[elthran]

Apple Cynic/Windows user here with a genuine question - why is this interesting? I'm currently looking at my wife's old corporate-issued windows laptop, which is running 2 external monitors as well as it's own display - am I missing something here, or is this just a case of Apple being held to different standards to other manufacturers in terms of feature parity?

[JohnBooty]

Well, it's definitely "interesting" because it was a weird and user-unfriendly restriction on previous M1/M2 Airs and now it's gone. So that is interesting for sure.

Perhaps more to the point, you're right -- Apple doesn't deserve to be lauded for removing something that was a dumb restriction in the first place. But it is interesting considering this is the most popular laptop in the world.

[kayodelycaon]

I don't think there is anything interesting. Someone on the hardware side thought it would be great to hardwire one of two the display controllers to the internal display. That would explain why M1 and M2 can't be fixed in a software update and why the Mac Mini supports two external displays.

Restriction implies they made the deliberate decision to withhold or break functionally. Limitation is probably more accurate, because they didn't put the extra work to make it work properly.

[JohnBooty]

    Limitation is probably more accurate

Yeah.

    I don't think there is anything interesting

From an engineering standpoint? Heck no.

From a consumer standpoint? Apple sells about six million Macs per year and the Air is their best-selling computer and anecdotally it is popular with the HN crowd. So it is objectively impactful. I would call that therefore "interesting" but at that point we're splitting semantic hairs so whatever.

[pixelbath]

It's not interesting in a "wow, Macbooks can finally support two external displays" as much as "this does make this intentionally-small form factor slightly more tolerable."

Comparing the port count/capabilities of the two isn't a fully fair comparison though. The Apple Silicon Macbook Air models are likely 1) much faster than that corporate-issued laptop (even if it's workstation class), and 2) much smaller and quieter (no fan noise even under load).

Though I'm not sure why all the griping about how many monitors an Air can support; users can buy a Macbook Pro if they want more monitors? I don't understand the logic behind buying a tiny, thin laptop only to dock it as a workstation.

[pquki4]

"Users can buy a MacBook Pro"

as if $500 isn't money to you. Maybe it indeed isn't, but that is a lot of money to many people.

FYI Intel Macbook Air has supported dual external monitors 2018-2020, and same for base Macbook Pro 2012 (Retina) - 2020.

[zer0zzz]

It’s interesting because the whole M# line started with a smart phone and built a pc out of that. As a result it has some unfortunate restrictions that aren’t there when you build a machine out of capable yet pretty clunky intel hardware. I don’t doubt there are similar tradeoffs in the WoS world but I’m not aware of what they are specifically.

The restriction I am most annoyed with these days is the lack of external GPU passthrough. I’m not even sure the asahi Linux folks have gotten that working yet.

So folks are probably just happy they’re not having to deal with as many compromises and tradeoffs (they get to have their PC that works almost just like a smartphone but does more things their intel machine could now). That’s totally understandable.

[justsomehnguy]

> As a result it has some unfortunate restrictions

Ah, yes, "poor Apple couldn't find a way".

Except it did for the more pricey models.

[_ph_]

Well, yes. By using the bigger CPUs, which have more cores, more gpus and more IO hardware on chip.

[justsomehnguy]

> which have more cores

Nonsense, Celeron 600, 1c/1t CPU from 25 years ago could drive multiple monitors just fine.

> more gpus

Nonsense, you just need more VRAM and guess what? DVMT was a thing 15 years ago.

> and more IO hardware on chip.

If you can use the external monitor with the either USB port then you have all the IO needed. Nonsense.

[zer0zzz]

Nope: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/27191/i...

You needed an agp video card of some kind. You're making a false comparison. Once again they clearly made tradeoffs to get the best balance for product experience, cost, and their own supply chain considerations (for entry level laptops, tablets, phones).

