Studio Display…aborted iMac?

[lepidotós]

I suppose my mindset is hyperfixated on "can I still use this in 15 years"/"will I be able to hand this off to a relative that needs it or sell it". And with a laptop with dead NAND, I can't, which means unlike even 30, 35 year old laptops/luggables still going strong today (or 50 year old Magnavox Odysseys, or 70 year old transistor radios), these things with a lot of materials and energy and money poured in them are literally predestined to landfills or having even more energy pumped into them to get back only 35% of the different elements that go into it, like 90% of that by weight being aluminum.​

 

[okkibs]

Lucky you. Reality is that there are firmware updates out there for many third party displays.

Either a monitor does what it's supposed to do from day one, or it doesn't. This is not a smartphone that does nearly everything and new features are introduced regularly. I buy a monitor with certain specifications that don't change and work the same over DisplayPort with nearly every device. My oldest 4k monitor is now 8 years old and perhaps there was some new firmware released along the way, but the only thing an upgrade could possibly do at this point is brick the monitor. It's also just as compatible with M1 Macs as it is with any older computers.

The Apple monitor by design can't be guaranteed to work flawlessly with newer devices without firmware upgrades, it's too complex and as mentioned has no fallback input. It's straight-up bad design. With the exception of the Ultrafine that is reported to have quite some failures, other USB-C monitors really always have a fallback input.

Sure, that forces people to be cognizant of whether or not their data is backed up. But most people still aren't and this makes it easier for them to lose their data.

The increased risk of data loss across all modern Apple devices is a drawback of that tech for sure, but my personal opinion here is that even thoguh manufacturers should take into account their user's ignorances to improve resilience, they shouldn't have to base their product design around the fact that for over a decade now it's been drilled into people to make backups and they still don't care.

I have had family members and good friends that I told repeatedly, over many years, that they need to make backups, I set up TM backups for them and all they had to do was take that external drive out of a drawer and plug it in for an hour, the Mac does the rest automatically. They still don't do it unless I plug the drive in for them.

One friend had a 500GB backup drive but now owns a 2TB Mac, and needs to switch out the backup drive for a bigger one. That was two years ago, I even sent him a link to the cheapest good offer online and he just had to press a button to get it delivered to his doorstep. Yet he never did, I offered multiple times to help him set it up and stopped bringing it up eventually because it's not my master's thesis on there and it was clear he didn't care.

Or ask repair shops about customers coming in with a broken iPhone that contains every photo they ever took in their life and their iCloud is full so nothing synced in years. They of course know all that and beg for the data recovery, and when I tell them to send it into kroll ontrack and expect around a thousand bucks for the restore they rather spend that money on a new iPhone and repeat the cycle of not making backups.

I have long ago lost all understanding for that kind of mindset and I don't hold that against Apple, they don't have to adjust their technical design to account for irresponsible user behaviour. There are other actually serious design flaws such as the current Macbooks having a 12v pin too close to the SSD that leads to destroyed SSDs. That's pretty bad as it makes fixing these Macs impossible since they now have their firmware stored on the SSD and can't boot from external drives without it working.

 

[Warped9]

You want to be nice, but people can be highly irrational.

They want us to set up their email on their new device yet insist they have never had a password—then you learn someone else set it up previously for them. They lock themselves out of a device and insist something must be wrong with it despite the device doing exactly what it was designed to do. They don’t write anything down. They have their little books of passwords and pins and have no idea whats what because they never scratch the old ones out.

As stated in previous post they never back anything up then whine about losing everything. So many of them are essentially hoarders and never delete or clean out anything they have no further use for then wonder why they have no storage left. We offer a cheap replacement warranty to replace their printer if it craps out within two years, on the tails of complaining their last cheap printer crapped out after 18 months or so, but they’d rather pay another $100 for a replacement printer than $11 for the replacement warranty—WTF!

They always underestimate their usage of a new device, be it a printer or computer, then later complain the device isn’t working out for them.

There is nothing new in this. For decades millions drive and barely know how to put gas in the car. You have to change oil? They’ll drive it till it breaks and then bitch about repairs. What is preventative maintenance?

 

[theluggage]

Either a monitor does what it's supposed to do from day one, or it doesn't.

Sorry, but that's just nonsense. Even "just plain old DisplayPort" is a complex protocol with optional features and ambiguities. Most modern displays rely on microcontrollers and firmware, which is never magically bug free - and firmware updates are published to fix issues. I had a quick google - here's the first example I found at random, for a Dell U2718Q: "fix HDMI no display issue at 2560 x 1440 with GFX1070 with HDR On" - maybe not a big deal for you, but a big deal for anybody out there with a GFX1070...

