Apple Stopgap Display

[Gudi]

The iMac Pro (2017) was famously meant to be a stopgap to bridge the time until the Mac Pro (2019).

Don’t Weep For The Discontinued iMac Pro. It Was Always A Stopgap.
In April of 2017, Apple did a very un-Apple thing. During a product launch event, then-Senior VP of Marketing Phil Schiller pre-announced a new Mac Pro, conceding that it was not going to be launched anytime soon. As professional and creative users of Apple’s highest-end Macs grew restless, Schiller’s peek under the tent was a “please be patient with us” move.

Although Apple didn't say it out loud, the Studio Display (2022) is also a stopgap to bridge the time between the last large Intel iMac and the first large Apple Silicon iMac. From the iFixit teardown we know, the Studio Display wasn't always meant to be a display. It's basically a failed first attempt at designing a flat iMac with a slim power supply inside, later repurposed as a display.

There was no strategic shift to abandon the larger iMac in favor of an external display. They simply couldn't make it work, probably because of heat. The 24-inch iMac took a clue from flat laptops and switched to an external power supply and the M1, which even works when passively cooled. But the larger iMac must compare favorably to the 10-core Intel Core i9 with a Geekbench multi-core score of 9027 and so can't use the M1.

For the most part the large iMac is the desktop version of the MacBook Pro, performance-wise as well as in display quality and i/o-ports. Whereas the small iMac is akin to the MacBook Air, with fewer ports and a less premium display. Therefore it isn't that unusual that both iMacs aren't updated at the same time. The larger iMac with Apple Silicon will eventually come.

And then it will become apparent that the Studio Display is obsolete. It has almost the same price and most of the same components that go into an iMac, but without the performance and usability. Why pay for an A13 Bionic only to run a webcam and a usb-hub? It's a terribly limited device with all the downsides and none of the upsides of an All-in-One. The Studio Display only exists, because without it there would be a large hole in Apple's lineup right now.

With their own bootloader and silicon Apple could, should and will make iMacs work as displays for MacBooks and headless Mac desktops. There is no good reason not to do it. The supply chain leakers, who confused the Studio Display for an upcoming new iMac are now saying Apple is working on multiple new monitors powered by Apple Silicon. I bet they got it all wrong again and what Apple is working on is an iMac Pro XDR. In the end what is an Apple Display other than an impotent iMac? And how many impotent iMacs do we need?

Have We Seen the Last of the 27-inch iMac?
The confusion apparently stemmed from the fact that the Studio Display features a webcam and built-in Apple silicon, making it appear in supply chains to be an iMac when it's not.

Gurman: Apple Working on New Monitors, Including Updated Pro Display XDR
In his newsletter today, Gurman said the new monitors will be powered by Apple silicon, just like the Studio Display has an A13 Bionic chip.

 

[Zest28]

The Studio Display + Mac Studio is the new iMac Pro. And it is even cheaper now as the iMac Pro starting price was $5000 while the Studio Display + Mac Studio starts at $1600 + $2000 = $3600.

Heck, you buy the Studio Display + M1 Ultra Mac Studio for $5600 which is almost as much as the base price of the iMac Pro.

So not sure why you think the Apple Studio display is obsolete when it enables a cheaper system than the iMac Pro.

 

[theluggage]

The iMac Pro (2017) was famously meant to be a stopgap to bridge the time until the Mac Pro (2019).

Nobody knows that - it's all speculation, and the timing really doesn't work out: The iMac Pro doesn't look like a kludge - a cooling system that could quietly run a Xeon and a workstation-class GPU didn't develop itself from scratch in 6 months. It would have been in an advanced stage of development in April 2017 when the infamous press conference happened. If Apple had wanted a "stopgap" Mac Pro, they could have thrown together a full-tower Hackintosh in a nice aluminium box overnight.

I think it is more plausible that the iMac Pro was going to be "the future of the Mac Pro" - Apple typically stick with an overall design for 3-4 years, so even if the Trashcan had been a success it would have been ripe for a major makeover in 2017. My guess - about 6 months before launch, they showed it to some key customers/developers and got laughed off of stage because: (a) it was even less expandable than the Trashcan, (b) it was an all in one with no choice of display (which also meant that the mess of external boxes you hung off the trashcan & tucked out of the way now had to live within 1m of your desktop).

