The Apple Studio Display is edge-lit like the old iMac 5K display.
Ross Young and Ming-Chi Kuo swear a MiniLED 27" panel with ProMotion is preparing production, but it's clearly going into something other than the Apple Cinema Display.
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Apple Confirms Studio Display Will Work With PCs, But With Some Caveats
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The Apple Studio Display is edge-lit like the old iMac 5K display.
Ross Young and Ming-Chi Kuo swear a MiniLED 27" panel with ProMotion is preparing production, but it's clearly going into something other than the Apple Cinema Display.
If you’re like me and own a Mac, PC, and a Linux machine then this is basically a deal breaker. One of the benefits of having a desktop machine is being able to mix and match and not be tied to one particular paradigm or another. More and more Apple is selling to “the converted” and not to a general audience. I’ll be interested to see the the direction they go with Mac Pro considering they have gone squarely with SoCs that won’t allow for many upgrade options after purchase.
Well that’s all personal opinion. I still am not impressed with the 5K gimmick, with no 120HZ.
It’s overpriced still. Very overpriced. Yes I’m sure it’s good but it’s a display that’s several years old now. And lacks 120 HZ, I suspect many would rather Apple ditched the webcam and speakers and put in 120HZ Pro Motion.
Yes it is.
But too many posters on too many threads misconstrue their personal opinion as the Gospel Truth that applies to everyone else, as well. And it's bloody annoying.
(For the record - not accusing you of this position as you have clearly stated your opinions are yours alone).
And for those whose personal desires track strongly toward MiniLED and/or ProMotion, that is coming per Ross Young and Ming-Chi Kuo. I don't know in in what form it will take - I want to say "iMac Pro", but that seems counterproductive with the Mac Studio now - but they're adamant it is coming and their sources are in the supply chain so that means it is nearing mass production.
Yes people do tend to do that. I would hold off on the claim it’s better then the LG though until you’ve seen it in person. Next to an LG perhaps. I expect it’s an LG panel anyway. But yes Apple displays are very good. Just think it’s poor value personally.
It was the same with the Apple Thunderbolt Display. It officially supported Macs only.
In my case, I have owned multiple iMac 5Ks so I am deeply familiar with the quality of the screen for all types of content. And I have seen plenty of LG UltraFine 5K's - both standalone and connected to iMac 5Ks - and I find it's panel uniformity to be inferior to that of the iMac 5K (Apple calibrates all iMac 5Ks to a common standard whereas LG does not). I see no reason why Apple would not provide the same level of out-of-the-box calibration to every Apple Studio Display that they did to every iMac 5K.
And based on the build-quality of the Apple 27" Thunderbolt and 27" Cinema Displays (of which I have owned both), I am confident the construction of the ASD will be better than the plastic case and wobbly stand of the LG UltraFine 5K. And considering how good the 12MP front-facing camera on my iPhone 13 Pro is, one with more than double that should mean it really looks sharp compared to the 1080p webcam in the LG UltraFine (which I find to be inferior to the one in my 2020 iMac due to the additional processing the A10/T2 SoC provides - and the ASD has an A13 providing that).
"Planned obsolescence"? Do you know what that term means? They don't expect PC users to come into an Apple Store looking for a monitor. They designed this to work specifically with Macs. There are a ton of monitors that work with PCs, that PC users can buy instead.
I am in the same situation as others in this thread. I have ordered a Mac studio and the studio display. I also NEED the display to accommodate my work laptop but I don’t want to be switching the usb-c cable back and forth all day long. That’s ridiculous by anyones standards. If there’s no way to get around this with some sort of hub I’ll go with an LG Ultrawide instead. Lower resolution but much more flexible for multi system users.
So? That was still comparable with (probably better than) the CPU in the $1099 i5 Mac Mini, not the cheapest one. You can't isolate it precisely, but it always seemed like the display accounted for less than $1000 of the price of the 5k iMac.
Now the difference is $1600 (ignoring KB and mouse) for essentially the same display, plus better webcam and speakers.
Yes, that's true, but you're paying a hefty price for that advantage. If they'd come out with new display tech which was going to be good for the next 10 years, that was great - but the most important component, the display panel, is 5+ year old tech that is due to be replaced by MiniLED Real Soon Now.
its only TB3 to boot. $1,600 would be a great price for a 27” monitor at 600 nit with more complete TB4 hub expansion functionality, a fully adjustable stand and at least 2 TB4 ports. TB3 should never have been on the table. Charging $300 extra for height adjustment is just insulting.
This monitor release should also have included a 32” 5K option with the above expansion port configurations. In fact, 4K would be enough for both 27” and 32” monitors. 5K may look better but it hardly matters with 90% of use case requirements.
Same, though they are 27inch IPS, 1440p, 170hz, Gsync monitors. I freely admit that I do no photo or video work that requires color matching or what have you. They are fantastic for gaming though, and there is nothing like high FPS gaming on a high hz monitor. Butter smooth.
I am a huge Apple fan, but nothing yesterday moved the needle for me. My computing needs as a IT infrastructure tech are not very demanding. My common tools and software are Secure CRT, web browsers, email, text editors, powershell window and Visio. I manage a pretty big on-prem VMware environment with Microsoft Edge and SecureCRT/Powershell. I do AWS and Azure work, mostly in a browser.