The Studio Display may not have a DisplayPort but it does work off a standard TB3/USB4 port on a PC, including basic webcam and audio support (no Mac frills like centre stage, spatial audio or 'Hey Siri' which would need OS support however they were implemented) so there's

Now, maybe what you are saying is that you prefer to have "just a monitor" without audio, webcam, Thunderbolt hubs etc. which is, indeed, "more stuff to go wrong" - I don't disagree and that's partly why I decided not to go for the Studio Display - but that's not what the Studio Display is for - it's a one-cable solution, largely designed as a MacBook docking station and an alternative to the all-in-one iMac experience. But, sorry, your 'just a DisplayPort Monitor' will still have potentially buggy firmware - if you never need an update (esp. if you buy a brand new model), lucky you.

The Apple monitor by design can't be guaranteed to work flawlessly with newer devices without firmware upgrades,

Nor can any modern monitor.

You're presuming that Apple is going to force upgrades on you by hiding them in MacOS updates, or deliberately break support for the Studio Display in future MacOS versions. Either they will or they won't, but that has nothing to do with whether or not it is "running iOS" - Apple could do the same thing with any modern peripheral based on a microcontroller with flash firmware. Anyway, the only evidence that it is "running iOS" is that some pundit has noticed that the version numbers match up. That certainly doesn't prove that it is running a "full mobile OS".

 

[okkibs]

maybe not a big deal for you, but a big deal for anybody out there with a GFX1070...

You did just accidentally prove my point: The monitor was released around May 2017. This firmware you linked has the date Jan 19th 2018. Anyone with this scenario who bought the monitor in 2017 would have seen it doesn't work, and would have had to wait anywhere from one to six months - but these customers would not have been able to know at the time of purchase when the fix would arrive or if one would come out at all.

What these customers should have done and hopefully did was return the monitor because it was obviously defective out of the box and if Dell had decided not to address the issue at all these customers would have been left with no recourse.

Okay fine I get it, the possibility to upgrade the firmware at home does have a benefit. If you receive older stock and your monitor has an issue right out of the box that can be fixed immediately, fair enough, that's better than having to do a return.

Nor can any modern monitor.

The Studio Display already had issues as mentioned before, with brightness control and audio. It already needed fixes. I have a couple of iiyama 4k monitors I got a couple of years ago and due to work I have to hook up a variety of computers to it. There hasn't been an issue with using DisplayPort on any Windows computer nor any Mac, Intel or ASi. The basics like 120Hz just work, though there is no HDR to begin with.

I don't need USB-C to use the speakers, they are recognized via DisplayPort just the same. I can use USB-C if I want to get the charging functionality and USB hub, but if for some reason the USB-C port were incompatible with my latest Mac I can use DisplayPort and don't have a bricked monitor until the manufacturer provides a fix in one month, in six months, or perhaps never.

your 'just a DisplayPort Monitor' will still have potentially buggy firmware - if you never need an update (esp. if you buy a brand new model), lucky you.

If you say so, my experience has been that DisplayPort works. Maybe brand new models are really bad in this regard, but I don't see why that should be the case. I have certainly seen issues where on some Mac you couldn't get 120Hz, and in the end the issue wasn't with the monitor, but either with the cable or recently the buggy MacOS Ventura (a Monterey downgrade fixed that instantly).

You're presuming that Apple is going to force upgrades on you by hiding them in MacOS updates, or deliberately break support for the Studio Display in future MacOS versions.

No, I don't think that. But when you are a regular customer that is told to make sure to install updates regularly, they might just install these as well since they are part of the MacOS updater. Apple won't have to deliberately break anything, I agree with you that this is of course nonsense. Apple will just move the monitor to "vintage" status. They did just this with the LED Cinema Display from 2008 and 2010, brightness control no longer works with the latest Apple Silicon Macs, you can attach the USB cable and it will show up in the System Profiler as connected, but the brightness controls are dead. If you bought that display in 2011 and bought a 2021 MBP 10 years later, now your display is stuck on 100% brightness.

For some people the 3rd party MonitorControl software allows to change the brightness still by sending commands to the monitor itself, but it doesn't work for everyone.

And that's what you might be looking at with the Studio Display. People are going to attach their shiny new 2031 Macs to the Studio Display and something will be broken. Perhaps it's "just" the brightness controls. But perhaps that entire single USB-C port with that extra complex firmware won't be able to communicate with those latest Macs anymore.

I have no doubt that a regular DisplayPort adapter cable in 2031, let's say a USB-D or USB-E to DisplayPort one, would work just fine on any of my regular iiyama monitors (or whatever brand you got as long as it isn't something terrible like Gigabyte that has issues all around).

