Daisy-Chaining Not Possible with mini-DP and Apple's Thunderbolt Displays

[Rob Williams]

We posted last week about the strong support that Thunderbolt received at Intel's latest Developer Forum, so it seems appropriate that Apple has just begun shipping its first 27" Thunderbolt displays to its customers. With this, Apple updated its support site and at the same time made a couple of limitations public - limitations that would have been nice to know about long ago.

Read the rest of our post and then discuss it here!

 

[Kougar]

Interestingly, Macworld did some tests and discovered that if a Thunderbolt peripheral is placed in the sequence of 'Thunderbolt display > PROMISE Thunderbolt NAS > Cinema mini-DisplayPort display', both monitors will function just fine. The fact that this works confuses the situation even more, because if the mini-DP display works when plugged into a Thunderbolt peripheral, then plugging the display straight into a new Thunderbolt display should work. This seems to be a hardware limitation by Apple, not a limitation with the Thunderbolt spec itself, which does support daisy-chaining of multiple monitors.

Ah, so ya did catch that part! I would say it's an artificial driver limitation done by Apple, as there shouldn't be any actual hardware issues. Not altogether clear why Apple would do such a thing though...

 

[MacMan]

Not altogether clear why Apple would do such a thing though...

Simple: Apple dosen't think the way we normal people do, but rather they 'think different' and from where I sit, they seem to be out of their cotton-picking minds, but maybe that's how they got to be not only the world's biggest tech company, but now the biggest and most valuable company on earth period, supplanting long time champ, Exxon? (http://www.appleinsider.com/article..._all_time_high_as_worlds_largest_company.html )

In the end, when it comes to Apple, however, I've come to expect the unexpected. In other words: I don't have a &*&^&%^^%^% clue why they do what they do, including what their doing with Thunderbolt!

 

[marfig]

but maybe that's how they got to be not only the world's biggest tech company, but now the biggest and most valuable company on earth period, supplanting long time champ, Exxon?

Bet you loved Microsoft when it was the largest company. Didn't you? You cute little rascal you!

Anyways, what's your point? They have a plan?

 

[Rob Williams]

I feel compelled to pull an Optix.

 

[marfig]

I raise your bad boy with my chuck testa.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJP1DphOWPs