Apple Releases Studio Display 16.4 Firmware Beta

[furbzv1]

Got 2 displays April of last year and aside from the initial volume cut off issue in the first month- everything has worked great. Even plugged my work pc to it a few times:

I do wish I could select or move which monitor to use for FaceTime

 

[TechnoMonk]

Cannibalising is more when you have a different product that does more or less the same as something else for better value. The Mac is one product range with several SKU's. If you hide the machine under your desk you cant tell when your using it what Mac your running. It could be Intel, m1, Mac Pro, MacBook attached to a monitor etc.. Its the same product.

I'm just saying that when you can sell to say 10% of all Mac buyers a 2K computer + 1.5k monitor and get those crazy margins from that, selling a powder blue iMac for 2.2K that does more or less the same thing is really going to impact the Mac Studio/apple studio sales.

That's a step beyond cannibalisation! For 1.3K cheaper you're doing pretty much the same thing.
The cost difference with base Mac-mini vs iMac 24 isn't that big when you factor in your own 24inch monitor and keyboard. But for macstudio + keyboard/mouse/studio displays that's a huge difference in price to what an equivalent iMac 27 would be.

It's also interesting that Apple have been slow to upgrade the existing iMac to m2 or any pro chips. Its not about cooling etc.. Its simply they will be losing money the higher end they go with these iMacs if they keep pace with m chips they have in their other devices.I feel like Apple thinks that iMacs are just too good a deal basically. Too many "pro's" were buying 27inch iMacs and getting a little too much value it seems.

That’s looking at narrowly with an iMac colored glasses. I never owned iMac, I will most likely never own one. Give me a studio display which can connect to any Mac. I could use it with Mac Book Pro, Mac studio or what ever Mac I am working on at that moment. I don’t have to replace a display because IMac is getting slower.
For some one who just wants to connect an iPad Pro, why do they need iMac?

 

[threesixty360]

That’s looking at narrowly with an iMac colored glasses. I never owned iMac, I will most likely never own one. Give me a studio display which can connect to any Mac. I could use it with Mac Book Pro, Mac studio or what ever Mac I am working on at that moment. I don’t have to replace a display because IMac is getting slower.
For some one who just wants to connect an iPad Pro, why do they need iMac?

The issue with the iMac was it was a spectacular deal. You got a high end max laptop with a well designed and engineered monitor of the highest quality. All for 2 grand! Even the old ones had target display mode which allowed you to use the monitor with another device.

It was too good a deal!

Now you will spend 1500 on the monitor alone. Which is great but we will all spend more to get the exact same mac experience than if there was an iMac 27 around.

Also, the 1 cable , no other boxes for the iMac actually is a very clean and tidy solution. Which is why they were in lots of homes and design / fashion offices.

It’s easily the best mac I’ve ever had. And I’ve had MacBooks, powermac g5’s etc. and I’m sad I can’t buy another one. Perfect machine really.

 

[haddy]

Now you will spend 1500 on the monitor alone. Which is great but we will all spend more to get the exact same mac experience than if there was an iMac 27 around.

Yep.. except that the Studio ultra has 6 TB4 ports as opposed to 2 for the iMac. And that has made the difference for me.

 

[xraydoc]

I do wish I could select or move which monitor to use for FaceTime

You can. FaceTime will let you select which camera to use.

 

[xraydoc]

The old iMac were just laptop chips stuck in a monitor.

Not entirely true. While some models used pretty low-end chips, several used desktop i7 and i9 parts. My daughter has a 27" 5K iMac which I think was the last model released, using something like a 10-core i9. She uses it for Final Cut X amongst other things and she's still happy with the performance.

GPUs were pretty paired down though, for desktop parts, that much is true.

 

[xraydoc]

Beta doesn't "fix" the first issue (at least on my 14" MBP and the Studio Display).

FWIW, I don't have this issue at all. 14" MBP M1 Pro. Two ASDs connected. They wake instantly, always in the proper orientation (one portrait, one landscape), and always at the proper resolution (looks-like 2880x1620).

 

[pirhy]

Can anyone tell me if the fans in the Studio Display are still always on after this firmware update even if the connected Mac is sleeping? I have this display in my bedroom and it is annoying during the night, so I have to turn off my Mac. Thanks.

 

[Luki1979]

Damn bro, mine is on and I can’t hear a thing. I must have damaged hearing from my dj-ing days. Just get a smart socket and program it to turn off monitor for a night. Will save you some money on electricity too.

