What About The Front USBC Ports?

[CronoCX]

Hey!, LOVE this App, but I noticed that it has all four of my back ports on the Mac Studio...but not the two in the front. Or rather it does, but it is presented like my Thunderbolt Hub. Are those not separate ports? I expect the DIsplay to be considered a Hub, but not the ports in the front, which I also noticed are connected to the back USBA port.

--Brian

[CoderDeltaLAN]

I may be wrong, but this looks like the Mac Studio’s internal USB hub rather than the app seeing those as normal Thunderbolt/USB-C port-controller ports. The only thing that feels off is the wording: for built-in front/rear USB ports, “built-in USB ports” would probably be clearer than “Reached through a Thunderbolt dock or display”. A raw dump plus the System Information USB tree should make it easier to confirm

[CronoCX]

Yeah! That would be better, I'd even go so far as to have a Built In Ports section of the UI, just to make it clear as I would not expect them to be listed as "Reached through" anything. Their right on the front of the Studio. Since I don't have the the Ultra, I wonder if that would display 6 TB Ports there.

[CoderDeltaLAN]

Yeah, that makes sense to me too. I’d expect the Ultra models to show six Thunderbolt ports if the front ones are actually wired as Thunderbolt, but on the non-Ultra/Max Studio a separate “Built-in ports” section feels much clearer than making them look like they’re reached through a dock or display.

[darrylmorley]

Thanks Brian, good catch. Those are separate physical USB-C ports, but your Studio runs its front USB-C and back USB-A through one shared internal controller. The app couldn't tell that apart from an external Thunderbolt dock, which is why it showed your front ports under the hub, next to the back USB-A port.

The latest beta changes how those ports are classified: devices on the front ports should now show under a "Built-in USB ports" section instead of under your Thunderbolt hub (the clearer wording @CoderDeltaLAN suggested, thanks). One heads-up, the front ports still won't get their own port cards like the back four, because they're plain USB behind that internal hub.

It's a beta and I've only tested it against other Mac Studios, not your exact machine, so I can't call it fixed yet. That's where you come in:

https://github.com/darrylmorley/whatcable/releases/tag/v1.2.0-beta.1

Download WhatCable.zip, replace your copy, use your normal licence. If the front-port devices now show under "Built-in USB ports" instead of under the hub, let me know and I'll get it into the next release. Thanks for the clear report.

[CoderDeltaLAN]

Thanks Darryl glad the wording helped. “Built-in USB ports” feels much clearer here, and I’m curious to see how the beta behaves on Brian’s Studio 👍

[CronoCX]

Looks pretty good IMO :)

[darrylmorley]

Perfect, that's exactly the result I was hoping for, thanks for testing it so quickly Brian.

I'll get this into the next stable release.

[CronoCX]

No problem! :)