Can someone tell me what’s even the purpose of having an A series chip in this thing? Can’t everything be done by the computer its self over thunderbolt?
Many peripherals these days (including competing computer displays) will have some sort of processor inside, replacing a lot of complex hard-wired circuitry, and possibly even handling image processing/scaling/compression which requires a relatively powerful processor (e.g. the processors in most 4k TVs). For Apple, it makes sense to use the same chips that they either make themselves or buy in huge quantities for iPhones & use iOS (probably heavily stripped down) rather than buy 3rd party processor chips and license some other embedded OS,
As to why not use the processor in the Mac, it's not like you can wire a set of multi-channel speakers & mics and a webcam directly into a Thunderbolt port - the display would need a bunch of extra interface circuitry which could end up more expensive than just using a surplus iPhone SoC. The webcam is almost certainly lifted from an iPhone, designed to connect to an A-series SoC and already supported in iOS, and, along with the spatial audio, probably requires the neural engine in the A series (so a "dumb" version of the display wouldn't work with Intel Macs or PCs). You end up with a display that
should just work rather than needing drivers or the latest MacOS update...
I think Apple's mistake here is
leaving out the power switch. "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" is only a cliche because nine out of ten times it solves the problem, and a power/reset button is a non-optional feature on any "smart" device.
Or, of course, an easily removable (without crawling under the desk) power cable. Remember when some of us were saying how unacceptable it was not to have a removable power cable?
