the LG on.

While I’d obviously rather not have to deal with this, I feel like it’s at least partially on the incredibly aggressive power saving of the Acer, which I can’t find any way to disable or extend the timeout of.

The excuse is that this is Apple, and the solution to problems with them is to buy more things. In this case, get a $1,500 ultra wide curved monitor which is better than dual head.

For $1500 it's better to get one of the 43" 4K displays. I've used one for over half a decade now, and the ability to comfortably tile a browser plus four terminals side-by-side is unmatched. Or if you will, display 10 A4 pages of a document simultaneously.

I have a €500 43" 4K and it's great. But anything else feels so small now.

4k? I'm talking 5k. regardless of which monitor you get, point is $1,500 gets you a lot of monitor that is far better than dual head.

No, it's not. I've used ultra wides and I don't like them :-)

get a better window manager. but to each their own. :)

side steps the problem of single monitor output

Would a better window manager fix the fact that I don't like the way the image looks?

If it's not about window management for you, what don't you like about a single flat 43" display over dual head of two smaller ones?

They frequently don't have adequate DPI. Or they cost an arm and a leg.

Invest in yourself. You gotta look at this thing for hours a day, it's worth it to get the one you want.

LOLNO.

Or I could get 2 smaller screens, not be a stickler for trivialities and use the money I saved to, dunno, buy a bike.

Sure, but most people don’t use more than two external monitors. Most people don’t use more than one.

The people who complain about specs per dollar were never Apple’s customers. “Why buy an Audi when a Dodge Neon SRT4 costs half as much and goes faster?” It has been this way for 40 years now. This just isn’t how they operate. When they design a product they don’t start from the specs, they start from how people use the product.

There are much cheaper ways to own a Max system if that specific spec is something you’re desperate for. For one thing, Apple themselves is selling the current model for $2700 refurbished. $500 off and it’s the exact same system with a brand new battery and full warranty.

Also, you should never buy a Mac without the student discount at the very least. Anyone can get it.

Finally, a used M1 Max system will cost you under $2000 and is barely 3 years old.

Keep in mind that if you were buying a MacBook Air in 2010 you were paying over $1800 in today’s money.

>Sure, but most people don’t use more than two external monitors. Most people don’t use more than one.

Most people don't buy Macs. So why even sell them then?

They literally took away a feature that their cheapest Intel Macs could do, and restricted it to their most expensive Apple Silicon Macs. They should be lambasted for this.

>Finally, a used M1 Max system will cost you under $2000 and is barely 3 years old.

A Raspberry Pi can do this for under $100. Come on.

> The people who complain about specs per dollar were never Apple’s customers. It has been this way for 40 years now. This just isn’t how they operate. When they design a product they don’t start from the specs, they start from how people use the product.

Ahahaha, I love how when any apple discussion starts to turn technical and detailed, the arguments about macbooks having superior hardware/quality/software immediately get abandoned in favor of some vague notion of 'blah blah DESIGN blah PEOPLE blah PRODUCT'. LOL. Cool story bro.

Well, what PC people do is they hyper-focus on one specific spec like number of displays supported or price per GB of RAM but can’t see the forest for the trees beyond that.

If I just do the same thing with Macs I can win arguments just as easily. Find me a laptop with the kind of performance per watt specs as the M3 systems. Find another laptop of the same size/weight/power draw that can match the M3 Max’s performance at anything close to the same battery life. Find me a completely fanless Intel/AMD PC that performs as well as the MacBook Air and gets the same or better battery life. Find me a PC laptop where you can feed a RTX 40X0 mobile GPU with over 100GB of RAM. Find me another laptop that uses TSMC’s most advanced chip lithography.

PC spec monkeys will basically say it’s not a real laptop because it can’t support 800 external monitors and there’s no print screen key and it doesn’t have a parallel port etc etc. These are all specs that don’t matter to 99% of users.

Hell, if you’re the kind of person who has a triple or quad external monitor setup, that means you’ve spent around $1000 on just displays. That probably means you can afford $3,000 for a MacBook Pro with a Max chip or maybe pay $2,000 for a used one. And if you didn’t spend $1000+ on those displays, that means those four displays are probably so bad that you’re better off looking at one 4K display or two decent quality ultrawide displays.

> Well, what PC people do is they hyper-focus on one specific spec like number of displays supported or price per GB of RAM but can’t see the forest for the trees beyond that.

