> A good bit of boils down to macOS expecting monitors to be well-behaved, e.g. each having unique EDIDs (many don’t, instead sharing one across all units of a particular model) and initializing in a timely fashion.
I don't really buy this explanation. I'm talking about using a single external monitor here, a monitor which I regularly also use with linux (intel/amd) laptops without a single issue.
> Because it’s fullscreened, not maximized. macOS doesn’t really have window maximization in the traditional sense out of the box, you need a utility like Magnet or Moom for that.
That's not really a good reason though. It still doesn't explain why the restriction exists. Why can't a non-maximized/fullscreen window be displayed on top of a fullscreen/maximized window? What problem does that solve?
> That fullscreen mode was introduced in 10.7 Lion and a lot of long time mac users have found it silly from day one. Personally I never use it.
> I don't really buy this explanation. I'm talking about using a single external monitor here, a monitor which I regularly also use with linux (intel/amd) laptops without a single issue.
Might be model-specific then. It’s not something I’ve seen with displays from Asus, Alienware, and Apple. I briefly owned a Dell monitor that would periodically flicker but it got returned.
> That's not really a good reason though. It still doesn't explain why the restriction exists. Why can't a non-maximized/fullscreen window be displayed on top of a fullscreen/maximized window? What problem does that solve?
Probably because it’d be easy for windows to get “lost” if the fullscreen window were focused and non-fullscreened windows fell behind it, with there being no obvious indicator that those windows exist.
In my experience, MacOS monitor support is very hit or miss. For an Asus Gaming monitor, I had to write a custom plist file to get it to even show a picture and getting it to run at native resolution took a lot of experimenting.
I would not buy any new monitor for MacOS that does not explicitely advertize MacOS support.
That’s kinda wild. Is there anything remotely unusual about the monitor, like high rez and refresh rate?
I was pleasantly surprised when I plugged the AW2721D that’s part of my gaming setup into my daily driver Mac. Everything worked great, including 240hz and variable refresh.
I don't really buy this explanation. I'm talking about using a single external monitor here, a monitor which I regularly also use with linux (intel/amd) laptops without a single issue.
> Because it’s fullscreened, not maximized. macOS doesn’t really have window maximization in the traditional sense out of the box, you need a utility like Magnet or Moom for that.
That's not really a good reason though. It still doesn't explain why the restriction exists. Why can't a non-maximized/fullscreen window be displayed on top of a fullscreen/maximized window? What problem does that solve?
> That fullscreen mode was introduced in 10.7 Lion and a lot of long time mac users have found it silly from day one. Personally I never use it.
It's default though.