The reason why they do this is because it lets them run system RAM at lower power or suspend it entirely without affecting the displays. Which saves a good chunk of power - AFAIK after Asahi added support for the display coprocessor firmware (which implements this trick) they got a few extra hours of battery life.
My main complaint is that you can't turn off the primary laptop display to get an extra external display back. That's probably why most people need >2 display controllers in their laptops. Though AFAIK this may have been fixed in the M3?
B) if the device was purchased by him, then the onus is on him to have researched the device's full functionality prior to the spending any amount in any currency.
C) "What Apple is doing is trying to squeeze even more profit out of all users who didn’t read the fine print."
Sounds a bit to me like the author of this blog is feeling a little guilty and self conscious about being apart of this subset of 'non-fine-print-readers'.
Being able to use two external screens is practically an expectation of any laptop at this point. I can understand the OP's point that this is ridiculous.
You should generally assume your customer is an idiot and while it is legal to take advantage of customers being idiots, it's still deliberately abusive and not something Apple is known for doing given its reputation.
His criticism is valid: this is not a product matching what customers are used to from the MBP product line and it's even labelled as "pro" suggesting more capabilities not fewer (though of course this is technically correct relative to the non-pro version of the same model). He doesn't feel "a little guilty and self conscious", he feels scammed and taken advantage of. Was it a scam? I don't think so, but it was (deliberately or unintentionally) misleading advertising.
Sure, he can bug the IT department for a different one.
Is he allowed to write about it if he got it as a gift? 20% off open box?
TFA lays out a ton of reasons why this is a particular problem beyond personal griping, ex. the cheaper MBA has a workaround that was promised to also land for the MacBook Pro, months ago, and it still hasn't.
M3 Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at 1 billion colors and: One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz
M3 Pro Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at 1 billion colors and: Up to two external displays with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt, or one external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt and one external display with up to 4K resolution at 144Hz over HDMI One external display supported at 8K resolution at 60Hz or one external display at 4K resolution at 240Hz over HDMI
M3 Max Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at 1 billion colors and: Up to four external displays: Up to three external displays with 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt and one external display with up to 4K resolution at 144Hz over HDMI Up to three external displays: Up to two external displays with 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt and one external display with up to 8K resolution at 60Hz or one external display with 4K resolution at 240Hz over HDMI
See also: American Airways absolutely refused to fly me first class when I only bought a cattle-class ticket. No, I didn't read any of the fine-print, but my ticket cost a load of money. American Airways need to fix their substandard product.
Apple is garbage, Macbooks are garbage, Windows + WSL beats them for every development task and in general productivity.
That’s a fair point, but also a narrow need. If that’s your need, then absolutely, look elsewhere. But the reason that it isn’t a major problem for Apple is that it isn’t a very common need—the laptop’s screen plus one external display is probably what the vast majority of people—even pros—need.
But to each their own.
So can quite a few Mac models on the Apple website. Pretty sure that “the competition” has a model or two in its product line up that is not as powerful or capable as another model it sells.
As for all of those other things you said…I have tiling shortcuts on my Mac via a lovely little program called rectangle that does so much more than Windows ever could. I have literally never ever wanted or needed a clipboard history but there are plenty in the App Store if I did. My Mac doesn’t open up my music player when I connect my earbuds (took about 15 seconds to disable that in settings)…and fun fact, my earbuds move between my iPad, Mac, and iPhone pretty much seamlessly which is really nice. I do carry a decent USB-c hub that weighs about 2 oz, so your right about that…but the power adapter that I use that can charge my Mac, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, and earbud case weighs about a tenth of what my wife’s Windows laptop power brick weighs and fits in my pants pocket, so I don’t mind that extra 2oz in my bag.
But hey, you buy the machine you want for the reason you want.
As someone that has been using 3-6 displays for the past 20 years, I really don't get how or why this is hard for Apple to figure out. They're the only ones that haven't.
While Apple can't figure out how to show more than physical supported displays virtually, 3rd party Vision apps such as Immersed have, making proper apps that can render I think up to 5 displays. Over wifi or even usb-c, it'll never be as good as DisplayPort or other hard-line connection, so compromise is necessary regardless. It is "good enough" for these others like Immersed, and far better than anything Apple is giving.
The only company I hate more than Apple is Meta, but I'll probably buy a $500 Meta Quest 3 + my already suitable PC before I ever do Vision Pro + Mac for some $10k, and get far more functionality (and available apps).
And I say this as someone who bought and uses a used M1 MacBook Air and knew about the display limitation when I purchased it (and almost went with a used Mac Mini instead due to that limitation).
Apple downsized in regards to multi-monitor support so that you were forced to buy an M1...M3 Pro CPU which costs substantially more for only being able to drive more than one monitor.
A shame that they did not fix the clamshell mode on the basic M3 Macbook Pro yet.
Hopefully Apple wakes up with Qualcomm X Elite chips soon flooding the Windows laptop market (and they can all drive at least 3 external monitors).
For me, the biggest thing is that MacOS has lengthy sigmoidal animations, and no ability to move windows between desktops ("spaces") with a keyboard shortcut.
Those animations are a source of constant friction, and the limited multi-desktop functionality makes single and dual monitor setups very frustrating.
GNOME has neither of these problems, so for these two issues alone, I think it far outshines MacOS's desktop environment.
I'm sure familiarity has a lot to do with it, and I'd argue KDE and Pop! OS's custom GNOME are more polished than base GNOME, but I wouldn't attribute OP's statement to frustration.
Every now and then I'll fire up a VM and install Linux. Try some stuff, and think "nope, still not the year of the desktop on Linux".
MacOS being far from ideal for a power user but sadly the best of a bad bunch.
My current solution is to use the Mac as a thin client as much as possible.
Also you aren't frying the hardware by running it in clamshell mode (was a worse problem with earlier, warmer running hardware)
the “base” M3 chip is essentially an overclocked iPad chip put into a computer, and it does not have two display controllers.