At that press conference (transcript) the only thing they definitely committed to about what became the 2019 Mac Pro was that it would come with a separate display. The only failing they really acknowledged with the trashcan was the "thermal corner" thing that stopped them updating it.

The expandability, lack of PCIe, internal storage expansion etc. were certainly a large part of why people were unhappy with the trashcan, but what brought that to a head after 4 years? I think the last straw was being forced to buy a "pro" machine permanently wedded to an (admittedly very nice) "prosumer" 27" display. That's hopeless if you have specialised display needs, or want a multi-display system.

From the iFixit teardown we know, the Studio Display wasn't always meant to be a display.

Again - fairly shallow speculation - a modern high-end monitor needs cooling fans (esp. if it is an ultra-bright one and/or has a large PSU to run USB-C laptops) and a fairly powerful on-board computer/media processor (esp. if it's going to do clever things with simulated surround sound and face-tracking cameras). Using an A-series processor makes perfect sense for Apple.

Look more closely at that teardown and the wheels come off the 'failed iMac' theory - the fans are nowhere near the processor board (OK for a passively cooled phone chip, but a M1 Pro/Max/Ultra would need to be right next to/underneath the fan) and most of that internal space is taken up by the expensive, ultra-thin power supply which is mainly needed to charge laptops via USB-C.

Why pay for an A13 Bionic only to run a webcam and a usb-hub?

...and a HomePod-esque "surround" sound system with fancy audio processing, plus, that webcam with fancy face-tracking features - plus, probably, probably auto-exposure, colour balance etc. implemented in software rather than hardware, for which Apple already has Apple Silicon/Darwin implementations. Possibly image processing upscaling/downscaling, dealing with display stream compression/DRM etc. for the screen, too (I don't know about that).

The SD needs some sort of fairly powerful onboard processor, and I think maybe, just maybe Apple know the guy who makes A13 Bionics and can get them at "mates rates". What are they going to do - license a chip from Samsung? Spoiler: iPhones have massive markups, any component used in the iPhone is already made in biblical quantities with corresponding economies of scale.

It's a terribly limited device with all the downsides and none of the upsides of an All-in-One.

The SD isn't an all-in-one, it's a standalone display and, as such, lacks the biggest disadvantage of an All-in-One - having a display that will be good for 10 years permanently wedded to a computer that will be outdated in 3-4 years.

Yes, it's expensive (I personally wouldn't buy one) - but its one of only about two 5k displays on the market, and the nearest competitor, the LG ultrafine, costs over $1000 so Apple can get away with that.

...and from Apple's point of view, a new "large" iMac would sell too a small niche who wanted a "pro" all-in-one whereas the Studio Display will sell to Mac Studio buyers, Mac Pro buyers and the potentially huge potential market of MacBook Pro users.

However, the thing that has really decimated the iMac market is the Apple Silicon MacBook Pro. With Intel, there used to be a big performance gap between the mobile-class CPUs and GPUs in MacBook Pros and the desktop-class chips in iMacs. With Apple Silicon, a M1 Max MacBook Pro has pretty much the same power as a Mac Studio with the same SoC. All those people who used to use a MBP on the road and an iMac on the desktop are suddenly only going to need the MBP and a docking station (which is probably the main reason why Apple made the Studio Display).

 

[Madonion]

do what Whitworth ( the inventor of the Whitworth thread form ) he did work in materials testing after the titanic disaster, his Moto was " Facts not Opinions "

 

[Gudi]

Studio Display enables a cheaper system than the iMac Pro.

Nonsense! The M1 Ultra enables a cheaper system than Intel Xeon. The display contributes nothing to the performance and can be connected to any Mac Pro. What the Studio Display enables is to replace the LG 5K UltraFine with an equivalent Apple-branded display (at a much higher price). It gives the Apples sales team something to point at for customers who look for a 27-inch Retina Mac. But it's not cheaper than any of the previous solutions. It's just there in lack of an iMac.

 

[Kazgarth]

The Studio Display + Mac Studio is the new iMac Pro. And it is even cheaper now as the iMac Pro starting price was $5000 while the Studio Display + Mac Studio starts at $1600 + $2000 = $3600.