I could use my 16inch Mabook M1 Pro or my 2018 Lenovo T-580 with an i5 8th gen CPU in it, for me either is just as powerful. I do like the screen better on my Macbook, but the T-580 has a built in ethernet port which is handy when I need to jack into a switch in a data center and not have to break out a dongle.
FWIW—not speaking for anyone else....I've been waiting to upgrade my late 2015 top-spec 27" iMac until I could get the next step up from the original M1 chip. As of yesterday there is no 27" iMac for sale—it's gone from the store. Interestingly, this monitor brings most of the features of an iMac to the Mac Studio, so is this combo meant to be the new 27" iMac and/or iMac Pro replacement? Will there be another more consumer-ish model in the 27" iMac format? Who knows, but this makes me think Apple never intended this to be a standard multipurpose monitor.
The Studio combo is perfect for me. Powerful desktop with a great monitor I can use with my MacBook as well on the rare occasions I need that. In the future I could replace the Mac Studio and keep the monitor, or vice versa. I ordered the combo less than one hour after the announcement yesterday. Base model monitor, base model Mac Studio—if you consider something with the M1 Max chip w/32 gigs of Ram "base." All I did was bump internal storage from 512GB to 1T. Monitor comes March 18, the computer in three weeks. But it's not the right monitor for everybody.
The Studio combo is perfect for me. Powerful desktop with a great monitor I can use with my MacBook as well on the rare occasions I need that. In the future I could replace the Mac Studio and keep the monitor, or vice versa. I ordered the combo less than one hour after the announcement yesterday. Base model monitor, base model Mac Studio—if you consider something with the M1 Max chip w/32 gigs of Ram "base." All I did was bump internal storage from 512GB to 1T. Monitor comes March 18, the computer in three weeks. But it's not the right monitor for everybody.
This is good news (unless it actually works very poorly). I am planning to get a gaming PC alongside whatever new Mac I finally buy, and I’d like to buy only ONE display. Which PC GPUs come with thunderbolt ports?
Oh wait; it’s still impossible to buy GPUs at a sane price. Never mind.
Oh wait; it’s still impossible to buy GPUs at a sane price. Never mind.
TB4 wouldn't confer any advantages. They need all the bandwidth for the display output, and so even with TB4, there would be only about enough bandwidth to support 10Gb/s output to the remaining ports.
With the way macOS handles scaling, 5K makes a difference, as 4K is just 5K downscaled.
It is effectively the iMac Pro replacement. Since Apple still sells the Intel Mac mini, I'm guessing there will be an update (perhaps to the M2 Pro) later in the year that effectively replaces the consumer-grade 27" iMac.
Just went to check Apple's website and the darn thing doesn't come with a power cord or a power brick. What a hell Apple?
I just don't see it as a fair comparison to use an iMac 5K with an i5, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage as a direct analog for a Mac Studio with an M1 Max, 32GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. Especially considering an M1 Max will annihilate the i9 in the iMac 5K, much less the i5. So I start the comparison of a $1999 Mac Studio to that base iMac by first adding the $600 i9 upgrade. Then I add the $200 for the 256GB to 512GB SSD upgrade and $400 for the 8GB to 32GB RAM upgrade.
So now I am starting the comparison at $1999 for the Mac Studio and $3000 for the iMac 5K. Of course, I must add $250 for the keyboard and mouse to the Mac Studio's cost, as well as $1600 for the Apple Studio Display. So all-in, it's $3850 vs. $3000. A fair bit of extra money, to be sure, but not the $2000 difference using the completely unrealistic $1800 iMac 5K as the comparison.
And then one should consider the added the value of the vastly better web cam, the better speakers, the four extra TB4 ports and the 3 extra USB-C ports. And yes, you can get Thunderbolt docks for less than $800, but those docks share the bandwidth of one TB port so even if you bought two (and at that point, you are a fair bit closer to $800), it is still not as many full-speed TB ports as the Mac Studio offers.
I expect Apple's BOM is in the $500 range considering what usable ones scavenged from dead iMacs cost. So it's probably around one-third of the price, plus another third taken up with the case, the webcam, the speakers, the internal circuit board, manufacturing costs, shipping and warehousing, and R&D recovery. That leaves the final third for margin, which is in-line with what Apple's hardware margins are believed to be.
And this is a very fair point.
It's also a point I admit to finding it hard to wrap my head around with Apple's Mac strategy of the past year.
Why hold back MiniLED from the Apple Studio Display? Even if it raised the price to $1700 or $1800, people would still be carping, but at least they would be carping about a display that should be relevant for a decade or more.
I don't see Apple worried about it knee-capping sales of the Pro Display XDR because that product has likely already run it's course with the "I don't need it, but I gotta have it anyway" crowd, so it is not like there are tens of thousands of Mac owners saving their pennies for an XDR who will now abandon that plan to get an ASD with all the goodies.
And I don't understand why Apple would save this display for an iMac Pro (even if I was saying just that 24 hours ago). Mac Studio and the Apple Studio Display are a more...elegant...way to address this market and sticking with an AIO. And yet, the usual suspects are still saying it is coming next year...
The PSU is internal and it comes with a power cable since you can see it hanging out of the back of the machine in pictures. It is possible it's hard-wired into the back, but I would expect it to be pluggable.
The panel itself is a 60Hz model and Apple's custom timing controller on the iMac 5K is DisplayPort 1.2 so I would expect it to be the same TC here.
I suppose we will have to wait until actual units are in reviewer's hands before we know the specifics of what it can and cannot support.