If we’re talking about support for external displays this all seems entirely tangential.

> When they design a product they don’t start from the specs, they start from how people use the product.

So they impose arbitrary limitations that have basically nothing to do with the specs just so that people who are supposed to use more expensive machines wouldn’t buy the cheaper models? Sounds about right.

Apple is trying to maximize their revenue because they can. There is nothing wrong about a for profit company doing that. Trying to find any other explanation is a bit silly though..

>Sure, but most people don’t use more than two external monitors. Most people don’t use more than one.

Most people don't buy Macs. So why even sell them then?

They literally took away a feature that their cheapest Intel Macs could do, and restricted it to their most expensive Apple Silicon Macs. They should be lambasted for this.

>Finally, a used M1 Max system will cost you under $2000 and is barely 3 years old.

A Raspberry Pi can do this for under $100. Come on.

The only issue I have with external monitors on my M2 Pro – and it’s admittedly annoying – is that unless I turn everything on in a specific sequence, the primary monitor’s energy saving kicks in and turns off the screen before the Mac has synced video. It essentially bootloops.

This only happens on my Acer Predator, and only if I’m using DP —> USB-C. The secondary LG doesn’t care, nor does the Acer if it’s over HDMI.

The fix I’ve found is to wake up the Mac first with the external keyboard, then turn the Acer on and wait for sync, login, then turn the LG on.

While I’d obviously rather not have to deal with this, I feel like it’s at least partially on the incredibly aggressive power saving of the Acer, which I can’t find any way to disable or extend the timeout of.

For $1500 it's better to get one of the 43" 4K displays. I've used one for over half a decade now, and the ability to comfortably tile a browser plus four terminals side-by-side is unmatched. Or if you will, display 10 A4 pages of a document simultaneously.

No, it's not. I've used ultra wides and I don't like them :-)

HDMI 1.4b does 1440p75 or 4k30 and HDMI 2.0 was brand new at the time.

> the grass isn't always greener, there's lots of pain points with x86 hardware too. heck, those celerons you're so fond of are down to literally a single memory channel by this point. is a single stick going to be enough raw bandwidth for a developer that wants to be compiling code etc?

What a weird argument; no shit a bargain bin CPU from 10 years ago is worse than a brand new mid-range chip. That's the exact point I'm making. That Celeron was bad 10 years ago. 10 years of progress, billions of dollars of investment and you get the same maximum RAM capacity, less external monitors at a much higher price.