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Multiple Displays on a Mac Sucks

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Re: Multiple Displays on a Mac Sucks

#211

Post by cmiles74 »

OJFord wrote: post #109
JR1427 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company has enforced frequent updates of browsers and other software set up, so we are relaunching apps very often, and this drives me crazy. It feels like someone is walking over to your desk and moving everything around, just to annoy you.

yabai is the closest you can get to i3/sway like tiling window management on macOS, and its config allows fixing an app always to open in a certain workspace.

I use Linux and I ended up moving to i3 almost entirely because of the window and workspace management with multiple displays.

Re: Multiple Displays on a Mac Sucks

#212

Post by spurgu »

This is weird. I used external monitors at the office back in 2017-19 and I thought it was magical how the windows resized/positioned themselves when I plugged in the monitors.

I didn't use external monitors at home though (just laptop screen) - maybe that confuses things, if you have two separate external display setups?

Re: Multiple Displays on a Mac Sucks

#213

Post by whynotminot »

baq wrote: post #210
whynotminot wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you ever consider there might be something wrong with your machine or some piece of software you’ve installed? Or do you think the rest of the world that has heaped praise on the Apple Silicon Macs has missed something you’ve seen?

I blame this on trying to use non-Apple hardware with the MacBook. I'm sure if I had an Apple Display instead of a g-sync 165Hz-capable monitor and closed the lid when hooked up everything would be... perhaps not fine, but good enough. The macbook is amazing when considered in isolation. Trying to use it in a workstation setting is definitely 'holding it wrong', which drives me nuts. Wasted potential and definitely u…

I use it in a workstation setting. Two workstation settings in fact.

I dock at home into a dual monitor setup.

I go to work and dock into a dual monitor setup.

I keep my MacBook open, not closed.

Pretty much all my coworkers do the same. All with Apple silicon MacBook pros. No idea what you’re talking about.

I believe you — I just think you need to do a deeper dive into your kit instead of assuming the rest of the world must be wrong about these machines.

Re: Multiple Displays on a Mac Sucks

#214

Post by resource_waste »

Toutouxc wrote: post #157
resource_waste wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this happen? You accidentally get sold a Mac when you are 19 years old and going to college? Like, you can get better EVERYTHING outside their hardware. I can't imagine ever being like: You know what I really want 0 GPU and only 64GB ram for $2700! I understand if you need to compile for Apple users, but if you are going to install Linux on it, get a GPU or some seriously significant amount of RAM.

> you can get better EVERYTHING outside their hardware I'm pretty sure my M1 MacBook Air was the most powerful fanless laptop on the market when I bought it, and there were just a few laptops with comparable battery life. I'm also pretty sure it had a GPU. (still has one)

>M1 MacBook Air was the most powerful fanless laptop

Huh, my gaming laptop was the most powerful laptop with 3 USB-C ports and was the color blue. It also has an NVIDIA gpu.

Apple had 0 blue laptops with 3 USB-C ports or NVIDIA GPUS.

>I'm also pretty sure it had a GPU. (still has one)

OH man! Victim of Apple marketing right here. You have an integrated GPU in your CPU. This is industry standard for the last 25+ years.

Re: Multiple Displays on a Mac Sucks

#215

Post by ffsm8 »

cjk2 wrote: post #155
ffsm8 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

See my other comments in the topic.

Well, you're plainly stating what we've established here too: you either don't have reading comprehension or didn't read it.

The arch of the CPU doesn't matter. I have the same issue on my M1 MacBook Pro 14"

I really don't care wherever windows does it worse or better either... so your other comment didn't add anything to the situation, really.

Re: Multiple Displays on a Mac Sucks

#216

Post by cmiles74 »

phito wrote: post #73
JR1427 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company has enforced frequent updates of browsers and other software set up, so we are relaunching apps very often, and this drives me crazy. It feels like someone is walking over to your desk and moving everything around, just to annoy you.

Is it a Mac thing to keep applications open? I usually close mine as soon as I'm not actively using them

Back in the day, there was this idea of some applications being "document" centered while others revolved around an "activity". On average you only want one instance of your calculator application open as it's what you use to do math and having two or three might be confusing. On the other hand, when you use Microsoft Word there's really one window per a document and having five Word documents open at once make sense.

This is another idea that has been somewhat lost over time. I believe the way it works now is that you can choose to have your application close when it's last window is closed, or not. That seems a reasonable compromise, it's never been clear to me why you'd want an application like Word with no window to continue running.

Re: Multiple Displays on a Mac Sucks

#217

Post by cwizou »

The sad thing about not remembering windows is that if you use spaces, you also never quite know where things will launch again on restart. I'm not even sure there's a definite pattern. Mail mostly goes into the right place, but sometimes don't.

Closest thing I noticed is that apps that have a "splash screen" of some sort (could be an update check, etc) will always fail to go where they are supposed to. This includes Discord and Xcode very reliably. Sometimes point releases make things worse.

Also, I think there's quite probably some firmware/hardware issues with screen detection on the M1. I do have a USB-C Studio Display which works mostly fine, but I also have a (I admit very odd and not quite new) Asus 4K display that uses Multistream Displayport. Connected via a USB-C to DP cable (protocol wise, it's supposed to be the best case scenario as VESA joined up to USB-C).

On my M1 Mac Studio (and something I can't reproduce with other hardware), that display will regularly not wake up from sleep and plugging/unplugging to another port will work maybe half the time.

Most puzzling also, if my Mac goes to sleep, periodically the Asus display will wake up for a few seconds (just going back to standby with backlight on), then go back to sleep. I never timed it but it's at least once an hour, and always does so.

I also had a few bug reports of people having issues with various USB-C docks where my screen saver (Aerial) just gets told the screen isn't there anymore and to go away, and people then see a blank screen on that one, and it never comes up again with the screen not on standby, but just displaying black with background on.

Considering it's been happening since I got the M1 and not on previous Macs (and most reports were on M1 I believe), I have a feeling there may be a few firmware/hardware USB-C issues laying around. Maybe it's been fixed since ?

Re: Multiple Displays on a Mac Sucks

#219

Post by cjk2 »

ffsm8 wrote: post #215
cjk2 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See my other comments in the topic.

Well, you're plainly stating what we've established here too: you either don't have reading comprehension or didn't read it. The arch of the CPU doesn't matter. I have the same issue on my M1 MacBook Pro 14" I really don't care wherever windows does it worse or better either... so your other comment didn't add anything to the situation, really.

Insulting much?

Re: Multiple Displays on a Mac Sucks

#220

Post by Toutouxc »

resource_waste wrote: post #214
Toutouxc wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can get better EVERYTHING outside their hardware I'm pretty sure my M1 MacBook Air was the most powerful fanless laptop on the market when I bought it, and there were just a few laptops with comparable battery life. I'm also pretty sure it had a GPU. (still has one)

>M1 MacBook Air was the most powerful fanless laptop Huh, my gaming laptop was the most powerful laptop with 3 USB-C ports and was the color blue. It also has an NVIDIA gpu. Apple had 0 blue laptops with 3 USB-C ports or NVIDIA GPUS. >I'm also pretty sure it had a GPU. (still has one) OH man! Victim of Apple marketing right here. You have an integrated GPU in your CPU. This is industry standard for the last 25+ years…

> OH man! Victim of Apple marketing right here. You have an integrated GPU in your CPU.

Dude, I know what an integrated GPU is (and it's certainly not "GPU in your CPU").

You're not smarter than everyone else for having a laptop with a dedicated GPU and running Linux on it. You haven't found a magical loophole in the laptop market by not buying Apple. You're just prioritizing different stuff than Apple users.

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