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Retina 5K iMac Will Not Act as External Display, Standalone Apple 5K Display Unlikely Soon

what makes this annoying is that there was no great market gap for 5k. There was no NEED for a 5k display. The only reason they had to go with 5k was to keep consistent retina scaling. If they could have settled for a slightly smaller imac 4k would have been adequate. AND it could work in Target Display Mode, and they could sell the exact same unit, minus CPU as a TB2 Display.
I also do not understand why they cannot make the 5k model work as a display with two TB2 ports?
I'm starting to regret my Mac Pro purchase before I've even paid it off.
(especially ever time I have to hard reboot it because some nasty third party application, like iTunes, is frozen.)
 
sputnikv said:
I go by this:
Click to expand...

Well makes sense.
I think what really is disappointing for most MacPro users that are professionals is seeing such an amazing display not available now to their hi-end machines and on an iMac that is a prosumer machine.
For people who make serious investment on their gear and make a living from it, I understand this feeling.
The positive of seeing this display is a reality, is the fact that sooner than later we know it will come as stand alone and MacPro users will be able to use it. But the wait for sure it's sucks!
 
Glassed Silver said:
see above, they could at least allow the old resolution of 2560*1440 to be used.

No Retina, because technically not possible? Sure, they're off the hook for that no question.
No support at all for a feature they had for many years at least at the performance that's possible with the existing hardware? Ouch.

Glassed Silver:mac
Click to expand...

If they're using an over-clocked or souped up system to drive the displayport then it might not be that easy.
 
Kariya said:
If they're using an over-clocked or souped up system to drive the displayport then it might not be that easy.
Click to expand...

We're talking about Apple here.
The Apple that constantly shows you in product videos to which great lengths they go to make their design work perfectly.

Yet, they simply omit a feature that has been standard for many years entirely, not even giving the new iMac with Retina feature-parity with smaller models. (parity as in what isn't an upgrade already of course)

Sorry, but Apple has let down folks too much recently to be given this much slack.
They wind down on effort left and right.

Glassed Silver:mac
 
Glassed Silver said:
In relative dimensions as it was meant to be looked at?

One of them would be 2007, the year of the introduction of the iPhone.

The same year when they built a mid-class computer that was so upgradable so easily that it's still a B-B-BEAST.

Glassed Silver:mac
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Well, iPhone and 2007 iMac is better than iPhone 6, iMac retina display, new iPads, apple pay, apple watch, mac minis? Cmon man, 2007 was nice, sure, but i'd hardly call a not-so-easy upgradable hard drive a better year overall ;)
 
fitshaced said:
I would nearly buy this iMac just to see that picture in 5k
Click to expand...

For $2500, you can go see the place for yourself, and much more of Iceland!
 

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gugy said:
Well makes sense.
I think what really is disappointing for most MacPro users that are professionals is seeing such an amazing display not available now to their hi-end machines and on an iMac that is a prosumer machine.
For people who make serious investment on their gear and make a living from it, I understand this feeling.
The positive of seeing this display is a reality, is the fact that sooner than later we know it will come as stand alone and MacPro users will be able to use it. But the wait for sure it's sucks!
Click to expand...

NEC makes better displays for similar money. If you use it work, you at the very least no worse off with several other brands.


sputnikv said:
If they released a 5k display, only the Mac Pro would be able to output to it. Then they would have to advertise that it doesn't work with macbooks or the mac mini... it's a headache. Not worth it.
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This would use the same displayport protocol. Why wouldn't the others be able to run that, unless they're lacking gpu driver capability? The display protocols are the same whether it's internal or external.
 
What I don't understand is why Apple doesn't build an external Thunderbolt display with the graphics card built into the display. By placing the graphics card in the display instead the computer the issue of not enough bandwidth in thunderbolt disappears as well as the issue of an underpowered graphics in the Mac Mini and MacBook Air. Seems like the perfect solutionfor a second third or even fourth display since you would not be using display port technology but rather native thunderbolt data transfers. Anyway just my two cents worth:)
 
Obviously standalone displays are not a priority for Apple anymore and it appears they didn't even have one (4k) planned to go with the Mac Pro…rather disheartening.

Frankly, since a 5k would not work with the current Mac Pro anyways and they didn't make a 4k for it, one has to wonder if Apple will be out of the standalone display business for good (once the existing MagSafe v1 display is phased out)…

Bummer…they made the most beautiful displays….(typing this on a 30 inch monster of yester-year).
 
I was waiting on this machine - but one of the main reasons was to use target display mode from my work retina MBP when I work from home

Guess I just will have to save my money and get a normal 27 then - shame
 
"Another potential product on the horizon is a Retina 21.5-inch iMac likely at 3840 x 2160 pixels, ..."

Pull up to the bumper baby! Phurrrleeease!!!
 
Technically, Apple could allow another Mac to output video at a lower resolution and have the Retina iMac scale the content up to fit its display, but this would not be ideal and Apple has apparently elected not to support it as an option.
Click to expand...

