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For all the work Apple is doing to improve their environmental impact (which I applaud) I'm completely flabbergasted as to why this is a single device monitor. It's quite the impact on the environment to require users who have a Mac mini/Studio and a MacBook Pro to buy two monitors (no matter how great the production chain is). Sure, you can plug/unplug the cable, but that works so-so on a Studio with the ports on the back.

Everything else I could've lived with, this is a major omission :(

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Can you not use a thunderbolt switch?

In my home office, I've got two monitors and a switch to flick input between a personal machine and a work machine.

Do they actually work well (I actually want to know)? I once started looking into something like that and it seemed to be all pain and suffering to get it to work or it having weird behaviours.

If you have a product that you know work I'm all ears, it would make my life a lot easier.

I currently do this with HDMIs (I somehow make do with a measley 4K monitors).

I assumed such a thing existed for thunderbolt but hadn't looked into it; it looks like you're right that this market is underdeveloped at present. Hopefully somebody does it! Or, the wisdom of HN will yield us some options.

Otherwise, if you're willing to settle for affordable retina-quality monitors, this is the one I use: https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B01LPNKFK0. Cribbed from this post which made the HN rounds not too long ago: https://www.caseyliss.com/2021/12/7/monitor-liss

Last I looked, Thunderbolt switches were prohibitively expensive and only made by oddball companies. My solution is a Thunderbolt dock (CalDigit TS3+/TS4+, ThinkPad Thunderbolt 4 Dock, etc) along with a TB cable for each machine that I swap the connection to the dock with as needed. Since it's a single cable swap, it's not much of an inconvenience.

I use an IOGEAR Thunderbolt 2 KVM[0] that lets you switch thunderbolt between two computers. I use this in conjunction with three TB2 -> TB3 adapters[1] and a CalDigit TS3+[2] (which drives my DisplayPort monitor). It's janky, but it works, and I don't really notice the speed difference dropping down to TB2 speeds since the only TB3 peripheral I hang off the CalDigit is an audio interface.

At some point I actually had a TB2 only computer I wanted to KVM switch with a TB3 laptop so this weird setup made more sense then.

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M74Y03E

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MQ26QIY

[2]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CZPV8DF

Use the remote control technology in the latest MacOS. It will allow the keyboard and mouse from the Studio to control the laptop. Even more environmentally friendly than having an extra cable.

I've been using 2 machines with universal control (it works pretty well in the latest betas), and it's quite neat.

Unexpected side effect: Two machines allow you to keep working while installing system updates, which seem to take forever nowadays.

Just have two devices on instead of one. So much more environmentally friendly than an extra cable or two.

But that doesn't work for the display, only the input devices. What I want is what I have now, two devices connected to the same display.

Doesn't the Mac Studio have a Thunderbolt 4 port on the front?

Is this not quite niche?

What about the environmental impact of adding extra ports that no one is going to use?

I would need to share the screen too between my laptop and my desktop mac, so, no. Homeoffice is a thing these days and that means, you need to connect a screen to your work computer. I would rather not have the additional USB ports on the screen (though they are nice) than not having a second input. And giving that the screen has an A13 on its own, it would have the ability for nice handling multiple inputs, e.g. PIP or nice switching of keyboard/mouse attached.

As already mentioned, people working from home would benefit from this a lot, and KVM monitors for two machines have been a thing for at least a decade (Dell, Eizo, BenQ amongst others have been offering them so there’s clearly a market). And even if it wasn’t very used, the environmental cost of just one extra monitor would be many many unused ports.

> Is this not quite niche?

Having more than one device connected to a display? I think that's rather common and I'd expect multiple inputs on a display from any price range.

Honestly - I think it's pretty niche. I get that on HN - everyone will chime in and say it's frequent but I've seen thousands of monitors in my day... and all of them were connected to just one device and never more than one device.

Yes - sometimes things get connected to multiple devices but again - it's a niche.

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