Mac And Display 4K / UHD / 5K, Extended Compatibility With Yosemite 10.10.3

The PC displays with resolutions UHD / 4K are becoming more common and popular, but they were poorly supported by Mac. I speak of the past because with Yosemite 10.10.3 Apple made a big step forward, as explained in the document "Using 4K display and Ultra HD TVs with your Mac. "

The most important change concerns the Single-Stream (SST) via DisplayPort, previously limited to only 5 display on the market and with the maximum refresh rate of 30Hz, not enough for a fluid use of the computer.

With the latest version of OS X, Apple says, things have changed. Are now supported "most" of the screens UHD (3840x2160) on the market, with 60Hz refresh rate, on the following computers:

• MacBook Pro Retina 13" early 2015
• MacBook Pro Retina 15" mid 2014
• Mac Pro late 2013
• iMac 27 "late 2013 and newer
• Mac mini late 2014
• MacBook Air early 2015
• MacBook Retina 12" 2015

As can be noted there is also the last MacBook, where the DisplayPort connection passes into the USB-C. However, Apple has not made a USB cable-C -> DisplayPort yet , so you have to look to third-party vendors. Google, which recently unveiled the Chromebook Pixel 2 with USB-C, has already made one that costs $ 40.

As regards the panels 4K (4096x2160), however, the list of Mac compatible with SST connection via DisplayPort is limited to:

• Mac Pro late 2013
• Retina iMac 27 "5K late 2014

Moving on to the displays that use instead connecting MST (Multi-Stream Transport), it always comes to 60Hz, but you have to manually configure the monitor. Those compatible, as specified in this page are just 5: Sharp PN-K321, PQ321Q ASUS, Dell and UP2414Q UP321Q, Panasonic TC-L65WT600. The same two computers, or the latest Mac Pro and iMac 27 "5K, also support dual screens with connection cable from Yosemite 10.10.3, although at the moment we speak only of Dell UP2715K 27" 5K. Much less performance turns out to be connected via HDMI, which are supported monitor 4K UHD 30Hz and 24Hz.