Heck, you buy the Studio Display + M1 Ultra Mac Studio for $5600 which is almost as much as the base price of the iMac Pro.

So not sure why you think the Apple Studio display is obsolete when it enables a cheaper system than the iMac Pro.

The base Mac Studio is equivalent to 27" iMac which was sold for $1999 including the 5K display.

 

[Gudi]

Nobody knows that - it's all speculation, and the timing really doesn't work out: The iMac Pro doesn't look like a kludge - a cooling system that could quietly run a Xeon and a workstation-class GPU didn't develop itself from scratch in 6 months.

Nobody said the iMac Pro was a kludge or rushed in development. It was a stopgap solution in the sense that Apple knew, what pro customers really wanted was a modular Mac Pro, which was upgradable with standard PCIe expansion slots. The iMac Pro was at least 4 years newer at its release than the un-upgradable "trashcan" Mac Pro, which never received any upgrades during its 6 years of existence. It wasn't a solution to the problem, it was just a stopgap until the real solution was available in form of the Mac Pro (2019).

The situation is similar, because what most iMac customers really want is simply a large iMac with Apple Silicon and reasonably good performance (at about the level of the new MacBook Pros). What they got instead was a display the size of an iMac, which can be connected to any Apple Silicon Mac, fast or slow. This can only be a stopgap solution, if what you care most about is display size and not the All-in-One form factor or a good price. The Studio Display doesn't even come with keyboard and mouse!

 

[dandeco]

Yep, and they came out with the iMac Pro because Apple was aware of how a lot of professionals were using the 27" Retina iMac. A great computer for professional graphics design and video editing and such, thanks to said display, user-upgradeable RAM, 3.X Ghz multicore Intel processing, dedicated graphics cards as standard, and versatile I/O port options (four USB 3.0, two Thunderbolt, GigaBit Ethernet and an SD card slot). So they decided to come up with an even beefier version of that as kind of a stopgap before the 2019 Mac Pro.
And again I say, I suspect once Apple comes out with a bigger iMac than the 24" model, it's going to be the one to get "iMac Pro" branding.

 

[Gudi]

The SD isn't an all-in-one, it's a standalone display and, as such, lacks the biggest disadvantage of an All-in-One - having a display that will be good for 10 years permanently wedded to a computer that will be outdated in 3-4 years.

The Studio Display has the same iMac Retina display from 2014. It has P3 colors which the iMac added in 2015, but not the HDR-support the iMac gained in 2020. It's 10 year technology run is about to end, when mini-LED and ProMotion have come up from iPad Pros to MacBook Pros to finally arrive in form of the iMac Pro XDR. If the Studio Display was top-notch, it wouldn't soon be obsolete. But it isn't. It's an average old iMac display for $1,599.

New silicon, new form factor and new display sizes usually arrive at the same time. The new iMac will set the basic display parameters for the next decade. Just as the 4K iMac grew to become the 4.5K iMac, the 5K iMac might as well grow to 6K. The Studio Display just echoes the display standards of the outgoing decade, not the coming decade.

 

[theluggage]

If the Studio Display was top-notch, it wouldn't soon be obsolete. But it isn't. It's an average old iMac display for $1,599.

Good job its not welded in to an iMac then, so you can get a cheap 4k today and if something better comes out next year you can keep your Mac and change the display. The ability to choose the computer and display separately works both ways... Now, if you wanted to claim that the Studio Display is a stop-gap display until 5k+, 27"+ miniLED screens appear I'd be inclined to agree.

when mini-LED and ProMotion have come up from iPad Pros to MacBook Pros to finally arrive in form of the iMac Pro XDR

Then we're back to expensive displays that are going to outlive the Macs built into them... and they will be expensive because the only people now buying 220ppi screens are Mac users, so don't go expecting any XDR replacements for those $2000-$2500 iMacs that people are mourning.

 

[GMShadow]

The base Mac Studio is equivalent to 27" iMac which was sold for $1999 including the 5K display.

The 27" iMac 5K was $1799 for the base, and that was all you needed. A Mac Studio is $1999 with no display, and a 5K panel isn't cheap. There's a bit of a gap in the lineup still.

