Major problems with Thunderbolt display & MB Air

There is going to have to be another firmware update to fix this. It doesnt appear to be hitting everyone so maybe a new display will work for people who are having issues. I'm not having any problems and I'm fully plugged in to all ports with multiple devices. Both a Logitech USB wired G500 mouse and USB dongle M805 work fine for me.

Experienced my first significant display shutdown. As in, display goes dark and you can't get it to come back on for quite some time. Possibly heat related? That Thunderbolt connector gets quite warm.

It must be our fault (customers), because Apple loves us and they must have tested this on their computers and their displays.

Hope this pleases the fanboys and employees of Apple lurking about here.

Mac OS X has never liked two or more displays, this may be my last attempt at using multiple monitors with Macs.

That doesn't contribute to this discussion at all. I'm not a fanboy, but what help is this? The problem isn't with multiple displays, it's with USB on the TB display, specifically.

Please keep discussion relevant to the topic.

Resetting the SMC while the Thunderbolt display is plugged in seems to have fixed the USB keyboard and mouse problems for me. It didn't work for someone in the thread above so I hadn't tried it, but now things seem to be working swimmingly. Thanks to Apple support!

Reset SMC instructions are here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964

I'm having the same issues, after all the updates, SMC install, etc. I've got a wired mouse and keyboard plugged into the USB ports on the TBD. They work fine directly plugged into the MBP.

I notice that it seems to happen more frequently when audio is playing through the display speakers.

There's a red light on the mouse I'm using (older MS 5-button mouse), and it'll blink off whenever I see the problem. If I start playing music, I can sit here and watch it blink on and off every few seconds. Keyboard gets sketchy too. When music is not playing, seems much better.

Seems like a conflict or throughput issue. Hopefully Apple is focused on this.

As another data point, I play audio through my own speakers (I'm saddened the TB display does not have a line out jack), so audio isn't going over my cable. I *am* using the display's GigE port.

I agree replacing the monitor is unlikely to help.

I run Boot Camp with this thing a fair amount. When I bought this display (a few hours ago), I brought my MBP in to make sure that the USB extensions would work when running Windows, on the TBD in the store. I asked for any random USB device to test with it and so the guy brought me a wired mac mouse to try.

I plugged it in, watched the USB device detection happen and tried the mouse. It was jumpy, but I assumed it was due to a poor mousing surface and declared victory. So it seemed to happen on that one TBD as well.

Have you tried to see how often it happens if you don't use the GigE port?

"It must be our fault (customers), because Apple loves us and they must have tested this on their computers and their displays.

Hope this pleases the fanboys and employees of Apple lurking about here.

Mac OS X has never liked two or more displays, this may be my last attempt at using multiple monitors with Macs."

Grow up.

OS X has always worked fine with multiple displays including doing so for years before Windows was able to have multiple displays.

You don't know what you are talking about. Troll elsewhere.

Mine has gone dark a few times. I unplug the TB cable from my MBA, plug it back in and it comes on. Not heat related.

Also having the same issue with the apple wired USB keyboard plugged into the Thunderbolt display. Losing keystrokes regularly and auto repeating.

All updates have been applied. Tried different USB keyboard, same thing started to happen soon after.

Now I have the screen not waking up issue, so I had to unplug display from mac Book Air to bring it back.

I too am experiencing some of the problems described above:

- plug in display while Air is in sleep mode = speakers / camera not recognized

- plug in display while Air is already on but hasn't been connected to the display since last being in sleep mode = speakers / camera not recognized

Some workarounds:

- reboot the Air while still connected to the display

- unplug the Thunderbolt cable, wait a couple seconds, plug it back in [and try to remember to dismount any firewire drive that's attached before doing that]

- start off with the Air off (not in sleep mode), plug it in to the display and power up

The above workarounds have provided access to all the extra parts of the Thunderbolt display for me. No wired mice, keyboards or other USB devices to attach and test, though, so I don't know how flaky they may be with this particular display. Luckily (?) I haven't experienced it just shutting down / blanking out on me yet.

And on the topic of that cable / area around the Air's Thunderbolt port getting warm when the monitor is attached -- yep, that gets quite toasty. Hot enough for me to avoid holding down the delete key when removed a bunch of characters and instead highlighting & then doing a quick tap of the delete key.

A couple hours ago, Software Update found the Apple Thunderbolt Display Firmware 1.0, and that has now been applied. Will see over the next few weeks if the speaker / camera are recognized right off the bat without resorting to the workarounds mentioned.

(These issues I've experienced aside, the screen, resolution and capabilities it offers are nevertheless a very welcome addition for an Air!)

I am also having problems. I have a Macbook Pro 15" (2011 model). My Thunderbolt monitor is updated with the new firmware Version 1.0 and it is having frequent keyboard drops (maybe 2-3 per day). I eventually have to give up and plug it directly into the MBP.

I'm having the same issue.. 2011 13" i7 MBA. EFI & TB updates installed and applied.

I've got an Apple USB keyboard and a Razer Mamba mouse plugged into my TB display. I'm not using ethernet or anything else on the display. The mouse cuts out quite frequently and the keyboard does the missing \ swapped \ stuck keys thing too. I've got my keyboard plugged directly into the computer now.

Rebooting with TB plugged in resolves the issues usually, but only temporarily. It's back the next time I'm using the display.

Also I've had another problem where it's difficult to get my laptop to sleep after it's been playing with the TB display. With my old cinema display if I would unplug everything while the lid was closed, the computer would power off. That's not the case with the TB display. Furthermore even if I go through the fairly annoying process of:

1) Opening the laptop

2) Disconnecting the TB display

3) Wait for displays to reset

4) Close laptop

it still won't turn off! I have to shut down the laptop manually sometimes. I discovered this problem after I had thrown my computer in my bag and drove around in the hot sun for 4 hours. When I took my computer out of the bag (still closed) the fan was roaring and the laptop was ridiculously hot. I stuck it in the freezer for 10 minutes to cool it down, but this is just silly. I'm considering returning this thing if we don't hear any news in the next couple of weeks..