[justsomehnguy]

> You needed an agp video card of some kind

You needed a video card of some kind. You can stick multiple PCI cards in one PC just fine, alongside one AGP card. And this is the time when the usual gaming video card had a whooping 32-64Mb of RAM. There is absolutely no reason a computer can be limited in amount of displays it can drive. And if 20+ y/o PCs could drive multiple monitors there is no reason the top notch tech company couldn't do that.

> You're making a false comparison

No, you are just trying to justify the greedy corporation habits.

> Once again they clearly made tradeoffs

No, they segmented their products and their fanbois are not only drunk their koolaid but eagerly defend it too.

[_ph_]

Your post is nonsense. I was talking about the Apple Silicon chips. Which combine all the logic on one chip. That means, they are limited in the capacities by what is put on that corresponding chip. Apple chose to put 2 display outputs on the smaller chips, and more on the larger ones. That is a conscious choice trading off chip area with other capabilities. Could they have done differently? Sure. Does it make sense? Yes. For the people, who need or want more compute power and more capabilities, they have two different chip offerings in the laptops, the Pro and the Max. And in the Mac Studio the Ultra, which are two Max and consequently raise the IO capability even further.

And I have certainly not talked about any other platform, which usually uses multi-chip approaches.

[zer0zzz]

Exactly right. I think some of my points got garbled in all this back and forth: that their conscious choice makes A LOT of sense when you take into account that they want their smaller chips to share supply chain with iPads, Vision Pro etc.

[zer0zzz]

No ones saying “poor apple.” The pricier models don’t run the same soc. With the air you’re getting the same constraints as an iPad. They made tradeoffs.

[scrlk]

M1/M2 MBAs are limited to one external display.

The M3 MacBook Air relaxes this restriction by allowing two external displays.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

... When the clamshell is closed. With an open one it is still just one external display.

[bombcar]

Which basically means the others could do it (all M1 processors can handle two displays, which is either two for the Mac mini or internal + external for the laptops).

The addition is the ability to have two external when closed; likely this could have mainly been done in software if they cared.

(You can get more than one external on a laptop with the screen open if you go up to the Max or Pro or whatever.)

[gxs]

This is far from a "genuine" question.

It's easy to deduce that it's a big deal for macbook air users because it wasn't possible before.

It's easy to deduce both from the article and from other comments here, which presumably you read if you're going through the trouble of responding to someone else's comment.

I typically despise this type of question, where you're obviously trying to make a point but playing dumb and playing it off as if you have no clue what you're talking about.

This type of question is used all over the place and super obnoxious.

I'm not American, genuine question, why is it a big deal that you're getting free healthcare? I've had free healthcare my whole life, shrug.

As a European, genuine question. Why is it a big deal that Biden wants to forgive student loan? I've gotten free education my whole life, shrug.

As an apple user, why is it a big deal that Dell is extending it's warranty to 2 years? My apple device gets updates 4 years later, shrug.

[pquki4]

How is Dell warranty comparable to iOS/MacOS updates? Maybe at least compare that to something related to operating system, like Windows 10/Ubuntu LTS support lifecycle, or Android major version updates, which are usually much longer than the 1 or 2 year warranty that comes with the device? That's too much a rant that is completely meaningless and way too cynical.

[skyyler]

It seems like their question struck a nerve. Did you really feel it necessary to bring up hot political issues to explain why it's interesting that the new apple laptops can drive two external displays?

Just for clarity, it's so far from novel in the world of windows laptops that it's genuinely confusing why that would be an advertised feature.

[gxs]

No, not every stern response you see online means it “struck a nerve”.

I must have struck a nerve with you after my objection to the format of the question.

My only mistake here was not saying those were oversimplified made up examples, thought it was obvious but apparently not.

[lozenge]

The limitation started because the M chip combined the CPU and GPU and combined the RAM with the VRAM. That's why its battery life and power efficiency blows Windows laptops out of the water. So they didn't just limit it for no reason.