LG working on Pro Display XDR successor & 2 other high-end monitors, reportedly for Apple

Posted:
in General Discussion
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
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
waveparticle
«1

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 35
    entropysentropys Posts: 4,152member
    Well for iMacs and the XDR monitor it seems. But I would love Apple to go back to making monitors with decent industrial design, priced around the Dell ultrasharp with premier colour range.
    edited December 2021 lkruppwatto_cobracaladanianelijahgopinionAlex_V
  • Reply 2 of 35
    thttht Posts: 5,421member
    Apple is certainly taking their time on this. It was a strategic error to discontinue a branded Apple monitor+dock. They should have shipped an Apple Thunderbolt 5K display in 2018. They really should have done it in 2016, but I digress. 

    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?
    xyzzy-xxxentropysaderutterlkrupph2pwatto_cobracaladanianelijahgopinion
  • Reply 3 of 35
    blastdoorblastdoor Posts: 3,258member
    tht said:
    Apple is certainly taking their time on this. It was a strategic error to discontinue a branded Apple monitor+dock. They should have shipped an Apple Thunderbolt 5K display in 2018. They really should have done it in 2016, but I digress. 

    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?
    I’d say tactical marketing error rather than strategic error, but otherwise I agree.

    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.
    h2pwatto_cobraelijahgopinion
  • Reply 4 of 35
    thttht Posts: 5,421member
    blastdoor said:
    tht said:
    Apple is certainly taking their time on this. It was a strategic error to discontinue a branded Apple monitor+dock. They should have shipped an Apple Thunderbolt 5K display in 2018. They really should have done it in 2016, but I digress. 

    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?
    I’d say tactical marketing error rather than strategic error, but otherwise I agree.

    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.
    Who knows what the difference between tactics and strategy are here, but Apple left billions of revenue off the table by discontinuing monitors.  A typical desktop setup in modern times, and I'm going back about 10 years here, is to have a laptop with an external monitor or two connected to it. When the 4th gen Macbook Pros came out in 2016, it should have been when this type of setup is mature, no dock dongle needed as it would have been in the monitor. Plug in the TB cable, everything is lit up, plug-n-play, and theoretically more "reliable" if it came from Apple. This is more or less how it works with my LG UF27, except that it only has 3 USBC in back. It could have Ethernet, SD card, the usual.

    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.
    williamlondonlkrupph2pwatto_cobrarundhvidelijahgopinion
  • Reply 5 of 35
    Hopefully these new rumours will materialize into thin and light in a beautiful (not plastic?) design that has either vesa or rotation as part of a stand in the smaller sizes. I too would have been happy with a 27" 4K (vs 5k) usb3 thunderbolt display in 2016... I still work @ 110dpi like the original 2010~2011 cinema display.
    watto_cobraopinion
  • Reply 6 of 35
    Even back in 2015, I would’ve paid $1000 for an Apple Thunderbolt Display but at 4K or greater resolution, if they had it.
    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. 
    watto_cobraopinion
  • Reply 7 of 35
    27 and 32 inch iMacs. 

    27 is too small for the top of the line iMac in 2022
    edited December 2021 watto_cobracaladanian
  • Reply 8 of 35
    Still plugging my MBP into 30" ACDs at home and office. I'd love to replace 'em with a 32" that doesn't cost $6K. 27" seems too small to me after working in front of these things for years now, even if they are higher res. Last one I bought was right when they were discontinued, still around $1600 at the time, funny how that seems cheap now.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 9 of 35
    tht said:
    blastdoor said:
    tht said:
    Apple is certainly taking their time on this. It was a strategic error to discontinue a branded Apple monitor+dock. They should have shipped an Apple Thunderbolt 5K display in 2018. They really should have done it in 2016, but I digress. 

    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?
    I’d say tactical marketing error rather than strategic error, but otherwise I agree.

    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.
    Who knows what the difference between tactics and strategy are here, but Apple left billions of revenue off the table by discontinuing monitors.  A typical desktop setup in modern times, and I'm going back about 10 years here, is to have a laptop with an external monitor or two connected to it. When the 4th gen Macbook Pros came out in 2016, it should have been when this type of setup is mature, no dock dongle needed as it would have been in the monitor. Plug in the TB cable, everything is lit up, plug-n-play, and theoretically more "reliable" if it came from Apple. This is more or less how it works with my LG UF27, except that it only has 3 USBC in back. It could have Ethernet, SD card, the usual.