 

[HVDynamo]

if the Studio Display has a Wi-Fi connection, could it function like a smart TV? Could it install apps like Netflix and Roku? Can it connect a Mac wirelessly?

It doesn't, but considering how much hardware Apple put into it, it should do it. Would need some sort of network adapter for that to work though, but I don't think it has any of those.

 

[stef.brl]

why did they just build in an apple tv? would love to have smart display like samsung offers.

 

[_Spinn_]

I still find it amusing that this display has more hardware than some laptops.

 

[Arctic Moose]

If they made the StudioDisplay into severely underpowered iMac it would be a PR disaster.

Yeah, probably.

I didn't mean that they should have done it, just that it would have been entirely possible, and probably still is with a firmware update.

just being a screen with even worse value is a much smaller issue.

I would have much preferred the opposite direction. Replace the SoC with whatever every other display manufacturer uses, rip out the Center Stage nonsense, put a normal ****ing camera in it drop the price by $400.

 

[Bug-Creator]

Replace the SoC with whatever every other display manufacturer uses, rip out the Center Stage nonsense, put a normal ****ing camera in it drop the price by $400.

a) the camera is just a "normal ****ing camera" with some SW behind it
b) using what they already have might even be cheaper that buying in some display-controller (even if not we are talking 2 digit savings at best, so no chance for a 3 digit price cut).

 

[ponzicoinbro]

why did they just build in an apple tv? would love to have smart display like samsung offers.

Because any Apple device you plug into it has the Apple TV app...and you can keep on multi tasking!

 

[threesixty360]

That’s looking at narrowly with an iMac colored glasses. I never owned iMac, I will most likely never own one. Give me a studio display which can connect to any Mac. I could use it with Mac Book Pro, Mac studio or what ever Mac I am working on at that moment. I don’t have to replace a display because IMac is getting slower.
For some one who just wants to connect an iPad Pro, why do they need iMac?

The issue with the iMac was it was a spectacular deal. You got a high end max laptop with a well designed and engineered monitor of the highest quality. All for 2 grand! Even the old ones had target display mode which allowed you to use the monitor with another device.

It was too good a deal!

Now you will spend 1500 on the monitor alone. Which is great but we will all spend more to get the exact same mac experience than if there was an iMac 27 around.

Also, the 1 cable , no other boxes for the iMac actually is a very clean and tidy solution. Which is why they were in lots of homes and design / fashion offices.

It’s easily the best mac I’ve ever had. And I’ve had MacBooks, powermac g5’s etc. and I’m sad I can’t buy another one. Perfect machine really.

Not entirely true. While some models used pretty low-end chips, several used desktop i7 and i9 parts. My daughter has a 27" 5K iMac which I think was the last model released, using something like a 10-core i9. She uses it for Final Cut X amongst other things and she's still happy with the performance.

GPUs were pretty paired down though, for desktop parts, that much is true.

I thought they were the i9 equivalent laptop class chips that they had in the MacBooks? I did think any of them were actually desktop chips that plugged into a desktop motherboard etc.

I don’t think anyone puts actually desktop chips in laptops do they? The cooling and sockets etc isn’t it all a bit different?

 

[Arctic Moose]

a) the camera is just a "normal ****ing camera"

It is not. It is practically a fisheye lens. Without the software it would be practically useless, although I’d argue it more or less is so even with the software.

 

[xraydoc]

I thought they were the i9 equivalent laptop class chips that they had in the MacBooks? I did think any of them were actually desktop chips that plugged into a desktop motherboard etc.

I don’t think anyone puts actually desktop chips in laptops do they? The cooling and sockets etc isn’t it all a bit different?

AFAIK, the 27" iMac, at least the later versions, all had desktop CPU parts.

Per Apple's spec page: https://support.apple.com/kb/SP821?locale=en_US
3.6GHz 10-core 10th-generation Intel Core i9, Turbo Boost up to 5.0GHz

 

[montuori]

Without the software it would be practically useless, although I’d argue it more or less is so even with the software.

Without software any modern camera would be entirely useless. I have to admit I'm curious what use case an embedded non-mobile webcam like this has beyond Zoom and the like. I'm not saying there isn't one, just that I'm not sure what it is.

