Can I daisy chain two Thunderbolt displays to the new MacBook Airs (July 2011)?

Question

I have last year's MacBook Air -- probably the best Mac I've ever had and I've had a few. I looked at using multiple displays last year, but the reviews for the major 3rd-party solutions really demonstrate how little is possible.
I see Apple says you can double up on displays for the MacBook Pro (I have a pre-Thunderbolt one unfortunately), what about the new (July 2011) MacBook Airs?
Anyone tried? Anyone know?
(I have a 30" Dell display, but it is, and always has been, very flakey when it comes to connecting to a Mac laptop).

Answer 1

You can thank Intel for that.
The sandy bridge chips all have integrated graphics, and before they were released -- they took nvidia to court claiming they didn't have a "license" to make GPU chipsets for the sandy bridge line.  Intel won, and consumers lost.
The solution most manufacturers are using for notebooks is graphics switching (nvidia optimus like technology) -- which basically uses a discreet GPU along side the intel integrated GPU, and switches between the two instantaenously based on the workload and \ or battery life -- this is how the macbook pro's with the ATI gpus work.
Since there isn't enough space physically inside a macbook air for a discreet GPU, and since no company in the world is allowed to make a shared GPU for intel's sandy bridge chipsets -- the only solution is to use the integrated graphics that is in the processors -- Intel HD 3000.  Intel basically has the monopoly here...there is no legal solution in the world another company can provide thanks to our wonderful court system
Wanna know the really sad part about the Intel HD 3000 GPU?  The Nvidia 320M (the GPU used in the previous model 2010 macbook air -- chip was released to the market in April of last year) actually out performs it in some benchmarks -- that's right, a 1+ year old shared gpu from nvidia outperforms Intel's 2011 integrated graphics.
Intel ***** at graphics, period.
The only other solution I can think of is for you to get the "Echo Express" product from Sonnet:
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/thunderbolt/index.html
It's basically an external bay that will allow you to put a PCIe GPU inside it, and it would then connect via thunderbolt to the macbook air.
You would then use the minidisplayport connectors on the PCIe GPU to connect to the apple displays -- I believe any modern ATI or Nvidia GPU can support up to 3 or 4 external displays.
Unfortunately, sonnet's bay is not released yet, and you'd also have to make sure the PCIe GPU you get supports both thunderbolt AND os x....so yeah, kind of slim pickens right now
EDIT:
So apparently the macbook pros can daisy chain two thunderbolt displays -- Apple has a picture of it on their site:
http://storeimages.apple.com/1867/as-images.apple.com/is/image/AppleInc/MC914_AV 7?wid=1200&hei=1200&fmt=jpeg&qlt=95&op_sharpen=0&resMode=bicub&op_usm=0.5,0.5,0, 0&iccEmbed=0&layer=comp
I just bought a new mac air too...I was gonna get a mbpro but they are just too expensive -- the one I configured was at around 3000$
Wanna know what's lame about using the thunderbolt display with the mac air?  So the new mac air has the magsafe connector on one side and the thunderbolt connector on the other -- they're not on the same side like the macbook pro is (see picture) -- so basically the cable is going to have to slack around the back of the macbook air -- who designed that?  Must have been smoking some good meth ;p
Message was edited by: NiqueXyZ