LG working on Pro Display XDR successor & 2 other high-end monitors, reportedly for Apple
LG is reportedly developing a trio of new displays based on the existing Pro Display XDR and iMac display sizes, with a leaker claiming that they could be future Apple-branded monitors.
The Pro Display XDR
According to leaker @dylandkt, LG is making a display based on the specifications of the 24-inch iMac, another display based on an upcoming 27-inch iMac, and a third 32-inch display that could sport a custom chip -- potentially released as a successor to the Pro Display XDR.
Dylan says that the three displays are currently housed in unbranded enclosures. However, the leaker added that it "can be assumed at the very least" that the 32-inch display could be Apple-branded.
The 32-inch display and the 27-inch display both seem to support mini-LED display technology and a 120Hz variable refresh rate, the leaker added.
Rumors have suggested in the past that Apple could be planning on releasing a first-party external display or computer monitor cheaper than the Pro Display XDR. A rumor from a display analyst earlier in December also predicted that a new 27-inch iMac with an Apple Silicon chip could arrive in early 2022.
While @dylandkt has a relatively short track record of Apple rumors, the developer has correctly predicted upcoming Apple plans and features in the past -- including the inclusion of an M1 chip in the iPad Pro and the upgraded webcams on the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
Read on AppleInsider
The Pro Display XDR
According to leaker @dylandkt, LG is making a display based on the specifications of the 24-inch iMac, another display based on an upcoming 27-inch iMac, and a third 32-inch display that could sport a custom chip -- potentially released as a successor to the Pro Display XDR.
Dylan says that the three displays are currently housed in unbranded enclosures. However, the leaker added that it "can be assumed at the very least" that the 32-inch display could be Apple-branded.
Thread 2/4: The other display seems to be an improved 32 inch Pro Display XDR. Despite the lack of branding, It can be assumed at the very least that this display will be Apple branded.
-- Dylan (@dylandkt)
The 32-inch display and the 27-inch display both seem to support mini-LED display technology and a 120Hz variable refresh rate, the leaker added.
Rumors have suggested in the past that Apple could be planning on releasing a first-party external display or computer monitor cheaper than the Pro Display XDR. A rumor from a display analyst earlier in December also predicted that a new 27-inch iMac with an Apple Silicon chip could arrive in early 2022.
While @dylandkt has a relatively short track record of Apple rumors, the developer has correctly predicted upcoming Apple plans and features in the past -- including the inclusion of an M1 chip in the iPad Pro and the upgraded webcams on the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
I can understand the wait for XDR miniLED versions, but a 27" 5K monitor, sourced straight from the iMac, should have been shipping 2 years ago.
Would love to hear how their product marketing and finance folks made all these decisions. Better be a book. It would be a horror book, but those are fun to read too. Maybe it was a bargaining chip with LG for monitor development?
An apple branded monitor is a marketing tool. Marketing-wise it’s nuts to have Mac users staring at a Dell logo all day. If they’re going to do that, then might as well put “intel inside” stickers on Macs too.
Apple sells about 20+ million Macs per year that could use an external monitor. With a take-up rate of 5% for a $1000 Apple monitor, 1m units per year, that's $1b per year in monitor sales alone. That's huge! Wasn't thinking about branding purposes at all.
They didn’t offer that so I moved on and yes went to Dell’s 27” 4K offering.
Not a big deal for me since I don’t need the HDR/XDR displays Apple offers.
Even now, a 24" iMac starts at $1300. Take out the Mac components and leave it as an external monitor and you can price it at $800 (or as is typical Apple price gouging, $1000).
24" Liquid Retina 4.5K (iMac 24 display as external monitor)
27" miniLED 5K (the Apple Silicon iMac Pro display as external monitor)
32" miniLED 6K (Pro Display XDR successor) that likely will be Apple branded
This a very good range imo and hopefully it all ships. Something for everybody which is as it should be. Just frustrating how long it is taking. Monitors have 10+ year lifespans, so perhaps that means they don't need to rush.
Well, added that these are LG rumors, not Apple ones. So, new LG UF monitors. Le sigh.
I also expect that most average buyers are happy with Dell/HP displays that are around $200-300. $1000 is a lot of money for most people to spend on a display. At least the XDR displays offer something worth paying that much extra for with good black levels, HDR, 5k+ resolution, 120Hz, Thunderbolt ports.
Hopefully they'll sell standalone XDR displays at a more affordable price point but at the very least allow the iMacs to have display input so that if someone owns an iMac and MBP, it's possible to plug the MBP into it and use its display and be able to repurpose old iMacs as displays, which helps maintain their resale value.
Yeah, I don’t think they lost billions in monitor sales. Premium monitors just isn’t that big of a market.
