1. Thunderbolt hub. Expensive, but it's going to do what you want.
Thanks for the replies!
I'll take a look at those Thunderbolt hubs...
Good luck - there's no such thing (not in the "thunderbolt equivalent of a USB or Ethernet hub" sense)!
You can connect 1 external display to the TB port with a suitable adapter. If you have a Mac with only 1 TB port and want a TB disk drive *and* an external display, you have to resign yourself to paying the premium to get a drive with a Thunderbolt 'daisychain' port - to which you can then attach your display.
The rule with Thunderbolt is that although the computer can drive 2 displays via TB you can only have 1 display per Thunderbolt peripheral - either built in to the device or a miniDP device connected to the peripheral's TB out (that includes all the various miniDP-to-VGA/HDMI/DVI adapters). The Apple Thunderbolt Display is a thunderbolt peripheral with a display (D'oh!) so you can't also connect a minDP display to it - but you
can connect a second Thunderbolt display
or any other TB device with a thru port, to which you can then connect a MiniDP display.
The recently shipping
Caldigit dock is the closest to what you want - it has a HDMI port that will let you drive
one HDMI or DVI display and a single Thunderbolt 'through' port that you can connect other Thunderbolt peripherals, including an Apple TB display, to - but it
won't run a HDMI display and a miniDP display.
So it will fix your 1 external display + thunderbolt peripheral problem, but won't get you 2 external displays without extra devices.
So for 2 external displays, your TB options are:
Code:
A Mac --> Apple TB Display --> Apple TB display
B Mac --> Apple TB Display ---> Any dual-port TB device ---> MiniDP display or adapter
C Mac --> Caldigit dock ----> HDMI/DVI display
|---> Apple TB display
D Mac --> Caldigit dock ----> HDMI/DVI display
|---> Any dual-port TB device ---> MiniDP display or adapter
(D) is probably the cheapest (for a given value of cheap!) option - presumably the 'other TB device' could be a second CalDigit dock - but you'd want to confirm that.
Alternatives - I've not used one, but Matrox do a device called 'DualHead2go' that (effectively) combines 2 displays into one big one, connected to a single display connection, giving you a big, wide desktop spanning 2 screens.
Since you have a Mac Pro going spare, there's a bit of software called 'ScreenRecycler' that will let you use the MacPro display as a second/third display for your MBP via the network. You'll get some lag/tearing on the remote display but its probably comparable to the USB2 adapters the other poster mentioned.
Or, for free, install Synergy on both machines - this lets you drive multiple Macs from one keyboard and mouse, fairly seamlessly (including some cutting & pasting between screens). Not quite the multi-screen setup you wanted, but you can use one machine for browsing/testing etc. while working on the other.
Meanwhile - shove a big hard drive in your Mac Pro and use it for Time Machine backups over the network!
