'A19 Pro' Chip Coming to Studio Display 2

[deconstruct60]

Sorry - I was just sloppy and forgot to type the "pro" every time - my bad.

No problems. But I think other commentary about why not A16/A18/A19 versus the pro variant miss that things have changed since 18-iteration.

My point is that, of the two displays that Apple currently sells, the 2019 Pro XDR is considerably older than the 2022 Studio Display.

The Mac Pro went through the WHOLE 'about two years" transition to Apple Silicon with no updates. The very top end Mac products are 'Rip van Winkle' products. If you expect them to move faster , then expect to be disappointed most of the time.

The Studio Display shipped with some buggy camera stuff that Apple had to lock down. And it is still a large 'head scratcher' for most folks what the 'value add' for the processor inside is. Apple needed a better embedded OS and embedded app implementation. It should at least be as good a web camera as the iPhone can be given there is bulk of the camera compute infrastructure inside the Display as well. The Display comes off as a 'under baked' product. I suspect they shoveled it out the door because there was some synergy with 'work from home" and the videoconference most of the day revolution.

For the XDR all they had to do is backtrack a bit from the "better than a top end reference monitor" hype. If don't look at it as a 'reference monitor' killer product, it has and still does its job. Over time the $900 stand jokes got old because technically, you don't need to buy it (and many folks were not going to from the start).

Studio is more threatened some something like this $1,399 model

ProArt Display 6K PA32QCVï½Monitorsï½ASUS USA

The goal of the ASUS ProArt display series is to offer the most advanced technologies to power the imaginations of creators everywhere. With features such as mini-LED backlights, OLED displays, and ASUS Smart HDR technology, ProArt monitors are the solution for creating masterpieces.

www.asus.com

than the XDR is. The XDR isn't immune for the non "deep, critical color" work some folks purchase it for ( e.g., buy XDR to look at text/code ). However, I suspect Apple doesn't view that as the 'core' XDR market. Still going pitch the XDR is a 'good enough, low cost leader' versus the $20+ K reference monitors. ( and the rest of the $10+ K monitor crowd is also moving in slooooow motion. So Apple isn't going to be left behind by market offering changes.)

 

[chucker23n1]

If the new Apple TV gets a worse processor than a new display, I'm never buying an Apple TV at full price again. What a rip off.

The current Apple TV’s SoC is already overpowered for what it needs to do.

 

[theluggage]

The Mac Pro went through the WHOLE 'about two years" transition to Apple Silicon with no updates. The very top end Mac products are 'Rip van Winkle' products. If you expect them to move faster , then expect to be disappointed most of the time.

The same argument applies to the Studio Display, though - it's direct predecessors are the 27" Thunderbolt Display (2011-2016) and the LG/Apple collaboration 5k Ultrafine (2016-2022) - by which standard the Studio Display is still merely middle-aged.

The late-2019 Mac Pro was replaced in 2023 at the age of 3-and-a-half. The Rip van Winkle-est Mac was probably the 2013-2019 Trashcan, and even that was replaced after ~6 years (and I suspect that plan A was for the iMac Pro to replace it in 2017). The Pro XDR was launched in 2019 and will be turning 6 by the time this rumoured new display appears.

I'm not saying that the new display is definitely going to be a Pro XDR replacement, just that there's no age-related argument that rules out the possibility.

The Studio Display shipped with some buggy camera stuff that Apple had to lock down. And it is still a large 'head scratcher' for most folks what the 'value add' for the processor inside is. Apple needed a better embedded OS and embedded app implementation.

No evidence that the camera issues had anything to do with the choice of processor. Whatever processor/embedded OS they use, firmware bugs are likely to happen. They at least partially rectified the camera with a firmware update.

What "most folks" don't seem to get is that virtually every modern display and TV has a powerful embedded processor and OS - look on the support pages for 3rd party displays and you'll frequently find firmware updates - maybe, somewhere, there's a DellRumours website that makes headline news of every patch. I'm not sure that "running iOS" means much beyond "running the same XNU kernel as iOS" which makes sense from Apple's perspective.

I think Apple's best strategy in future is to simply not advertise the processor used in things like displays (I see the A13 does get a plug on the Studio Display website - which is possibly a mistake since it makes it sound "dated") because it obviously seems to confuse some people.

