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Why doesn't M2 MBA support more than one external monitor?

Wokis said:
Very weird stance you got there. Apple has been adamant that they don’t do low-end and their prices reflect that. Even their old Intel laptops beat their new ones in certain aspects of monitor support, not to talk about their current competition in these price brackets.
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No. Exactly what I said: Apple should not be expected to have its spectacular lowest end laptop drive more than one...

The MBA is Apple's lowest end laptop, even though the rest of the market maintains a much lower end. And as Apple's low end laptop the MBA should be configured accordingly. As the lowest end Apple laptop, the M2 MBA is an absolutely spectacular box. Only whiners who want features from the higher (pro) end have anything to complain about.
 
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Allen_Wentz said:
No. Exactly what I said: Apple should not be expected to have its spectacular lowest end laptop drive more than one...

The MBA is Apple's lowest end laptop, even though the rest of the market maintains a much lower end. And as Apple's low end laptop the MBA should be configured accordingly. As the lowest end Apple laptop, the M2 MBA is an absolutely spectacular box. Only whiners who want features from the higher end have anything to complain about.
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Nonsense.

Driving a couple external monitors should in no way be a “premium feature” in 2022

These aren’t $400 chromebooks
 
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turbineseaplane said:
Nonsense.

Driving a couple external monitors should in no way be a “premium feature” in 2022

These aren’t $400 chromebooks
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We disagree. IMO driving one 6k external display in addition to the spectacular M2 performance and available 24 GB RAM is exactly where Apple's lowest end laptop should be.
 
turbineseaplane said:
No.
Do better Apple
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Actually we agree that Apple should do better. Just not at the low end. IMO the high end is where Apple laptops should do better. The top MBPs should not be limited to just 3 Thunderbolt 4 ports. That is a huge deficiency that - being the highest end laptops - lacks any excuses about low end configuration.
 
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The M1 and M2 are derived from the A-series chips and I don't think that it is clear what the actual differences are between the M-series and the A-series other than the video encoders/decoders. I think this is the main reason why they only support two displays, one internal and one external. That's all that the A-series had to do so the hardware was designed for just that. Not wanting to significantly retool the M-series base chips, Apple wound up with this limitation. The M-series Pro, Max, and Ultra chips represent a much more significant chip design effort than the base M-series chips, thus the differing capabilities.

As we move forward, we may see more differences in the M-series chips vs. the A-series and these limitations may go away, but it's hard to say as the base model M-series are likely destined for future iPads as well and there they also wouldn't need to drive more that one external display.

So, I don't think that it's really much of a marketing move to limit features and upsell people on the Pro models as it is a sharing of designs between the chips. That would make it more of a cost/effort saving measure.
 
Allen_Wentz said:
Actually we agree that Apple should do better. Just not at the low end. IMO the high end is where Apple laptops should do better. The top MBPs should not be limited to just 3 Thunderbolt 4 ports. That is a huge deficiency that - being the highest end laptops - lacks any excuses about low end configuration.
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lol, why would they? they make their money on the low end, if you don't like what Apple offers on the high end, buy a Dell.
 
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BanditoB said:
The M1 and M2 are derived from the A-series chips and I don't think that it is clear what the actual differences are between the M-series and the A-series other than the video encoders/decoders. I think this is the main reason why they only support two displays, one internal and one external. That's all that the A-series had to do so the hardware was designed for just that. Not wanting to significantly retool the M-series base chips, Apple wound up with this limitation. The M-series Pro, Max, and Ultra chips represent a much more significant chip design effort than the base M-series chips, thus the differing capabilities.

As we move forward, we may see more differences in the M-series chips vs. the A-series and these limitations may go away, but it's hard to say as the base model M-series are likely destined for future iPads as well and there they also wouldn't need to drive more that one external display.

So, I don't think that it's really much of a marketing move to limit features and upsell people on the Pro models as it is a sharing of designs between the chips. That would make it more of a cost/effort saving measure.
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M1 has 1/3 more additional transistors compared to A14. Everything was beefed up, from the cache to memory controllers, to NPU. Even the packaging was completely redone.

Keep in mind even Snapdragon chips redesigned for PC use support dual external monitors. Celeron chips with 20% the transistor count support dual monitors.

This is a marketing decision, pure and simple.
 
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Allen_Wentz said:
No. Exactly what I said: Apple should not be expected to have its spectacular lowest end laptop drive more than one...

The MBA is Apple's lowest end laptop, even though the rest of the market maintains a much lower end. And as Apple's low end laptop the MBA should be configured accordingly. As the lowest end Apple laptop, the M2 MBA is an absolutely spectacular box. Only whiners who want features from the higher (pro) end have anything to complain about.
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How valid criticism is labelled whining here is quite to stretch. This used to be a feature and now it isn’t. Granted it’s a spectacular box, except for the areas where it’s not, and multiple display support is one of those areas.
 
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turbineseaplane said:
Dirt cheap Dells with Intel Xe graphics can do three 4K HDR displays at once.

Let’s stop carrying water for Apple on this please.

This is absurd.
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Well said. Totally valid criticism. I am reminded of the days of crappy iBooks that lacked in this department. 20 years later this is expected to be supported.
 
Useless Touchbar said:
It just doesn't make sense.
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It does make sense because dual monitor support (as a whole) is not the target audience, especially with Apple seeking to better differentiate the Air model from the more expensive pro line where more people would have need for such a feature with sustained use. Like @JPack said, it is a marketing move and one that makes very good sense from Apple's perspective.
 
