Good choice ! I also bought a early 2015 MBP with 1 TB and: no dongles. I guessed this was the last opportunity to live dongle free and magsafe. I wonder how many persons did the same.....
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Review: Elgato's $300 Thunderbolt 3 Dock Offers a Solid Set of Ports in a Slim Design
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That’s great - but this article has nothing to do with dongles. This is a docking station which is a fundamentally different product. Your 2015 would benefit from such a dock as well - but lacks the Thunderbolt 3 port necessary to make it a reality.
Why not just build these ports into the computer in the first place?
Dongles and docks... what a disaster Apple's made of the MacBookPros....
Yep. I loved disconnecting and reconnecting 6+ different devices (including ethernet) from a non-retina MBP regularly. enabling people to choose to have everything (including the power supply) plugged into a single cable dock? absolute dick move. shame on apple.
The entire point of a docking station is to be able to quickly connect to your workstation. I realize this is new to the Mac world, but this is one thing PC's have been doing right for decades. This has NOTHING to do with building in the ports to the computer. Most PC's that are docked have a full array of ports built-in.
See above. Docking stations have nothing to do with the complaint you are leveraging here. Docking is something Macs have been lacking for years.
Not sure if this has changed with TB3, but up to TB2, you could only extract one DP signal per TB controller, which is why all TB docks only had one video port. Even with TB2, you couldn't plug a mDP display into the second TB2 port of those docks and get a video signal. You needed another TB controller, which either meant a TB display or using a second TB dock (something that, eg, OWC made clear in its documentation for its TB2 dock). Given that all TB3 docks also come with only one video port, my guess would be that limitation still applies.
The Thinkpad TB3 dock has two Displayport connections. I have this dock connected to my X1 Carbon - currently to a single 4k display, but my understanding is this dock can drive up to 3 4k displays - two at 60hz and one at 30hz.
Maybe something is different with TB3 (here is an article on USB-C and TB3 that touches on these things, while detailed it still leaves a lot of things unclear, at least I felt I still had to guess a lot of things). In principle nothings stops a dock maker to put a second TB chip in its dock. Or this dock (and computer) simply is using MST (which Macs don't fully support). The linked article states:
"As for Thunderbolt, Intel's 2-port controllers have historically included two DisplayPort inputs and one output, so a single Thunderbolt link can carry 2 DP streams without using MST, but a single device could never make use of more than one of them unless it included a pair of 2-port controllers internally."
If you can fully make sense of this article, I'd appreciate another person's attempt at explaining the topic.
I think this has changed with TB3 (a 5k display needs both signals!) - Caldigit, OWC etc. seem to be advertising dual display support with their docks.
Tricky, because PCs support DisplayPort daisy chaining so you can drive two displays from one DisplayPort stream.
OWC also advertised dual display support for their TB2 dock but then in the fine print stated that one of those had to be a TB display.
It changed with TB3.
TB3 carries 2x DisplayPort 1.2 over a single cable. This is how you're able to drive a 60hz 5K display over TB3.
MBP13 has 1x TB3 controller allowing for 2x 4K displays or 1x 5K display.
MBP15 has 2x TB3 controllers allowing for 4x 4K displays or 2x 5K displays.
Quite frankly, the IO on the MBP line is incredible, but not many people will understand that because not many people are driving 5K displays.
After owning a 5K display, I won't be buying anything less in the future.
Thunderbolt always has carried 2x DisplayPort, but the TB1/TB2 controller chips would only extract 1 DP stream each. So you could chain two TB displays (each with its own controller), and although you couldn't hang a regular DisplayPort device directly off a TB display, you could hang a hard drive off it, with its own controller, and then get a second DP signal out of that.
The TB3 controllers seem to be able to extract both DP streams... because a 5k display needs both.
True, they do kinda spoil you (just switched to an iMac)... but they seem to be a Mac only thing.
...true, but maybe an overkill for a mobile CPU and GPU? And when you're dealing with 5k displays that eat half of the bandwidth of a TB3 link does it really make sense combining DisplayPort and PCIe on the same cable?
I rather pay $350 for a dock with courage. As in, 10 USB ports, Firewire ports, Female Lightning port for charging an Apple Pencil, 1/4" headphone jack, balanced audio outputs, and a large volume knob on top.
That, or make a 13" & 15" clamshell case dock that affixes itself perfectly beneath the macbook pros. Only then would we be cooking with fire!
That, or make a 13" & 15" clamshell case dock that affixes itself perfectly beneath the macbook pros. Only then would we be cooking with fire!
Seems like it. Plus macOS has much better scaling than windows. I almost got the iMac 5K because of the display.
I develop on a MBP13 attached to the LG 5K and it's been mostly smooth. There are rare times when it would slow down for some reason, but restarting my machine clears it up. Once Metal 2 is released, it should improve performance. I think many would be surprised at how smooth 5K is on the MBP13.
5K does use up most of the bandwidth, but you still get decent bandwidth for peripherals from the monitor's USB-C hub. I wouldn't attach a 500MB/s drive to the monitor, but anything 300MB/s and less would be fine.