 

[DotCom2]

This is all very interesting. Now I don't know what I am going to do.

 

[Gudi]

Then we're back to expensive displays that are going to outlive the Macs built into them...

Even Intel iMacs are being used for decades, precisely because the displays are still good and performance isn't an issue for many computing tasks. For what you get the iMac was always an attractive package, which you couldn't match by buying everything separately.

$900 LG UltraFine 5K
$700 Mac mini
$150 Magic Keyboard with Touch ID
$80 Magic Mouse
+ speaker, woofer, microphone, camera

The iMac is a rather inexpensive way to buy a high quality display. And the deal will only get better with an even better display. As demonstrated by the Studio Display, you don't save much money by omitting XDR and the entire Mac part. With Apple Silicon the useable lifetime of iMacs is only going to increase, because they run cooler, silent and efficiently. And without Intel's monopoly prices, we will at least see more performance in the base model iMacs, if not lower prices in general. Even though Apple's official support for using iMacs as monitors isn't great, it is certainly possible. So you don't have to throw away a perfectly good monitor when the computer turns vintage.

and they will be expensive because the only people now buying 220ppi screens are Mac users, so don't go expecting any XDR replacements for those $2000-$2500 iMacs that people are mourning.

But you do have to accept a certain price level with any Apple product. Every feature you won't find on a PC is an "Apple-only" benefit of the Mac platform. So I do welcome 218 ppi, P3, XDR and ProMotion! The way you save money is by choosing your upgrade path wisely. Not by mixing and matching cheaper PC peripherals into your Mac setup. At least you don't have to buy an Apple Display without a Mac or a Mac without an Apple Display. And certainly not both without keyboard and mouse. You shouldn't lower your expectations only because Apple doesn't offer a large iMac right now. These are just the circumstances of an ongoing transition to Apple Silicon.

Keep your eyes on the goal and the gaps in Apple's lineup will eventually be filled. For years people complained that there was no desktop between the fastest Mac mini and the slowest Mac Pro. Except for the all-in-one iMac, which was also performance limited by using mobile CPU variants. And now these people have everything they ever wanted with the Mac Studio. Great for them! Not great for everybody.

 

[enterthemerdaverse]

The Studio Display has the same iMac Retina display from 2014. It has P3 colors which the iMac added in 2015, but not the HDR-support the iMac gained in 2020. It's 10 year technology run is about to end

Incorrect. You are only looking at the resolution and profile support but not accuracy and brightness. P3 rendition is about 2% higher and AdobeRGB is around 10% more accurate on the Studio Display.

The Studio Display also supports reference modes and refresh rates that the 2014-2015 iMac 5K didn’t support and is about 150 nits brighter. The viewing angle is also much better.

There are other benefits with modern display panels. Back in 2014-2016 many iMacs displays were compromised of two panels stuck together. That meant one side could be a little more color accurate than the other. We used to see this inaccuracy in the studio and laugh about it.

 

[Gudi]

There are other benefits with modern display panels. Back in 2014-2016 many iMacs displays were compromised of two panels stuck together. That meant one side could be a little more color accurate than the other. We used to see this inaccuracy in the studio and laugh about it.

Back in the days HDMI didn't even had enough bandwidth to run a 4K display at 60Hz. HDMI 2.0 was going to fix that with a max resolution of 3840×2160p@60 Hz. Still not enough for a 5K iMac. Only DisplayPort 1.3 could later on barely handle 5120×2880p@60Hz@8bit. The industry solution for when there's not enough bandwidth is to run two cables to the monitor, delivering separate video signals for the left and right half of the display. So there weren't two panels stuck together, but two connections.

 

[enterthemerdaverse]

Back in the days HDMI didn't even had enough bandwidth to run a 4K display at 60Hz. HDMI 2.0 was going to fix that with a max resolution of 3840×2160p@60 Hz. Still not enough for a 5K iMac. Only DisplayPort 1.3 could later on barely handle 5120×2880p@60Hz@8bit. The industry solution for when there's not enough bandwidth is to run two cables to the monitor, delivering separate video signals for the left and right half of the display. So there weren't two panels stuck together, but two connections.

Yes two connections not two panels.