It does in a roundabout way:

Annoy a thousand developers / power users.

Leading to:

Util developer gets 100 emails.

Leading to:

HN post gets 100k views.

Leading to:

One of the readers proverbially punch some faces.

See: good design!

PitFAAS. It's the hot new tech of 2023.

The manufacturer isn't assigning UUIDs, we're talking about what macOS considers a display UUID. MacOS will generate a UUID based on the manufacturer, the model, the manufacturing date and the serial number, and the intent is truly that these UUIDs uniquely identify the display. It just doesn't work when multiple monitors have the same serial number, which isn't supposed to happen.

> If that happens, then they’re just assigning “ID”s.

Or "serial numbers," as it were.

The concoction of UUIDs that are neither universal nor unique happens in software, but the cause is the serial numbers colliding.

> Or "serial numbers," as it were.

Or in this case, a constant number…

I’ve seen similar problems with inexpensive Chinese wifi modules all shipping with an identical MAC address. Mostly you can Google up the method required to reflash them (or worst case, I’ve been out a dollar or two because it usually the ultra cheap things this happens on).