They are not artificially limiting the number of external screens. To support more screens, they would have to reserve die area for an additional controller. That could mean a gpu less or something. This is about engineering tradeoffs.
Considering the M3 has 55% more transistors than the M1, I'm sure they could have found some room for a third display controller, or a more capable one (one with MST support for instance), or just a more flexible one.
They're selling a $1600 machine which can't drive two external displays, it's sad. Intel's HD Graphics have been doing better since 2012 and they're trash.
It’s a business decision. You don’t think Apple knows the demand for multiple external displays? If they thought it would sell more Macs, they would do it.
> If they thought it would sell more Macs, they would do it.
It's short term thinking, it generates bad feeling of nickel and diming and unnecessary upsells: on M3 you need to pay $2000 to be able to use two external displays, and $3200 for 3, even if you have no need for the rest of the processing power.
Not only that but they managed to create more range confusion with the expensive but gimped entry-level 14".
What you describe is only considered by a vanishingly small number of their customers. The vast majority don’t care or even own an external display. You could be right about range confusion, but I doubt it simply because, like everything else, Apple is so disciplined about market research. Time will tell
> The vast majority don’t care or even own an external display.
Or more than 1 external display. The vast majority own none or a single. Few people have multiples, and those people are generally enthusiasts who will also tend to pay more.
Fair point. It's a bit anecdotal and things I've read over the years. Multi-monitor was growing quickly for desktops until the big wide screens came out. Then it seemed to slow. As many people shifted to laptops, the one larger monitor seemed to be more common or no monitor at all. There's also the challenge of defining multi-monitor as I use 3, but one of those is my laptop. In that sense nearly everyone can run 2 screens.
I'd love to see some modern stats that take into account these nuances.
Ofcourse it's a business decision but it's one a lot of people disagree with. How can you keep repeating 99.9% of the customers don't care when it's one of the most repeated complaints on places like this over and over again? It's a stupid decision that doesn't make sense.
Hi, in case you forgot, you’re on an HN forum. That’s why 99.999% of people do not care about most things people here care about. Get some perspective.
Have you ever actually tried driving decent large monitors from those crappy intel chips?
I have.
Engineering tradeoffs indeed.
For all its flaws, Apple focuses on making sure there is a good experience overall. In general, they'd rather have a more limited hardware ecosystem that works better than a broad ecosystem that's flaky.
There are tradeoffs to both approaches. I go back and forth between windows and mac, and have for decades.
I was a surfacebook/win10/WSL guy for a few years, and liked it a lot. Win 11? Not so much.
Currently the M series chips blows any PC laptop away for the combination of portability/performance/battery.
The Snapdragon X might change that in the next couple years, and I'll take a look at switching back then, and see what win 12 offers. If MS decides to take a step back from being an ad-serving platform and goes back to focusing on productivity, I may switch back.
For now though, I'm planning on accepting the gut punch to my wallet and picking up a 14" M3 Max in a few weeks.
> Have you ever actually tried driving decent large monitors from those crappy intel chips?
Yes, I regularly drive my monitors with 1 intel laptop and/or 1 amd laptop (modern ones, linux). Not a single issue ever. I plug in my work m2 pro mac to these same monitors - constant issues.
> For all its flaws, Apple focuses on making sure there is a good experience overall.
MacOS has had dozens of well-know, well-documented bugs for years that haven't been addressed, many of them mentioned in this thread. I don't see any focus from Apple on these whatsoever - their main focus seems to be advertising and visual design.
I have done dual external monitor setup for years on Intel and AMD laptops without any issues.
The standard setup at my company is a ThinkPad connected to dual 27" monitor. My company has thousand of employees. (Mac setup is also available for those who requests.) Many many companies offer a similar setup for employees.
Thanks for the kindness, I had my first laptop (PC) in the mid 80s, and have been writing software on various hardware configurations for 30 years, so maybe I just need a bit more reality I guess?
> The standard setup at my company is a ThinkPad connected to dual 27" monitors
No one claimed that dual monitors isn't possible.
Running two 4k large, high quality monitors off a low-end Intel integrated video controller at 120hz is going to be harder.
Apple is focused on higher-end experience, always has been. They're not a great choice if you're looking for standard enterprise arrangements.
You can go into pretty much any bank or office and see the kinds of setups that you're talking about.
You can also see the flicker and wince at the eye-strain.
> I had my first laptop (PC) in the mid 80s, and have been writing software on various hardware configurations for 30 years, so maybe I just need a bit more reality I guess?
Yes, sounds like you've been drinking apple koolaid and fanboying over bullshit for 40 years.
> This is a silly discussion.
What's silly is reading through comments of multiple people discussing actual issues they face with macs, completely ignoring what's said, and then claiming 'apple is focused on higher-end experience' based on nothing but your own anecdotal experience and imagination.
> Regardless, why are you responding with such anger and venom?
Any 'anger and venom' is completely imagined by you.
> This community frowns on personal attacks,
Really? What personal attacks? Please point out exactly where I've personally attacked you.
> we try to focus on comments that are informative and add to the discussion.
You mean like your comments in this chain? Where you dismiss the entire conversation as 'silly', based on nothing but your own personal, anecdotal experience? If it's silly, no need to participate. Your comments are rude, condescending and add nothing of substance to the discussion.
@dang - wubrr is a newish account, I've reviewed their other comments/threads and they all seem fine, if a bit inflammatory. This one is off the rails though. I'll stop participating. Probably best if this whole thread is deleted (starting with my original comment), it adds no value.
There's always one reason after another. "It won't fit", you say sure it can, others do it, "Well, they don't do it efficiently", you say okay, how many times are you driving multiple monitors (most of which support power delivery these days) on battery, then it'll be "Apple just understands this better".
You're effectively saying that you want Apple to design a chip without any compromises in features, cost, performance, or efficiency.
Apple sure could design a chip that drives more monitors, but maybe they decided that making the chip x% more performance/efficient, or having y feature was more important.
Or, maybe this really truly is trivial and they decided to segment their chips by not including this feature. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Perhaps because until recently, battery life has sucked? I used to plug in my laptops all the time. Now with the M1, it only gets plugged in to charge, then I don't plug it in until I charge it again. I have been enjoying sitting on my couch when I want to, to get work done rather than at my desk.
You can sit on the couch and have your laptop plugged in. I also don't keep my lenovo plugged in all the time and don't notice any battery issues. Realistically you're not sitting on a couch, working for 6 hours straight either.
It’s not just battery life, it’s heat and noise too. Yeah I know not a lot of people actually use laptops on laps (though I do), but you typically can’t hide it under a desk like you can with a desktop.
My job provided me with a Dell laptop with an i7 and it can keep my coffee warm just idling. Sometimes, when it’s decided it doesn’t want to sleep, I can hear the fans from the next room. While the screen is off, not being touched.
I could go on at length about just how shitty the Dell is compared to my MacBook Air (despite costing more and performing worse!), but Apple Silicon Macs are just so much nicer when it comes to the practicalities of using a portal computer.
So this conversion goes from Apple shouldn't need more display controllers since most people Air users don't use more displays to most people don't use their laptop on battery but power usage should be a major concern.
It's almost like we should focus on what Apple does best and ignore what Apple does worse.
True. But when I was going to customer sites, it was really nice to plug in my MacBook Pro the night before and not have to think about battery life. It’s also nice not to have the fans going constantly and being able to work with it on my lap without the fear of never being able to have little Scarface’s.