    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.
    That has always been my thought. Why not take the 24/27" iMacs, take out the "Mac part" and convert it to an external monitor (keeping the same connectivity on th back.

    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). 
    stompylkruppwilliamlondonelijahgdanvm
  • Reply 10 of 35
    macguimacgui Posts: 2,350member
    32" ACD or nought. Go big or go home.
    lkruppwatto_cobra
  • Reply 11 of 35
    thttht Posts: 5,421member
    macgui said:
    32" ACD or nought. Go big or go home.
    The rumors are for 3 monitors in development [by "LG"]:

    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.
    edited December 2021 watto_cobraopinion
  • Reply 12 of 35
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,310moderator
    tht said:
    blastdoor said:
    tht said:
    Apple is certainly taking their time on this. It was a strategic error to discontinue a branded Apple monitor+dock. They should have shipped an Apple Thunderbolt 5K display in 2018. They really should have done it in 2016, but I digress. 

    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?
    I’d say tactical marketing error rather than strategic error, but otherwise I agree.

    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 left billions of revenue off the table by discontinuing monitors.

    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 must not have been selling well for Apple to discontinue them, there's no way they'd end a product line that was making money. I think part of the problem is that they make those kind of products in a way that people don't need to keep buying new ones very often, like with their routers. People used the Cinema displays for over 10 years and so sales dry up and Apple assumes nobody wants them but people already had one that didn't need replaced yet. Eventually that time comes around but it could easily be over 10 years, it's around 8 years for TVs.

    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.
    williamlondonStrangeDayswatto_cobraopinion
  • Reply 13 of 35
    sflocalsflocal Posts: 6,092member
    I refuse to buy any other monitor for my Macs other than the Apple-branded ones.  I ended up purchased two more Apple Thunderbolt displays last year on the used market for a total of three I own across two iMacs.  Sure, they're 2K displays but I'd rather have good overall quality with plenty of ports in the back than the anemic options available today.

    Apple is missing out on a ton of revenue from us that are literally waiting for Apple to come out with updated monitors.  Give me/us a $1000+/- display and I'll buy at least two right now for my 2020 iMac.
    watto_cobraopinion
  • Reply 14 of 35
    tht said:
    Apple is certainly taking their time on this. It was a strategic error to discontinue a branded Apple monitor+dock. They should have shipped an Apple Thunderbolt 5K display in 2018. They really should have done it in 2016, but I digress. 

    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?
    Define “strategic error”? While we would certainly enjoy branded monitors, I don’t think there are as many customers as you think there are. The Mini was originally marketed as “BYOM” for switchers before becoming a small server of sorts and then midrange machine…Certainly not a mass market device like the iMac. MBs are popular mass market devices, but most ”normals” do not get docks and external monitors — and if they do they’re gonna get a $250 monitor, not a $1000 monitor. Pros and enthusiasts, sure, but I doubt that market is as large as you’re speculating. So I’m struggling to see how this could possibly be a strategic error for Apple’s efforts, which is on its way to be the first $3 Trillion company. 
    tht said:
    blastdoor said:
    tht said:
    Apple is certainly taking their time on this. It was a strategic error to discontinue a branded Apple monitor+dock. They should have shipped an Apple Thunderbolt 5K display in 2018. They really should have done it in 2016, but I digress. 

    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?
    I’d say tactical marketing error rather than strategic error, but otherwise I agree.

    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.
    Who knows what the difference between tactics and strategy are here, but Apple left billions of revenue off the table by discontinuing monitors
    Yeah, I don’t think they lost billions in monitor sales. Premium monitors just isn’t that big of a market.  
    edited December 2021 williamlondonfastasleep
  • Reply 15 of 35
    thttht Posts: 5,421member
    Marvin said:
    tht said:
    blastdoor said:
    tht said:
    Apple is certainly taking their time on this. It was a strategic error to discontinue a branded Apple monitor+dock. They should have shipped an Apple Thunderbolt 5K display in 2018. They really should have done it in 2016, but I digress. 

