I wish you had told me that before. I‘ve been doing it for years. If only I knew it was impossible…
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Apple Rumored to Launch Lower-Priced 24-Inch and 27-Inch External Displays: What to Expect
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DP v2.0 is pragmatically jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. Apple has no SoC that can drive DPv2 . If Apple does a display where the vast majority of the Mac base can't drive it, then they have a different problem.
( pragmatically can just set things so just don't jump into 120Hz mode and get more compatibility . Doing anything heavyweight 3D probably will quit 120Hz mode in most apps. It isn't going to be on all the time. ).
Over the extended long term if Apple wanted to do something like 8K at 120Hz then yeah DP v2.0 would be necessary. ( still would need to have DSC on. )
I wouldn't expect. DP v2 before M2 or M3 series. I don't think Apple is in a hurry there.
don't put words into people's mouths. nobody said it was impossible. it just wans't good at it
I suspect they just haven’t seen the value of offering a consumer grade one in the current market. Maybe they’ve seen a trend (COVID: people working from home) that suggests there’s now a market for semi-pro displays at prices we can (just about) swallow.
There's nothing better than a "standalone display" that requires a $999 stand.
Apple's current prices are so ridiculous that the few people who can afford them simply don't buy them out of principle alone. Tim Cook's in a pissing contest over pricing but doesn't yet realize nobody else has their pants down.
Relative to Apple's revenue stream? ... not that significantly much.
Five major factors.
1. 70+ % of Mac sales are laptops. All Mac laptops have a LCD panel. So therefore Apple has a 100% chance of a successful sell of a LCD monitor with that laptop sale. That is way, way , way, way better than any attachment rate they ever got with their old line up of discrete monitors.
2. The vast majority of the remaining 30 (or less) % of Mac are iMacs. Again a 100% chance of a "display" sale versus discrete monitor. So conservatively say half of the 30% is iMac. So 85+ %. So somewhere probably smaller than 15% of Mac market left.
3. Headless servers. Mac Mini and Mac Pros racked/embedded and deployed for CI/CB and other servers. This numbers in the many 10's of thousands and is growing. Nobody is typically getting a display sale out of that. Not as big of the percentage drop as the iMac , but just further erosion of the addressable market.
4. Apple monitors aren't particularly good general market monitors. One and only one input (typically an input format that Apple is more interested in than the general PC market ) . No buttons, so software controlled . Basically not going to get much help outside of Mac market.
Apple monitors aren't as diverse as the aggregate general market monitors. Shapes , sizes , features, etc. Folks specialized needs will probably going with the options that best match their priorities. That is a further reduction in attachment rate.
5. Opportunity costs. Apple takes fixed sized display team and.
a. improves iPhone screen leading to 10% increase in phone sales.
or
b. builds displays for. less than 10% of the Mac market.
Which one of those is the better return on investment?
Similarly, Apple has to spend some time and resources on supporting 3rd party displays anyway. Not everyone is going to be a Mac display. The attachment rate is likely under 50% on new system sales. (monitors tend to "outlast" the computers they are attached to. A substantial number of folks will plod forward with the "sunk cost" monitor they have. (e.g. go back through this thread and the other "monitors coming" thread and pick out the folks with "my Thunderbolt display works fine" , "I'm still using my ACD 30" for last 10 years " etc. Substantive numbers of folks already have a monitor and won't buy new one with a new headless Mac. )
Apple doesn't have a "sell everything to everybody" strategy at the baseline of the company objectives.
There is a sixth contextual factor in that if take the budget that Apple usually charges for a monitor and add another $300-400 to that and go shop the upper end of the other major players in the monitor market. ( Dell "Pro" , HP "Pro" , NEC "Pro" , EiZO , LG "pro" , etc. ) then it isn't like there is a slacker competitive landscape out there. If Apple doesn't do an external monitor then someone else probably will. Apple could try to 'Sherlock' those 'partners' , but these days that will also 'buy' additional regulatory scrutiny. ... is that worth it if barely moving the overall mac revenue needle ? Probably not.
If the market was more like the x86 processor one where one competitor was stumbling and the other was focused on solutions that didn't match Apple's primary interest ... then that would be a different opportunity cost mix. If there were no "good" external monitors might blow back and hurt base headless Mac sales. But outside of the "hard core" buy only Apple labeled stuff fan base ... that isn't were the general monitor market is at right now.
A possible driver for Apple could be if they open the Mini up to more fratricide with the iMac
M1. mini "slimmed out further" -- M1 iMac 24"
M1 Pro/Max Mini "Pro" -- M1 Pro/Max iMac Pro
That probably would lead to more variability in the amount of panels the iMacs were consuming and it could be an opportunity to soak up possible "slop" there with external displays that could relive the iMac production of unused panels. But that doesn't necessarily require an Apple labeled device. It wouldn't be primarily because Apple has some "fear of missing out" of the booming high margin monitor sales. That is more an opportunity to better optimize the supply chain.
