How to connect Apple Cinema Display with newer USB-C MacBook Pro (2016+)

this is the Apple 27 inch LED Cinema display and this is a 2017 MacBook Pro in this video I'm going to show you how to get them to work together [Music] hey everybody it's Chris from family geekery and today we're going to be taking a look at getting the newer style Apple MacBooks and MacBook Pros that use the USBC connectors use the Thunderbolt 3 connectors to uh to talk to an older style monitor which obviously predated those Technologies so this is a 27 or a 27 inch LED Cinema display which came out in 2010 it was replaced a year later in 2011 by the Thunderbolt display which is very similar with with one main difference the main difference being the interface before the video was Mini DisplayPort instead of Thunderbolt between the two so the Thunderbolt display uses Thunderbolt output that showed up in the 2011 MacBook Pros and the older LED display like this one the cinema display use the Mini DisplayPort so with that being said neither one of those types of Technologies exist on this laptop here today so we obviously have to have some way of converting it and let me show you how we do that so first things first let's look at what these monitors uh used as an interface and and what their main premise was so we had a pigtail on them that looked like this and it's got a magsafe um charging adapter to plug into a laptop it's got a mini mini display port or Thunderbolt video interface and then a USB now the USB will carry over a USB signal to the back of the monitor which has several USB channels there for you can plug in like mouse and keyboard and you could actually make this one monitor here into basically a laptop dock so you plug in these cables close the lid on your laptop and you've got a full you know desktop working station with a mouse and keyboard and monitor so the the power adapter obviously this kept your laptop charged while you were using it which is nice so you don't have to take the laptop charger out of your bag and then obviously the video is for the video now the easiest way to know the difference between the two is the little icon that's on here if it looks like this then it's Mini DisplayPort if it looks like a little lightning bolt then it's the Thunderbolt so this is the older of the two models and that's going to make a difference when it comes to hooking up to one of these newer style laptops so let's start first by figuring out if we can charge the laptop with this now in a previous video I showed you guys how to use a magsafe charger for these newer style laptops so let's say you had a like a 85 watt mag safe or magsafe 2 charger back from the 2012 days and you got a brand new laptop that has USBC with power delivery and I showed you guys this thing here this Electric which takes a magsafe power adapter and creates power delivery out of it so all we do is just magnet this guy on here and it can be either magsafe one or two they both fit and then just plug this into the side of the laptop and now within a couple seconds you'll see it's charging and there we go all right Next Step we need to get video out of the laptop and this is where the two are going to differ between the Mini DisplayPort model like this and the Thunderbolt model now I've owned both and they're both like I said very similar it's just how we're going to get them attached is different if you've got a thunderbolt adapter then Apple makes a USBC 3 Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter and this would work for hooking up to this style laptop and attaching anything that was Thunderbolt so it could be a thunderbolt display it could be a third party monitor or it could be some kind of storage device that uses Thunderbolt could be an audio interface that uses Thunderbolt so that's what you would use now that's not going to work for this even though the connector which sometimes a little confusing the Thunderbolt connector is the same exact physical connector as the mini display port this is not going to work in this case so what you need then is simply a USBC to Mini DisplayPort cable so I got this on Amazon for like 15 bucks they had two different models they had one that looks just like this and they had one that had a power input so you can put your power delivery in here and then it would deliver power and video through here just depends on which one you want that was about twice as much and I already had this adapter here so I didn't need that so all we do is simply plug this in to the laptop and then plug in the Mini DisplayPort adapter give it a few seconds to find it and boom now we've got our 27 inch display attached to our newer style Thunderbolt 3 laptop all right so what what's the big deal why would you want to do this now I guess the first answer would be if you've already got one of these like me and you want to use it then this is a good solution for that if you went from a older style MacBook Pro to the newer style then this is your solution to get this monitor working with your newer laptop now I've been using these monitors for years and years I've had several of these I've had several of the Thunderbolt adapters over the Thunderbolt monitors over the years and they are my absolute favorite monitors I've ever used um they predate all the modern gaming monitors now that have high resolution stuff and back when they came out this was just the the best way to get what we now know is QHD or 1440p but it's the 2560 by 1440 resolution and it was the only way to get that onto a desktop or it was the best way to get that onto a desktop not only that but the color is beautiful on it if you're a photo editor or video editor then it's really going to help you out with your color correction um it's just a it's just a great monitor now let's talk