There isn’t some software limitation here. It’s more that they only put two display controllers in the base level M-series chips. The vast, vast majority of users will have at most two displays. Putting more display controllers would add (minimal, but real) cost and complexity that most people won’t benefit from at all.
On the current gen base level chips, you can have one external display plus the onboard one, or close the laptop and have two externals. Seems like plenty to me for the cheapest option.
Having two external monitors + the built it minor is extremely common.
At work almost everyone has at least two monitors because anything less sucks (a few use just a big external one plus the built in) and it’s also common to also use the built in monitor for stuff like slack or teams.
Having more than two monitors isn’t a “pro” feature. It’s the norm nowadays.
Sure it might be enough for the cheapest option if the cheapest option was cheap. Unfortunately they are absolutely not cheap, and are in fact fairly expensive.
Not really. There is a compromise between output resolution, refresh rate, bit depth (think HDR), number of displays, and the overall system performance. Another computer might technically have more monitor output, but they probably sacrificed something to get there like resolution, HDR, power consumption or cost. Apple is doing 5K output with HDR on their lowest end chips. Think about that for a minute.
A lot of people like to blame AMD for high ideal power usage when they are running multi-monitor setups with different refresh rates and resolutions. Likewise I have seen Intel systems struggle to run a single 4K monitor because they were in single channel mode. Apple probably wanted to avoid those issues on their lower end chips which have much less bandwidth to play with.
There is no reason that they couldn’t do 3 1080p monitors or more especially when the newer generation chips are supposedly so much faster than the generation before it.
Do you have multiple monitors?
Yes - Don’t buy a mac
No - Still don’t buy a mac
I have a Mac with multiple monitors. It handles them a hell of a lot better than my PC at work.
I dont think it’s even possible to use more than two monitors on a M series computer (maybe except if you spend extra for the max edition)
That is only the case on the base model chips. The Pro, Max, and Ultra chips all support multiple monitors.
Yeah, it’s a ridiculous limitation.
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It’s still ridiculous to limit it.
Pretty much any modern computer should be able to output to more monitors than that.
There isn’t some software limitation here. It’s more that they only put two display controllers in the base level M-series chips. The vast, vast majority of users will have at most two displays. Putting more display controllers would add (minimal, but real) cost and complexity that most people won’t benefit from at all.
On the current gen base level chips, you can have one external display plus the onboard one, or close the laptop and have two externals. Seems like plenty to me for the cheapest option.
If true they are some pretty shitty chips.
Having two external monitors + the built it minor is extremely common.
At work almost everyone has at least two monitors because anything less sucks (a few use just a big external one plus the built in) and it’s also common to also use the built in monitor for stuff like slack or teams.
Having more than two monitors isn’t a “pro” feature. It’s the norm nowadays.
Sure it might be enough for the cheapest option if the cheapest option was cheap. Unfortunately they are absolutely not cheap, and are in fact fairly expensive.
Not really. There is a compromise between output resolution, refresh rate, bit depth (think HDR), number of displays, and the overall system performance. Another computer might technically have more monitor output, but they probably sacrificed something to get there like resolution, HDR, power consumption or cost. Apple is doing 5K output with HDR on their lowest end chips. Think about that for a minute.
A lot of people like to blame AMD for high ideal power usage when they are running multi-monitor setups with different refresh rates and resolutions. Likewise I have seen Intel systems struggle to run a single 4K monitor because they were in single channel mode. Apple probably wanted to avoid those issues on their lower end chips which have much less bandwidth to play with.
There is no reason that they couldn’t do 3 1080p monitors or more especially when the newer generation chips are supposedly so much faster than the generation before it.
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