Month: March 2022

Enlarge / Apple's Studio Display. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Ever since Apple released the $5,000-and-up Pro Display XDR in 2019, rumors have persisted that the company was also planning a more affordable screen to fill the same niche as its Thunderbolt Display. You could connect the Pro Display XDR to a MacBook Air that costs one-fifth its price, and Apple always went out of its way to mention that M1 MacBooks were technically capable of driving its 6K display resolution. But it wasn’t exactly an appealing value proposition.

Enter the new Studio Display. With a design that strongly recalls 2011’s Thunderbolt Display and a name that harks back to its late-'90s namesake, the display is tailor-made for anyone who wanted the 5K screen from the dearly departed 27-inch iMac without the computer that was attached to it.

It’s certainly not for everyone, and at $1,599, it’s not the first external display I’d recommend for all Mac owners (especially people who tend toward the cheaper Mac mini and MacBook Air end of the spectrum). But as its enthusiastic reception from several Ars staffers suggests, it will find an audience by virtue of being a 5K Apple-branded monitor, and its design and features are a solid step up from the 5K LG UltraFine display that Apple has sold for the last few years.

Enlarge / Apple's Mac Studio desktop. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Apple Silicon Macs have gotten more interesting the deeper into the transition we've gotten. The MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini all looked and felt exactly like the Macs they replaced, just with better performance and much better battery life. The 24-inch iMac and 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros were throwbacks to the colorful G3 iMacs and titanium PowerBooks from two decades ago. And now we've gotten to the Mac Studio, the first totally new Apple Silicon Mac.

The Studio reminds me of a few Macs we’ve seen before—it’s sort of a trashcan Mac Pro by way of the PowerMac G4 Cube. It borrows elements of the Mac Pro and the Mac mini, but it replaces neither. It’s both a glimpse at what is possible now that Apple is leaving the Intel era behind, and yet another recommitment to the Mac as a powerful and flexible platform for getting work done.

It’s not quite the mythical midrange “xMac” workstation of yore, but it’s as close as we’ve ever gotten. That’s an exciting place to be.