about resolutions real quick I said it's 2560 by 1440. now these newer style laptops that Apple makes have really high resolutions and this particular one here has a 2880 by 1800 resolution so it sounds like a higher resolution than this particular Monitor and in fact it it may be as far as like pixels go then it's a higher resolution but usable workspace it's actually much smaller and let me let me demonstrate that so let's first take a look in our settings and go down to displays and you can see it sees our LED cinnamon display it's got the built-in display the built-in display here it listed as 1440x900 that's because how much that's how much usable space it is this is a retina display which means it's got four pixels in the same space as what a normal pixel would be so it's actually blown up a little bit and we're using four pixels for every one pixel so that 2880 by 1800 is really cut in half now this guy here the 27 inch is a true 2560 by 1440 or 1440p as we call it now monitor so if we take a look at the arrange screen here where we can see the two side by side here's my built-in display and here's my LED cinnamon display now like I said this this screen may have more pixels it may be crisper you know to the eye but if you're worried about like actual desk space you know working space which is what resolution used to equate to before we got into the the days of retina displays if you want more space to work if you're doing photo editing or video editing then really you need to have this type of display so let me demonstrate this even more dramatically if I take this Safari window here which I've got blown up to the full size of the screen on my laptop and I take that and drag it onto this desktop you can see the size of my laptop screen and the usable space that's left over here on this 2560 by 1440 display so there is just no comparison if you need a lot of real estate space on your desktop then having a screen like this is obviously the way to go so if you've got one of these older style monitors sitting around and you're not using it because you got one of the new laptops then now maybe the time to go ahead and grab one of these adapters or a couple different types of adapters depending on what you want to do and and hook it up and start using it the other thing to consider is these guys here which used to be very expensive probably around a thousand dollars when they first came out are now if you find them on Marketplace or something I find them in the 200 range sometimes even cheaper than that and that's that's a lot of money I guess a lot of money when you can go down to Best Buy and get a 27 inch monitor for uh cheaper than that but this isn't just a 27 inch monitor this is a color pure monitor that's a QHD that's it's obviously it's very heavy but it's uh it's an awesome monitor the the speakers that are built into it are great as well and if you can keep it running or if you've got one then it's a it's a beautiful monitor keep using it now here's another benefit with this setup this is now connected to my Huawei matebook which is a thunderbolt 3 device and it's got USBC connectors inside so I'm using the same power adapter to actually Supply it power over the power delivery and I'm using the same exact mini display port adapter to bring the video out to here so I did extend the the displays so you have two displays because this particular monitor here is a three by two ratio so if you mirror this it's going to look kind of silly but with it extended you can see that the two displays are detected now this is where Windows is kind of lying a little bit to you it shows the laptop display as being much bigger because this is 3000 by 2000 pixels so yes it is more pixels but the only way that this holds true is if we go down to the layout settings and see how it's set up is 200 to 200 times this is basically what the apple is doing for us automatically so the apple is taking that 2880 by 1800 display and cutting it down to 1440 by 900 and this is doing the same thing so this is really 1500 by 1000 pixels as we're seeing it now now if we take this and bring it to 100 percent now we see the display size comparison stays the same because this is truly more desktop here now than there is here the only problem is you need a magnifying glass to read any of this stuff because it's so tiny so that's why Windows here on this type of display defaults to this 200 percent as a recommended so that's going to wrap it up for this video I really just wanted to show you what a great monitor this still is today and how you can get it working with your newer devices this is awesome that it works with both apple and with Windows using this Mini DisplayPort adapter and for 15 bucks and a a monitor use monitor or one you may have sitting around you can have a really nice display on your desk so if this was helpful to you at all or if you found it interesting then I appreciate that thumbs up on the video If you like this type of stuff and want to see more like it then go ahead and hit subscribe check out the back catalog of videos I got all kinds of stuff dealing with reviews on this particular mate book reviews on a bunch of Mac's updates on MacBooks that type of stuff and a bunch of stuff to go watch and enjoy so thank you as always for watching and until next time peace out and geek out [Music] thank you

Channel: FamilyGeekery

Views: 32,746

Keywords: apple cinema display 27, Apple Thunderbolt Display, thunderbolt 3 macbook pro, apple cinema display, apple monitor, connecting macbook pro to old monitor, apple cinema display vs thunderbolt display, apple display with pc, apple monitor 2023, cinema display apple 27, cinema display windows

Id: DwNPw2DZO3E

Length: 13min 42sec (822 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 03 2023