What have your experiences with connecting display via Thunderbolt been? Let us know in the comments below.Īpple has some serious problems with external display support on the 2011 Macbook Pro, at least the ones with the Radeon graphics. Once reset, we were able to disconnect the MacBook Pro and reconnect it to the iMac. Then we let the video go through its connection there.

The only solution that we’ve found for the moment is to hook the MacBook Pro up to a DisplayPort-equipped monitor (not an iMac). On our 15” 2011 MacBook Pro when using a 2010 iMac as a display, we found that the video connection became unstable, as in this video.

One final “glitch” that’s popped up seems to be relegated to a particular set of circumstances.

Only get a Thunderbolt cable if you’re going to connect two ThunderBolt-equipped computers together, it won’t work for anything else.

DisplayPort iMacs require a DisplayPort cable, though they can work with either DisplayPort or Thunderbolt Macs.

The only iMacs that will work as a display for a DisplayPort Mac is one that also has a DisplayPort.

The only way to use a Thunderbolt-equipped iMac as a display is to hook it up to a Thunderbolt Mac via a Thunderbolt cable.

Utilizing a Mini DisplayPort cable allows a Mini DisplayPort equipped iMac to be used as a display on either a Thunderbolt or Mini DisplayPort equipped Mac.īut when it comes to utilizing a Thunderbolt cable, only another Thunderbolt-equipped Mac can use Target Display Mode with a Thunderbolt capable iMac. If the iMac was able to be used as a display for the MacBook Pro, it passed. We attached MacBook Pros to the iMacs in each combination with each cable. To determine this, we ran eight simple tests using the following:

This includes:Īnother wrinkle comes in the form of what computer can connect to which iMac with which cable. Most non-retina iMacs from 2009 and later can work in target display mode.

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