 

[TechnoMonk]

The issue with the iMac was it was a spectacular deal. You got a high end max laptop with a well designed and engineered monitor of the highest quality. All for 2 grand! Even the old ones had target display mode which allowed you to use the monitor with another device.

It was too good a deal!

Now you will spend 1500 on the monitor alone. Which is great but we will all spend more to get the exact same mac experience than if there was an iMac 27 around.

Also, the 1 cable , no other boxes for the iMac actually is a very clean and tidy solution. Which is why they were in lots of homes and design / fashion offices.

It’s easily the best mac I’ve ever had. And I’ve had MacBooks, powermac g5’s etc. and I’m sad I can’t buy another one. Perfect machine really.

Like I said iMac is useless for me. My laptop goes everywhere with me, iMac doesn’t travel with me. I use it with my iPad Pro too. I don’t want the display to be on all the time in headless mode, or tied to an iMac.

 

[DotCom2]

So, does anybody know what the heck is in the Firmware update?

 

[Bregalad]

For years these forums (and others like it) were filled with people demanding Apple make an xMac, a small desktop that could be attached to a 3rd party display. The moment Apple made one the forums filled with people screaming that there was no 27" iMac option anymore. Forums are like that.

Someone else probably said it more eloquently already, but Apple isn't going to make multiple items that fit the same target market. Since the return of Steve Jobs there has always been a clear distinction in the product line. We also need to realize that the entire Mac market is now only a tiny percentage of Apple, a little side business that makes a few bucks for them.

Buying separate computer and display is good for people who upgrade their computers regularly or those who want a large display to connect to their MacBook. The display may last 2 or even 3 computers.

That's rarely been the case for me. When I look back at all the Macs, PCs and displays I've owned since 1992 I see that I've replaced the display almost as often as I replaced the computer. Technology changes, displays get bigger and brighter, the pixel density increases, the power consumption goes down and, perhaps most importantly, the cable used to connect it to a computer changes.

My old Samsung display with VGA and DVI inputs still works, but it's only 21.5", low resolution and would require some crazy display adapter to get it to work with a 2023 Mac mini. Having been spoiled for over a decade with 27" iMacs I couldn't possibly go back to a 21.5" or even 24" screen.

My next Mac might be a Mini connected to a pair of 4K displays. That appears to be cheaper than a single Studio Display and offers more screen real estate.

 

[SilverWalker]

Got 2 displays April of last year and aside from the initial volume cut off issue in the first month- everything has worked great. Even plugged my work pc to it a few times:

I do wish I could select or move which monitor to use for FaceTime

If you go to System Preferences > Displays > Display Settings > then click on the display you want to use facetime on by default then change the 'Use As' drop down selection to 'Main Display' does it work? Perhaps after a reboot?
I'm still using Monterey so the menu location might be a tiny bit different on Ventura.

 

[jakeowens]

I hope this fixes my issue with my studio displays never turning off when I go to my Lock Screen

 

[AndiG]

27" is so 1990 and I wouldn't buy a monitor that expensive for the provided value that includes cumbersome updates all the time. Apple could have moved all the sw logic to the connected Mac.

I'm looking forward to next gen 5K or 6K 32" monitors that aren't Apple flawed. I also do own an 5K LG Ultrafine monitor and while the panel is nice, colorful and bright, the problems start when you want to connect a standard gfx card to it.

At the moment no gfx card ships with thunderbolt or USB-C video port. And LG UltraFine 5K display requires two DisplayPort channels over a single Thunderbolt. A proprietary Apple solution that doesn't work with anything else in the whole world, but costs a ton of money!

At least situation seems to have improved a tiny little bit with the Studio display, but connecting it to anything else but Mac still seems to involve a lot of fun.
https://justin.searls.co/posts/connecting-a-gaming-pc-to-apple-studio-display/


Apple once made its comeback with standards. Darwin (macOS) is based on FreeBSD, OpenGL was the base for all the UX, Apple also supported and developed the LLVM project (OSS compiler project) and delivered implementations of its GCD for Linux (The main LLVM guy left Apple).
Maybe only a few of you guys will be aware of the fact that also the Apple printer system is CUPS (Common Unix Printer System) which was developed and releases under the GPL by (main developer) Michael Sweet (who left Apple).


So without all this OSS and Open Standards we wouldn't have any Apple today. But nowadays Apple gives a **** about open standards and nearly everything Apple does today is proprietary. Starting with stuff like Metal, Apple Silicon or simple monitor connections ...