thunderbolt display lcd panel manufacturer

Apple"s newly released Thunderbolt Display sports an LG display with the same model number found in the 27-inch iMac released in 2009, a teardown of the screen has found.

The new display, powered by Apple and Intel"s Thunderbolt technology, was disassembled this week by iFixit. They found that the LG display is model number "LM270WQ1," matching the previous iMac as well as the screen found in Dell"s competing UltraSharp U2711 27-inch monitor.

However, Apple"s display uses LED backlights for better picture quality and lower power consumption, as opposed to the cold-cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFLs) found on Dell"s screen. In addition, the Dell display is matte, while Apple"s is glossy.

The solutions provider also noted that Apple"s screen has a 12 millisecond response time and 17.7 million colors, while Dell"s competing panel offers an advertised 6 millisecond response time and 1.07 billion colors.

iFixit found that the glass front of the new Thunderbolt Display can be removed with "heavy duty suction cups," just like with Apple"s iMac lineup. The LCD screen sports a resolution of 2,560-by-1,440 pixels.

"The fan is easily removed by simply detaching a couple of connectors and unfastening a few screws," they said. "Apple has, as usual, chosen to go with a large, brushless fan to keep the colossal Thunderbolt Display cool and quiet."

Inside the display, iFixit found a plethora of chips, causing them to remark that "it"s hard to believe there"s no computer inside." The screen includes a built-in FaceTime HD video camera, 2.1 speaker system, integrated MagSafe charger, three USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire 800 port, one Gigabit Ethernet port, and a Thunderbolt port for daisy chaining up to five additional Thunderbolt devices.

The teardown also discovered that the speakers inside the Thunderbolt Display are 49 watts with a miniature subwoofer. In addition, the Flextronics power supply is said to provide 250 watts of maximum continuous power.

The Apple Thunderbolt Display is a 27-inch flat panel computer monitor developed and sold by Apple Inc. from July 2011 to June 2016. Originally priced at $999,Apple LED Cinema Display. New to the Thunderbolt Display was the switch from Mini DisplayPort and USB to a single Thunderbolt connector for data and DisplayPort. The Thunderbolt Display also added a Gigabit Ethernet port and FireWire 800 port. Macs released before 2011 without Thunderbolt, the 2012 Mac Pro and the single USB-C Retina MacBook are incompatible with the Thunderbolt Display without use of additional adaptors.

The Thunderbolt Display was discontinued in June 2016, and replaced by LG UltraFine displays developed with LG on the consumer end, while the Pro Display XDR succeeded it in 2019 as Apple"s professional display. In 2022, the Apple Studio Display was released as the first Apple-branded consumer display since its discontinuation.

Like its predecessor, the 27-inch LED Cinema Display, the resolution is 2560×1440 pixels in a 16:9 aspect ratio. It was made with aluminum and glass, having a similar appearance to the contemporary ranges of iMac and MacBook Pro unibody designs. The display featured a built-in 720pFaceTime HD camera (replacing the iSight in the previous model), microphone, and stereo speaker system with subwoofer (2.1 channel). An octopus cable with Thunderbolt and MagSafe is permanently attached to the back of the display for data and charging MacBooks, respectively. On the rear of the display there is a Thunderbolt port, a FireWire 800 port, three USB 2.0 ports and a Gigabit Ethernet port.

The Thunderbolt port allows for the possibility of daisy chaining Thunderbolt Displays from a supported Mac, or connecting other devices that have Thunderbolt ports, such as external hard drives and video capture devices. In July 2012, Apple began including a MagSafe to MagSafe 2 adaptor in the box.

On June 23, 2016, Apple announced through a statement that it was discontinuing the Thunderbolt Display and would no longer produce stand-alone displays, saying, "There are a number of great third-party options available for Mac users."LG to design the Thunderbolt 3-enabled UltraFine line, consisting of 4K and 5K displays, which were the only displays sold by Apple from 2016 to 2019.Pro Display XDR, the first Apple-branded display since the Thunderbolt Display"s discontinuation. In March 2022, Apple released the Apple Studio Display, the first Apple-branded consumer display since the Thunderbolt Display"s discontinuation, which similarly includes integrated speakers and a webcam.

The Thunderbolt Display drops compatibility with all previous standards, including VGA, DVI, and DisplayPort.Retina MacBook and 2012 Mac Pro do not support Thunderbolt.

Macbook Pro (2012): 2+2 Displays: Can daisy chain two Apple Thunderbolt Displays, in addition to one HDMI display and the MacBook Pro"s own display, for four displays total

MacBook Pro (Late 2016): Apple released a Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter for enabling the Thunderbolt 3 ports of MacBook Pro (Late 2016) to connect to Thunderbolt 2 devices.

MacBook Pro (2017-2019) Using 2 of the Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 Adapters can run 4 Thunderbolt Displays in addition to the built in Retina Display for a total of 5.

MacBook Pro M1 Pro (2021) Using 1 of the Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 Adapters can run 2 Thunderbolt Displays in addition to the built in Retina Display for a total of 3.

MacBook Pro M1 Max (2021) Using 2 of the Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 Adapters can run 4 Thunderbolt Displays in addition to the built in Retina Display for a total of 5.

MacBook Air (M1, 2020): 1+1 Displays: Can use one Apple Thunderbolt Display (with Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter), in addition to the MacBook Air"s own display. Further displays have to rely on virtual display output like DisplayLink or Apple Sidecar.

