The days of Apple making its own stand-alone displays for the Mac Mini and Mac Pro are dead.
Apple revealed a new 5K 27-inch Thunderbolt 3 display during its “Hello Again” keynote yesterday, only instead of being made by Apple, the company partnered with LG to create the monitor. And according to people who talked to Apple at the event, there are no plans to ever make an Apple display again.
The Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel tweeted this afternoon that he was informed by Apple that “it’s out of the stand-alone display biz.”
Apple’s Thunderbolt Display was introduced on July 20, 2011. The company discontinued it on June 23, 2016. A rumor claimed Apple was working on a new Thunderbolt 3 display with a built-in GPU, but it was quickly shot down.
What’s special about LG?
Despite getting out of the display business, Apple did add some tech to LG’s display so that it integrates better with Macs. Jason Snell reports that you can adjust the brightness settings on the LG 5K UltraFine display from your Mac, rather than pushing buttons on the display itself.
The new 5K display will go on sale for $1,300 in December. If you don’t need that big a screen you can step down to the 4K version that uses USB-C for $700.
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
6 responses to “Apple is officially done making displays”
Looks the dream setup is officially dead for me-all I ever wanted was to have 2 5K Apple displays flanking an iMac
Ditto :(
Your dream has come true, and you don’t even know it??? The two 5K displays Apple just announced are a collaboration between Apple and LG … but this article says that already, doesn’t it?
I know that and appreciate it but…when I say Apple displays I mean Jony Ive designed glass and aluminum with a consistent base and an Apple logo on the bottom bezel
I don’t get it – they make the iMac, so shipping one without a computer built-in should be very cheap and easy for Apple to do. I have to say that this combined with the lack of updates to the Mac Pro (or indeed the mini) does not auger well for Apple’s pro users.
I’ll check out the LG monitor, but I’m very sad to hear that Apple will no longer produce its own monitors. I’ve used nothing but Cinema Displays since 1999, and am still using an aging but still gorgeous 30″ Apple monitor connected to my 2013 Mac Pro. What I’ve always enjoyed about Apple monitors is the incredibly superior and predictable color they produce. With other companies, the color settings could be off by miles, but Apple’s monitors usually have a large gamut. This is really important to me because I’m a photographer and graphic designer, and I do a LOT of retouching in Photoshop. I need to know that the colors I’m looking at are as accurate as possible so that I’m not editing out tints that aren’t really there, and that my color corrections will look the way I want when printed.