Not at all, there are many examples of various types of specs in this thread, where apple fanboys suddenly go mute :)

> If I just do the same thing I can win arguments just as easily. Find me a laptop with the kind of performance per watt specs as the M3 systems. Find another laptop of the same size/weight/power draw that can match the M3 Max’s performance at anything close to the same battery life.

So the only example you can come up with is performance per watt? (Your second question is basically the same as your first). M3 very good in that category, I don't disagree, it's apple's latest/best processor, and it does slightly outperform AMD Ryzens in that category[0]. Of course, when you take price into account, apple M processors are not even close to best :).

> Find me a PC laptop where you can feed an RTX 4080 mobile with over 100GB of RAM

Hilarious that you bring this up when macs don't even support CUDA and basically useless when it comes to the the most important aspects of having a GPU today... gaming and deep learning...

> Those laptops don’t exist, unless it’s a Mac.

Yeah, nothing but apple exists in an apple fanboy's mind.

[0]https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-cpu_performance_...

So what you’re saying is you can’t find a better performance per watt, AMD “comes close.”

You are doing the spec monkey thing again. You changed the spec. I chose performance per watt and now you’ve changed it to performance per dollar.

Under a performance per dollar logic AMD makes the best PC graphics card on the market, which they obviously don’t in terms of total performance. Nvidia charges a huge price/performance premium on the RTX4090 because you can’t buy that performance elsewhere. Sound familiar?

> So the only example you can come up with is performance per watt

I’ve got another one: media encoding. Apple’s systems obliterate the rest.

If your argument is that CUDA is important I hate to say it but you’re actually reverting to that whole “product ecosystem and experience” angle that you were deriding in the same breath. Nvidia users have to buy Nvidia because it’s the only way to use Nvidia software. Kind of like how iOS developers and Final Cut Pro users must buy a Mac? “Yeah, nothing but apple exists in an apple fanboy's mind.” You could replace that statement with “Nvidia” under your own preferences.

Under the spec monkey argument someone buying a graphics card should ignore Nvidia’s CUDA ecosystem and buy an AMD graphics card that offers better performance per dollar. But you’re saying that the lack of CUDA on a Mac is a major downside. Which is it? Performance per dollar or user experience and ecosystem?

This is why doing the spec monkey thing turns us around and around in circles. I’m not being an Apple fanboy I’m just pointing out how it’s completely reasonable for an expensive computer to not prioritize supporting a zillion monitors.

I never claimed that any particular single spec makes macbooks bad, that was entirely your own strawman :). There are maaaaany reasons why I think they're bad.

> I’m not being an Apple fanboy I’m just pointing out how it’s completely reasonable for an expensive computer to not prioritize supporting a zillion monitors.

My 9 year old asus laptop has better external monitor support than my m2 macbook pro... these problems were basically solved 10 ago... how hard can it be? How much do you have to 'prioritize' this? How hard is it to solve the many years-old annoying, well-known macos bugs? I don't see innovation or engineering quality coming out of apple (the only exception being (the very recent) M line of CPUs)... everything else is meh - buggy, fragile, locked-in, overpriced, non-standard, lack of support for important stuff like CUDA, etc.

If we’re talking about support for external displays this all seems entirely tangential.

> When they design a product they don’t start from the specs, they start from how people use the product.

So they impose arbitrary limitations that have basically nothing to do with the specs just so that people who are supposed to use more expensive machines wouldn’t buy the cheaper models? Sounds about right.

Apple is trying to maximize their revenue because they can. There is nothing wrong about a for profit company doing that. Trying to find any other explanation is a bit silly though..

M1 Max also supports two external monitors (plus built-in monitor).

"Cheapest" but not cheap. A $400 Steam Deck can do 3 external monitors with an inexpensive MST hub and has a single USB C port.

The MBA is an extremely close competitor to the Dell XPS line too. And "Pro" doesn't even guarantee you more monitors. The $1600 M3 MBP is just as limited as the "consumer" Air.

> extremely close competitor to the Dell XPS line

Only if you ignore the shitty finger trackpad tracking on dell, windows (shit UX) or Linux (shit battery life and shit sleep/wake), and in general the real life battery duration in real life use cases.