Your Apple Thunderbolt Display comes with 90 days of free telephone support and a one-year limited warranty. Purchase the AppleCare Protection Plan to extend your service and support to three years from your display’s purchase date. Only the AppleCare Protection Plan provides you with direct telephone support from Apple technical experts and the assurance that repairs will be handled by Apple-authorized technicians using genuine Apple parts. For more information, visit Apple support or call 800-823-2775.

Size class of the display as declared by the manufacturer. Often this is the rounded value of the actual size of the diagonal in inches.27 in (inches)

Approximate diagonal size of the display. If the manufacturer does not provide such information, the diagonal is calculated from the width and height of the screen.685.8 mm (millimeters)

Approximate width of the display. If the manufacturer does not provide such information, the width is calculated from the diagonal and the aspect ratio.596.736 mm (millimeters)

Approximate height of the display. If the manufacturer does not provide such information, the height is calculated from the diagonal and the aspect ratio.335.664 mm (millimeters)

There are various panel technologies. Each has its own specific features - viewing angles, color reproduction, response time, brightness/contrast, production cost, etc. The image quality depends directly on the type of the display panel used.H-IPS

The most widely used panels are those with 6, 8, and 10 bits for each of the RGB components of the pixel. They provide 18-, 24-, and 30-bit color, respectively.8 bits

Frame Rate Control (FRC) is a method, which allows the pixels to show more color tones. With quick cyclic switching between different color tones, an illusion for a new intermediate color tone is created. For example, by using FRC, a 6-bit display panel is able to show 16.7 millioin colors, which are typical for 8-bit display panels, and not the standard 262200 colors, instead. There are different FRC algorithms.No

The maximum number of colors, which the display is able to reproduce, depends on the type of the panel in use and color enhancing technologies like FRC.16777216 colors

The ratio between the horizontal and the vertical side of the display. Some of the standard and widely used aspect ratios are 4:3, 5:4, 16:9 and 16:10.1.778:1

Information about the number of pixels on the horizontal and vertical side of the screen. A higher resolution allows the display of a more detailed and of higher quality image.2560 x 1440 pixels

The pixel pitch shows the distance from the centers of two neighboring pixels. In displays, which have a native resolution (the TFT ones, for example), the pixel pitch depends on the resolution and the size of the screen.0.233 mm (millimeters)

Information of the number of pixels in a unit of length. With the decrease of the display size and the increase of its resolution, the pixel density increases.109 ppi (pixels per inch)

The backlight is the source of light of the LCD display panels. The type of backlight determines the image quality and the color space of the display. There are various backlights such as CCFL, LED, WLED, RGB-LED, and etc.W-LED

The static contrast shows the ratio between the brightest and the darkest color, which the display can reproduce simultaneously, for example, within one and the same frame/scene.1000 : 1

The dynamic contrast shows the ratio between the brightest and the darkest color, which the display can reproduce over time, for example, in the course of playing a video.2000000 : 1

Information about the type of coating of the display. There are different types of matte and glossy coatings, each of which has its own advantages and drawbacks.Anti-glare/Matte (3H)

With the 2022 Apple Studio Display, the company has returned to the display business in a big way. To celebrate, I thought we could walk through the history of Apple’s standalone flat displays.

In March 1998, Apple introduced the Apple Studio Display (15-inch). At the time, all of Apple’s external monitors were CRTs wrapped in beige plastic. In contrast, the Studio Display was a thin-for-the-time LCD perched on a plastic stand.

The Apple Studio Display combines state-of-the-art digital imaging technology with advanced software-based features unique to Apple. The result is a high-performance flat-panel display that’s ideal for anyone who spends a lot of time manipulating text, graphics, and other media on-screen. Whether you’re a multimedia content creator, a designer, a writer, an educator, or an accountant, the Apple Studio Display can make your job look a lot better to you — and vice versa.

The time the Blue and White G3 as well as the initial batch of Power Mac G4s had matching CRTs, but the Rev. B LCD is my favorite from the time period:

(Amazingly, this display — wrapped in beige plastic — was teased in 1997 by none other than Jonathan Ive and Phil Schiller. Skip to about 36:30 in this video.)

In September of 1999, (alongside the Power Mac G4) Apple released a 22-inch LCD named the Apple Cinema Display. It introduced a new design language that would last for nearly five years:

The panel itself was enclosed in an acrylic housing with two clear feet that were fixed in place. Around back was a leg on a hinge that could be used to adjust the tilt of the monitor. It was designed so that it was easy to change this angle, but that the display would hold its place on almost any desk surface.

This display initially sold for $3,999 (or $6,901.13 in Pro Display XDR 2022 money) and had a resolution of 1600 x 1024. Like the 15-inch Studio Display before it, it underwent a connection change, moving from DVI to ADC later in its life.

Let me start by saying one undeniable thing about the 22-inch Apple Cinema Display digital active matrix LCD: you want this monitor. Even if you don’t yet know that you want this monitor, trust me, you do. Don’t try to deny it. Its screen area is 22-inches on the diagonal and its thickness varies from 1.25 inches on the edges to about 2 inches in the center. It’s completely digital. It has a single cord coming from the back of it: an ADC cable. There’s not even a power cord. If you were to take this monitor back with you a decade or so into the past, it, perhaps more than anything else that exists in the world of computer hardware today, would look impossibly futuristic and magical. It’s as elemental as computer display devices get these days: a flat, thin panel with single cable poking out of the back. And I suspect that if Apple could have made it wireless, it would have.

