Macs With M3 Chip Still Officially Support Only a Single External Display

[dwaite]

Strangely, the M3 MacBook Pro doesn’t support two external monitors. You have to get M3 Pro MacBook Pro. I guess Apple wants to be extra sure you’re a real “Pro” first.

Not really that strange - the ability to drive two displays (in this case - one internal and one external) is a hardware limitation of the M1/M2/M3 SoC.

The baseline chips have less I/O capabilities, which is why they have less display output hardware, fewer USB-C ports, and why the notebooks aren't able to be Thunderbolt 4 certified.

If you're asking why someone would get the M3 MacBook Pro once the M3 MacBook Air is out with the same I/O limitations and close to same performance - well, yeah.

 

[dukebound85]

Great! Done! Use the Windows laptop. Problem solved.

enough with apologizing for apple

The fact is my older equivalent model mbp can support more displays than the new counterparts

 

[Runaway Train]

OK, so no dual external display support for any upcoming MBA models. ☹️

I just had my (now six year old) MBP repaired. Like new…and…yes it’s now considered « vintage »….and it support…surprise …two external displays. 📺

 

[justdanyul]

You do realize it works great on the native machine but the minute you have to work on another machine scaling and everything else goes out the window.

Try to work on a RDP session to a legacy windows server. Hope you have a magnifying glass.

Ah, that’s fair. I suppose I’m just blessed that I always worked in Linux and Unix (back in the day) environments. Meaning, remoting is basically synonymous with ssh and terminals to me, not legacy windows servers.

The closest thing I encounter to what you are describing is the occupational lab equipment software running on ancient windows machines , but, I rarely need to remote into those as well, you kinda need to be with the equipment anyways. In the rare case I’ll need to monitor it remotely, I’d just fire up an old laptop by my side to deal with those, for me, edge cases.


With that said, I did mostly take offence to last paragraph of your post, and my reply was mostly commenting on that. As I felt you insinuated it was largely that the only reason somebody would run a high dpi monitor was to show off their wealth, as it was scaled anyways. And this, i disagreed with 🙂

 

[dwaite]

I can see it now:

When Apple releases their low cost MacBook (rumored) - it will support one external monitor but only in amber!

Hmm, I might get a MacBook in amber if it was cheaper.

 

[JPack]

Not really that strange - the ability to drive two displays (in this case - one internal and one external) is a hardware limitation of the M1/M2/M3 SoC.

The baseline chips have less I/O capabilities, which is why they have less display output hardware, fewer USB-C ports, and why the notebooks aren't able to be Thunderbolt 4 certified.

If you're asking why someone would get the M3 MacBook Pro once the M3 MacBook Air is out with the same I/O limitations and close to same performance - well, yeah.

It's a strange decision from Apple's leadership, aside from the obvious money factor.

Snapdragon 8c from four years ago supports dual 4K external monitors. It has less than half the transistors compared to M3. The upcoming Snapdragon X Elite supports two 5K external. Celerons from a decade ago with a fraction the transistor count support triple monitors.

Clearly, this is not a technical limitation nor a transistor budget issue, but rather marketing.

 

[HereticalAppleConvert]

Those who can read shall inherit the earth. Or something along that line.

M1/2/3 all support 2 displays, with the Mini these 2 are external while for everything else it's 1 external plus the build in.
2 screens is more than enough for 99% of users even more if you look at the target audience.

As for being artificial, for me it seems that there is a limit of outputs per GPU cluster, hence you get more the bigger the chip you buy. A far cry from yesteryear where Apple would put an (easily defeated) FirmWare block on using the really independent external VGA on iBooks/iMacs for anything but mirror mode.

Thanks for this, I was just going to say the same damn thing! It's an architectural limitation...and those who need more displays are supposed to upgrade to the Pro and Max models. The base model M1/2/3 are just that...BASE models, for those who just need BASIC computers. Power users are expected to pay more and upgrade.

 

[HereticalAppleConvert]

The thing that is so absolutely stupid about this is that with an external display hooked up, you can still connect your iPad and run Sidecar on it, connecting it as a 2nd display. That absolutely is more taxing on CPU/GPU than a real 2nd display. This is just the worst kind of Apple BS. I'm an Apple fanboy, but it's things like this that make me want to leave the ecosystem.

Go. No one is stopping you. If you bothered to pay attention when they explained the M1 architecture you would know why this limitation exists.