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ericwn said:
It used to be a feature of the Air models , besides of course the fact that pro is just an empty marketing phrase for slightly better specs.
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There is nothing empty about selling a range of laptops with the higher end (more performance, more features, more throughput, higher price, etc.) designated as more pro. The MBA does drive one 6k external display, and restricting the capability of driving even more external displays for bigher end M2 laptops is totally appropriate.
 
Allen_Wentz said:
There is nothing empty about selling a range of laptops with the higher end (more performance, more features, more throughput, higher price, etc.) designated as more pro. The MBA does drive one 6k external display, and restricting the capability of driving even more external displays for bigher end M2 laptops is totally appropriate.
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Of course it’s empty as it’s just a marketing term with zero meaning in the real world. As the Air can easily drive a 6K display - what would be more “pro” than that and is incapable now all of a sudden of doing basic stuff like drive two not so pro external and more conventional displays it’s obvious to anyone that the limitations are purely there to upsell to the higher spec model, not because all of a sudden having two external displays is some sort of edge case.
 
Useless Touchbar said:
It just doesn't make sense.
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The simple answer is market segmentation.

The long answer, it’s obvious that Apple wants the display outputs to support 6K, which is the Pro XDR, which is the most expensive display. The base M1 and M2 chips do not have the GPU horsepower to support the target resolution, thus it’s limited to one external display. That and adding dual display support on the base model would take sales away from Macbook Pros, Mac Studio, and soon the new Mac Pro. Apple views more than one external display support as a Pro feature, especially since the GPU on higher end models can support multiple 6K display. If they allowed it, people would think that you can hook up two 6K displays and left with a poor experience with two displays dropping to a lower resolution or poor performance.

Simply put, Apple wants you to buy the more expensive model. If you need two or more external displays, you need a higher end Mac, no way around it besides Displaylink adapters, which doesn’t support DRM content.
 
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ericwn said:
Of course it’s empty as it’s just a marketing term with zero meaning in the real world. As the Air can easily drive a 6K display - what would be more “pro” than that and is incapable now all of a sudden of doing basic stuff like drive two not so pro external and more conventional displays it’s obvious to anyone that the limitations are purely there to upsell to the higher spec model, not because all of a sudden having two external displays is some sort of edge case.
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Correct, the limitations are there to differentiate between models. Of course Apple, Nikon, whomever must differentiate between models. In this case one way of making the MBPs more pro is by giving them the ability to drive multiple displays. Another way is by allowing more RAM in MBPs, more TB ports, etc.; each added stronger characteristic making the MBPs more pro, not just a marketing term with zero meaning.

Nothing empty about it, the MBPs are more pro. In my case Apple's product segmentation worked as planned by Apple. The M2 MBA is so strong that I would have ordered one for my pro workflow - - except for its inability to drive 3 external displays. So I wait for the pricier M2 MBPs, instead of me (inappropriately) force-fitting Apple's lowest end laptop into my pro workflow just because Apple built such a sweet chip and sweet new MBA so much less expensive than a loaded MBP.
 
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Allen_Wentz said:
Correct, the limitations are there to differentiate between models. Of course Apple, Nikon, whomever must differentiate between models. In this case one way of making the MBPs more pro is by giving them the ability to drive multiple displays. Another way is by allowing more RAM in MBPs, more TB ports, etc.; each characteristic making the MBPs more pro, not just a marketing term with zero meaning.

Nothing empty about it, the MBPs are more pro. In my case Apple's product differentiation worked as planned by Apple. The M2 MBA is so strong that I would have ordered one for my pro workflow - - except for its inability to drive 3 external displays. So I wait for the pricier M2 MBPs, instead of me (inappropriately) force-fitting Apple's lowest end laptop into my pro workflow just because Apple built such a sweet chip and sweet new MBA.
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MBP's can't drive 3 external displays unless you get one with the M1 max, I guess the M1Pro is not really a pro chip
 
Allen_Wentz said:
Correct, the limitations are there to differentiate between models. Of course Apple, Nikon, whomever must differentiate between models. In this case one way of making the MBPs more pro is by giving them the ability to drive multiple displays. Another way is by allowing more RAM in MBPs, more TB ports, etc.; each added stronger characteristic making the MBPs more pro, not just a marketing term with zero meaning.

Nothing empty about it, the MBPs are more pro. In my case Apple's product segmentation worked as planned by Apple. The M2 MBA is so strong that I would have ordered one for my pro workflow - - except for its inability to drive 3 external displays. So I wait for the pricier M2 MBPs, instead of me (inappropriately) force-fitting Apple's lowest end laptop into my pro workflow just because Apple built such a sweet chip and sweet new MBA so much less expensive than a loaded MBP.
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Defending a machine that can depending on conf be north of 2k but can - no longer - support multiple displays is a weird hill choice to die on, but so be it.
And since pro is not a term as it itself and only suggesting professiona, prostate or procrastination we are in awe of those who so blindly label something as “more pro”. Reality distortion field, live in action.
 
Allen_Wentz said:
No. Exactly what I said: Apple should not be expected to have its spectacular lowest end laptop drive more than one...

The MBA is Apple's lowest end laptop, even though the rest of the market maintains a much lower end. And as Apple's low end laptop the MBA should be configured accordingly. As the lowest end Apple laptop, the M2 MBA is an absolutely spectacular box. Only whiners who want features from the higher (pro) end have anything to complain about.
Click to expand...
You think £1900 is a reasonable price to get dual monitor support?

Dual monitors is hardly a pro feature.
 
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