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I think what users here are asking is: if there will be a non pro screen for home use? Or do they have to settle with non apple screens. Any rumors of a non pro apple display?
Yes, that's the thing I've been wondering about as well. Will we get say a standalone 5k iMac screen? Apple had reasonably priced cinema displays in the past. Will we get something like that again?
 
Can someone pls explain why monitor calibration is necessary?

- Most often displays come out of the factory with poor calibration, provided they're uniform enough in the first place (big problem here with consumer displays in general) you can improve on their colour accuracy out of the box.
- They may not be calibrated at the right colour temperature for your workflow or for the right colour space or with the right settings (some workflows for example require absolute black / white points). Basically, you might want to create several profiles for, for example, 4000k, 5500k, 6500k.
- Displays drift over time for various reasons. Their colour accuracy will change and calibration is needed to keep it in check.
 
Yes, that's the thing I've been wondering about as well. Will we get say a standalone 5k iMac screen? Apple had reasonably priced cinema displays in the past. Will we get something like that again?
I don’t think Apple displays were ever reasonably priced. They’ve always been priced at a premium in the market. In the Cinema Display era, you could get Dell monitors with the same LCD panel for less than half the cost. That’s a heavy premium for design and OS brightness control. The 5K iMac remains an outlier in this, which is a relative bargain considering the dearth of options and cost for stand-alone 5K displays.
 
Can someone pls explain why monitor calibration is necessary?
Displays drift in terms of accuracy as they being used. Colourists must recalibrate them every some months in order to keep them up to spec. They also need to set the display paramiters up to certain standards they will deliver project for. But I doubt any serious colourists that do high end work would buy this display, its just not that good, especially for HDR.
 
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For the price and for the target audience shouldn't this have been available day 1 and not almost a year later?

Do you even know what a spectroradiometer is, and what it's use entails? Of course not, otherwise you wouldn't have asked such a sill question.

This isn't something you pick up at Best Buy and use out of the box without any training. A cheap spectroradiometer costs more than the display itself, and requires knowledge on how to use it.
 
I'm not an expert, but I'm guessing it's for the same reason guitar players tune their guitars.
Kinda... but it's more like flat response monitoring speakers used in recording studios. Those speakers have "uncolored" sound response, but they need calibration (frequency response adjustments) depending on the room acoustics they will be used in, so the mix and mastering engineers have an accurate representation of the sound they are getting. This allows them to take decisions that affect how music or film will sound on PC speakers, cell phone speakers, high-end audio systems, headphones, etc.
 
I don’t think Apple displays were ever reasonably priced. They’ve always been priced at a premium in the market. In the Cinema Display era, you could get Dell monitors with the same LCD panel for less than half the cost. That’s a heavy premium for design and OS brightness control. The 5K iMac remains an outlier in this, which is a relative bargain considering the dearth of options and cost for stand-alone 5K displays.

yeah, wrong. A comparable display to the XDR runs upwards of $15k. For people who actually know what this is and have a need for it, it's a bargain. If you're just going to use it post on MR, then it's a complete waste of money.

 
Obviously this display is not for you.
If you do work that demands the specs this display offers, then it is not a bad deal.
I do believe Apple should offer a consumer display 5K res at $1200. There is a huge segment that would buy these.

Honestly, I’d rather whatever is in the MacBook pros just bigger. Those displays are pretty much perfect in every way.
 
I find it unbelievable, that people are buying these displays.
I know one person's ceiling in another person's floor... That for some, $6,000 is $6. I get that. While I've not seen one of these displays in person, I can't imagine the picture being $7k good. And I have a pretty good imagination.
Sure, a display can be more than just the image quality. Makes me wonder how the price tag is distributed between picture quality, 'other' hardware/build quality and "we think enough people will pay that much to justify the product."
That said, I'd love to see one of these things...
 
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I am a Developer and waited endlessly for a cheaper option for an external 27"+ Retina display for my 16" MBP. I finally bit the bullet and bought an XDR. I am super happy with the display and since I use it to make money, can more easily justify the expense.
Same here the only weird thing is I don’t see variation in blacks too well. Then when I export footage to my phone I can see the detail of where the blacks have degraded or are of. But I simply cannot see them in the xdr display. Which almost defeats the purpose of me getting it ha
 
I think what users here are asking is: if there will be a non pro screen for home use? Or do they have to settle with non apple screens. Any rumors of a non pro apple display?

Not a hint, though there have been people asking for it.

I think the main drawback is Apple doesn't believe there is enough of a market to offer it (which implies there is enough of a market to offer the Pro Display XDR).

As others have noted, the Apple Cinema displays were always significantly more expensive than directly-comparable monitors and I imagine that they did not sell "well" (at least in quantities that Apple considered "well"). And I believe that that is why Apple was content to let LG sell their 4K and 5K panels used in the iMac 4K and 5K under their own brand than compete with them because they (probably correctly) presumed the not-insignificant premium they would charge over LG would make them "poor" sellers.

That being said, I do think Apple might have been too pessimistic. Apple does perform additional conformity calibration on the panels they use in the 4K and 5K iMacs which is why if you put two side-by-side, they will look pretty comparable. Based on reports / complaints, LG does not do this and an LG Ultrafine 4K or 5K monitor can (and apparently often does) look very different than the iMac 4K / iMac 5K it is connected to even though both use the identical panel. As such, Apple might very well have been able to secure that pricing premium due to better uniformity with the iMacs than the LG OEM displays.
 
Same here the only weird thing is I don’t see variation in blacks too well. Then when I export footage to my phone I can see the detail of where the blacks have degraded or are of. But I simply cannot see them in the xdr display. Which almost defeats the purpose of me getting it.

The OLED display on the iPhone has "perfect blacks" compared to the LCD display of the Pro XDR because each pixel emits it's own light so there is no need for backlighting. The Pro XDR display does have multiple LED backlights (though it is not a MiniLED display) so it does better than most LCDs in terms of Black Level, but it cannot match an OLED as there is some light-leak/bleed-through from those backlights.
 
I know one person's ceiling in another person's floor... That for some, $6,000 is $6. I get that. While I've not seen one of these displays in person, I can't imagine the picture being $7k good. And I have a pretty good imagination.
It’s not just a matter of “some people are richer”. If you’re using the monitor for web surfing, then it’s not $7k good for your uses. If you’re working on, say, filmmaking, where your color/brightness/etc has to be exactly the same as everyone else who’s working on the production (producers, editors, special effects artists, etc.), then it’s much more than $7k good - it doesn’t need to be just pretty, it needs to be crazily accurate. For the intended audience this monitor is a bargain. But the general consumer isn’t the intended audience for this monitor. Some understand that, and others get outraged / offended.

I wish Apple would make a $1k-ish monitor as well as this one - it’d be a lovely pairing with a M1 Mac Mini - but they haven’t, yet.
 
Wait—you couldn't calibrate this thing before? I've never owned a display that I couldn't calibrate at any price point. Apple once again not understanding professionals.
 
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