M3 MacBook Air Supports More External Displays Than M3 MacBook Pro
If you frequently work with external displays, it's worth noting that Apple's just-announced M3 MacBook Air models support two external displays – one more than the 14-inch MacBook Pro with the same M3 chip.
Launched last October, the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M3 chip simultaneously supports one external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz.
In contrast, both the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air with M3 chip support one external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz, and two external displays with up to 5K resolution at 60Hz when the laptop lid is closed, also known as clamshell mode.
Given that the machines use identical chips, it could be that the additional external display support on the MacBook Airs has been made at the software level. If so, there would seem to be no reason that it could not be added to the M3 MacBook Pro in a future software update. However, it could also be a hardware-based change, and we might not know for sure until a teardown is performed on the new laptops.
The new M3-powered MacBook Air models start from $1,099 and can be pre-ordered on Apple's website, with availability beginning on Friday, March 8. The 14-inch MacBook Pro with M3 chip starts at $1,599.
Popular Stories
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
Top Rated Comments
We all knew it, but to release the same machine in a thinner shell and enable more displays is just a complete piss take. Unless of course they release a firmware/OS update to enable it on the 14 inch too.
My first gen retina MBP ran 3 external displays, it's a farce that they claim their state of the art SoC, worlds best blah blah blah doesn't support 2. And of course now it does support 2.
Oh dear it gets worse. 2 displays only with lid closed. They really take the biscuit.