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Comment by RexM | Hacker News Reader

My weird monitor issue (since we’re talking about it, not that anyone asked) is sometimes when I wake my M1 MacBook Pro, my monitor (AW3821DW) has a cyan overlay across the whole screen.

I unplug/plugin the usb-c cable and it fixes it.

I have a usb-c to DP dongle, then connect via DP to the monitor.

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I find apple's treatment of monitors kind of weird.

PC graphics cards just have a plentiful supply of video outputs, say a mix of HDMI and DP.

But apple has always used dongles, many of which are basically small computers that can basically convert one video signal to another on-the-fly.

(I don't know if USB-C to DP is an electrical conversion or has logic)

But the complexity involved is probably a steaming heap of corner cases for the driver. And apple has probably tested and prioritized bugs for their hardware, but 3rd party monitors are probably hit or miss.

USB-C to DP is an electrical conversion. The monitor has to negotiate an alternate mode with the USB controller (then the high-speed data pairs in the USB-C cable are used for Displayport signalling and not USB).

(There are such things as USB monitors which actually take pixel data over the USB protocol, but I don't think they ever caught on.)

> There are such things as USB monitors which actually take pixel data over the USB protocol

DisplayLink. It caught on for a while at least, especially in the case of some dock products that would output to a more conventional display interface but were USB DisplayLink adapters themselves. You’ll see tons of forum and Reddit posts about suboptimal CPU load and performance related to it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayLink

It more recently was resurrected to overcome M1 limitations.

https://danielcompton.net/apple-m1-displaylink-multiple-disp...

> But apple has always used dongles

Most the Mac laptops I’ve owned have had display port or hdmi, the dongle lifestyle is a new and unpleasant one.

The laptops with dedicated ports might have been the last common-sense laptops they made.

I laughed (and grumbled) at the article "Benjamin Button Reviews The New MacBook Pro":

https://blog.pinboard.in/2016/10/benjamin_button_reviews_the...

(The Benjamin Button movie was about a man who lived life in reverse, starting as old and wrinkled and gradually getting younger)

The current laptops have a HDMI port. DP over USB-C doesn't require active conversion. I think you're slightly jumping at shadows here.

(Apple's _really_ problematic video dongle was the thankfully largely dead lightning to HDMI one, for phones; this was essentially an external USB video card.)

Active or not, it’s still a dongle (but a dongle or a cable for an external monitor is less of a rage concern and they have added back HDMI as mentioned). However, seriously give me just one fucking USB-A port on a “pro” device. There’s enough people in that segment that use flash sticks and need to interface to all kinds of various hardware (MIDI controllers, pro audio equipment (not every use is a rack)), all kinds of random special purpose hardware, etc. It’s a pro device it should cater to a wider range.

wow...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_Pro_(Apple_silicon)#/m...

no usb-a ports sucks, but I guess it's a step in the right direction.

sort of amazing how out-of-touch they (still) are with "pro" users. who cares if you need usb-a only once a year.

People might only need the bed in their pickup truck once a year, but they buy pickup trucks, get stuff done and are fiercely loyal.

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