Developer's dream come true: New MacBook Airs now support two external displays

http://9to5mac.com/2012/06/20/retina-macbook-pros-run-three-external-displays-refreshed-airs-get-dual-external-display-support/

by gaborcselle • 14 years ago

40 60 14 years ago

9to5mac.com

gaborcselle4• 14 years ago

This is a pretty big deal for designers and developers who love dual-display setups, e.g. for looking at code and docs at the same time. Until now you had to lug around a 15" MacBook Pro to get dual external monitor support.

Ralith5• 14 years ago

Or use something other than a MacBook. That's an option too.

gaborcselle4• 14 years ago

The vast majority of developers I know use some version of the MacBook. (However, that could be the San Francisco / New York tech bubble that I live in.)

mkaltenecker3• 14 years ago

Are there ultrabooks with dual monitor support? It seems to me that the graphics hardware is the limit (and all ultrabooks use the same one).

jinushaun• 14 years ago

But then, instead of lugging around a heavy/bulky MBP, you're lugging around a heavy/bulky PC laptop. Problem not solved.

scott_meade• 14 years ago

Or use Plugable's UGA-2K-A USB to VGA/DVI/HDMI adapters for Multiple Monitors. I've been running three external 1920x1200's off my MacBook Air. http://twitpic.com/9yr3tr/full Not Thunderbolt nor 2,560x1,440, yet multiple monitors nonetheless.

swah• 14 years ago

That's a lot of pixels with integrated graphics :) (IRRC). Don't you find the brightness from the 2nd/3rd displays causes eye strain?

Ralith5• 14 years ago

Rather presumptuous to imply that developers in general care about MacBook design tweaks, isn't it?

rch• 14 years ago

The hyperbole didn't sit well with me either.

gaborcselle4• 14 years ago

Yeah, the title may be a little exaggerated, but most developers I know (including myself) have some version of the MacBook.

cmelbye• 14 years ago

Wow, that looks amazing. Forgive my ignorance (I don't use external displays with my MBP), but how is this done? Does each display connect to the next display with Thunderbolt daisy chaining?

modarts• 14 years ago

Exactly, the thunderbolt displays have outputs that you can daisy chain with.

NickM• 14 years ago

The new MBP has two Thunderbolt ports and an HDMI output so I assume it's just using each output separately. Not sure about the Air though....

mikeevans2• 14 years ago

Do the displays have to be Thunderbolt displays? Seems really expensive.

grecy• 14 years ago

I'm no expert, but I wonder if you could go:

Air->Thunderbolt Dispaly->DVI Adapter->DVI display ?

The way I see it, you can't daisy chain without having at least one thunderbolt display.

jpxxx5• 14 years ago

Unfortunately no. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5219#dispnum

Thunderbolt only chains to Thunderbolt. But the port coming out of the Mac will gladly connect to one of anything.

jpxxx5• 14 years ago

Negatory. The Thunderbolt port is really just passing through a DisplayPort signal - any DisplayPort monitor will do.

Displayport degrades nicely into HDMI, DVI, or VGA with an adapter, so sky's pretty much the limit.

The new MacBook Pro does also have a HDMI port which can do all the same.

gaborcselle4• 14 years ago

I didn't know that.

Since I have Cinema Display with DisplayPort, could I do MacBook Air > Thunderbolt > Cinema Display?

mikeevans2• 14 years ago

Awesome. But you'd still need at least one Apple Display to chain the second one? Or are there ways to chain together two DisplayPort displays?

RossDM• 14 years ago

So where are the affordable Thunderbolt displays? Will they even exist for this generation of tech?

duaneb• 14 years ago

I would imagine that there are converters to DVI/HDMI.... I hope?

AdamGibbins• 14 years ago

You can't daisy chain pretend thunderbolt ports aka converters. So 1 monitor max.

mcrider• 14 years ago

I believe the only way to get two displays working though is to pass the second display through the first display (via thunderbolt). AFAIK, there is no adapter to split thunderbolt into two DVI/VGA/HDMI cables. Though I hope I'm wrong, I'd buy that in a flash and wire up my second external display to my new air.

numo16• 14 years ago

There are, no worries

bingbing• 14 years ago

Monoprice has this:

http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=101&c...

