I got myself a Mac for learning SwiftUi because I want to make an iPhone game. I got myself a used 16/256 M1 Air model that has 2 USB-C ports and that’s it.

This made me create a workstation, where I have a high quality Thunderbolt 3 dock that works with DisplayLink, so I can have up to 4 external displays on windows and 3 on my MacBook Air. On this dock, I have connected 2 monitors, a mouse, a keyboard, a webcam, still have some USB A and C ports free to use. Best thing is that this dock has a micro SD and a regular SD slot!

All this through a single USB-C cable!

I want to connect my work HP Probook to this setup? Just plug the USB-C cable in and all comes to life!

I want to connect my gaming-PC? Just plug the USB-C cable in the Thunderbolt slot of the Graphics card and all comes to life!

Oh, I want to connect my USB-C emulator console, iPad, Tablet, etc. to the monitor, or the USB-stick? Or the Ethernet ? Just plug it in!

Basically I got my single cable workstation, and all that because of Apple removing useful at-home-things from a on-the-go device

  • foggy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    2 months ago

    Yeah until a peripheral is having weird issues that magically goes away only when you plug in directly to the computer.

    • Jesus_666@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      2 months ago

      Or the dock randomly decides it doesn’t like one specific computer anymore and falls back to being a USB3 hub. Thunderbolt docks are really cool but I’ve had tons of reliability issues with them over the years.

      I still use one but it’s been relieved from display duty because it didn’t always play nice.