Displaylink ceases to work in 10.13.4

[Sofla David]

Originally Posted by smithgcovert2

I feel like one thing missing from this discussion of it now working with the Mac OS X 10.14 beta:

--- Its the DisplayLink Beta 5 (released 1 1/2 months ago) that is now working in 10.14 ---

That means that DisplayLink has had their side done for a while, and it required Apple to do their side to make it all work again.

It also means that Apple could backport those fixes to 10.13 and make it work as well, but they probably have no interest in it.

I totally get all of the complaining that the hardware stopped working, and the complaints about the fix being slow, but I appreciate whatever must have had to happen behind the scenes to get Apple to do their part.

Cheers,
Greg

Displaylink said this from Day one:

"DisplayLink has committed significant resources to finding a way to restore extended mode display support in a future release of macOS"

That meant Displaylink KNEW they would not be able to do it with the current version, and had to wait for Apple to make a change on their side.

But a lot of people were too angry to understand that.

Apple Operating systems are very limited in what they let outside developers do. Once they close a door, Developers cannot always find "another way in" to perform the same task. Many applications and hardware devices have "died" because Apple (and Microsoft too) have moved on from a technology or closed a door to the OS. Displaylink could have been one more corpse on the pile. I think we should consider ourselves lucky.

I'm honestly surprised they cared enough to go through the trouble of opening another door for a third party vendor. They must have received a good amount of complaints and pushback from the users and maybe even seen users moving away from MACs because of the issue. While there are other limited options for additional monitors on desktops, there are almost no alternatives for portable monitors for those of us who travel that do not use display link.

I will be surprised if they port the changes back to 10.13. They really have no incentive to do that. Wy waste development resources on an OS you are trying to phase out? The Mojave release is right around the corner, and they WANT you to upgrade to Mojave as soon as it comes out. and if you own a computer that is too old for Mojave, they WANT you to upgrade. WIN-WIN for them.