    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?
    I’d say tactical marketing error rather than strategic error, but otherwise I agree.

    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 left billions of revenue off the table by discontinuing monitors.

    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 must not have been selling well for Apple to discontinue them, there's no way they'd end a product line that was making money. I think part of the problem is that they make those kind of products in a way that people don't need to keep buying new ones very often, like with their routers. People used the Cinema displays for over 10 years and so sales dry up and Apple assumes nobody wants them but people already had one that didn't need replaced yet. Eventually that time comes around but it could easily be over 10 years, it's around 8 years for TVs.

    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.
    I think Schiller, a lot of product guys under him, and Jobs before them, became true believers in the "post-PC" era after seeing 2 years of crazy iPad sales in the 2011 and 2012 time and drove Apple's decisions accordingly for Macs and iPads for the next 5 years or so. A lot of them, or perhaps even most of them, were poor decisions. Not developing a successor to the Thunderbolt Display was one of those decisions, and they left it all to LG. It's as if they thought an external monitor was not a core part of their computing offerings anymore.

    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.
    watto_cobramattinozwilliamlondonh2pelijahg
  • Reply 16 of 35
    thttht Posts: 5,421member
    tht said:
    Apple is certainly taking their time on this. It was a strategic error to discontinue a branded Apple monitor+dock. They should have shipped an Apple Thunderbolt 5K display in 2018. They really should have done it in 2016, but I digress. 

    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?
    Define “strategic error”? While we would certainly enjoy branded monitors, I don’t think there are as many customers as you think there are. The Mini was originally marketed as “BYOM” for switchers before becoming a small server of sorts and then midrange machine…Certainly not a mass market device like the iMac. MBs are popular mass market devices, but most ”normals” do not get docks and external monitors — and if they do they’re gonna get a $250 monitor, not a $1000 monitor. Pros and enthusiasts, sure, but I doubt that market is as large as you’re speculating. So I’m struggling to see how this could possibly be a strategic error for Apple’s efforts, which is on its way to be the first $3 Trillion company. 
    ...
    Yeah, I don’t think they lost billions in monitor sales. Premium monitors just isn’t that big of a market.  
    Imo, the strategic error was not shipping a Thunderbolt 3 Display, with TB3, USBC, USBA, ethernet, maybe SDcard, in late 2016 when the 4th gen MBP models were shipped. 4th gen models are MBP models with 2 or 4 TB3 ports all the way to 2020. blastdoor makes the usual comment about tactics versus strategy, and I'd agree with him that this was more a tactical error while strategic errors would be thinking that they were in the post-PC era and PCs weren't important anymore.

    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.
    williamlondon
  • Reply 17 of 35
    tht said:
    Marvin said:
    tht said:
    blastdoor said:
    tht said:
    Apple is certainly taking their time on this. It was a strategic error to discontinue a branded Apple monitor+dock. They should have shipped an Apple Thunderbolt 5K display in 2018. They really should have done it in 2016, but I digress. 

    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?
    I’d say tactical marketing error rather than strategic error, but otherwise I agree.

    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 left billions of revenue off the table by discontinuing monitors.

    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 must not have been selling well for Apple to discontinue them, there's no way they'd end a product line that was making money. I think part of the problem is that they make those kind of products in a way that people don't need to keep buying new ones very often, like with their routers. People used the Cinema displays for over 10 years and so sales dry up and Apple assumes nobody wants them but people already had one that didn't need replaced yet. Eventually that time comes around but it could easily be over 10 years, it's around 8 years for TVs.

    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.
    I think Schiller, a lot of product guys under him, and Jobs before them, became true believers in the "post-PC" era after seeing 2 years of crazy iPad sales in the 2011 and 2012 time and drove Apple's decisions accordingly for Macs and iPads for the next 5 years or so. A lot of them, or perhaps even most of them, were poor decisions. Not developing a successor to the Thunderbolt Display was one of those decisions, and they left it all to LG. It's as if they thought an external monitor was not a core part of their computing offerings anymore.

    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. 
    Post-PC simply means "after" PC, it does not infer a non-PC world. Apple is making more revenue from Mac sales today than ever before.