Why not? If it supports 4K, why not allow the current Mac Pro to push out what it can for a 4K display, later owners can purchase new Mac Pro's with full 5K support. This would sell well as a "future proof" display for the next few years. At least Thunderbolt 2.0 can support 3x 4K displays. When connected to a Thunderbolt 5K display, jut don't list 5K as a supported resolution. The display will likely have controllers as current models, simple. Will appeal to current and future Mac Pro owners.

(or produce 24" displays as they did in '08 with the 24" iMac, Apple had three different CCFL LCD's in 2004 - 20", 23" and 30", why not offer MORE selection?)
 
scottwaugh said:
Obviously standalone displays are not a priority for Apple anymore and it appears they didn't even have one (4k) planned to go with the Mac Pro…rather disheartening.

Frankly, since a 5k would not work with the current Mac Pro anyways and they didn't make a 4k for it, one has to wonder if Apple will be out of the standalone display business for good (once the existing MagSafe v1 display is phased out)…

Bummer…they made the most beautiful displays….(typing this on a 30 inch monster of yester-year).
Click to expand...

But why would you think that? The most recent MacPro is a relatively new design. They clearly want to do something with it. They've just announced the 5k iMac which means they also want to do high resolution displays. There are 4k options for you right now for your Mac Pro. There will be a 5k option, I'm sure for a newer release of the Mac Pro, by Apple.
 
They could at least lower the price of the current Thunderbolt Displays. By now these things have to have like $800 profit per unit.

I would love to see a slimmer version with USB 3 and TB 2, etc, but then again I don't want to be buying new displays every 2 years.

I have to go with Apple displays to use multi-monitors on my work MBP with daisy-chaining. I don't think any non-Apple monitors do this correct?
 
Many have commented 'it sucks' when they should be commenting 'it's actually quite sad.'. Apple clearly didn't think this one through.
 
Sonmi451 said:
Why can't they rig some kind of dual thunderbolt adapter to give it the necessary bandwidth?
Click to expand...
You also need two TB busses in the computer which only the Mac Pro has (it actually has three). The Xeons used in the latter have enough PCI lanes for that, the i5/i7s used in all other Macs have significantly less PCI lanes, most likely not enough for two TB2 busses.

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J. Jizzle said:
I was thinking about getting one... Until I saw the price! No thanks, Apple. I can buy two 27" iMacs for practically the price of one 5K Retina iMac. 5K isn't really needed at this point in time, since there aren't any devices that can record in 5K. There aren't really many on the market that can even record in true 4K, so I'm going to wait a while
Click to expand...

There are however a couple of still cameras that produce 14.7 MP or higher.

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guzhogi said:
I have a 15" rMBP for personal use and a 13" non-retina MBP for work, and I can't really tell the difference. I don't know if if I have bad eyesight, or just don't care. Meh.

However, the article says Thunderbolt 3 will support DisplayPort 1.3. Will it also support PCIe 3, or better yet, 4? As PCIe 3 supports 128b/130b encoding while PCIe is 8b/10b, we'd get far better throughput due to lower overhead (1.54% versus 20% overhead).
Click to expand...

I think I read somewhere that TB3 will support PCIe 3.
 
WigWag Workshop said:
I don't understand, why Apple can not release a stand alone cinema display. A lot of the other vendors are selling them, is there not enough profit in them? Is Apple not able to get the displays manufactured for them? Is there not enough materials available for the manufacturing of these displays? Or is the quality not up to Apple standards? I am really curious about this, I mean they have a Mac Pro in their lineup, one would think a nice Apple cinema display would be a companion for it.
Click to expand...

When did Apple release the first 27" iMac and when did they release their first 27" standalone monitor?
(Hint: it was not on the same day.)

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fs454 said:
Why not two ports? The Pro machines can all do this. rMBPs and Mac Pro trashcans both have 2 or more TB ports.
Click to expand...
Two ports, but not two TB busses. Except for the Mac Pro, the two TB ports share the same bus/controller and thus cannot simultaneously output at their nominal rate. This is a very common setup, most computers don't have a separate bus for every single port if they have multiple ports of the same type.
 
Glassed Silver said:
iPad Mini 3, it doesn't deserve the name after their decision last year to make the Mini just another size product and making it the key aspect of the Mini
Click to expand...
I agree but what should they have named it? iPad mini 2.1?

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AJClayton said:
Not surprised by this article. It pretty much confirms what most of us were probably thinking. To be fair to Apple (which is a struggle, but bear with me) they must've had the 5K iMac under development for some time and will have been well aware that the Mac Pro won't be able to support that kind of resolution until technology catches up allowing them to update the hardware.

I'm as disappointed by this as anyone - I bought a nMP and part of the reason I wanted to replace my Mac Pro 1,1 with the new model rather than an iMac was because I felt that retina-like display technology would take a year or two to catch up at which point I could plug it into my machine. Of course at the time I figured this would be 4K but Apple's decision to go to 5K leaves those of us who paid thousands for the new Pro machine with really only one way to go and that's to third party 4K displays.
Click to expand...
Knowing how retina displays work (from the iPhone 4, over the iPad 3 and the rMBPs), it was clear that Apple would not be releasing a 4K 27" display.
 
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