Celerons from 10+ years ago support 3 monitors and 32GB of RAM. There is no excuse.

there are AMD chips being sold right now that don't even support HDMI Org VRR let alone AV1 decode.

and those skylake laptops are stuck on HDMI 1.4b, so they top out at effectively 1080p60, but sure, you get three of them. And the DP/thunderbolt tops out at 4K60 non-HDR with crappy decode support, and you get at most like 2 ports per laptop.

the grass isn't always greener, there's lots of pain points with x86 hardware too. heck, those celerons you're so fond of are down to literally a single memory channel by this point. is a single stick going to be enough raw bandwidth for a developer that wants to be compiling code etc?

HDMI 1.4b does 1440p75 or 4k30 and HDMI 2.0 was brand new at the time.

> the grass isn't always greener, there's lots of pain points with x86 hardware too. heck, those celerons you're so fond of are down to literally a single memory channel by this point. is a single stick going to be enough raw bandwidth for a developer that wants to be compiling code etc?

What a weird argument; no shit a bargain bin CPU from 10 years ago is worse than a brand new mid-range chip. That's the exact point I'm making. That Celeron was bad 10 years ago. 10 years of progress, billions of dollars of investment and you get the same maximum RAM capacity, less external monitors at a much higher price.

And you’re ignoring all the things that the apple will do that your chip won’t, or the things it’s massively better at.

It has 2x the bandwidth of a Radeon 780M and runs at 35w, it has as much bandwidth as a PS5. there are pluses and minuses to doing it both ways, but, detractors only want to look at the handful of areas where traditional chips have an edge.

I work on a m2 pro and the external monitor issues don't end.

> It’s not on Apple to make sure their cheapest consumer-targeted computer is good enough for enterprise use.

Except they crippled it on purpose as a form of market segmentation. Claiming anything else is beyond absurd.

We really don’t know. Personally I’m not surprised that a chip that came from a smartphone has difficulty with multiple monitors. I’m guessing that the Pro and Max chips need a much larger die area dedicated to that functionality.

Few years back I had a MacBook pro 2019 and an old ultra wide LG screen with resolution 25:9 and HDMI only input. Apparently, official Apple's USB to HDMI connector cannot handle screen resolution 2560*1080 at that time.

Thing that was possible at 300$ windows laptop cannot be done on 2500$ machine with 60$ connector.

Because if you agreed to pay $2500 anyway, you can agree to pay for an upgrade!

Apple is in the business of selling you hardware, specifically premium hardware. Think car dealership.

And Dell is not in that business? Or Lenovo?

People agree to pay ridiculous prices for memory or apple connectors - why not to charge them maximum?

I had a 2019 MBP, and it worked fine with my LG 5K ultrawide at full resolution (5120x2160).

I would check your HDMI cable (not all hdmi cables support the resolutions you want), but mine worked perfectly fine using a USB-C thunderbolt 3 cable, as well as an USB-C to DisplayPort cable.

I was amazed to see the new Air models support dual external displays!

> Apple unveils the new 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with the powerful M3 chip The world’s most popular laptop is better than ever with even more performance, faster Wi-Fi, and support for up to two external displays — all in its strikingly thin and light design with up to 18 hours of battery life

EDIT:

mmmm... no.

>Support for up to two external displays: MacBook Air with M3 now supports up to two external displays when the laptop lid is closed

FFS Apple.

I guess it's something of an improvement at least :-/

I agree 100% with what you've said, but this sentence:

> Way over-priced storage and RAM upgrades, can't connect multiple monitors unless you pay up, and you're stuck with MacOS.

Basically boils down to "Apple is selling a much better product, and they know it." I.e. your first bullets (over priced storage, RAM, charging for multi monitor support) all just boil down to "Apple charges more because they can". The "you're stuck with MacOS" is obviously true but just highlights that Apple has always been about optimizing hardware and software together.

If anything, I think the "dark times" for Apple laptops was the late teens during the era of stuff like the butterfly keyboard, the touchbar, and too few ports. I think Apple consumers have consigned themselves to paying more for a much better product. What they're not willing to do (as much anyway) is to pay a premium for a crappier product. The butterfly keyboard especially was such a disaster ("We shaved .2 mm off the width, all at the minor expense of any key randomly stopping to work at any time!") Admitting mistakes in big corporations is hard so I'm glad they just jettisoned all that stuff.

These days I want Apple's hardware (the M chips specifically, but the trackpads/screens/cases are nice too) but can't stand their software. While I'm not a big fan of Windows either, it at least provides basic window management features by default.

> Basically boils down to "Apple is selling a much better product, and they know it." I.e. your first bullets (over priced storage, RAM, charging for multi monitor support) all just boil down to "Apple charges more because they can".