I'm not a huge fan of the Studio Display - due to the combination of high price with bargain-bucket 'features' like a captive mains cable, no height adjustment and no additional video inputs - but the actual display panel & anti-reflective surface don't currently seem to have much competition.

Studio is more threatened some something like this $1,399 model

Well, 32"@6k sounds like a threat to the Pro XDR, too. The Pro XDR had two unique features - a 6k@220ppi display and local dimming. With other 6k@220ppi displays now appearing at much lower prices - and 32" 8K appearing at Pro XDR-like prices, one of those is gone. The XDRs local dimming but it is actually quite a low resolution LED matrix that is probably due for a re-vamp using modern MiniLED tech. Even a new 5k Studio Display with MiniLED is going to be more attractive than a Pro XDR if HDR is important to you.

Over time the $900 stand jokes got old because technically, you don't need to buy it (and many folks were not going to from the start).

The $900 stand (as with the $800 Mac Pro wheels) wasn't so much a practical problem for potential Pro XDR buyers as a horrendous unforced PR mistake which helped to cement the non-Mac-evangelist public's image of Apple being overpriced and greedy. Also, if the defence is that most customers would be using custom VESA mounts, why did that still require a $200 VESA adapter rather than the display having 4 threaded bolt holes as standard? That's just bad form-over-function design.

It's still bad with the Studio Display: want VESA? Make an irreversible decision when you order the display. Want the sort of height adjustment that comes with virtually every other mid/high end display? $400 extra.

Still going pitch the XDR is a 'good enough, low cost leader' versus the $20+ K reference monitors.

ISTR that $20K reference monitor was a dual-layer LCD with per-pixel local dimming for "true" HDR - there's not really any comparison between that and 576 dimming zones. Anyway, if you need that $20K display it's probably because your clients specifically require it as a minimum standard and 'good enough' won't cut it.

Once you open the door to 'good enough' that Asus is probably 'good enough' for anybody who wants a 6k 220ppi display, and a 4k display with MiniLED local dimming or OLED is probably better for previewing HDR content.

 

[iPhone2019]

I think Apple is being cheap. They could very well use the M-chip instead. But they want to sell Mac Minis. Sad to see.

 

[tenthousandthings]

Maybe it needs to be able to process 5k HDR, possibly ProMotion video?
Maybe it's going to provide the Thunderbolt/USB4v2 connectivity?

I think this clever leak is designed to confirm the timeline (without going full leaked-roadmap, the oldest trick in the book) and slow the damage on two or three fronts:

[1] The onslaught of competing 27" 5K displays, many with better contrast and HDR capabilities. See the Philips Brilliance, due this month, at a listed price point (€1090) well below the ASD. I count 15 displays released or announced this year alone, and 19 total since 2023 (actually 22 if you count 2023 models that have been replaced in 2025 but are still being sold). With LG having finally discontinued the 2016/2019 UltraFine 5K in July, the ASD is now the oldest competitor. *None* of these have locally-dimmed backlights, they are all edge-lit, so I think it's safe to assume that feature will remain the domain of the Pro Display XDR.

[2] Speaking of the LG UltraFine, there's also the emergence of three different 6K panels in 2025 from three different manufacturers, probably LG Display (Korea), AUO (Taiwan) and BOE (China). See the list of 32" 6K displays. We do not know if the new LG UltraFine 6K will introduce a further refinement. It's absolutely possible it could have 120Hz -- it would still be "Nano IPS Black" (as LG has already said), but, with Thunderbolt 5, uncompressed 6K 120Hz becomes possible, along with 5K 120Hz in a hypothetical new UltraFine 5K.

That's a factor I didn't fully grasp until recently -- back in 2019, Apple made a decision to launch the Pro Display XDR at 6K 60Hz. I always just assumed that the reason they did that was because 6K was 32" Retina. But it was also close to the limit of what Thunderbolt 4 (40Gbps) could handle (10-bit 6K 60Hz uses 39Gbps uncompressed) -- now that math extends neatly to Thunderbolt 5 (80Gbps), where 10-bit 6K 120Hz uses 78Gbps uncompressed.

