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Major problems with Thunderbolt display & MB Air

Since I received my Thunderbolt display yesterday and hooked it up to my 2011 MB Air, I've had nothing but problems.


Software update is fully up to date, including the TB Display firmware.


I'm experiencing three major issues:

1. About half the time when I connect the display, my connected USB devices are non-functional. Unplugging and reconnecting the devices does not fix it.

2. Also, about half the time when I disconnect the display, the MB Air does not reconfigure the monitor layout. Putting it to sleep and/or disconnecting / reconnecting monitors does not fix this. I have to hard restart my laptop.

3. When connected through the TB Display, my Mac will infrequently not recognize key up events from my USB keyboard, causing keys to repeat until I hit them again. For an idea of frequency, it has happened 4 times so far thus far while writing this post.


Also a couple of minor niggles:

1. The default color calibration is WAY different from the MB Air's screen. It's most obvious with yellows which have a severe green tint on the TB display. For example, note windows in Mail appear very slightly orange on my MB Air (as expected given the color value), while on the TB display it is florescent yellow with a slight greenish tint.

2. The sound is a lot poorer than I had hoped. I wasn't expecting anything really amazing, but with the "built in subwoofer" I expected noticeably better bass than my MB Air's built in speakers provide.


The minor issues can either be minimized (with color calibration and equalizer) or ignored, but the major issues make this display completely unusable for me. Is this just a defective unit, or are these widespread issues?


Thanks in advance for any help.


PS. Total instances of keys getting stuck while writing this post: ~9. Seems to only be space and delete that get stuck so far.

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.1)

Posted on Sep 21, 2011 8:19 PM

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438 replies

Apr 12, 2012 8:23 AM in response to Erik Johnson3

The problem for me is that I've wasted a lot of time calling Apple trying to solve that issue. For now I'm lucky to have the previous 27" LED display (non-thunderbolt) around. It works flawlessly with my MB Air using the USB to ethernet adapter plugged in the back).


I'll put the thunderbolt back in its box and wait patiently until Mountain Lion is released (people seem to have no problem at all with it installed)...

Apr 19, 2012 5:21 AM in response to David Elkington

David,


Interesting... So, it appears that it may be a hardware failure of some kind, or some kind of driver corruption in OS X, as my display was working fine in December and began failing sometime in the last few months (not sure exactly when).


Here are the actions I've taken:


1. I've reached out to Tim Cook's office and have a meeting scheduled for this Friday to discuss the issue and seek some kind of resolution. If nothing else, escalating this through his office will put pressure on the product managers to take some kind of action and/or simply provide some kind of communication to the community regarding a remediation plan. I am VERY surprised and disappointed that there does not appear to be any representation from Apple in this discussion...


2. I scheduled a Genius Bar appointment, and subsequently canceled, once I learned that you were getting a new display. I wanted to see how you fared with the replacement. Now that you've received the new display and it appears to be working properly, I'm going reschedule my appointment and follow a similar course.


I'll keep everyone advised of progress...


Best,


Erik

Major problems with Thunderbolt display & MB Air

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