 

[Yebubbleman]

The increased risk of data loss across all modern Apple devices is a drawback of that tech for sure, but my personal opinion here is that even thoguh manufacturers should take into account their user's ignorances to improve resilience, they shouldn't have to base their product design around the fact that for over a decade now it's been drilled into people to make backups and they still don't care.

I have had family members and good friends that I told repeatedly, over many years, that they need to make backups, I set up TM backups for them and all they had to do was take that external drive out of a drawer and plug it in for an hour, the Mac does the rest automatically. They still don't do it unless I plug the drive in for them.

One friend had a 500GB backup drive but now owns a 2TB Mac, and needs to switch out the backup drive for a bigger one. That was two years ago, I even sent him a link to the cheapest good offer online and he just had to press a button to get it delivered to his doorstep. Yet he never did, I offered multiple times to help him set it up and stopped bringing it up eventually because it's not my master's thesis on there and it was clear he didn't care.

Or ask repair shops about customers coming in with a broken iPhone that contains every photo they ever took in their life and their iCloud is full so nothing synced in years. They of course know all that and beg for the data recovery, and when I tell them to send it into kroll ontrack and expect around a thousand bucks for the restore they rather spend that money on a new iPhone and repeat the cycle of not making backups.

I have long ago lost all understanding for that kind of mindset and I don't hold that against Apple, they don't have to adjust their technical design to account for irresponsible user behaviour. There are other actually serious design flaws such as the current Macbooks having a 12v pin too close to the SSD that leads to destroyed SSDs. That's pretty bad as it makes fixing these Macs impossible since they now have their firmware stored on the SSD and can't boot from external drives without it working.

I don't know that I "hold it against Apple". That seems very much like I am attacking them and, by extension, their fervent fanbase. I don't agree with the trade-off of removing data recovery ability in the name of added security no one asked for or really needed. It's also true that it's super easy and not really inconvenient to attach an external hard drive to any desktop Mac, turn on Time Machine and then forget about it. Doing so with a laptop Mac requires a lot more of an effort. You're not going to always have your drive plugged in; you probably don't want to take it with you (or at least you don't want to take your only Time Machine drive with you), it requires you to not only have a drive, but to know when and how long to plug it in. Not a problem for diligent computer users, but most people buy a Mac so they don't have to care about preventative maintenance. (I personally think that's the wrong reason to buy a Mac, but who am I to judge? They do it anyway!)

 

[Johnny London]

I have a macbook pro m1 pro (2021) and wish to work on a larger screen sometimes. The screen should be the best in it’s class. Should I get an iMac or the studio display? Why? Thanks!

 

[okkibs]

The screen should be the best in it’s class.

There isn't an objective best and unfortunately today's screens don't do it all. You have to choose between lighting technology, LED/miniLED/microLED/OLED, HDR, resolution 4k or more, screen size, max refresh rate, adaptive refresh rate, coating and there's ergonomics too. The iMac and Studio Display are available in different ergonomic options as well (you either get no ergonomics, or basic ergonomics, or Apple graciously allows you to provide your own monitor stand).

In any case, since you already have a Mac you'll want the Studio Display if it's between the two. The iMac is its own Mac that's slower than your Macbook and can't be used as an external display for your Macbook in the first place. The cheapest Studio Display version has no ergonomics whatsoever, not even height adjustment, be aware of that.

 

[Johnny London]

There isn't an objective best and unfortunately today's screens don't do it all. You have to choose between lighting technology, LED/miniLED/microLED/OLED, HDR, resolution 4k or more, screen size, max refresh rate, adaptive refresh rate, coating and there's ergonomics too. The iMac and Studio Display are available in different ergonomic options as well (you either get no ergonomics, or basic ergonomics, or Apple graciously allows you to provide your own monitor stand).

In any case, since you already have a Mac you'll want the Studio Display if it's between the two. The iMac is its own Mac that's slower than your Macbook and can't be used as an external display for your Macbook in the first place. The cheapest Studio Display version has no ergonomics whatsoever, not even height adjustment, be aware of that.

Thanks for this! Ergonomics-wise, would you place the monitor on a stand/ pedestal and the macbook in front of it? Or can you close the macbook, but it in a corner (connected) and use a separate keyboard?

 

[macsound1]

Very true. On my Studio Display, I thought the center stage feature was neat at first but after while, it gets distracting, annoying and sometimes doesn't centers me properly and leaves me a bit in the corner. You can disable that feature if you want.

So annoying that it's amazing they shipped the feature at all. Poor image quality and distracting movement, seems like they should've just skipped the camera in the studio display all together, since they obviously don't know how people use webcams on desktops.

Wonder why it so vastly diverged from the laptop cameras which look great and (thankfully) don't have center stage.