learlo

I've been using two or three external displays for ages, could not live without it. The problem with Apple and consequently Appleinsider is that they are bent on the single big screen use case.
Which is really weird given that the Macintosh II was the very first and best in class at multi-display productivity. At the time I had an SE and boy I so much wanted one!
Unfortunately since around 10 years ago both OS features and the HW have consistently limited the multi-display use cases. How I hate "displays as spaces"!!!
Some use cases that just require more than one external display are:
- Clamshell mode. Many, many people choose not to use their amazing Mac screen, keyboard and trackpad. One day I'll understand why.
- Videoconference - this literally hit home in the last year. At the very minimum you need one screen to share, one screen for the videoconference controls and chat, one screen for other apps.
- Specific activities, the most classic being trading where 4 to 6 screens is the norm
- People who need to work simultaneously on 3+ apps at the same time like me
Finally, DisplayLink. Not sure what is Appleinsider's beef with DisplayLink but they are brilliant. 97% of the time our screens are static (and more screens you have more often some will be static) and in that time, DisplayLink sends exactly zero data over USB. When something moves, just the changed information is sent. Alt mode and Thunderbolt instead the moment you connect a screen start wasting gigabits or tens of gigabits of pixel data constantly. The same pixels over and over again because it's just a cable basically. You have bought a series of advanced high-speed integrated circuits which basically emulate copper wires. As an engineer I find that beyond irrational.
Of course if you are watching a full screen video on an external screen, alt mode is a more efficient option. For that 0.1% of the time on a Mac.
Moreover if you have any other devices (like in most companies), as long as they have USB they can use the external screen. Well apart from iOS/iPadOS devices of course because there are no APIs yet for external screens... but Android, Windows, ChromeOS, Linux, Mac all work. And for $49 for one external screen adapter or $99 for a complete dual screen dock!
As you can tell I'm a bit of a multi display fanboi and I was heartbroken too when MacOS broke most external screen software in High Sierra. This has now been fixed and I am confident Apple has heard us and it will stay that way. We need these developers to provide more flexibility for MacOS.