ADC is just one chapter in the long story of weird Apple display standards. It wrapped power, DVI and USB into one connector for easy set up. In a way, it was the precursor to what we have today in standards like Thunderbolt.

In May 2001, a 17-inch Studio Display (LCD) was added to the line. At this point, Apple’s entire line had transitioned to flat screens, with three models:

In March 2002, Apple added another display to its lineup, in the form of a 23-inch LCD named the Apple Cinema Display HD. It supported a maximum resolution of 1920 by 1200 pixels, allowing for 1:1 playback of 1080p media for the first time on an Apple display.

Toward the end of 2002, the old 15-inch Studio Display was discontinued, making the 17-inch Studio Display the entry-level option for Power Mac users.

In January 2003, Apple introduced a new 20-inch Cinema Display to take the now-empty middle spot, replacing the 22-inch Cinema Display. This gave the 23-inch Cinema Display HD some breathing room at the top of the line, and nicely split the difference between it and the remaining Studio Display, as you can see on this tech spec page:

“Our gorgeous new 30-inch Cinema Display is the largest desktop canvas ever created, and you can even run two of them side-by-side to get 8 million jaw-dropping pixels,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Apple’s Cinema Displays have always set the bar for the industry’s highest quality displays, and our new 30-inch display is a giant leap forward for our pro customers.”

I remember the first time I saw one of these in the real world, and my jaw dropped. The 2560 x 1600 panel was so much bigger than anything I had ever seen on a desk up to that point. I mean, just look at this press image of the 30-inch display next to a Power Mac G5:

All of those pixels meant that most Macs couldn’t actually push the 30-inch Cinema Display, at least at first. Initially, only a G5 tower with a then-new GeForce 6800 GPU could so.

The quality of the pixels you see impacts how you use your computer. After years of experience, Apple engineers have discovered the ideal resolution to display both sharp text and graphics — a pixel density of about 100 pixels per inch (ppi). Other vendors may offer a larger monitor, but with less resolution, so you end up with fewer pixels, or a smaller monitor with a high resolution that causes eyestrain and headaches. Apple’s balanced 100 pixels per inch format is optimized for images, yet allows you to easily work with text in email, Safari and sophisticated type treatments in layouts.

Around back, all three of the new models now included two USB and two FireWire 400 ports, and the display was run via DVI. This meant the display could be used as a hub for all sorts of workflows, including those powered by notebooks, as ADC was now a thing of the past.

Of course, this also meant that the days of a single connection between a Mac and display were over. This generation of Cinema Displays shipped with a break-out cable that included individual connectors for DVI, USB and Firewire 400. Additionally, there was a power connector that plugged into an external power supply.

In the fall of 2008, Apple replaced the mid-range 23-inch Cinema Display with a new 24-inch model that was just $899. Built with a LED backlit display and in an updated chassis to better fit in with the now glass and aluminum iMacs.

While the other two Cinema Displays remained on sale, it was clear from Apple’s press release that this display was the start of a new generation of products. For the first time, Apple had made an external display really designed for notebook users:

“The new LED Cinema Display is the most advanced display that Apple has ever made,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “It is a perfect fit for our sleek new line of aluminum MacBooks with its 24-inch LED-backlit screen, aluminum and glass enclosure, integrated camera, mic and speakers, MagSafe charger, three USB ports and Mini DisplayPort.”

The 24-inch glossy, widescreen display with 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution uses LED-backlit technology to provide instant full-screen brightness and great power efficiency. Suspended by an aluminum stand with an adjustable hinge that makes tilting the display almost effortless, the new display includes a built-in iSight video camera, mic and speakers, making it ideal for video conferencing with iChat, listening to music or watching movies. The new display also includes three self-powered USB 2.0 ports so users can simply leave their printer, camera, iPhone 3G or iPod dock connected when they take their MacBook with them. The sleek, thin display also includes a built-in universal MagSafe charger so users can conveniently leave their notebook’s MagSafe power adapter in their travel bag.

Less than two years later, Apple replaced all of its external displays with a new one — a larger LED Cinema Display. Its 27-inch screen ran at a resolution of 2560 × 1440, but was otherwise the same as the outgoing 24-inch. It ran $999.

In July of 2011, the 27-inch LED Cinema Display got one-upped, in the form of the mighty Apple Thunderbolt Display. It took everything good about the LED Cinema Displays and made it even better, thanks to the all-in-one nature of Thunderbolt:

With its 27-inch LED-backlit screen, the new Thunderbolt Display delivers a brilliant viewing experience. But connect it to any Thunderbolt-enabled Mac, and it becomes a plug-and-play hub for everything you do. You get 27 inches of high-resolution screen space, high-quality audio, a FaceTime HD camera, and support for FireWire 800 and Gigabit Ethernet. All through a single connection.

Well not everything was made better with this product. This was pre-Retina, so the display remained at 2560 x 1440, but it was bright and vivid, with great viewing angles.

However, the Thunderbolt Display truly was the realization of a decades-long dream at Apple: a display that could hook up to almost anything, with as few cables as possible.

