bad Apple

The battle for multiple displays on an M1 MacBook Air, Chapter 1

Right now, I am caught between two worlds. Specifically, Mars and Jupiter. I’m stuck in the asteroid belt, send help!

Just kidding.

I use both a Windows 11 PC and an M1 MacBook Air. Both are very nice machines and perform well. I think Windows 11 has caught up in many ways to macOS in terms of appearance and UI, and even surpasses it in some ways (window management remains much better, as I’ve noted before).

I would be Windows-only save for one thing: my fiction writing is done in Ulysses, which is a Mac-only app. Now, it’s true that my fiction writing has been moribund (very, very moribund) for the last year or so and if I had no intent on changing this, I could just put aside the MacBook Air for the fabled time when I’d actually need to go back out into the world with a laptop again.

But I am intent on actually trying to revive my fiction writing and I’m too lazy to look for or switch to another writing app, so I’m keeping my Mac–for now, at least.

My previous setup was a single 27″ monitor and it worked well for both PC and Mac. Switching between the two was not instant, but it was pretty easy and only took a second or two. I added a second monitor, which has been glorious for my Windows 11 setup. However, for ?reasons? Apple deigned to make its initial Apple silicon offering, the System on Chip (Soc) known as the M1, only work with a single external display.

This means I can only use one of my two 27″ monitors with my MacBook Air and I am sad.

But wait!

You can use a DisplayLink adapter or dock to sneakily connect more displays via USB. It’s confirmed to work with all M1 Macs (it’s not needed for the newer M1 Pro and M! Max SoCs, since they support multiple external displays). I procured one of these devices, specifically a StarTech USB-A to HDMI DisplayLink adapter. I downloaded the latest DisplayLink drivers (also required), connected the adapter to a free USB-A port on my CalDigit 3 dock and…it didn’t work.

With both monitors connected, only one or the other would work, neither would work at the same time (the “permanent” monitor is working via USB-C to HDMI).

Thus I began troubleshooting.

It’s worth mentioning here that the reason I went with a DisplayLink adapter as a solution is because it would be the cheapest way to get a multi-monitor Mac setup going (about $100). The next cheapest option would be to trade-in or sell my Air and get an M1 Mac mini, which supports two external monitors because it really only supports the same number as the Air, but since it doesn’t come with a display, it can actually display to two external monitors. This option, no matter how I might finagle it, other than winning the lottery, would cost more than $100.

Troubleshooting involved a lot of the usual stuff. I won’t go into details. It was bad enough that I suffered through it. No one else should suffer through it by proxy.

In the end it’s still not working. I have one thing left to try–switch the “permanent” connection from HDMI to DisplayPort, but this would upset my PC configuration, which is working just dandy, so I am loathe to do it. I might, if I manage to reach the right balance of bored and desperate.

For now, my Mac work continues to be single monitor, with the second display dimly showing my forlorn reflection and nothing else.

I have considered getting one of those new MacBook Pros by selling my Air and using other monies I have from previous trade-ins, but there’s no getting around it costing a lot more than $100, and it would be serious overkill for writing. I rationalize it by saying I’m getting into game development now and video editing and it would be useful for those things. But my PC already works well for those. But it is now and shiny and solves a problem, and so I ponder, occasionally glancing up to that forlorn figure looking back at me.

tl;dr: DisplayLink is definitely a hack when it comes to M1 Macs. This isn’t the technology’s fault, really, it’s Apple’s strange and arbitrary regression on monitor support for their first batch of Apple SoCs. Still, it’s important to remember what you may be getting into before making the leap, as I did.

Also note: All PCs happily support multiple displays without any trickery!

I end with a repeat of this:

Bad design: Cryptic firmware updates

Yes, Apple again. Apple makes this too easy.

This MacRumors story outlines a firmware update for AirPods today. Here’s the relevant quote:

Apple does not offer information on what’s included in refreshed firmware updates for the AirPods, so we don’t know what improvements or bug fixes the new firmware brings.

Why would any company push out updates to a product and not tell the customer what the updates contain? I cannot think of any reason for this that is not consumer-hostile, and the Apple executives who have signed off on this policy are wrong-headed and dumb.

And on top of being needlessly secretive, Apple has pushed out firmware updates that have actually degraded the user experience, but with no way to opt out of the updates and no way to see what has changed, the user is effectively held hostage to the hope that Apple won’t screw up.

