Thunderbolt 5 (TB 5) is pretty handy, you can have a very thin and lightweight laptop, then can get access to external GPU or eGPU via TB 5 if needed [1]. Now you can have your cake (lightweight laptop) and eat it too (potent GPU).
[1] Asus just announced the world’s first Thunderbolt 5 eGPU:
eGPU has a ton of issues on MacOS - I've used it for years, but now on Silicon its prob much worse - but let me give a shout out to the amazing (somewhat new) High Performance screen sharing mode added in Sonoma.
When I connect to my Mac Studio via Macbook I can select that mode, then change the Displays setting to Dynamic Resolution and then my 'thin client':
- Is fullscreen using the entire 16:10 Macbook screen
- Gets 60 fps low latency performance (including on actual games)
- Transfers audio, I can attend meetings in this mode
- Blanks the host Mac Studio screen
All things that were impossible via VNC - RDP is much better but this new High Performance Screen Share is even more powerful.
The thin lightweight laptop that remotes into a loaded machine has always been my idea of high mobility instead of suffering a laptop running everything locally. This works via LTE as well with some firewall setup.
[1] Asus just announced the world’s first Thunderbolt 5 eGPU:
https://www.theverge.com/24336135/asus-thunderbolt-5-externa...