Not at all. Apple is selling a 'brand' and most of their success is down to marketing. They know they can charge more, because their average customers don't really understand what they're buying.

Would love to see hard numbers on the claims of 'apple/macbooks are just much better'... :) I just read ~20 apple fanboy comments in this thread making absurd claims about 'apple is way better than everyone' based on nothing but anecdotal experiences and BS.

Have you ever used a Apple computer for long, like 1-3 months?

I ask because I used to be like you, calling Apple users "fanboys", throwing hard data from benchmarks in discussions, being proud of my true h4ck0rz Linux installation on a IBM ThinkPad for work that was a pain in the ass to maintain in working state, had to stop updating after too many hours spent troubleshooting. Or relegate myself to working in Windows on ThinkPads.

Until one day I begrudgingly accepted a Intel MBP at a new job some 15 years ago, I was going to install Linux on it anyway so didn't care. Started using macOS in the meantime, it had the shell utilities I needed so I kept using it while checking how you install some Linux on it, the UI worked flawlessly, the OS was a breeze to learn, after a few months I had barely had to troubleshoot anything, I'd just turn it on and work.

I never went back, I want my tools to work well and found a tool that worked much better than anything else I had used before.

When something better shows up I'll be very excited to try, unfortunately nothing in the past 15 years has changed my mind.

Not everyone likes it, and that's ok, but calling satisfied customers "fanboys" is a tad bit immature. The product works, and works well.

> Have you ever used a Apple computer for long, like 1-3 months?

I've used many apple computers for the last ~10 years. I work on them daily.

> I ask because I used to be like you, calling Apple users "fanboys"

I'm not calling 'apple users' fanboys, I'm calling people who are literally fanboying in the comments fanboys.

> Started using macOS in the meantime, it had the shell utilities I needed so I kept using it while checking how you install some Linux on it, the UI worked flawlessly,

Ahahaha, there are soooooo many bugs in the macos UI and macos in general, many of these are well known and have existed for years.

> the OS was a breeze to learn,

What kind of point is this? You said you've used Windows and Linux before... what else is there to learn for macos? A few new shortcuts?

> I'd just turn it on and work.

I turn my windows and linux laptops on and they just work! Magic!

So again, you didn't make a single rational argument for why macbooks and macos are actually better... literally a fanboy.

> Ahahaha, there are soooooo many bugs in the macos UI and macos in general, many of these are well known and have existed for years.

What's the point of this? I didn't say it was perfect and bugless...

The point about turning it on and working is that I never had an issue where my soundcard simply stopped working (many times on Linux), nor issues with sleep mode not working and draining the battery (many, many times on Linux), nor my graphics configuration randomly going out of whack and KDE/Gnome getting stuck in a bizarre resolution.

Maybe I should just disengage, you sound a bit deranged in your quest, best of luck!

No, the product is simply much better. If you pay $2000 for an Apple laptop vs. a PC running Windows or Linux, the Apple laptop will have twice the battery life and be in better physical condition after 3 years of equivalent use.

False.

> thread making absurd claims about 'apple is way better than everyone' based on nothing but anecdotal experiences...

I'm not sure why you think "anecdotal experiences" are invalid when people are talking about a personal choice. I.e. I don't need some sort of double blinded study to "prove" Mac laptops are better. I've used other laptops, and I have a strong preference for Macs for a myriad of reasons that have nothing to do with marketing (to be honest I can't even remember the last time I saw an actual ad for a Mac). You may disagree, that's fine, but it's silly to pretend the personal preferences of others are somehow invalid or less than.

I didn't say anecdotal experiences are invalid. I said anecdotal experiences aren't a valid basis for the vast generalizations about 'macbooks are just much better than everything else' type fanboy comments.

Price: if that’s the major qualm that’s not really a product flaw. The best product usually commands the highest price.

Stuck with macOS: technically not true, Asahi Linux exists.

Connecting multiple monitors: a legitimate negative limitation unusual at the MacBook Air price point, but still something that only a small fraction of consumer laptop buyers care about.

> The best product usually commands the highest price.

apple products being the perfect exception :)

Asahi Linux is still missing features a lot of people consider key. M1 even STILL doesn't support DP alt mode for example. That's a pretty serious shortcoming on something like a MBA where the only video out is through DP alt mode.

> you're stuck with MacOS

Interesting way of thinking about probably the biggest draw of the hardware.

