Hi there,
I know I'm late to the party but I have just received a new-to-me 2019 2.3GHz I9/32GB/1TB and it's a fantastic machine! I have of course read the many threads that advise against this because of Apple Silicon, noisy fans, overheating, Logic board failures etc. etc. but it came up at the right price and more importantly I was able to use PayPal Pay-in-3 which made the difference between owning a newer Mac or not.
It has a 12 month warranty excluding battery (that only has 116 cycles and seems to last 8 hours in early testing) with the option to extend for a further 2 years which after reading some of the threads on here I will probably take out. Although it runs cool & quiet at the moment I want to try driving an external monitor(s) as this seems to be where if it is going to overheat it will so if it does turn out to be a problem I can return it within its 14-day returns window.
I don't get the hate around the Touch Bar as I think it's fantastic but then again I'm not a touch-typist nor do I use function keys much as I'm not a coder and a quick push of the FN key bottom left brings up F1-F12 so nothing lost for me and much gained in the process.
I also see many complaints of multiple button presses to adjust volume or brightness but if you hold your finger on the relevant icon a little longer it brings up a slider that you can control without having moving your finger off.
The ability to quickly skip YouTube ads was almost worth the price of entry for me!
In fact the only things I don't like are the loss of handy ports (Apple removing these ports was the main reason I haven't purchased a new Mac since 2013) such as a single USB-A (legacy USB drives & devices) SD Card slot (camera/drone/dashcam/Raspberry Pi's) and of course MagSafe leaving me an unwilling dweller in Dongle City. Apart from that it's the best Mac I've ever owned and I still have 7 others!
Anyway on to my questions;
I have both an Apple Thunderbolt Display and 27" LED Cinema Display and I assume I can drive the TB Display using the Apple TB3 (USB-C) to TB2 Adaptor but how would I drive the older LED Cinema Display? Use a second TB3->TB2 adaptor in a second USB-C port of the MBP?
And I'm assuming if I purchase a Caldigit or OWC ThunderBolt Dock I could use the Display or USB-C ports on that to drive the second monitor using the Apple TB3-TB2 Adaptor where necessary so leaving me with a single TB3 connection between the MBP and the Dock?
I guess the only way to share the displays between this MBP and my 2013 Mac Pro would be using a KVM of some sort? Can anybody recommend a suitable make/model of KVM with at least 2 but possibly 3 inputs as I also have a 2010 Mac Pro that would be good to connect once again and able to utilise both monitors per input?
That's it for now but no doubt there will be more posts from me as a new user of this machine...
Thanks & kind regards,
-=Glyn=-
I know I'm late to the party but I have just received a new-to-me 2019 2.3GHz I9/32GB/1TB and it's a fantastic machine! I have of course read the many threads that advise against this because of Apple Silicon, noisy fans, overheating, Logic board failures etc. etc. but it came up at the right price and more importantly I was able to use PayPal Pay-in-3 which made the difference between owning a newer Mac or not.
It has a 12 month warranty excluding battery (that only has 116 cycles and seems to last 8 hours in early testing) with the option to extend for a further 2 years which after reading some of the threads on here I will probably take out. Although it runs cool & quiet at the moment I want to try driving an external monitor(s) as this seems to be where if it is going to overheat it will so if it does turn out to be a problem I can return it within its 14-day returns window.
I don't get the hate around the Touch Bar as I think it's fantastic but then again I'm not a touch-typist nor do I use function keys much as I'm not a coder and a quick push of the FN key bottom left brings up F1-F12 so nothing lost for me and much gained in the process.
I also see many complaints of multiple button presses to adjust volume or brightness but if you hold your finger on the relevant icon a little longer it brings up a slider that you can control without having moving your finger off.
The ability to quickly skip YouTube ads was almost worth the price of entry for me!
In fact the only things I don't like are the loss of handy ports (Apple removing these ports was the main reason I haven't purchased a new Mac since 2013) such as a single USB-A (legacy USB drives & devices) SD Card slot (camera/drone/dashcam/Raspberry Pi's) and of course MagSafe leaving me an unwilling dweller in Dongle City. Apart from that it's the best Mac I've ever owned and I still have 7 others!
Anyway on to my questions;
I have both an Apple Thunderbolt Display and 27" LED Cinema Display and I assume I can drive the TB Display using the Apple TB3 (USB-C) to TB2 Adaptor but how would I drive the older LED Cinema Display? Use a second TB3->TB2 adaptor in a second USB-C port of the MBP?
And I'm assuming if I purchase a Caldigit or OWC ThunderBolt Dock I could use the Display or USB-C ports on that to drive the second monitor using the Apple TB3-TB2 Adaptor where necessary so leaving me with a single TB3 connection between the MBP and the Dock?
I guess the only way to share the displays between this MBP and my 2013 Mac Pro would be using a KVM of some sort? Can anybody recommend a suitable make/model of KVM with at least 2 but possibly 3 inputs as I also have a 2010 Mac Pro that would be good to connect once again and able to utilise both monitors per input?
That's it for now but no doubt there will be more posts from me as a new user of this machine...
Thanks & kind regards,
-=Glyn=-
