I’m a little confused by your post. The m1 support 2 video monitors (1 built in or not) and 1 up to 6k. The m1 even as great as it is, is still only the entry level in Apple silicon for macs. It seems the m1 does not conform to the spec in the number of outputs, hence can’t label it as such. All other specs appearing to have been met.
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OWC's Upcoming Thunderbolt Hub Adds More Thunderbolt 3 Ports to Your Mac
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It's about time we started getting TB hubs/switches that didn't turn one useful port into a bunch of useless legacy ports.
I've been waiting for something like this. Im very curious how this works as I thought Thunderbolt was only daisy chain able and not hub. Also I am wondering if the downstream ports are able to be used for USB C devices or strictly thunderbolt. Either way Im happy this has come about.
Edit:
I missed the part in the article saying that they are USB C compatible.
Edit:
I missed the part in the article saying that they are USB C compatible.
I will never buy anything from OWC again. They have never sold me a good product. The SSD's are overpriced and slow compared to conventional SSD's (Which I found work perfectly with a simple pin adapter from Amazon). The Envoy SSD case for the Apple SSD is extremely unreliable in the three I've had to the point I just throw them away out of frustration. The last straw was when I bought a "genuine" MagSafe 2 power brick for my MBP, it caught fire 3 months later and when I opened it I found it was a counterfeit product.
Not 2 on the Thunderbolt ports.
MBA M1
"...
- One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz .."
MacBook Air 13- and 15-inch with M4 Chip - Tech Specs
See all technical specifications for the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air with M4 chip.
www.apple.com
MBP 13" M1
"...
- One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz ...:"
Mini M1
" ...
- One display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz connected via Thunderbolt and one display with up to 4K resolution at 60Hz connected via HDMI 2.0 ..."
Mac mini - Technical Specifications
See all the technical specifications for Mac mini with the M4 or M4 Pro chip.
www.apple.com
HDMI 2.o port doesn't' count toward Thunderbolt compilance.
To qualify for Thunderbolt v4 they would need minimal 4K video on on both ports. They can qualify for the lower threshold to get a Thunderbolt v3 label but not v4.
The display output stream capabilities of the M1 iGPU is a backslide.
Thunderbolt is an "all of the above" / "all required" kind of spec. You don't get to cherry pick you way through shortcuts.
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it expands to different types of ports. It only has one Thunderbolt v3 downstream (away from computer) port.
If what you need to plug in is other USB 3 and headphones and etc devices , then yes it works just fine.
This is dock is more so useful in contexts where the user have multiple Thunderbolt peripherals that don't plug into most of the ports of a Caldigit dock ( or USB only Type-C hub). (e.g. two Ultrafine 4K displays.... which work work with the M1 systems but two. So Ultrafine and two TB SSD external drive (with only one port on it). )
Thunderbolt devices that are "dead enders" (terminate a TB chain) tend to cost less but the more you have the fewer ports available to plug into on most systems. ( and if have a daisy chain have to find the end to plug them in. )
Just to clarify a few things...
USB4 is largely based on Thunderbolt, however, there are material differences in regards to implementation (signaling rates, power delivery, etc.). Thunderbolt 3 interoperability is optional, not required, for USB4 hosts and devices.
Thunderbolt 4 is USB4 with mandatory Thunderbolt 3 interoperability along with a bunch of other minimum requirements to achieve certification. The Thunderbolt/USB4 ports on the M1 Macs are Thunderbolt 4 as far as signaling and power delivery are concerned. They do not meet the minimum requirement for video output because the M1 can only provide the Thunderbolt/USB4 host router with a single display stream. So aside from not supporting at least 2 displays, the USB Type-C ports on M1 Macs are otherwise Thunderbolt 4 compliant. This is not a deficiency in Apple's implementation of Thunderbolt/USB4, but rather in the display engine for the M1's GPU. Either port can drive a display, but not both at the same time.
The reason why Thunderbolt has historically been strictly a daisy-chain topology is that Intel never produced a Thunderbolt controller with more than 2 ports. You can't build a bigger switch/hub with only 2-port switches. That all changed when Intel recently released the 4-port JHL8440 "Goshen Ridge" controller. OWC's device appears to be first to market and very reasonably priced, but I'm sure more vendors will soon follow.
USB4 is largely based on Thunderbolt, however, there are material differences in regards to implementation (signaling rates, power delivery, etc.). Thunderbolt 3 interoperability is optional, not required, for USB4 hosts and devices.
Thunderbolt 4 is USB4 with mandatory Thunderbolt 3 interoperability along with a bunch of other minimum requirements to achieve certification. The Thunderbolt/USB4 ports on the M1 Macs are Thunderbolt 4 as far as signaling and power delivery are concerned. They do not meet the minimum requirement for video output because the M1 can only provide the Thunderbolt/USB4 host router with a single display stream. So aside from not supporting at least 2 displays, the USB Type-C ports on M1 Macs are otherwise Thunderbolt 4 compliant. This is not a deficiency in Apple's implementation of Thunderbolt/USB4, but rather in the display engine for the M1's GPU. Either port can drive a display, but not both at the same time.