The Thunderbolt Display was the ultimate docking station for a number of years, but as more and more of the Mac lineup went Retina, it felt increasingly out of place.

In 2016, when Apple introduced the Touch Bar MacBook Pros, a curious thing happened: no new display was in sight. Instead, Apple said that it had worked with LG on a display for Mac users: the UltraFine 5K.

The 2019 Pro Display XDR was Apple’s first display in eight years, but was unlike anything that had come before it. Bigger than the old 30-inch Cinema Display, this monitor packed a whopping 6K resolution into a panel that Apple said went toe-to-toe with reference monitors used in Hollywood. At a starting price of $4,999 — without a stand — it was far from what most Mac users could justify.

The 27-inch Studio Display houses a 5K panel in a new design that takes its cues from the Apple’s current design language. While its name is an old one, it really feels like a successor to the Thunderbolt Display more than anything else. While notably more expensive, it offers a similar docking experience that notebook users were first treated to over a decade ago.

While the XDR is just too much … everything… for most people, the Studio Display is a much better fit. Many think it is too expensive at $1,599, and that’s probably true, especially given that the panel itself isn’t anything all that special anymore.

I’m willing to sit those things aside and just be glad Apple is back in the display business. It has a rich history of making good products in the space, and I hope there are many more to come in the future.

Is it possible to (1) Are any of the components of Thunderbolt Display upgrade-able? .... (2) There appears to be plenty of real-estate, can a Thunderbolt Display be turned into mac and/or pc? ... (3) Any way to upgrade to USB 3.0/3.1?...

If you haven"t gathered by now, the Thunderbolt Display isn"t a regular monitor - it has a lot of components inside that you"d typically only find in a full fledged computer. Being the curious cat I am, I wanted to see inside. Apple isn"t too fond of us poking around inside their review samples, but luckily the Crabtree Valley Mall Apple Store just got Thunderbolt Displays in so I hopped in the practical-wagon and grabbed one in the name of science.

Apple has an incredible fascination with using magnets in its designs. What it enables are some pretty neat enclosures, particularly on its displays. The glass front of the Thunderbolt Display is actually identical to what"s used on the 27-inch LED Cinema Display and iMac. The glass is held to the chassis via several very strong magnets. To remove the glass you"ll need to use suction cups:

Behind the glass front is the actual LCD panel itself. The LCD and backlight are enclosed in a single unit. What we"re interested in is behind the LCD however. Unplug a few cables and remove a grounding screw and the LCD unit is easily cast aside. Behind it are two discrete PCBs:

The PCB on the left is the monitor"s power supply. Looking at another half-wave rectifier isn"t on my to-do list this time, so we turn our attention to the right PCB. This is the board that handles all of the IO on the Thunderbolt Display. All of the screws we"ve removed thus far just need a T9/T10 torx bit.

The Thunderbolt Display"s motherboard is full of controllers driving all of the rear facing IO ports. Contrary to what we originally posted, I now believe this is the same Light Ridge controller we"ve seen on other Macs (not the MacBook Air):

The external Thunderbolt cable actually continues inside the display and ends up at an internal Thunderbolt port. The cable terminates at the port and then is routed via traces on the PCB to the Eagle Ridge chip:

There"s nothing immediately apparent in the PCB design that would point to the cause of the issue we saw with the Promise Pegasus interfering with the Thunderbolt Display"s USB audio controller. The root cause must be exclusive to the Pegasus.

Grade A in Excellent Working Condition, Fully Tested and 100% Functional 90 Day Hardware Warranty Buy with Confidence - Coretek is a Microsoft Registered Refurbisher and Global Seller The Apple Thunderbolt Display (27-Inch) is intended to be the "ultimate docking station" for a Thunderbolt-equipped Mac notebook (it is not compatible with earlier Macs). Thunderbolt makes it possible to connect one cable and use this display"s built-in Face

Time HD camera, mic, 2.1 speakers (49 watts), three USB 2.0 ports, single Firewire "800" port, single Gigabit Ethernet port, and Thunderbolt port. In addition to the built-in Thunderbolt cable, the display also has a built-in Mag

Book Pro. With the exception of connectivity, this display is similar to the LED Cinema Display (27-Inch) that preceded it, and likewise uses the same sleek aluminum case and features a 27-inch glossy LED-backlit TFT active-matrix LCD display with IPS technology and an optimum resolution of 2560x1440. It has a 178 degree horizontal and vertical viewing angle, a "typical" brightness of 375 cd/m2, contrast ratio of 1000:1, and a 12 ms response time. Expand All Details | Contract All

Details: This is a 27-inch glossy LED-backlit TFT active-matrix LCD with IPS technology and a viewable area of 27-inches. The optimum resolution is 2560x1440. It has a 178 degree horizontal and vertical viewing angle, a "typical" brightness of 375 cd/m2, contrast ratio of 1000:1, and a 12 ms response time.

Details: Three powered USB 2.0 ports, one Firewire 800 port, one Gigabit Ethernet port (hub), and one Thunderbolt port as well as a built-in Thunderbolt cable and a built-in Mag

As the sequel to Apple’s LED Cinema Display, the Apple Thunderbolt Display (Orig. $999, now on Ebay for much less) was originally introduced in July 2011, and had not changed until it was discontinued in June 2016. Measuring 27″ on the diagonal, the metal and glass Thunderbolt Display uses the same 2560×1440 screen found in the original 27″ iMac and the LED Cinema Display, with a chassis thickness somewhere between the last two iMac generations. Three speakers are inside the frame for 2.1-channel audio, along with a basic FaceTime HD camera and a microphone.