 

[dwaite]

I bet any amount of money that since the m3 chip runs at a blistering 4GHZ the iMac will have thermal throttling issues.

4Ghz isn't a temperature.

I believe the throttling works differently for the M series than for Intel - rather than lowering clock frequency, they reduce scheduling on the performance cores and/or the number of GPU cores in use.

The sustained performance of a M3 MacBook Air should be less than the M3 iMac, which is likely less than the M3 MacBook Pro. However, sustained workloads of both CPU and GPU are needed to really get the fans to engage, so it isn't a threshold people will typically will hit unless they are doing benchmarking or some specialty applications such as ML-based data processing (like audio transcription.)

 

[theorist9]

Some posters live in their own make believe world.

Apple didn't even come close even during the height of demand and with people clamoring for M1.
View attachment 2306330

A fuller picture would look at not just unit sales, which this shows, but also revenue. If you instead consider the market share by revenue (dollars), Apple would be much closer to the top, because Apple's average sales price per unit is much higher than that of everyone else listed here. I don't have specific data for laptop sales, but for 20-21, total PC sales by Apple and Lenovo were $35.2B and 43.1B, respectively. Source for Lenovo given at bottom (I extrapolated to 20-21 based on the increase they reported).

Thus while Lenovo's 20-21 laptop unit sales are 2.6 times Apple's, their PC revenue is only 1.2 times Apple's. And laptop revenue probably has a roughly similar differential.

https://investor.lenovo.com/en/financial/results/press_2122_q4.pdf

 

[JPack]

Thanks for this, I was just going to say the same damn thing! It's an architectural limitation...and those who need more displays are supposed to upgrade to the Pro and Max models. The base model M1/2/3 are just that...BASE models, for those who just need BASIC computers. Power users are expected to pay more and upgrade.

No other chip manufacturer considers dual external displays a "power" feature.

One monitor for media streaming. The other for web browsing or shopping.

Apple certainly doesn't consider their base M3 a "basic" computer.

 

[BeatCrazy]

It's a strange decision from Apple's leadership, aside from the obvious money factor.

Snapdragon 8c from four years ago supports dual 4K external monitors. It has less than half the transistors compared to M3. The upcoming Snapdragon X Elite supports two 5K external. Celerons from a decade ago with a fraction the transistor count support triple monitors.

Clearly, this is not a technical limitation nor a transistor budget issue, but rather marketing.

It's not 'leadership' nor marketing deciding these things. It's a product decision, i.e. John Ternus' org.

 

[JPack]

A fuller picture would look at not just unit sales, which this shows, but also revenue. If you consider the percentage of the market by revenue, Apple would be much closer to the top, because Apple's average sales price per unit is much higher than that of everyone else listed here. I don't have specific data for laptop sales, but for 20-21, total PC sales by Apple and Lenovo were $35.2B and 43.1B, respectively. Source for Lenovo given at bottom (I extrapolated to 20-21 based on the increase they reported).

Thus while Lenovo's 20-21 laptop unit sales are 2.6 times Apple's, their PC revenue is only 1.2 times Apple's. And laptop revenue probably has a roughly similar differential.

https://investor.lenovo.com/en/financial/results/press_2122_q4.pdf

Why? How does that affect whether someone uses dual external displays?

 

[ProfessionalFan]

All M3s should do multiple displays. Want to limit to only 2 for the base M3, fine. But 1 is ludicrous. Confused by people arguing against it.

Edit: Because for some reason I have to be clear. Multiple EXTERNAL DISPLAYS is what I mean. The internal display does not count since a lot of people would want to clamshell their laptop and still be able to use 2 monitors. Something they can do with practically any Windows laptop.

 

[JPack]

It's not 'leadership' nor marketing deciding these things. It's a product decision, i.e. John Ternus' org.

In that case, Apple should be updating their web page. He's simply a Senior VP who also has some serious decision making responsibilities. 😁

Apple Leadership - John Ternus

John Ternus is Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering and a member of Apple’s executive leadership team. Learn more about John.

www.apple.com

 

[dukebound85]

The M3 chip hasn't got a Pro in it's name.
The MacBook Pro is the hardware and it refers to Pro Grade materials.....does that finally explain it to you?

that's like your opinion man

or provide me the technical memo stating the definition of pro

It's a strange decision from Apple's leadership, aside from the obvious money factor.