They only started the course correction in early 2017. The Pro Display XDR came out last year. This rumored cheaper Apple display will hopefully come out next year, which notionally will be a true blue successor to the Thunderbolt Display, with TB4, miniLED, 5K resolution, and some accoutrement of other ports. This means they have come full circle after about a decade, with a monitor in the $1000 to $2000 range.
Yes, the vast majority of Mac buyers will get a cheaper external monitor. That's way I said "take-up rate of 5%". If only 5% of Mac buyers bought an Apple branded monitor at $1000, that would be a billion dollars per year. Maybe it really would have 1%? Lower? But having external monitors attached to a laptop at a desk at home and in the office is very normal and an increasing market imo. A monitor with a built-in dock would be pretty attractive for a lot of laptop owners. There are people who want 2 monitors, and if they could be daisy chained so only 1 TB cable is needed, great, but only 4K or lower for now. A 4K 40" monitor is something that people use. If the iPad Pro had extended display support, some of them would buy an Apple branded monitor too. It's a big market of monitors, and if they only get a small fraction to buy it, that's billions of dollars.
With the iMac 24 being so monitor like, yes having display input would be nice as it has a very nice monitor in it. However, for Apple's macOS machines, I'd like to see Universal Control on steroids. Hook up a TB cable between two iMacs (or iMac and Mac mini+external monitor, etc), network them up, have a master-slave clustering arrangement (or some form of clustering), and have apps be able distribute processes between them. Like, if you open up a new Safari window, it's running own its own process, you drag it from one iMac to a 2nd iMac, and that Safari process runs on the 2nd iMac. The 2nd iMac's filesystem can be mounted onto the first iMac so that files can be moved in-between easily (or forms of storage fusion).
Apple already does clipboard, link sharing, and app state sharing today. Universal Control is another step up from that. Clustering would be another step up. Ie, you run Handbrake, and it would know to distribute its transcoding processes across multiple Macs.
Exacerbating the situation: the MB12 shipped with USBC from 2015 until it was discontinued 2019, the MBA had TB2 until the rMBA model in late 2018, the Mac mini had TB2 until late 2018, and the Mac Pro had TB2 until it was discontinued. The iMacs didn't get TB3 until mid-2017. A rather large fraction of sales were the MBA with TB2 all the way until late 2018. Even furthering the problems were that Intel iGPUs could barely drive 5K resolutions at the time, so you can argue that only half of Apple's Macs could drive 5K monitors. Maybe this was the real reason for not having a Thunderbolt display successor? But this would be a reason of their own making, not something they couldn't change. Apple would have had to make the decision not to develop a TB3 monitor in 2014 in order for them to say that 4th gen MBP buyers should get the LG UF27 in 2016.
The reason I call it an error is that a lot of customers would have bought a TB3 5K monitor for their 4th gen MBP, a lot of their high paying customers. These are the customers who use external monitors all the time, and sometimes more than two. It's a prime front facing part of computing, and Apple should own that too for their products. TB3 plug-n-play with a laptop and an external monitor with dock, camera, speakers and mic is a great user experience. I do it with my MBP15 and LG UF27. iMac 5K users could buy one and have a monitor of the same DPI and size, and it comes with more ports. If Apple wanted to be ambitious, they could have put in a couple of NVMe slots for additional SSD storage.
Computer monitors have about 130m units sold per year, mostly split among dominant PC vendors plus Samsung (arguably 90% of monitors are either Samsung or LG, just rebranded). At 8% Mac marketshare, that's 10m monitors bought by Mac buyers every year. Is it reasonable to say that for every 2 Macs sold, 1 monitor is also sold for use in one of those Macs? If so, Apple needs to take 10% of those 10m units with a $1000 monitor. That's a billion dollars per year left off the ledger if they could have achieved it. I definitely think Apple would have sold a lot more TB3 5K monitors than LG has sold UF27 monitors.
Citation needed on majority of Mac buys getting monitors. From what I've read most Macs are MBs, followed by iMacs. No monitors for iMacs of course, and I would disagree that "most" laptop users by external monitors. I would argue the opposite, that most normals do not buy external monitors. Do I have one? Of course. Does my friend who just wanted a nice laptop for basic computing? Nope.
I think Offices would be willing to buy an Apple smart monitor appliance especially if it allowed remote access to hosted machine. For hot desking or loosefit offices it makes a great system for workers just to turn up with a Laptop or iPad/iPhone (supplied or DYOD) just bump up to any screen in the office and get to work.
Environmentally it would be great to keep full-formed products used as long as possible but that might be why it needs a subscription attached the accountant let alone the shareholders aren't going to let Apple spend time on keeping it running without a revenue stream attached.
Still, this would be the last great piece of the 1997 Return of Jobs "Plan". He started those remarks by saying at NeXT he just walk up to a computer and a simple login makes it his to use. The seamlessness of interaction he described is still missing from Apple Systems - Universal Control is only just getting there now.