The display is different because it has a Thunderbolt connector, which makes a MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac mini, or Mac Pro easy to hook up. After plugging the monitor into a wall outlet, you connect your Mac via the Thunderbolt cable to gain access to three powered USB 2.0 ports, a Firewire 800 port, a Thunderbolt port, and an Ethernet port. There’s also a MagSafe plug to supply up to 85W of power to a MacBook, as well as a packed-in MagSafe 2 adapter for newer MacBooks. Thunderbolt is required for the video connection; no other video standard is supported.

The Thunderbolt Display has not been updated for roughly four years, and shows its age in physical thickness, non-Retina display resolution, the age of its ports, and pricing. It’s very hard to recommend right now, and we’d expect Apple to release a new version in the not-too-distant future.

Apple unveiled the all-new Thunderbolt Display, a 27-inch standalone monitor priced at $999, 10 years ago this week. It was the first display to use the new Thunderbolt connection and the last Apple monitor to ship for less than $4,999.

But $999 might as well be $5,000 when you’re a freshman in college. I never had the opportunity to actually review Apple’s last consumer display, but based on what we knew then, this is the review I could have written at the time (followed by some classic video reviews):

With WWDC 2021 coming up on Monday, it’s been two years since Apple announced the Pro Display XDR — an amazing but expensive external monitor aimed at professional users who need things like high resolution, extreme brightness, and wide color gamut. But what about regular Mac users? They also deserve to have a great external monitor, and Apple should think about this.

Earlier today, Apple silently pushed shipping times for the LG UltraFine 5K display back to 5 to 6 weeks. The move came following our report last week highlighting problems using the display with 2 feet of wireless routers due to poor shielding.

If you’ve been holding out for a new standalone desktop display from Apple, you’re either going to take news of the Thunderbolt Display being discontinued as a sign of good things to come, or as a cue to finally purchase a new 4K or 5K display from someone else. For most, especially considering Apple itself is recommending you purchase a third-party display, the latter option is going to be the more likely.

While Apple didn’t recommend any specific third-party alternatives during its discontinuation announcement of the Thunderbolt display last week, we’ve done the work for you and put together our top picks for the best 4K & 5K displays for Mac available to buy right now.

Apple officially announced yesterday that its Thunderbolt Display is dead. The monitor was never updated to match the much thinner design of the current iMacs, it featured a MagSafe 1 connector and required a MagSafe 2 adapter, and its resolution was far inferior to Retina iMacs so it was no surprise to see it finally discontinued.

Apple typically replaces a discontinued product with a newer version, though, so yesterday’s move could be interpreted as a sign that the company is fully exiting the external display business. Not so fast, says one voice however…

The current $999 (!) Thunderbolt Display is showing its age to put it mildly, now significantly overshadowed by Retina MacBooks and iMacs in terms of screen resolution and quality. Reaffirming earlier reports, we have heard that stock of the Thunderbolt Display at Apple Stores is quickly running out with no indications of more units on the way to replenish availability. This is often a good indicator that a refresh is imminent. We are led to believe that WWDC will be very light on new hardware. However, given the opportunity for cheers in the audience, perhaps Apple could announce the new display at the keynote with a release pencilled in for later in the year.

Independently, we have heard some rumblings about what the new display might offer. Finally bringing it up to speed with its Retina display Mac cousins, the new ‘Thunderbolt Display’ will likely feature a 5K resolution display 5120×2880 pixels. Moreover, sources indicate that Apple will take the display in a surprising direction, specifically suggesting that Apple plans to integrate a dedicated external GPU into the display itself …

It’s been true for way too long now that Apple’s Thunderbolt Display is due for a comprehensive upgrade. Apple’s $999 27-inch display has a dated design and has much lower resolution than the Retina 5K iMac for $800 more. For those reasons and more, it’s been on everyone’s Do Not Buy list for quite some time, but that may be about to change.

There are a few products in need of updates that aren’t currently being planned for the event, with new MacBooks the most obvious of candidates, but some aging products like Mac Pro, the Thunderbolt Display, AirPort products, wireless EarPods, and more also due for updates. Here’s everything Apple needs to update, but likely won’t announce at its event on Monday:

We’ve been poring over Apple’s change to the 8.4mm by 2.6mm USB Type C standard since we got tipped the design of the new MacBook late last year. It is a big change for Apple and puts the future of longstanding technologies like Thunderbolt and MagSafe into questionable status.  Even Lightning seems a whole lot more vulnerable when an adapter that is marginally bigger, but has the whole industry behind it, shows up in Apple’s future flagship laptop.

Despite USB 3.0’s growing popularity with consumers, Thunderbolt remains a viable alternative for professional users, particularly video makers willing to pay a premium for guaranteed high speeds. Over the past year, several Thunderbolt 2 hubs have come to market — boxes with one Thunderbolt 2 connection to a computer, one for a Thunderbolt accessory, and multiple ports to connect USB, audio, video, and Ethernet accessories. The idea: keep all of your gear hooked up to the hub, then use a single cable to connect it all to your Mac.

