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Apple's Pro Display XDR is Nearly Five Years Old With No Update in Sight

Neil Harrison said:
I had an LG 4k display and it’s not half as good as the studio display.
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I have the LG 5K display and the Apple Studio display. Both have good panels but the Apple build quality is much better.

The LG plastic surround on mine has cracked at the corners which seems a known thing.

Apple needs to change future macOS releases to make the XDR display unsupported and release a new version to force everyone to pay Apple tax again… and make sure the new version doesn’t work with older macs… Oh, and also drop all support for the old display models.

Or am I being too cynical?

Edit: My cynicism must have been correct judging by the reactions.
 
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Neil Harrison said:
I had an LG 4k display and it’s not half as good as the studio display.
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Spot-on. My Mac Studio computer drives my ASD for photo processing and general computing.

I use the three USB-C connectors on the back of ASD for driving three 32" 4K LG displays for when I want to run X-Plane flight simulator. While the LG displays are nice and work fine for X-Plane, they don't live up to the optical quality of the ASD. And for my purposes, they don't need to.

If I weren't into using Lightroom for processing image files, one of my three LG displays would be fine for general purpose computing.
 
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Wow, the Apple screens nobody sane bought are old and ridiculously overpriced?

Who would EVER have guessed that would happen.

(I mean, my 27" Cinema Display is still pretty decent, but it was free, so... I still can't quite get the color calibrated quite right compared to the iMac next to it. Tried again earlier today actually.)
 
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Give me an iMac without the Mac part to pair with my MBA. I don’t need a display more expensive than the laptop.
 
andrewxgx said:
problem is, theres no way to connect that to a Mac
needs Thunderbolt 5 for 5k@120Hz (so theres chance for 120 Hz Studio Display if M4 has TB5)
not sure if it supports 6k@120Hz
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Took 2 full pages for someone to point out that there is no current Mac that can support a pixel density/refresh rate higher than what the current XDR offers. So a “better” higher-ape model would be absolutely useless to any Mac user.
 
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BeatCrazy said:
Took 2 full pages for someone to point out that there is no current Mac that can support a pixel density/refresh rate higher than what the current XDR offers. So a “better” higher-ape model would be absolutely useless to any Mac user.
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Well, luckily there will be new Macs announced soon, even if they won't have TB5 yet.
 
More than an update to the XDR, I would love a 50/60% slash in price for the display and stand/nano. Still expensive but more tolerable. For a 5 year old tech, I don’t think is asking too much but knowing Apple, they won’t do it which sucks.
For me the ASD is just too small.
 
4dmaze said:
I have wondered about this a lot lately. The XDR has never been discounted or on sale anywhere. Never been sold by Apple as refurbished (in 5 years!) I still use two 18 year old 30" Cinema Displays.

I don't like the new designs (screen ratio of a pencil). The 30" are great for using side by side. Pages of paper or scripts are tall not wide, more tall space is needed. I think they made the mistake of throwing in the kitchen sink and having to price accordingly without offering a lower cost alternative. They may consider their monitors as not as important in the larger scheme of things but us non-video editor content creators (3D, designers, animators, etc.) need these critically.
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Like you I still have two ACD 30”. I’m a designer as well and would love the XDR, that’s a perfect size but that price blows. If it was half, I would buy it.
 
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gugy said:
More than an update to the XDR, I would love a 50/60% slash in price for the display and stand/nano. Still expensive but more tolerable. For a 5 year old tech, I don’t think is asking too much but knowing Apple, they won’t do it which sucks.
For me the ASD is just too small.
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I doubt the manufacturing costs of the XDR has gone down in price much.

It is an expensive design, and accomplishes HDR via an expensive system. I'm sure it's margins are healthy, but I doubt Apple sees any reason to decrease its price.

If anything, Apple will just replace it with a newer model, with newer tech, and maybe it will be only $3500?
 
DavidSchaub said:
I doubt the manufacturing costs of the XDR has gone down in price much.