[3] This is all a long way of saying an early 2026 27" 5K 120Hz ProMotion Apple Studio Display HDR with 10-bit color would use something like 64Gbps uncompressed. So it would need Thunderbolt 5, but it could run at 90Hz with Thunderbolt 4, and of course all M-series Macs could run it at 60Hz.

In that context, like you suggest, an A19 Pro SoC seems like it might be quite useful.

 

[deconstruct60]

The current Apple TV’s SoC is already overpowered for what it needs to do.

there is a vocal faction that wants Apple to get into the Nintendo (maybe Xbox , Playstation) realm of turning AppleTV into a more gaming focused box. Mac Mini M4 at $499 pricing though makes that more questionable though.
Apple like's to brag about "desktop/laptop power" captured into their lower end SoCs. It isn't like they don't invite that meme.


But yes if 98%+ of utilization for AppleTV. is running Netflix , Disney+. , Pluto , Tubi, Prime Video , AppleTV + etc. ( content streaming apps) , then it is relatively overpowered. Converting data to video/audio should be primarily just be fixed function logic (not general computation on CPU/GPU cores). Local Ai (voice navigation / search, image processing , etc.) and HomeHub compute server stuff would require more compute if it was utilized more. ( some folks use it. But not as mainstream as it could be ). Shouldn't really need a multimillion dollar data center to pick out a movie from a genre search (shoveling all queries into a cloud server).

 

[DavidSchaub]

That's a factor I didn't fully grasp until recently -- back in 2019, Apple made a decision to launch the Pro Display XDR at 6K 60Hz. I always just assumed that the reason they did that was because 6K was 32" Retina. But it was also close to the limit of what Thunderbolt 4 (40Gbps) could handle (10-bit 6K 60Hz uses 39Gbps uncompressed) -- now that math extends neatly to Thunderbolt 5 (80Gbps), where 10-bit 6K 120Hz uses 78Gbps uncompressed.

[3] This is all a long way of saying an early 2026 27" 5K 120Hz ProMotion Apple Studio Display HDR with 10-bit color would use something like 64Gbps uncompressed. So it would need Thunderbolt 5, but it could run at 90Hz with Thunderbolt 4, and of course all M-series Macs could run it at 60Hz.

Other than the Mac Pros saddled with the horrifically old RX580s, isn't almost every XDR being used with DSC (Display Stream Compression) enabled. The USB-C ports on the XDR are woefully limited if DSC isn't being used right now.

I made a rough video stream data rate web calculator: https://ddrc.froods.ca/

With DSC, 5K 120Hz HDR is really pretty easy (it's about 61.80 Gbps using DP encoding, but only around 24.72 Gbps with DSC on.

DSC is good.

 

[tenthousandthings]

Other than the Mac Pros saddled with the horrifically old RX580s, isn't almost every XDR being used with DSC (Display Stream Compression) enabled. The USB-C ports on the XDR are woefully limited if DSC isn't being used right now.

I made a rough video stream data rate web calculator: https://ddrc.froods.ca/

With DSC, 5K 120Hz HDR is really pretty easy (it's about 61.80 Gbps using DP encoding, but only around 24.72 Gbps with DSC on.

DSC is good.

Nicely done, thanks! I didn’t mean to imply compression is bad.

My point was that if Apple goes to 120Hz, I think they will stay at 6K. I used to think 7K Liquid Retina (or 8K) was likely for a next-generation 32" Pro Display XDR (I think ProMotion is a given), but now I doubt that.

It’s not that a 10-bit 8K 120Hz panel wouldn’t work, it’s more that lossless streams should (and do) factor into the thinking. The number I cited for 6K 60Hz was taken from the user guide for the Kuycon G32P. The number for 6K 120Hz was from a Vietnamese discussion of the LG 6K.

My number for 5K 120Hz was just a rough guess, so it’s nice to know I wasn’t too far off. Your calculator factors in things I don’t follow, but it’s useful to know what they are.

 

[erasr]

Finally.

I'm getting tired of spending so much money on iPhone and Watch. After buying the 16 Pro and Watch 10 last year, 12 months later I regret spending so much on them, given that the Watch is scratched and the phone is just...another iPhone.

I'm going to spend less on the luxury stuff and more on the productive products such as ASD. My MacBook Air M2 is flawless and gives me so much back, all these years on from launch.

 

[philosopherdog]

Sweeping, universal generalizations very often are not true.

😭