Snapdragon 8c from four years ago supports dual 4K external monitors. It has less than half the transistors compared to M3. The upcoming Snapdragon X Elite supports two 5K external. Celerons from a decade ago with a fraction the transistor count support triple monitors.

Clearly, this is not a technical limitation nor a transistor budget issue, but rather marketing.

my sub 100 dollar raspberry pi supports 2 external monitors. A state of the art apple laptop doesn't seem to be able to

 

[BeatCrazy]

All M3s should do multiple displays. Want to limit to only 2 for the base M3, fine. But 1 is ludicrous. Confused by people arguing against it.

They all do support 2 displays. But one of them is the internal one

Buy/use the right tool for the job. It's the same reason they make 2WD trucks and 4WD. Get what you need. Not everyone needs 4WD.

 

[BeatCrazy]

In that case, Apple should be updating their web page. He's simply a Senior VP who also has some serious decision making responsibilities. 😁

View attachment 2306364

Apple Leadership - John Ternus

John Ternus is Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering and a member of Apple’s executive leadership team. Learn more about John.

www.apple.com

Of course he does. But you used 'leadership' like Tim Cook sits around with Craig F and John and they decided that M3 only supports 2 displays.

That's not how it works. John Turnus' org (up to and including him) make these types of decisions. Not marketing.

 

[ProfessionalFan]

They all do support 2 displays. But one of them is the internal one

Buy/use the right tool for the job. It's the same reason they make 2WD trucks and 4WD. Get what you need. Not everyone needs 4WD.

Sigh... You knew what I meant.

2 EXTERNAL displays.

Because obviously the M3 Mac mini if it ends up being released will also do only 1 display.

They are upselling the Pro chip with this limitation. It is the only reason for it. Customers defending that business practice will always be weird to me.

 

[JPack]

Of course he does. But you used 'leadership' like Tim Cook sits around with Craig F and John and they decided that M3 only supports 2 displays.

That's not how it works. John Turnus' org (up to and including him) make these types of decisions. Not marketing.

In my world, anyone who is a senior manager or higher is considered leadership. The top level guys should fully understand the product stack, or should be hearing loads of advice from those who do. By the time it gets to Tim and Craig, there is overwhelming evidence from lower leadership positions to support a decision.

Either way, the leadership team ok'ed it.

 

[BeatCrazy]

They are upselling the Pro chip with this limitation. It is the only reason for it. Customers defending that business practice will always be weird to me.

Does everyone who uses a truck for their work/business to earn a living need four wheel drive? Serious question. You are imposing your needs for everyone else's priorities. My wife uses her MacBook Pro to earn a living and she's never hooked it up to an external display the entire time she's had it.

 

[theorist9]

Docks rely on the computer's GPU to output to 1, 2, or more monitors.

M3 MacBook Pro doesn't support more than one monitor, so the Thunderbolt dock won't do anything.

You would need to use a software-based DisplayLink dock to bypass. Nobody wants to use those.

Just out of curiosity, what's wrong with those? Do they decrease bandwidth and thus resolution or frame rate?

OWC USB-C Dual HDMI 4K Display Adapter with DisplayLink

Easily add two HDMI displays up to 4K to any Apple M1, M2 & M3 Mac or computer with a USB-C or Thunderbolt port. Includes a 1-year OWC warranty.

eshop.macsales.com

 

[JPack]

Does everyone who uses a truck for their work/business to earn a living need four wheel drive? Serious question. You are imposing your needs for everyone else's priorities. My wife uses her MacBook Pro to earn a living and she's never hooked it up to an external display the entire time she's had it.

It's market consensus. Every other manufacturer supports two or more external displays on their "base" model computers that cost $1,599. Are all PC manufacturers stupid including Qualcomm?

Apple ranks #4 in overall notebook sales. Is Apple right or everyone else wrong?

 

[ProfessionalFan]

Is Apple right or everyone else wrong?

Love rhetorical questions, well said.

Good research on that.

 

[BeatCrazy]

It's market consensus. Every other manufacturer supports two or more external displays on their "base" model computers that cost $1,599. Are all PC manufacturers stupid including Qualcomm?

Apple ranks #4 in overall notebook sales. Is Apple right or everyone else wrong?

Apple sells plenty of notebooks that support 2+ displays.