Known for large, heavy, professional-grade Mac accessories, CalDigit has just released Belkin’s $300 Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD and Elgato’s $230 Thunderbolt 2 Dock (review) into a smaller, denser-feeling enclosure, at a lower MSRP — sort of. In reality, Thunderbolt Station 2 has some very specific benefits and one limitation that place it on par with its competitors, making the choice between them a more personal decision…

A security researcher speaking at the Chaos Computer Congress in Hamburg demonstrated a hack that rewrites an Intel Mac’s firmware using a Thunderbolt device with attack code in an option ROM. Known as Thunderstrike, the proof of concept presented by Trammel Hudson infects the Apple Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) in a way he claims cannot be detected, nor removed by reinstalling OS X.

Apple has already implemented an intended fix in the latest Mac mini and iMac with Retina display, which Hudson says will soon be available for other Macs, but appears at this stage to provide only partial protection…  expand full story

LG has just announced that it will formally launch the 34UC97,  “the world’s first curved monitor with an extra-wide 21:9 aspect ratio,” at the IFA in Berlin next month. The 34-inch ultra-wide monitor offers a 3440×1440 resolution, and – appealingly for Mac users – supports Thunderbolt 2 …  expand full story

When Apple made a big fuss over the ability of the Mac Pro to support three 4K displays, it signalled that it could only be a matter of time before the company created its own. As I predicted back in October of last year, the company made no attempt to rush this, but we’re now hearing that Apple is close to finishing work on either a 4K Apple Thunderbolt Display, a 4K iMac or both.

There are Mac accessories that are exciting or fun, and others that are boring but useful. The Elgato Thunderbolt Dock most definitely falls into the latter category.

As regular readers will know, I’m of the view that wires are evil. Anything that can be wireless should be wireless, and any wires that are unavoidable should be hidden from sight. This is particularly easy if you have an Apple Thunderbolt Display, of course, since all you need in the way of wires from a MacBook is power and Thunderbolt: everything else can be plugged into the back of the monitor.

But if you share my aversion to visible wires and don’t have a Thunderbolt display, or you are frequently connecting and disconnecting your MacBook from a bunch of devices on your desk, the Elgato Thunderbolt Dock may be the answer …

Corning is hoping to turn that around this year with the consumer launch of its Thunderbolt Optical Cables in 10 meter (33 foot), 30 meter (99 foot), and 60 meter (198 foot) sizes. With these lengths, you can put your Thunderbolt hard disk and arrays far away from your desk. If you have a Thunderbolt Display or a Thunderbolt dock, you can even move your Mac to the utility closet or basement and really clean up your desk space.

When Apple started offering a Sharp 4K display in its European online Apple Store, then withdrew it shortly afterwards, some speculated that this might mean an Apple 4K display is about to be launched.

It’s possible, of course, but I strongly suspect not. As I argued in October, the launch of the Mac Pro would have been the obvious point at which to announce an Apple 4K display – and current MacBook Pros can’t drive 4K displays at decent frame-rates, so I can’t see Apple launching a display that would leave the bulk of Mac owners disappointed.

The far more likely explanation is that Apple plans to sell the Sharp displays alongside the Mac Pro once it launches – as I suggested it might in that same opinion piece in October. The displays were inadvertently made live on the store before the Pro was launched, and have been removed until the Pro is available …  expand full story

Having recently speculated on what Apple might have planned in the way of 4K displays, I thought I’d build on that to think about what it might have in store on the television front.

If you didn’t read my 4K piece, the tl;dr version is I think Apple will launch a 4K Thunderbolt Display in about a year’s time, once it has a new generation of MacBook Pro models able to drive one (or preferably two) at a decent frame-rate.

The question then is: what form might the long-rumored Apple Television take? After all, plug an upgraded Apple TV box into an Apple 4K display and you’d have an Apple Television right there. Why would we need anything more … ?  expand full story

There was one notable omission from Apple’s recent flurry of new product announcements: a 4K display. It will launch one in time, of course – and I’ll come to that shortly. But in the meantime, there’s the question of how it demonstrates one of the key capabilities of the new Mac Pro.

Sure, they could hook it up to multiple Thunderbolt Displays, but that’s not the same: Apple made a point when launching the machine of pointing out that it could drive three simultaneous 4K displays. That’s a capability you’d imagine it would want to at least show off in-store, and perhaps even offer for sale …

I’m a huge fan of Thunderbolt. A single wire carrying both DisplayPort and high-speed PCIe data is an incredibly elegant approach to minimising cable clutter even if you don’t need the blistering speed, especially when you can use an Apple Thunderbolt Display as a hub for your USB devices.

I also admire clever tech. The reason you can daisy-chain up to six separate devices is because Thunderbolt automatically multiplexes and de-multiplexes the signals as needed. Thunderbolt 2 takes this approach one step further, combining two 10Gbit/s channels into a single 20Gbit/s connection, with the the Thunderbolt controller again doing all the work. It’s impressive stuff.

Just Mobile is known for making accessories built from high quality materials, like aluminum, that nicely match the designs of Apple’s recent hardware products. However, some of their products seemed to have focused on function over form, rather than a mix of both. However, over the past few weeks, I have been using their AluDisc accessory for the Apple Thunderbolt Display, LED Cinema Display, and iMac, and I have found the accessory to be a nice, helpful addition to any workspace with those large Apple screens.

