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.