It’s just such a bad way to treat customers. It really baffles me. If anything ultimately brings down Apple, it will be the hubris behind its “we know best” policies and actions.

Ghost in the machine: Apple edition

Tonight, the Apple TV turned itself on (technically it woke up, as it actually doesn’t have an actual on/off switch) and started silently streaming music from my music library (the receiver that powers the speakers was off at the time–it does have an on/off switch).

The last time I streamed music on the Apple TV was…I don’t remember when, actually. More than six months ago, I’d guess. Maybe longer. And I’ve done it maybe twice or three times in total.

But there was the Apple TV, doing its thing, unbidden and unwanted.

This happened a few days ago, too, but in that case it didn’t actually do anything, it just sat there until the screensavers kicked in.

A quick search suggested that having Background App Refresh set to ON might be responsible in it waking on its own. That doesn’t explain why it also started running some random app, though.

I updated the software, set Background App Refresh to OFF, then took the most important step:

I unplugged the power cord on the damn thing.

With all the streaming apps on the Xbox One (including Apple TV+, the confusingly named streaming service Apple offers), the Apple TV hardware is redundant. With it also acting squirrelly, it’s now actively annoying.

Having compared the streaming experience between the two platforms, I prefer the Xbox One, anyway. Maybe I’ll use the Apple TV as a very expensive paperweight–it’s actually about the right size and heft for that job.

Bad design: Most music apps

But the one I’m going to highlight here is, of course, Apple’s. Apple makes itself such a juicy target because the company’s leadership extols its superior design aesthetic while charging a premium price for the experience.

Specifically, I want to highlight one thing about the interface of the iOS music app, which is pre-installed on every iPhone. You can see it in this screenshot:

First, let me acknowledge the prehistoric nature of the songs highlighted (the newest is from 1992). I am old as dirt, and so is the music I like. Plus, I was sampling some music Apple has highlighted that supports the Dolby Atmos spatial sound standard (more on spatial music in another post) and I didn’t recognize the majority of suggested tracks (again, due to being an out of touch dinosaur).

(Also, the fact that the time was 4:20 p.m. when I grabbed the shot is not some sly signalling that I love the mary-ju-wanna, it’s just a coincidence. Sorry, my BC buds!)

You can see the currently playing song at the top of the screen. It’s Blondie’s well-known classic, “Hanging on the Telep.” It’s “Telephone,” of course, but because the song title is too “long” (four entire words) for the UI, it gets truncated. Apple’s solution (as with nearly all music players) is to slowly scroll the title from beginning to end, allowing the music lover to eventually piece together the entire title of the track they are listening to.

Look at the rest of the music app and ask yourself, “Is there enough room here to fit the entire four word title of a song so it doesn’t have to scroll?” and you may find the answer is, in fact, yes.

And yet this is almost never done. The UI of the music app isn’t actively bad or anything (Apple has much worse stuff tucked away in other areas of iOS), but this tiny space for song titles has always baffled me, because when you’re listening to music this is always going to be the active part of the interface. It just grates on me, especially since there is enough room to easily manage any title of reasonable length. I mean, okay, I don’t expect a music app to properly display Pink Floyd’s “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict”, but still.

Why are wireless mice so bad on the Mac?

Seriously, this should be a solved problem, but the only way to get consistent performance on a mouse when I’m using any Mac (I have owned three in the past four years) is to use one that plugs in using old-fashioned cables.

Tonight I have been using my MacBook Air with the Logitech Marathon mouse and it started out fine, but over time the mouse cursor starts to become slow and then erratic, glitching across the screen. It improves for a bit, then starts glitching again. If I dig out one of my old wired mice it works just fine, so it seems like there’s something up with both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity on Macs.

This never happens in Windows. In fact, I can take this exact same mouse and use it in Windows right now and it will operate perfectly fine. My regular Windows mouse is a Logitech G703 wireless gaming mouse. It works perfectly when untethered.

I just don’t get it. It’s like Apple optimizes the OS to only work with their mice and nothing else. It’s incredibly annoying and reminds me why I never manage to make it long whenever I try using the Mac. For an OS that gets lauded for its stability and design, it has some pretty deep flaws.

At least the keyboard works properly. Oh wait, it’s plugged in. Bleah.

EDIT: Here, have an amusing (?) semi-related gif: