Apple's Thunderbolt Display is Junk

8/18/2014

2 min read

My current work setup is a 15" MacBook Pro Retina connected to a 27" Apple Thunderbolt Retina display. I will start off by saying that the Thunderbolt display is a very pretty display and the colors are crisp and clean... when it works.

My god, the thing is so finicky its got me to the point where I want to throw the thing off the 5th floor balcony of the office building. For $1K, you'd think it would be more reliable than 60% of the time... the thing is just plagued with problems:

For an Apple product, its extremely disappointing at best.

The main problem I have is that I can get it to connect and work about once a day. If I disconnect the display at any point (or the power goes out for a second), the display will not work for hours. It doesn't matter what kind of strange incantation of steps I come up with, I can't get it to work without just waiting until tomorrow.

Here are some things I have tried:

unplug the Thunderbolt cable and plug it back in
unplug the Thunderbolt and Magsafe cable, wait 30 seconds, plug it back in
unplug the display from the electrical outlet and wait 60 seconds, plug it back in.. pray
reboot my MacBook
reset the SMC on my MacBook
hit it like my dad used to do to get the TV to work
yell at it (people in the office did not like this solution)
ask it nicely to "just work"

I am to the point of sacrificing goats and pouring chicken blood all over it. The messed up part is that the thing doesn't seem to care what I do in what order.. it simply waits till the next day to start working again. When I show up to the office in the morning, I can plug it in and it just works. WTF?!

How could Apple have released such a shit product? If anyone has any suggestions, leave them in the comments below.

All I know is that when I'm looking for awesome displays for my home office, I will absolutely not choose the Thunderbolt display. What a waste of money.