Which USB C adapters for Thunderbolt display and other connections

Hey there, Darren!

From your post, it sounds like you are looking for information about the best way to connect two different Macs to external displays. We’re glad that you reached out to the Apple Support Communities. We want to try and help get you some helpful information.

This first link provides information about how to determine how many displays your Mac will support: Connect a display to your Mac. If you are able to connect multiple displays with your Mac, you can follow the steps on this page: Use one or more external displays with your Mac. 

For your MacBook Pro, you may want to look over this guide with information on how to Use an external display with your MacBook Pro. It covers information on how to use an external display, a projector, or an HDTV with your MacBook Pro. Here is some information on that process as well: Connect a display, TV, or projector to Mac. 

If you have any issues with the external display seeing your Mac, look over these steps: If you can’t see your Mac desktop on an external display.  

We hope this information helps you out. 

Cheers!

The 2020 Apple-Silicon M1 13-in MacBook Pro and Air are extremely-capable entry-level computers. They can support the internal display AND an External display up to the previously unheard of size of the Apple 6K display at billions of colors. But only ONE in addition to the internal display.

This may not match the way older computers forced you to work, since older computers were not able to support a really large external display. But it is NOT a defect. The spec was available long before you could purchase the computer.

Executive summary: additional Hardware-accelerated display support can NOT be added to the entry-level 13-in M1 systems.

DisplayLink technology creates a "fake" display buffer in RAM, sends the data out over a slower interface to a stunt box with DisplayLink custom chips that put that data back onto a "legacy" interface. It is not a true "accelerated" display, and it can suffer from lagging. Just adding the DisplayLink Driver is not adequate to get a picture -- you need a DisplayLink "stunt-box" or a Dock that includes DisplayLink chips.

————

It may be acceptable for a second display showing slow-to-change data such as computer program listings, stock quotes, or spreadsheets, but NOT for full motion Video, not for Video editing, and absolutely not for gaming. Mouse-tracking on that display can lag, and can make you feel queasy.

In a pinch, it may even play Internet videos (as one user put it) “without too many dropped frames".

This is in stark contrast to the Apple standard for its built-in hardware-accelerated displays, which are suitable for production/display of cinema-quality video with NO dropped frames, and NO dropouts or partial-blank scan lines due to memory under-runs or other issues.

--------

It is really nice to know that you can use a DisplayLink display if you MUST have an additional display for some of the types of data I mentioned. But that is NOT the same as the computer supporting a second, built-in, Hardware-accelerated display.

These displays depend on DisplayLink software, and are at the whim of Apple when they make MacOS changes. There have been cases where MacOS changes completely disabled DisplayLink software, and it took some time for them to recover.

--------

I think the Big Surprise for a lot of Hub/Dock buyers is that they thought they were getting a "real" display, but actually got a DisplayLink "fake" Display. If you got what you expected in every case, I would not use such pejorative terms to describe DisplayLink.