It is an expensive design, and accomplishes HDR via an expensive system. I'm sure it's margins are healthy, but I doubt Apple sees any reason to decrease its price.

If anything, Apple will just replace it with a newer model, with newer tech, and maybe it will be only $3500?
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Don’t really have expectations it will happen, mostly wishful thinking. 😂
If the motion graphics/design industry wasn’t going through a big downturn, I would suck it and pay for the XDR. I just can’t justify that price tag of $7k (nano/tax) and have been thinking the same way for these last 5 years. Well, it is what it is.
 
MacRumors said:
Additional features that customers are hoping for with the next Pro Display XDR include a built-in camera, speakers, and a higher refresh rate.
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Why would pro users want a built-in camera and built-in speakers? Built-in cameras and speakers are low quality, and may have a place in consumer displays, but not in pro displays. Pros don't care much about form factor and wires, and would prefer the higher quality external webcams like a 4K Logitech and the higher quality external speakers.
 
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Asarien said:
The problem with out of touch titans of industry, is that they make out of touch products based on their own wealth biases.
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Give people OLED 144Hz with amazing colour calibration etc etc and triple the existing price. It will sell, I promise.
 
ThomasJL said:
Why would pro users want a built-in camera and built-in speakers?
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Pro users have to do Teams meetings from time to time in the age of mixed location working.

Unfortunately you can't just bury your head in Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects or inDesign all day (or whatever other "pro" apps you use), there is always the mundane stuff that gets in the way of the nice things.
 
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ThomasJL said:
Why would pro users want a built-in camera and built-in speakers? Built-in cameras and speakers are low quality, and may have a place in consumer displays, but not in pro displays. Pros don't care much about form factor and wires, and would prefer the higher quality external webcams like a 4K Logitech and the higher quality external speakers.
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All “pros” are the same?
 
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When will a new monitor arrive? Simple.
If Apple installs Thunderbolt 5.

That's the point.
The company is obsessed with using as few cables as possible. Everything should work via one connection.

And unlike Gurman, who cluelessly earns his money by rambling, others know that more than 60 Hz is only possible with Thunderbolt from Series 5 onwards.

So once again for everyone: as long as Apple only uses Thunderbolt 4, there will be no new monitor. Unless you really believe that Apple will switch and use multiple ports in parallel.
 
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nikaru said:
Then why bother in developing a display in a first place? Very nice display for a very very niche market. Ton of money and time to design and manufacture, to ultimately sell probably less than 100.000 units worldwide. It is obvious why do see the need of update, even a modest one.
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Apple sells monitors for the same reason it sells its unpopular Mac Pro. Like Mercedes its S-Class or BMW its 7 Series.
Prestige.

If you're active in the premium segment, you need products that don't pay off because the target group is tiny, but to show that you have this premium claim.

Otherwise there would be neither the Pro Display nor the Mac Pro.
 
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If all they added to the 5K studio display was ProMotion, I’d sell mine and buy in a heartbeat. It makes that much of a difference to the “feel” of performance. Using my built in display on my MBP makes my studio display (and the Mac itself) feel juddery.
 
Display tech has stagnated. We got higher refresh rates for gamers but I’m not a gamer. I’m not keen on OLED due to burn in. I recently bought a studio display as they went on sale. I already had an lg 5k which I bought on release in 2016 (8 years ago). The studio display is not a measurably better display side by side. The case is nicer that’s about all.

On a side note, I was incredibly disappointed by the speakers in the studio display. A pair of HomePod minis (which suck compared to my full size HomePods) completely destroys the display speakers. The webcam is so bad too lol but not something I ever use.
 
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c84216 said:
These aren't the kind of products that scream for even the most occasional of updates. Display tech is pretty mature and you don't see 120hz displays of this size and pixel density in Apple's price ranges. The XDR should come into parity with the Studio for the camera and speakers...but that's about it.
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Not really though..
Mini led with More dimming zones..
Duo layer oled..
120hz refresh rate with usb4.0/thunderbolt 5..
A small os that supports airplay and other basic apps..

A lot could happen
 
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