The AluDisc is a high-quality, seemingly well-built pedestal that allows you to easily and quickly rotate your display. During my daily workflow, I need to consistently pull USB and Thunderbolt cables out and in of the back of my Thunderbolt Display. Usually, to accomplish this task, I need to manually rotate my display. This is not a truly complex task, but the AluDisc actually makes this process extremely quick and easy. The disc can spins 360 degrees, making it simple to rotate my display.

It’s been a long time since Apple made a standalone display; the Apple Thunderbolt Display was discontinued in 2016. Apple tried to point customers looking for an external display at an LG 5K monitor for a while, but it was fairly buggy, leading the company to promise pro customers a high-end display of its own when it also promised to reboot the Mac Pro in 2017.

And now it’s here: the Pro Display XDR, part of Apple’s aggressive retrenchment in the professional market with the new Mac Pro and the 16-inch MacBook Pro. (Here’s our Mac Pro review and our 16-inch MacBook Pro review, if you’re interested.)

The Pro Display XDR is a 32-inch 6K LCD that can hit 1,600 nits of peak brightness, with 1,000 nits of sustained brightness from a full-array local dimming backlight composed of 576 special blue LEDs. It supports true 10-bit color and the full DCI-P3 color gamut, and Apple says that it can hit a million-to-one contrast ratio using certain industry-standard test patterns. These are all very impressive specs — so impressive that Apple confidently says the Pro Display XDR is the “world’s best pro display.” It’s also so impressive that the company spent a lot of time at the launch event comparing it to a $43,000 Sony reference OLED that is usually used for high-end color grading work in film and TV production.

The Pro Display XDR costs $4,999, with a $999 optional stand. Even at $6,000 total, that’s substantially less than $43,000, a number Apple certainly wants you to think about to put the price in perspective.

The outside of the Pro Display XDR is notable both for what’s there and especially for what’s not there. What’s there is Apple’s striking new pattern of cooling vents across the back, which looks like overlapping alien heads or the fever dreams of a depressed honeybee that just wants to draw for a living. It’s fair to say no other display has ever looked like this from the rear.

There are four USB-C connections on the back, but they are far more confusing than you’d expect. (Or perhaps not, given that USB-C is generally confusing.) One of the USB-C connectors, marked by a lightning bolt icon, is a Thunderbolt 3 port, which is how you plug the display into your Mac. The other three USB-C connectors operate at different speeds, depending on your computer: most supported Macs can only run them at USB 2 speeds, but the 16-inch MacBook Pro can run them at the USB 3 speeds because its video card supports a new standard called Display Stream Compression that leaves enough bandwidth on the Thunderbolt bus for faster USB connections. The Mac Pro does not offer video cards that support DSC, in case you’re wondering.

It makes sense that the $999 Pro Display XDR stand isn’t bundled with the display: professional studio setups often have mounting arms in them, and if you don’t need the stand, you don’t have to buy it. (The VESA mounting adapter for those setups will cost you an extra $199, however.)

That said, I still wouldn’t get the stand, if only because we found it impossible to keep level: the stand can rotate the display to portrait, and there’s a little too much play in the hinge. It’s not floppy or anything, but you will find things out of level quite often just by adjusting the display. I don’t think that’s a problem $999 monitor stands should have.

In any case, I told The Verge’s resident USB soothsayer, Chaim Gartenberg, that the USB-C ports on the back of the Pro Display XDR only run at USB 2 speeds on most computers, and he looked me dead in the eye and said, “This is my nightmare.” So USB-C is going just great.

Speaking of the 16-inch MacBook Pro, it got very hot while running the Pro Display XDR. We mostly used the display with our Mac Pro, but we also plugged it into our 16-inch MacBook Pro review unit a few times. After about 45 minutes, the laptop got pretty warm, and the fans had spun up. This isn’t a huge surprise — pushing that many pixels isn’t easy — but don’t expect to use this thing with a laptop and have things stay cool.

What you will not find on the outside of the Pro Display XDR are any buttons at all. Zero. Everything is controlled by software, specifically macOS Catalina 10.15.2. Brightness, resolution, reference modes, you name it, it’s in the Displays control panel in macOS. Apple says you can plug the Pro Display XDR into a Windows or Linux PC if they support DisplayPort, but you won’t really be able to configure it. (Apple’s also made drivers for certain newer Macs running Windows in Boot Camp, but it’s not clear how configurable it is in that setup.)

What all of this mostly means is that the Pro Display XDR is unlike virtually every other display in the world in that it only really works as designed with new Macs running the latest versions of macOS Catalina or an Apple-blessed Blackmagic SDI converter box.

The next step is to configure the Pro Display XDR to your workflow, which is a little more complicated than many people might think. Out of the box, the display comes set to a profile that allows it to hit its peak brightness of 1,600 nits, but it isn’t completely color-accurate, and which also tonemaps macOS apps and content into HDR. Apple says this profile is suitable for “home and office use” in environments with variable lighting conditions. The Pro Display XDR has two light sensors, one on the front and back, that measure ambient light and work with Apple’s True Tone technology to constantly adjust the display’s color and brightness. (Apple says that you shouldn’t point direct light sources at the light sensors, so maybe don’t put a Hue light behind your display if you’re using it in this mode.)