Display with built in speakers and camera would be perfect match to apple tv.
Maybe Apple can maintain the $1299 price tag for the 5K, if increased production units allows enough room for it. I’m sure they will sell better than LG due to brand and construction/design.
A special edition with built in AppleTV, camera and speakers for $1599 could also sell well.
But remember: those displays are not for you (or even me, and I work in digital design and marketing!) They’re targeted at the very highest level of visual design professionals. Professionals who work at businesses where putting 20 of these monitors (with stands) on a single invoice doesn’t even get flagged by the bean counters. Companies who bill more per hour than lawyers.
Apple will sell so few of these that they kind of need to sell them for insane (to you and I) prices just to cover R&D.
I'm still rocking my Thunderbolt Display but only having USB-2.0 ports is quite the nuisance.
Other than that I'm still fine with the display. But if Apple were to finally present a suitable replacement for price sensitive customers such as me...?
I say: Bring it, Apple!
Other than that I'm still fine with the display. But if Apple were to finally present a suitable replacement for price sensitive customers such as me...?
I say: Bring it, Apple!
In general they segment the market so the standard iMac is your $2399 option and the Pro is the $4999 option.
It's all about figuring how much the customer is willing to pay and extracting that much.
What I will concede though is the market for $5000 devices may have been too small to warrant the effort.
24-inch iMac display with no chin and black bezels at $499 would be an instant purchase for me to pair with my MacBook Air. Now, they could get really fancy and leave the iMac chin and speaker system and add AirPlay functionality when the display isn't connected to a computer.
You present a lot of points but how about those of us that tether to a display? I do so at home and on location when I do large photo shoots. I realize that I'm in the minority but there are many careers that require such things and Apple has ignored us for years. Hell, remember when Apple discontinued the matte display? Apple forgot about the Photographers, Graphic Designers and such that made their Macs so successful.
Yeah, in a pinch. But the question is if the 120Hz is really worth compromising quality on the other end.
I would hate gaining quality on scrolling only "much of the time" while getting worse quality at some other times when compression is overwhelmed by large-scale changes and turns noticeably lossy.
Yeah, bandwidh-wise one 120Hz monitor is two 60Hz ones, both on the interfaces and on the GPU and memory.
I’m curious to know what is “low priced”, taking into account the price of the current display, 3000 could be considered low priced
If the M-Series SoC supports DisplayStream Compression (DSC), that can handle 5K @ 120Hz over TB4 using "visually lossless" compression.
I love my Apple stuff but I am not optimistic we'll see a sub $1300 monitor for consumers when they sell a stand for over $1000. But hey, I could be wrong (I hope I am wrong).
Since the Thunderbolt Display was discontinued in 2016, Apple has not offered a consumer-oriented external display. Apple did release the Pro Display XDR in 2019, but it is aimed at professionals and costs a hefty $4,999.
Fortunately, rumors suggest that Apple is developing two new lower-priced external displays that will be more suitable for everyday users. A new version of the Pro Display XDR with an Apple silicon chip is also said to be in development.
Heading into 2022, we've rounded up everything that we've heard so far about Apple's future display lineup below.
Early Rumors
In January 2021, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman was first to report that Apple had started early development of a lower-priced external display to sell alongside the Pro Display XDR. Gurman said the display would be geared more towards consumer than professional use and would have lower brightness and contrast ratio compared to the Pro Display XDR.
In July 2021, 9to5Mac's Filipe Espósito reported that Apple was testing a new external display with an A13 chip, and he said it would likely be a new Pro Display XDR. The report speculated that the chip could help a Mac achieve better performance when connected to the display and/or enable some dedicated features like AirPlay.
24-Inch Display
Earlier this week, often-accurate leaker @dylandkt claimed that LG is developing two new displays that have the same specifications as the current 24-inch iMac and an upcoming 27-inch iMac. While he said the displays currently have unbranded enclosures, he believes they will likely end up being standalone Apple-branded displays.
According to @dylandkt, one of the standalone displays will be based on the current 24-inch iMac, which has the following specs:
Like the 24-inch iMac, the standalone 24-inch display likely won't have mini-LED backlighting or ProMotion, meaning the display won't have increased brightness for HDR content or a variable refresh rate up to 120Hz for smoother scrolling.
