Q: Mountain Lion keeps forgetting display arrangement

@mict23

You're right, that is some scary ****!

I am yet another person affected by this, in both 10.8 and 10.9. I so hoped Maverick would had solved this. Add me to the list. uhhhhh 

Operating System - Maverick

Mac Pro Mid 2010 2.8 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon

16 GB Ram 1066 Mhz DDR3

Four Displays

Two ATI Radeion HD 5770 1024 MB cards

Hello everyone,

While I fear everyone may have moved on to the ten grand can by this point, I am still trying to get this issue with the older Mac Pro resolved. I have some exciting news for you all!

About a week ago, I had had enough, so I unplugged my Mac Pro, and carried it 10 blocks down to the Apple Store in Charleston, SC, where I was graciously greeted by the genius team whom I had previously spoke to about the problem. We did some testing in the store and were in fact able to replicate the problem. The genius spent some time looking through Apple's logs of cases and support documentation, but was unable to find anything relating to this issue. The next step he then told me, was to escalate the issue to the engineering department. I was told I would hear a response back in about a week. To my amazement, it was less than 48 hours later. I got a call from the same guy at the local Apple store. He told me that he spoke to the engineering team and said this, "this is a software or firmware bug that has recently been brought to light. The issue is related to the order in which the displays are powered on/brought out of sleep." I was told the best thing for me to do next, was to head over to apple.com/feedback and fill out a software bug feature request. I did so, and I would suggest that all of you, still have this issue do the same as well!

I will certainly keep you all informed of any further developments.

-John

Done!

Done!

My entry at

apple.com/feedback

This has been a long annoying bug: every time I connect my laptop to an external monitor the arrangement was wrong. OS X simply does not store my last Display Arrangement.

While I appreciate the enhancement for multiple display Mavericks has brought, such as no more confusing Spaces. Please fix this bug.

Jack.

Done!!!

Having this problem with my 2012 Mac Pro running 10.8.5. Submitted a bug report as suggested. Thanks.

I began to experience this issue when I upgraded from 10.7 to 10.9. I submitted a bug report as suggested.

Hello guys.

Having the same problem on my late 2013 macpro i must say the only "solution" is to switch of my secondary monitor in order to boot on the main monitor and yes... i'm on 10.10...

It's high time this bug gets adressed.

I have had the same problem with Mountain Lion, Mavericks, and now Yosemite.  I've read through every post I could find and no proposed solution has solved the problem.  In addition to the display and window arrangements not being remembered, it usually takes me at least 4-6 cold starts before all of my four monitors are even detected.

I see 6 full pages of posts on this problem and that's just in this single thread.  These posts range all the way from July 30, 2012 through November 2, 2014.

This is extraordinarily frustrating and I don't get the feeling that Apple is paying attention to the problem.

This just happened to me.  Yosemite running on a trash can mac pro.  Two old 24" apple cinema displays.

So I thought, fine, I'll just reverse the two plugs.  So I did.  But it outsmarted me and kept them in the same wrong order.

AHA!  Maybe it's the order I plug them in.  Primary first, secondary second.  So I did that.  And it still outsmarted me and put them back in the wrong order after both were plugged in.

Clearly it knows the IDs of the monitors and it knows which data is associated with which physical monitor regardless of which port or which order they are plugged in.  Unforunately, it is remember these IDs "wrong".  It is probably mapping a logical ID to the physical id.  In other words when it boots it must say (as a hypothetical example) that ID 12345 is "FIRST" and id 67890 is "SECOND".  And it must store window associations with "FIRST" an "SECOND" rather than with "12345" and "67890".

If that's the case, a possible workaround would be to unplug your second monitor when you reboot, and plug it back in after the system is up (but before you log in).  I don't feel like doing that now, but the next time I reboot I'll try to remember to do this.

Let me also say that if my hypothesis is correct, this is not simply a "bug".  This is incorrect design, and won't be fixed until Apple is willing to redesign their entire approach to monitor detection and assignment.

Hi there

I made a Spider monitor calibration and I no longer have the software to re-calibrate my monitor. I wanted to upgrade from Lion but! apparently it's really not worth it (nor to Mountain Lion, Mavericks or Yosemite..)

To be honest, I can live without ICloud and a few other improvements if that means that the apps that I already have and use constantly work just fine.

If upgrading means I'm going to lose my monitor calibration, my Mail, and plenty of other stuff that is mentioned in this and other posts… I don't see the point.

Please, create a new 100% compatible upgrade!!!

Thanks

Same thing here. My graphics card was just replaced and I've only had the dam thing a month! AAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHH! So annoying having to do the displays over and over again. I wonder if I can lock the plist?

Same here Late 2013 Mac Pro with 3 apple displays (2*24" + 1*27"), after rebooting one of the 24" monitors gets rearranged.

FWIW, my workaround was to simply move the monitors to the cable that always wants to default. Only two monitors at present so not sure that will work with three, but if the connections are the same, and the monitors are the same, just move the monitor and leave the cable as is. Been working great but it really needs to be fixed.