I've been looking at an external display for my Macbook, and though I'd love to pull the trigger on the Thunderbolt display, there's just too many issues that are making it unfeasible. To start, it's a gorgeous display, both the screen itself and the build is beautiful - there's no denying it, looking at it from a hub-perspective it all falls apart however. USB 2?! Thunderbolt 1?! no HDMI-out?
Considering this is the only stand-alone screen in the Apple range, it needs more attention - in Apple's ideal scenario this is the accompaniment to the Mac Mini, yet it's IO falls weaker than the standalone Mini. Sold as a compliment to your new Macbook? The IO is weaker and slower than the one on the Macbook.
Considering it's screen (while great) can be matched by other monitors for significantly less, and it's IO is weaker than the computer's it's being sold alongside - an external monitor and a Thunderbolt 2 hub runs much cheaper yet has more options IO-wise.
An update wouldn't be the most demanding task in the work, just updating the components with their modern counterparts - it's such a shame this peripheral is so dated now, anyone who's used USB 3 significantly won't want to step back into USB 2 - regardless of how pretty the display is. Considering USB 3 has been the standard of Macs for 3 years now, it's pretty alarming how redundant this device is as a hub.
I know Apple ideally wants you to buy two external Thunderbolt displays, but I'd love to see some form of HDMI passthrough where you could connect a third party monitor from the thunderbolt display itself and have 2 separate monitors running from one thunderbolt cable - much like you can now with 2 Apple displays.
I'm not too fussed on having retina-resolution since the current resolution is perfectly enjoyable and running that many pixels at once would alienate a majority of thunderbolt-equipped devices out there unable to push that many pixels at one smoothly or at a decent enough refresh rate.
Any one else feeling this?