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MacBook Neo Compatible With New Studio Displays, But There's a Catch

applesith said:
$500 macbook users are not buying $1600+ displays.
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From my understanding of the discourse so far, the concern is that the child who had a Neo forced on them, and their beloved iPad taken away, is going to occasionally need to plug into mommy & daddy's Studio Display to do school work.

Perhaps while being watched or something maybe?

You'll take this keyboard, mouse and lack of touch input GimpBook and you'll LOVE IT.
Mommy & Daddy love macOS and that's what we DO in this house!
 
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turbineseaplane said:
From my understanding of the discourse so far, the concern is that the child who had a Neo forced on them, and their beloved iPad taken away, is going to occasionally need to plug into mommy & daddy's Studio Display to do school work.

Perhaps while being watched or something maybe?
Click to expand...

And they can plug in and use it. Plus, were they using their budget iPad with such an expensive display?
 
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I don't think that someone is likely to buy the cheapest Macbook, and the most expensive Apple Display and use them together.

A lot of people don't understand that the Macbook Neo ISN'T designed for high-end tasks that people buy the most expensive equipment for. A lot of people on this forum have been needlessly complaining about a product they'll likely never purchase, because they already have the highest end equipment anyway.

I think that some people have a culture of elitism, and like to talk down to people who don't have as powerful of a computer as they do, which is silly.
 
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How will this work if the Neo doesn't have Thunderbolt ports? Does that mean it will support other devices without Thunderbolt ports like iPhone or the non-Thunderbolt iPads?
 
While the Studio Display is 5K, the default is to display 1440p (which is then pixel doubled for "retina" or whatever). Confusing, what the Neo is supposed to be limited to outputting?
 
turbineseaplane said:
This is where we are at with the Neo now?

Any questions or concerns = "not for you".
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Well, hopefully in the coming weeks we'll see proper reviews and sustained hands-on experiences - rather than just gushy re-readings of the press release - and find out whether it does what it says on the tin or if it has major flaws.

I guess there will also be reviews from people who's first reaction is to see how it performs on DaVinci or Blender... which will be interesting but not really relevant. The target market for this will be getting more than they needed if they can draw a rotating teapot.

Meanwhile, yes, there has been a torrent of comments from people who seem to have trouble grasping the notion that an entry-level machine aimed at buyers who don't want to spend $1000 on a laptop will have worse specs.
 
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that's an odd couple, to be fair, as the Studio Display has a better CPU than the laptop.
we could simply run the same OS if apple would've added some extra ram to the display. and they could claim that they reimagined the iMac, or something.
 
maflynn said:
Why would someone spend 500 dollars for a low end laptop (that's nicely built don't get me wrong), and then drop over 3,000 dollars for a monitor for it?
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well, one of these is $1599 (which will be $1299 on discount) so I would consider it.
 
Rychiar said:
that display has a more powerful chipset than the Mac neo... let that sink in. Could just call it an iMac Neo and run Mac OS natively on the display....
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Not to mention the extra space of a monitor gives more options for cooling/power so they could probably over clock it a bit, or at least let it run harder + longer.
 
u5214128309 said:
While the Studio Display is 5K, the default is to display 1440p (which is then pixel doubled for "retina" or whatever). Confusing, what the Neo is supposed to be limited to outputting?
Click to expand...

Nope. This 1440p and "pixel doubling" stuff is terribly misleading and doesn't happen outside of ancient apps that don't fully support retina mode. It's not helped by the silly way that Apple labels the resolution options on a Mac.

(A) Unless you go menu diving and option-clicking for low resolution modes "2560x1440" (used to be "looks like 2560x1440" but Apple dumbed down even further) means "5128x2880" with fonts, UI elements smoothly enlarged so that they appear the same physical size as on an old-school pre-retina 1440p @ 27" iMac - but with twice the detail. The image being sent from the computer is always 5k and the content of your (retina-capable) apps should get rendered and displayed at full 5k resolution.

(B) If you connect a full-blown Mac to a 4k display and choose "1440p" mode then the Mac effectively renders it as 5k internally and then the GPU downsamples it to 4k (usually 3840x2160) and sends it to the display. Again, this makes the UI elements the same physical size as they would be on an old 27" 1440p display - but the level of detail is considerably higher than it would be at "real 1440p" but (obviously) less than on a true 5k display. Because this isn't a round 2:1 scaling factor the result is slightly soft and blurred around fine detail but these issues are massively overhyped by people who have gone looking for the problem.

(C) Alternatively, with a 4k display, you can choose "(looks like) 1920x1080" which is really full 4k mode, again with fonts and UI elements smoothly enlarged exactly x2. This is sharper than "looks like 1440p" and preserves 1-pixel details but the result is that the system fonts and icons are rather large and eat a lot of real estate. However, the actual content you are working on can still be freely scaled to get decent "real estate" esp. if you hide the menu/dock etc.