    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.
    williamlondonh2pfastasleep
  • Reply 18 of 35
    tht said:
    tht said:
    Apple is certainly taking their time on this. It was a strategic error to discontinue a branded Apple monitor+dock. They should have shipped an Apple Thunderbolt 5K display in 2018. They really should have done it in 2016, but I digress. 

    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?
    Define “strategic error”? While we would certainly enjoy branded monitors, I don’t think there are as many customers as you think there are. The Mini was originally marketed as “BYOM” for switchers before becoming a small server of sorts and then midrange machine…Certainly not a mass market device like the iMac. MBs are popular mass market devices, but most ”normals” do not get docks and external monitors — and if they do they’re gonna get a $250 monitor, not a $1000 monitor. Pros and enthusiasts, sure, but I doubt that market is as large as you’re speculating. So I’m struggling to see how this could possibly be a strategic error for Apple’s efforts, which is on its way to be the first $3 Trillion company. 
    ...
    Yeah, I don’t think they lost billions in monitor sales. Premium monitors just isn’t that big of a market.  
    Imo, the strategic error was not shipping a Thunderbolt 3 Display, with TB3, USBC, USBA, ethernet, maybe SDcard, in late 2016 when the 4th gen MBP models were shipped. 4th gen models are MBP models with 2 or 4 TB3 ports all the way to 2020. blastdoor makes the usual comment about tactics versus strategy, and I'd agree with him that this was more a tactical error while strategic errors would be thinking that they were in the post-PC era and PCs weren't important anymore.

    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.
    You've described what you wanted and that which Apple didn't do, yes. But you've not established that this was an error. Apple is selling more Macs than ever, generating massive revenue, and on its way to being the most valuable it's ever been. It is impossible to call this an error-state for the company simply because they didn't sell the techie dream monitor enthusiasts want. Specialist markets (~$1000 monitors are very niche) just isn't the definition of commercial success or error. They say no to markets all the time, even stuff we like -- Apple-branded printers, scanners, routers, etc... Do I wish they didn't? Sure, of course. Is it an error that they did? Unlikely. Only they have the sales data, but very unlikely.
    edited December 2021 williamlondonAlex_V
  • Reply 19 of 35
    The sooner Apple goes back to monitors and airport extremes, the better. 

    It really was horrible to go through the QC nightmares of the ultrafine displays and the various routers floating around. Apple had the best router going. Would love to see them make a new one available. 
    opinion
  • Reply 20 of 35
    mattinozmattinoz Posts: 2,299member
    tht said:
    Marvin said:
    tht said:
    blastdoor said:
    tht said:
    Apple is certainly taking their time on this. It was a strategic error to discontinue a branded Apple monitor+dock. They should have shipped an Apple Thunderbolt 5K display in 2018. They really should have done it in 2016, but I digress. 

    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?
    I’d say tactical marketing error rather than strategic error, but otherwise I agree.

    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 left billions of revenue off the table by discontinuing monitors.

    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 must not have been selling well for Apple to discontinue them, there's no way they'd end a product line that was making money. I think part of the problem is that they make those kind of products in a way that people don't need to keep buying new ones very often, like with their routers. People used the Cinema displays for over 10 years and so sales dry up and Apple assumes nobody wants them but people already had one that didn't need replaced yet. Eventually that time comes around but it could easily be over 10 years, it's around 8 years for TVs.

    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.
    I think Schiller, a lot of product guys under him, and Jobs before them, became true believers in the "post-PC" era after seeing 2 years of crazy iPad sales in the 2011 and 2012 time and drove Apple's decisions accordingly for Macs and iPads for the next 5 years or so. A lot of them, or perhaps even most of them, were poor decisions. Not developing a successor to the Thunderbolt Display was one of those decisions, and they left it all to LG. It's as if they thought an external monitor was not a core part of their computing offerings anymore.

    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.
    If they created a DisplayOS that was the "desktop-like" parts of iPadOS (granted these need improving still) basically a Catalyst target machine that had all the Universal Control features (on steroids. Yes Please) then it would be something we'd pay for, Subscription model even. Would be so useful for making use of older machines. Would be a great target machine for light users. 

    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. 
    just cruisin
Sign In or Register to comment.