A Surprisingly Annoying Problem Apple Leaves You to Solve

It’s been awhile since I’ve felt so frustrated about something that I needed to write about it...

I have two MacBooks, one Apple Studio Display, one Magic Keyboard, and one Magic Trackpad. All I wanted was to switch between my two laptops without messing with a pile of cables or constantly re-pairing Bluetooth devices. I thought: this should be easy — it’s all Apple gear, right? Spoiler: it’s not.

I’ve gone down a rabbit hole I never expected — learning way more than I ever wanted to about Thunderbolt hubs, USB-C switches, DisplayPort alt mode, bandwidth caps, and why seemingly no one (including Apple) wants you to share a Studio Display between two Macs.

So here's the setup I thought would be simple:

  • MacBook #1: personal laptop that I use mostly for research

  • MacBook #2: work laptop 

  • Studio Display: beautiful, expensive, capable

  • Magic Keyboard + Trackpad: wireless, Apple-made, minimal

  • The goal: One button or one action to flip between MacBooks, have the display and input devices follow, and not lose functionality.

What I assumed:

  • Since everything’s Apple, there’s native support for this.

  • Or at least some magical Belkin or Apple-branded switcher that just handles it.

  • At worst, maybe I’d need a fancy dock.

Nope.

Where it started falling apart

The Studio Display has exactly one Thunderbolt port for connecting to a Mac. That’s it. No input switching, no HDMI fallback, no native KVM functionality.

And Apple doesn’t make anything — not a dock, not a switch, not a “Studio Display Companion Hub” — that lets you switch between Macs. Even third parties haven’t really solved this. I tried digging into:

  • USB-C switches (they mostly don’t support Thunderbolt 3/4, and if they do, it’s partial — bandwidth issues, no camera/audio, etc.)

  • Thunderbolt 4 hubs (they work... but only with one machine at a time - you still have to manually unplug and replug the host cable, which kind of defeats the point.)

  • Bluetooth input switching (no automatic way to switch devices — you have to unpair/pair or use iCloud + Universal Control, which has limitations and is weirdly finicky)

And here’s the kicker...

If I didn’t have a Studio Display, or if I was using some random USB-C or HDMI monitor from LG or Dell or whoever, none of this would be a problem.

Almost every USB-C or Thunderbolt switch on the market plays nice with “normal” monitors. There are docks and KVMs built for that world. Even basic switches would’ve worked fine. But because I bought into the Apple ecosystem — keyboard, trackpad, two MacBooks, and the Studio Display — I’ve now created a setup that’s beautiful and painfully rigid.

It seems as if I paid extra to make my life harder.

Why does this feel like a blind spot?

Apple builds devices that work incredibly well within their expected use cases. But the moment you want to do something just slightly outside of their standard path — like working across two Macs with a shared display and inputs — you’re on your own. It’s wild how little support there is for what's a very normal setup among power users, devs, or anyone who uses multiple Macs.

Final thoughts (for now)

If you’re in the same boat: I feel your pain.

There’s no perfect solution yet, but if you’re okay with manually swapping one cable (or using a magnetic adapter to fake it), a Thunderbolt 4 hub like the one from Belkin gets you most of the way there without losing display quality or input functionality.

If you’ve solved this better than I have — seriously, I want to know. DM me, email me, comment, whatever. And if you’re a hardware designer/product person reading this: there’s a real gap in the market here. Please fill it.