(Sorry if that's grandma's egg-sucking lesson to some people, but the world seems to be divided between people who don't know how Apple's complicated and misleading scaling works and people who do know but assume that everybody knows too. Complicated thing is complicated...)

With the MacBook Neo it's not yet clear whether the limitation is the GPUs ability to render internally at 5k (unlikely since even Macs with grotty Intel iGPUs have been doing this since forever) and/or the display interface/USB-C port not supporting the DP1.4 data rates needed to send a 5k image or the SD simply not supporting that in non-Thunderbolt mode (more likely).

Now, since Apple have explicity said "4k" it sounds like the Neo is going to be sending a 4k image to the display and the display will be upscaling this to 5k. That's not going to be as good as the internally native 2:1 or downscaled image you get on a 4k display but it could still be good - the Studio Display has plenty of horsepower to do smart interpolation.
 
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swm said:
that's an odd couple, to be fair, as the Studio Display has a better CPU than the laptop.
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The laptop is built down to a price.

The Studio Display is a premium product (OK, I'm inclined to gripe about the captive power cable and rubbish basic stand).

Also - the Studio Display has to support 5k displays
🙂
 
Odan said:
I like the price and all, but I guess storage is a subjective matter. Just need 1 tb for the regular stuff like music library, documents and photos so even a 2 tb drive isn't a luxury depending on your needs. Not criticizing the Neo which is great value, just wishing their ssd options weren't so expensive on MBP and Mac mini... looking at like 4 tb options at least. And no I don't feel like voiding my warranty and risking unstable situations or bugs from software updates to install a third party ssd in my Mac mini. If you need space and want to be safe, you have to overpay Apple A LOT.
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As long as you have Internet access, Apple's iCloud works well. MacOS will keep the most recently used files on the computer, and the rest will live in the cloud. It is reasonably transparent and seems to the user as if he has many terabytes of storage on the local device.

The best part is that the Neo and your iPhone will both have this data available, and it stays in sync across your devices.

I remember the 1980's when I had to remember which data was on which computer, but by the late 80s, at work, I was using networked UNIX computers, and my desktop and data followed me to whichever computer I logged into. This kind of thing is now available to consumers on cheap $500 devices. Data should NEVER live on a portable device, especially if you own two devices.
 
applesith said:
$500 macbook users are not buying $1600+ displays.
Click to expand...
That is very true, but Apple also advertised their $6,000 Pro XDR Display with the $500 Mac mini.

If someone goes into an Apple Store to buy a MacBook Neo and inquires about an external display, the only ones in the store are the Studio Displays. And you are right, a Neo buyer should not buy a $1599 Studio Display when it is not fully supported on the Neo, with the downscaling from 5K to 4K. Hopefully the Apple Store staff would recommend a third party 4K display purchased elsewhere.
 
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I would rather buy 3 MacBook neos instead of the Studio Display and a MacBook Neo

Or maybe just one iMac...
 
its great that apple puts so much attention into the beautiful colors of these neos so that they match the design quality of all the dell and acer monitors theyll be linked to.

get your act together apple and get us some beatiful 27inch 120hz 4k monitors for =$699. id buy loads of them
 
maflynn said:
Why would someone spend 500 dollars for a low end laptop (that's nicely built don't get me wrong), and then drop over 3,000 dollars for a monitor for it?
Click to expand...

They wouldn't. But why would so many MR readers in previous threads feel the need to point out that Neo could not connect with the new ASD's? Apple has just responded with 'yes they can.'

There are some edge cases of folks with computers that support 5k AND want a Neo for kicks and grins (and maybe travel) so already have a ASD. But yeah, the minority. Shrugs.
 
turbineseaplane said:
From my understanding of the discourse so far, the concern is that the child who had a Neo forced on them, and their beloved iPad taken away, is going to occasionally need to plug into mommy & daddy's Studio Display to do school work.

Perhaps while being watched or something maybe?

You'll take this keyboard, mouse and lack of touch input GimpBook and you'll LOVE IT.
Mommy & Daddy love macOS and that's what we DO in this house!
Click to expand...

No one has suggested they forced anything on anyone. 🙂. and no has suggested anything be taken away. and nobody suggested it was mommy or daddy's ASD.

But sure, that's the discourse as you understand it. While plenty have suggested it's silly to buy a new ASD for a $500 computer, thats not what anyone is actually suggesting. At most Apple is saying, sure, if you want to connect your Neo to your ASD you can. With a new ASD, or an old one. Not that you will have to.

you'll hate this new computer, hate the new touchpad, hate the processor, because that's what we do, we hate anything new while complaining nothing is new.
 
klasma said:
The catch is that the Neo can't output 5K, hence the monitor will resample the 4K image that is output by the Neo to 5K, introducing some blurriness. And potentially the 4K output by the Neo may already be a rescaling of a different internal resolution, so the end result may be doubly rescaled.
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Thanks for explaining! So I gather the Studio Display will perform worse than other displays (with 4K) for the Neo.
 
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