Thunderbolt Display Firmware 1.2 broke the USB inside the display.

I've been struggling with problems with my two TBDisplays for a year now. I'm working with one Apple tech now for 3 months. I keep sending them data captures with failures on every different setup they would like me to try next. After two weeks of silence and no replies to my emails, the guy comes back with the error reports are inconclusive. REALLY. That is the opposite, the results are conclusive, the TBDisplays are failing with every possible setup they ask me to do. How is that inconclusive? Who do we have to call to get these displays recalled? Who do I have to call to get my money back? I'm tired of this crap. This is BS pure and simple.

Well my semi local Apple store manager surprised the heck out of me. I brought my two TBDisplays and computer and TB hub in for a couple rounds of genius bar tech time. After going over the last 3 month long case file, they came to a conclusion. They offered to refund me my entire purchase costs, including my Apple Care plan for the two monitors that I had for nearly 16 months............I jumped at the offer. I wished for this answer, but never thought they would do this. My online and telephone Apple tech said he couldn't make that offer, nor would he tell me who could. The bottom line is Apple knows there is a problem with the TBDisplays. My best guess is there are problems with the built in hub in the displays. Whatever was plugged into the hub, whether another TB display or another hub or the USB ports. Those devices always seemed to be dropped for various reasons. Whether sleep mode or start up or who knows what else. I feel rather lucky at this point. I can now move forward instead of doing the constant try this, try that approach. I had over a year of that type of trouble shooting. Never once did an apple tech tell me they were looking for problems here. But the store manager and genius bar tech were well aware of the issues. Of course me bringing in two TBDisplays, computer and stuff in their original boxes on a busy saturday, might have helped. It doesn't help business to make a scene with a store full of customers. Thank you Apple.

I have been having problems with the thunderbolt display ever since i got it. I have used it with MacBooks and now, the new Mac Pro. When through a few OS upgrades and using yosemite now. I don't know what the problem is, but i fixed it now. The problem is whenever i went away for holidays, i will switch off the main power socket for a few days. When i come home, for the first boot everything is ok. Problems starts when it first went to sleep and no matter what i did(reset PRAM,SMC,2 mins off power socket etc) , i could not get the USB related problems solved.

I even connect the display to my windows PC and the USB on the display works fine. When i connect it back to the Mac, the USB is not working.

The only solution that i found to be solving my issue is to get another thunderbolt cable and connect using the thunderbolt port behind the display to your mac. This will give you back your USB usage. After a few days, i will switch back using the fixed thunderbolt cable and everything works fine again.

I have been dealing with the dropped USB ports for some time as well. After Apple Care wanted me to do a clean install, bring to Genius bar, etc, etc....I noticed my Time Machine icon swirling on the last dropout.

Unplugged my thunderbolt cable and plugged back in...that gets my USB ports functioning again. Started a back up and sure enough, USB ports dropped again. That was the first time I was able to recreate the issue on demand. Unplugged my external drive and have not had the drop out since. Not sure if incremental backups cause it was well, but it seemed very random prior to that.

I may try a different USB drive or a thunderbolt drive to see if I can recreate it. I am using a Seagate Freeagent GoFlex 500GB. USB powered. I wonder if that had anything to do with it. maybe I should be using an AC powered version.

I had got the same problem with Yosemite, now i've installed OS X 10.11 and seems that the issue was solved