The reason why Thunderbolt has historically been strictly a daisy-chain topology is that Intel never produced a Thunderbolt controller with more than 2 ports. You can't build a bigger switch/hub with only 2-port switches. That all changed when Intel recently released the 4-port JHL8440 "Goshen Ridge" controller. OWC's device appears to be first to market and very reasonably priced, but I'm sure more vendors will soon follow.
I love how I can use my Razer core X EGPU works with thunderbolt 3 and my MacBook Pro 16 with Intel. And with a Nvidia 3080 card graphics are amazing, even with a AMD video card works great with Big Sur!
What’s interesting is that it works with the M1 Macs AND any Intel Mac with TB3 ports, so long as they are running Big Sur. I wonder if the Big Sur update contains a firmware update that effectively conforms the TB3 port to the TB4 standard (apart from the multiple display requirement).
I am a big OWC fan. Many drives and an old Mac Mini. All perfect or replaced before I had to return them. But both port expanders (TB2 and TB3) were flaky. Dropped connections, devices unpowered, disks not mounting. Everything else has been great. Just my experience. CalDigit has been flawless.
I completely agree that the display engine on the M1 is a major weakness and a regression.
However, the PHY behind the USB Type-C ports on the M1 Macs is Thunderbolt 4. The GPU only being able to supply a single display stream is a technicality. Thunderbolt 3 ports are not capable of USB4 signaling, so there is no way Apple would call them that.
And frankly, Apple is probably free to do whatever they want in this instance, due to their relationship with Intel, the Thunderbolt brand, and the USB Promoter Group. However, they are respecting Intel's definition and not outright calling these ports Thunderbolt 4 without meeting the arbitrary requirements that Intel set for certification. Until this year, Apple had shipped more Thunderbolt ports than all the other vendors combined, with 100% of the controllers coming from Intel.
I love how I can use my Razer Core X eGPU over TB3 with my new M1 MBP ... oh, wait.
There's one upstream facing port and three downstream facing ports. It gives you three additional ports. It uses a 4-port controller internally.
TB3 signaling and protocol are slightly different than USB4. TB4 fully supports USB4. The Big Sur update allows legacy TB3 host ports to connect to the new 4-port Goshen Ridge controllers as well as other USB4 devices that support TB3 interoperability. It cannot add the USB4 signaling rates to the physical layer or support direct encapsulation of USB packets for transport over the USB4/Thunderbolt fabric.
The M1 Macs are the only Macs that don't support multiple displays over Thunderbolt, but that's due to the display engines of their respective GPUs, and isn't really related to their Thunderbolt/USB4 capabilities at all.
That is what standards are technicalities. Otherwise what you have is a hand waving marketing lable; not a standard.
In 2 years will a M2 Mini pass Thunderbolt v4 certification. Probably so. ( if Apple expends the effort). Will Apple 'close the gap' with a M1X within the next 9 months... probably so. ( Apple at one point used to segregate FW400 to the lower end Mac and only put FW800 on the higher priced one. In 2021 they can do that with this entry Mini variant along side of higher priced ones with TBv4 . Same thing with four port MBP 13-14" versus this lower prices two port model. ) . Plus they get to sell more A14X dies so the margins on next iPad Pro go up. Basically, more money for Apple.
They probably don't get a pass. If Intel gave Apple a pass on their implementation then other folks would want a pass too. The notion that Apple handing over stacks of money to Intel ... well that was then and this is now. Highly doubtful Intel is going to "look the other way" when the checks shrink in value.
Now that all of Intel's gen11 U series processors have TB built in the number of deployed implementations on Windows 10 is going rapidly climb. Same thing with TBv3 being merged into USB4. Some folks will "shortcut" on USB4 on sub $800 systems, but there is lots of stuff above that that Apple doesn't sell. Apple's lead on deployed "Thunderbolt capable" ports is shrinking.
When AMD finally gets on board with an embedded controller it will shrink faster.
Hoping the next 16" MBP is less than the current 96W. Would like a lot of these hubs to be an option and I've always used OWC but needing 96W is limiting.
This actually looks good. Hopefully someone like Caldigit will come out with this. I have the TS3 Plus, but I don't need the darn audio jacks and the additional device drivers loaded to support it.
All I've wanted was an actual Thunderbolt / USB-C hub with multiple USB-C ports and a couple USB 3.1 ports and that's it. Exactly what this hub supports.
All I've wanted was an actual Thunderbolt / USB-C hub with multiple USB-C ports and a couple USB 3.1 ports and that's it. Exactly what this hub supports.
Is the power out on the USB-C bad for the M1 MacMini? Meaning the MacMini has its own power in. This and my USB-C Dell monitor (with power out) has me a bit worried for my ordered M1 MacMini.
Nah, they screwed up by giving it an external power brick instead of going with a built-in 200W PSU that could provide up to 100W to the upstream port while still keeping the other ports within spec.
This thing has to maintain a power budget capable of providing at least 15W to each of the downstream facing USB Type-C ports as well as 4.5W to the USB Type-A port. The controller in the hub probably draws several watts, and there are inherent conversion losses in the power supply and delivery system. If the hub itself was powered by USB Power Delivery, the maximum power it could provide to the upstream facing port would be 45W or less.