Apple may have discontinued its aging Thunderbolt Display, but it hasn’t given up on making external monitors altogether. Sources say the company is still hard at work on a new model that will have its own GPU built-in.
We first heard whispers about this new display at the beginning of June. One report claimed it would boast a super-sharp 5K resolution like the high-end iMac, and a built-in video card that would allow even entry-level Macs to power all those pixels.
But when Apple discontinued the Thunderbolt Display this week, rather than introducing that refresh, the future of its standalone display looked uncertain. Now BuzzFeed’s John Paczkowski, citing unnamed sources, says it’s not dead yet.
“Thunderbolt Display takes dirt nap as expected,” reads his tweet. “Sources telling me next-gen display will indeed have integrated GPU.”
With that GPU, Apple can guarantee compatibility with almost any Mac — assuming it’s not too old. Even those that aren’t powerhouses — like the 12-inch Retina MacBook — will be able to connect to it and drive all 14.7 million pixels.
Sadly, we still don’t know when that next-generation display will arrive. It wasn’t unveiled during WWDC earlier this month, which is what many fans were hoping for, but there’s still a chance we’ll see it before the end of the year.
Killian Bell is a freelance writer based in the U.K. He has an interest in all things tech and also covers Android over at CultofAndroid.com. You can follow him on Twitter via @killianbell.
2 responses to “Apple’s Thunderbolt Display replacement is still in the works”
I do hope that Apple is indeed releasing a new display (and one with anti-glare coating to reduce reflections). My old matte 30″ Cinema Display still looks and works just fine, but it’s getting long in the tooth. I’d love to get a new, modern Apple display for the time when this one decides to give up the ghost. What I love best about Apple monitors is the consistency of color quality, which is essential in my graphic design business.
This sounds way more likely to me than they just decided to stop making monitors because………
As for why the gap, there could be any number of reasons. They converted the factory that was making the old displays to make the new ones but ran into production snags that caused them to run out of the old ones before the new ones were out.
They ordered x number of displays from manufacturer but were too conservative and rather than pay for a new run, they decided to just wing it a few weeks.
Maybe they just wanted to create more buzz.
Another question is “Why would a profit driven company like Apple choose NOT to sell monitors when there’s an obvious market of Mac users that use them? A 4 or 5k monitor with a built in CPU would expand their existing base to include users that were shut out of the thunderbolt displays simply because their CPU’s weren’t up to spec. Even if they didn’t make money on them (which I don’t believe) it’s probably still worth it to keep graphics arts people happy and in the fold.