Remember the Duos? Anyway, there are some downsides, especially to 3rd party hubs, docks, dongles, etc. Various chipsets get used and often things that need external power use very unreliable power-bricks.
What this means, is that while you've gained a single-plug solution when coming to or going from your desk with your laptop, you'll likely have more flaky and less reliable operation of all of these off-boarded ports.
It's a great article, though yes, it is highly technical. IMO, the tl;dr is that while TB3 and USB-C provide a lot of future promise, it's currently going to create a lot of confusion and be kind of a mess.
Choose high-quality products, do your research, and make sure there is a good return policy. Once you get everything connected, it might not do what you think it will or expect it to. And, there's going to be a bunch failure on the lower-end of USB-C accessories, largely due to bad power bricks.
If that's the case, it's because Apple and the accessory makers haven't done their due diligence. PC's have had 100% functional docks for decades. Dell and Lenovo currently have 100% functional TB3 docks that have none of the problems you list. The VAST majority of issues that people are hearing about or experiencing are from the small unknown manufacturers who have been putting out garbage. Everyone wants the perfect usb-c/TB3 device and they want it to cost less than $100 (just look at the comments in this thread). Good PC docks have always cost between $250-300 - exactly how much the Dell and Lenovo TB3 docks cost today. I would think that Apple users would understand that high quality comes at a price.
See that article referenced above: http://ioblog.suider.com/type-c-personality/
It explains why there aren't USB-C hubs yet, and the complications with expectations if they are on external devices. Basically, the ones built-in to your laptop (or computer) will probably support full USB-C and/or TB3, but once you go out beyond that, it can't be assumed anymore, depending on what chipsets and 'standards' are in play.
True, I'd assume most of these top-brand docks are well tested, and will do their best to remain highly compatible with Apple's current and future OSs. But, that's not the same as having, for example, and Ethernet port built into your laptop. Whenever you go 3rd party external, the odds of problems (or less than full performance) go up.
Also, if you've ever run many external peripherals, you know what I'm talking about with power-bricks. They generally suck, even from high-end brands, and are often the source of flaky behavior or even failure. Again, I'm sure some of these bigger brands will use better ones than the cheaper brands.
But, try to read through that linked article (even if you only understand it a bit). It's far from being the new 'plug-and-play' universal standard it's being portrayed as.
I'm quite familiar with most of the concepts outlined in that article. I was an early adopter of the MacBook 12", pushed the adoption of the Dell TB15/16 docks in our office even when they were in their infancy, and now have an X1 Carbon with the Thinkpad TB3 docking station as my work computer. I've watched this market develop right from the beginning - and the only real surprise to me has been how slow Apple has been to provide fully functional accessories for usb-c and TB3. I think they could be doing a lot more here to make sure that there are quality peripherals available that do the things users want, and they'd actually be pushing along the entire industry which is what they ostensibly want to do. It is to be expected that most of the no-name stuff from China is exactly as good as its price, and it's also to be expected that the PC OEM's will move much more slowly in their transition.
I don't honestly have your experience with flaky power bricks. We've had some issues with the Apple ones over the years, but in 15 years managing an IT department of mostly Dells and Lenovos, I'm not sure I've ever run across a bad power supply. Generally the supplies for the docks are exactly the same as the ones provided with the computers, sometimes in a slightly larger form factor to support a bit more power.
I generally agree with the article that TB3 will remain in the realm of high-end machines, but I think the split will ultimately be that inexpensive, say sub $800 machines will get usb-c ports, and those above will get TB3. There is some confusion today, and I think that Apple and the standards organizations share the blame here. In the end though I believe it will be worth it. It's fantastic having 1 power brick for my MacBook, my work laptop, my phone and my tablet, and TB3 docking is also a big improvement over the heavy, proprietary docking stations that we've been wedded to for years with PC's. I'm really excited to see what develops in the future.
Edit - I should say that I agree that the problems with usb-c that we are all too well aware of does worry me. I think this lack of a standard that people can trust could potentially sink what is one of the great technological developments of recent years. When average consumers lose trust they'll stay away for a long time. I suspect we'll see that play out by most computers continuing to offer usb-a along-side usb-c for the forseeable future. Hopefully many of them will move to usb-c for standard charging at the very least, and in the end we will get there - but the confusion in the marketplace is going to delay the transition much more than was necessary.
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Well said. I can't really disagree with much there, aside from the fact that people will buy the lower priced peripherals, which won't perform as well as previous gen Apple laptops with the ports built right in. And, like you, I'm not sure why Apple only seems to do half the job on this kind of stuff (as I remember back to Firewire, as well). If Apple made a true, high-quality USB-C hub, wouldn't they sell a bunch? Kind of like WiFi routers... I'm not sure that's something Apple should have abandoned.
re: power bricks - Yes, hopefully they will include high quality ones for these higher quality docks. And, as you've noted, good ones can be made (i.e.: like what come with laptops, or gaming consoles, etc.) But, I've had trouble with the bricks that come with high-end Blu-ray or DVD burners, or USB hubs, scanners, etc. And, it seems that often with these kind of devices, high-end or low-end often come with the same 'brick' in the box. (Aside from bigger devices like laptops, are high-quality 'bricks' even made?)