It doesn't support chaining more thunderbolt devices, though.

jemka• 14 years ago

I had no idea people paid ~$1000 for a computer display, let alone buy more than one.

drivebyacct22• 14 years ago

Displays from Dell that rival this in quality are not even $100 less, and don't have the docking powers that a Thunderbolt display offers. I've got a bound pair of cables (power+thunderbolt) that plug into my laptop and all of the sudden my backup drives, both monitors, ethernet and USB hub are connected. The Dell 27" higher-than-1080p monitor is nice, but it can't do all of that sadly.

outworlder2• 14 years ago

Unfortunately, the industry pretty much decided that 1080p is all they are going to support. Nowadays, it is pretty hard to find anything above 23" with a decent resolution. Most of the market is now taken by monitor/TV devices, with crappy resolutions (1080p is crappy with a 27" screen).

Find me a big monitor that has a decent resolution and uses a good panel and is significantly cheaper than an Apple display, and I'm going to buy one right now. Maybe two.

veemjeem4• 14 years ago

it's amazing how much cheaper a monitor is when you go from 2560 res to 1920 res -- the price is less than half the cost. The usual run of the mill 1920x1080 display goes for $300 or so. I'm guessing the reason for the price differential is that the 1080p monitors are mass produced compared to these expensive 27" 2560res displays.

teilo4• 14 years ago

A mini display port to DVI adapter is $30. You could get fully fitted out with three external screens + adapters and cables for under $600.

tedivm• 14 years ago

Thunderbolt and mini display ports aren't the same thing. Although they use the same connection type, thunderbolt has additional features which allow it to transfer far, far more data. It also lets you chain devices together, which is going to be needed for all of those devices. You can't just slap the DVI adaptor and hope it'll work- especially if you need to chain the devices together to support all of them.

krunaldo• 14 years ago

Thunderbolt supports DMA pretty much unrestricted iirc so it's a stupid standard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMA_attack

http://www.breaknenter.org/2012/02/adventures-with-daisy-in-...

TomatoTomato• 14 years ago

Can the macbook pro retina handle 4 thunderbolt displays (2 on each port as with the Air) + HDMI?

jpxxx5• 14 years ago

Negatory. The total volume of pixels the Mac can push is the limiter. As you add monitors, the Mac will eventually black out the laptop display and spend the pixels externally. Beyond that it'll simply refuse to light up the display it can't feed. Doesn't matter which port they're headed out of.

Three sizeable displays appears to be the limit.

Note: A Thunderbolt display can pass along enough signal for another Thunderbolt display. But not two extra on the chain. And for (presumably) dumb (presumably) Apple Reasons, a non-Thunderbolt display cannot be involved in that chain at all.

tl;dr: give Apple all your money

veemjeem4• 14 years ago

probably not apple reasons since thunderbolt is really just intel's lightpeak spec. you probably can't chain a non-thunderbolt display at the end of the chain because the data packets are probably encoded with some device id, and if it doesn't match the current hardware, it would just forward it along the chain, so when these packets arrive at the non-lightpeak compliant display, it wouldn't be able to interpret it.

tl;dr: normal displays don't read packet data

drivebyacct22• 14 years ago

That's why I pulled the trigger and bought mine yesterday.

bwh2• 14 years ago

I've been running two external displays for some time on my MBP. One mini display port, one USB. The USB has a mostly negligible lag.

HalibetLector• 14 years ago

I've been doing the same and the lag isn't the issue. The real problem is high CPU usage. I can only use the usb monitor for looking at text, anything more (like opening a webpage or watching a video in youtube) and the computer slows to a crawl (I'm using the first unibody macbook pro, pre-thunderbolt).

Developer's dream come true: New MacBook Airs now support two external displays

Related Stories