Depends. To me, software is the thing that will keep me from Apple products. IMO Linux and Android are light-years ahead and are becoming even further ahead every year.

> IMO Linux and Android are light-years ahead

Linux on the Desktop has finally arrived !

It has always been there and it has always been better for some people. Nothing has changed. The day Linux on the desktop arrive, for the masses as meant in the meme, is the day Linux dies.

I have a hard time considering Linux "light years ahead" when they still can't even figure how to do HDR.

My daily driver before this was Linux and anyone who says "Linux is light years ahead" is kidding themselves

You have to set up a bash script to do something as basic as change the scrollwheel speed. Bluetooth is extremely spotty. Installing most software is still a pain unless you know all sorts of terminal-fu

You have to install software like UnnaturalScrollWheels or Smooze to get sensible mouse scrolling behavior out of MacOS (unless you use the horrific monstrosity of that Apple mouse that you can't use and charge at the same time). You have to install software like Rectangle to get actual window tiling + shortcuts for window tiling. You have to install Raycast/Butler to have a non-shit Finder alternative. There's dozens of basic UI/UX things Apple gets wrong that can only be fixed via either building your own hacks or paying for some ludicrously priced proprietary software (for example Smooze Pro).

I could go on, there's many basic features MacOS has been missing for going on a decade, let's not pretend they get it all right either.

How do you fix the keybindings on linux short of changing hundreds of separate software packages? Spoiler, I've and you can't. Why are there about eighteen million packages implementing each component on linux, each subtly broken and offering a different set of features? Because the community can't agree on anything (except keybindings adopted from the IBM PC, apparently) or commit to providing any single package that actually addresses all user needs.

Of course I don't expect everyone to share my opinions on what sane keybindings are, let alone what good software is in general, I'm just trying to illustrate how ridiculous you sound if you're trying to come off as engaging in the topic in good faith. I think it's pretty obvious why people prefer macos, personally, even if I don't agree with all the decisions apple makes for you.

Even if we say we agree (which we don't) how is this worse? Is a 25 gigabyte Windows 11 install better? I'd take this (IMO unrealistic comparison) over Microsofts and Apples way to do things any day.

I've used Linux on and off as both daily driver, dual boot and in my homelab. I'm definitely not kidding myself when I say I feel that for me, Linux is far ahead. Nothing you wrote changes that, even though I don't really agree with it. I won't add a long list of why as others have already done that, but saying “agree with me or you are wrong” as you basically did is just.... yeah. You are wrong, and it is a bit strange you think you know better than me what is best for me just because you like Apple better.

Can any OS? I've got an (apparently) HDR-capable monitor but genuinely can't tell much of a difference on Win10/11, any Linux distro I've ever tried and my Macbooks provided by my work.

The whole HDR thing seems more like a meme or weird flex type of thing to me, I've never noticed it ever really making a difference for me.

Also a weird hill to die on when talking about relative strengths of each platform, but you do you.

I use HDR all the time in Windows. Most newer AAA games support it, all my 4k movies, and being able to make true HDR photos and video is nice.

You won't notice a difference most of the time in normal desktop use because most desktop apps and the web are all SRGB, and get tone mapped accordingly when HDR is enabled. To really notice a difference with HDR content though, you need a good HDR monitor and not just one with basic DisplayHDR 400 certification, and either an OLED panel or mini LED full array local dimming.

Windows' HDR implementation is far from perfect (the gamma tracking on SRGB content is incorrect, for example), but it's a far cry from Linux where HDR support just doesn't even exist. I can't even realistically use Linux as an OS for a home theater PC anymore.

macOS is probably the gold standard when it comes to polished HDR support, especially with mixed mode use (HDR and SDR content on screen at the same time)

I hardly expect folks on HN to have normal opinions about the usability of linux, but duly noted.

Nah, it’s the single reason I have zero interest in Mac hardware.

i'd say the M processors are the biggest draw...

but yea, i agree, probably the 2nd biggest draw

Good lord no, the hardware is the actual good part of these machines, the OS is a piece of crap hobbled by catering to the lowest common denominator. I wish I could just wipe it off my work M3 pro, cause it drives me insane on the daily

> catering to the lowest common denominator

Ah this is why technical professionals all use linux, right?

Yes? Windows and Linux are by far the majority for most software work according to the SO Developer Survey[0]. Going by the survey, MacOS is 3rd after Win/Linux (of the 3 possible options).

[0] https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-most-popular-t...