- 4.5K Retina display with 4480×2520 resolution
- 500 nits brightness
- Support for 1 billion colors
- Support for DCI-P3 wide color gamut
- True Tone technology, which automatically adjusts the white balance of the display to match the color temperature of the light around you for a more natural viewing experience
Given that the 24-inch iMac starts at $1,299 in the United States, a standalone 24-inch display without any of the computer-related components like storage would almost certainly be priced at less than $1,299, but pricing ultimately remains to be seen.
27-Inch Display
According to @dylandkt, Apple's larger 27-inch display will be based on the rumored Apple silicon version of the 27-inch iMac. The leaker said this display appears to have mini-LED backlighting and a 120Hz variable refresh rate, so it should feature ProMotion.
Earlier this week, display industry analyst Ross Young claimed that Apple is planning to release a new 27-inch iMac with a mini-LED display and ProMotion in the first half of 2022, so rumors do appear to be aligning for these products.
Little else is known about the 27-inch display at this point since the upcoming 27-inch iMac has yet to be released, so we don't have complete specs.
The current 27-inch iMac starts at $1,799 in the United States.
New Pro Display XDR
LG is also working on a 32-inch display that is likely to be a new version of the Pro Display XDR, according to @dylandkt. The leaker said the display appears to be equipped with an unspecified Apple silicon chip and will gain support for ProMotion.
It's likely that the new Pro Display XDR would remain priced around $4,999.
Release Timeframe
Rumors have yet to provide a release timeframe for the new Apple displays, but @dylandkt said LG is still at an "early development" stage.
Article Link: Apple Rumored to Launch Lower-Priced 24-Inch and 27-Inch External Displays: What to Expect
Those two are just not related since the XDR is explicitly a high-end, low-volume product and priced accordingly. A more pedestrian monitor would likely be more in line with the previous Thunderbolt Displays.
No, as I have explained above it does not, not even at 8bit color, even less so with 10bit.
Compression could be one workaround but it also costs some quality under certain circumstances which compromises exactly the one aspect 120Hz is supposed to improve on.
Newer Display Port modes could transfer the display data uncompressed, but then that port on the computer must be hardware-switched to that alternate mode (using all 4 lanes for output, not 2 in each direction as for Thunderbolt, so 80Gbps but output-only) and that could only work with Macs which have Thunderbolt / Display Port sockets prepared for this down to the SoC level, so that would not work with other Macs at all and such a monitor would need at least a backward compatibility mode at 60Hz for those.
Until the Thunderbolt throughput is upgraded further a 5k 120Hz monitor using just a single Thunderbolt port remains a complicated challenge which can only work with compromises of some kind.
6k @10bit + 60Hz for the XDR display is actually almost exactly the maximum TB3/TB4 can manage through one cable without compression; That the XDR display only has USB2 ports and not USB3 is perfectly apt: The display is already eating up almost all the Thunderbolt output bandwidth so there's just almost nothing left for USB3 any more!
Look at the 13” M1 MacBook Pro compared to the M1 Mac Mini. Refusing to put out a Pro laptop that offers at least one usb-A, and maybe an HDMI? Instead, they made everyone wait a year. But consider how many would still have waited, but ALSO purchased a 13”? Even now, if they came out with a 13” with minimal, usable connectivity …
$599?
yathink?
The ONLY 24” monitor they offer on the Apple Store now is an LG. It’s Apple friendly of course, having two thunderbolt and two USB-C ports. No other monitor like it. Why don’t I own one; with a dead iMac, two M1 Airs and a 16” M1 Pro? I’d LOVE to have a larger, MacBook friendly monitor.
Two reasons: The 24” LG offered for the last few years is $699!! Plus, there‘s ALWAYS a shipping delay. Now it’s 10-12 WEEKS!! That’s why …
Do you really believe Apple will bring in a new, LG-based, Apple-Friendly monitor; with iMac cosmetics, for LESS than $699? I‘d LOVE to believe it, but frayed knot.
I’m guessing between $900 and $1,200. Maybe more.
If these monitors come out along with the new iMac Pro’s, at least a half million of us worldwide, will be stuck for six months in Apple‘s “might as well” hypnotic loop/trance: Might as well spend the extra $200; but then, for an extra $50; oh wait, my wife is taking classes; with the Ed discount, maybe I can swing the binned iMac Pro … but wait! Might as well wait for it to come out on the refurb sight. But no! That’ll be at least 18 mos … Might as well spend $699 now for the LG. But wait! 10-12 weeks before it ships? Might as well wait for these new ones …
As we’ve seen; many will eventually snap, not being able to handle the consideration of all the permutations. And don’t forget the “Can’t decide between“ threads that are sure to pop up; and the millions worldwide that will order every permutation to see which one they want; send the others back a week later; then start the “I regret KEEPING this one“ threads.
Let the processing times and shipping delays begin!