If you’re trying to see how your work will look on standard, non-XDR Apple displays, there’s another mode called “Apple Display” that limits brightness to 500 nits, keeps True Tone and the sensors active, and basically matches the profile Apple uses for all of its other displays.

But if you’re doing serious color work, the modes get much more precise. For HDR applications, you set the display to a mode that’s totally color-accurate but which sets overall brightness to 100 nits and limits peak brightness to 1,000 nits. This mode is only suggested for use in a standardized, controlled lighting environment; it also disables True Tone and user brightness controls.

All of these reference modes are explained in detail in Apple’s Pro Display XDR white paper; the company says a forthcoming macOS update will allow users to create their own custom profiles. But if you’re looking for a totally color-accurate display, know that you’ll have to adjust settings out of the box in such a way that limits the display’s brightness to get there. That’s pretty normal, but it’s certainly not obvious.

Once you’ve got the Pro Display XDR set up and configured for your workflow, you’ll be looking at a very sharp LCD panel with full-array local dimming (FALD). This part is going to get very nerdy, but if you are already this deep into a monitor review, this is what you came for. You are my people.

Local dimming is not a particularly new technology. TV makers have been using it on high-end LCD TVs for several years now. The basics are pretty clever: LCD panels don’t generate any light by themselves, so you have to backlight them somehow. Most LCD monitors and cheap TVs have LEDs along the edges, which means that you can never get a true black: there’s always light coming out of the black parts of the display, so the best you can do is a dark gray. The reason people like OLED panels is because they don’t have this problem; each individual OLED pixel is also a light source. There’s just no light coming out of black parts of the image on an OLED screen, giving you true blacks.

What full-array local dimming does is attempt to split the difference: instead of LEDs along the edge of the display, FALD displays have a grid of LEDs behind the LCD grouped into “zones,” and those zones can be dimmed and turned off along with the image on-screen. Turn off a zone, and you’ll get a true black from an LCD display.

Again, anyone who’s been following LCD TV trends for the past few years will find all of this familiar. Increasing the number of local dimming zones on high-end LCD TVs is how companies like Samsung and Vizio have tried to remain competitive with OLED. That’s because the grid of local dimming LEDs will always be lower-resolution than the display itself; turning on a white pixel requires the entire local dimming zone to light up, resulting in “blooming”: a splotch of gray where the LED zone is lit up around the white pixel on the display. And if the dimming zones are slow to respond to the image on-screen, that blooming gets worse, as a trail of gray follows bright pixels around the screen as the dimming zones turn themselves off.

And of course, local dimming is a spec race like any other; the number of local dimming zones goes up every year. This year’s highest-end Vizio 4K TVs have 792 zones, for example. That means the dimming zones are smaller, reducing blooming and letting more parts of a display hit true black when necessary.

I’m telling you all of this so that I can put Apple’s riff on local dimming into context. It’s still local dimming, but Apple says it’s using special blue LEDs in 576 zones — one LED per zone — behind a set of custom lenses and layers that even out colors and brightness. The whole thing is run by a custom Apple-designed timing controller that runs the backlight at 10 times the refresh rate of the display itself, which should reduce smearing. Using certain industry-standard VESA test patterns, Apple says the Pro Display XDR can hit a contrast ratio of a million-to-one, which is right up there with OLED.

When I first saw the Pro Display XDR, I was incredibly impressed by how it looked. The black levels in high-contrast scenes with a lot of black are there. The resolution is undeniable, especially with 4K video and photography. And it is incredibly bright in that default mode that can hit 1,600 nits. There’s not a lot out there like it. As we were working on our review video and having people gather around the display to watch different edits, it always attracted a crowd. It’s just nice to look at.

But as we used it more, I think it’s safe to say that while it can run with the very best full-array local dimming LCDs I’ve ever seen, it’s still a local dimming LCD: sometimes it blooms, and sometimes all of the dimming zones are lit up, and blacks look gray across the whole screen. Starfield patterns made it bloom, and there was plenty of content where you could see the black levels turn to gray as all of the dimming zones were turned on.

None of this is even remotely fatal — most people have edge-lit LCD monitors that can’t begin to compare to this display, and full-array local dimming LCD TVs are among the most popular on the market.

But again, Apple has repeatedly invited people to compare this display to very expensive OLED reference monitors that simply don’t have these issues. I am way more surprised that Apple invited that comparison than I am by the results, to be honest: the Pro Display XDR offers a vastly higher resolution and far deeper blacks than almost any other monitor you might test it against, unless you have very specific needs and the budget to match. In terms of backlight performance, it’s basically what I expected.

As with our Mac Pro review, we gave the Pro Display XDR to a variety of media professionals across Vox Media to use in their day-to-day work. The display attracted a tremendous amount of praise for brightness and sharpness, but two people, in particular, immediately noticed issues with the display viewed off-axis: Verge senior motion designer Grayson Blackmon and Vox Media director of post production technologies Murilo Silva.

The XDR display is one of the best I’ve ever worked on, but that comes with a lot of caveats. The fall-off in brightness on the edges, even when you’re on-axis with the monitor, is very noticeable to me, no matter what application I’m working in. Viewing full-screen video content is less jarring, but it’s still there.

Sadly, my biggest first impression was that the off-angle viewing was just incredibly inaccurate, even at the slightest angle. It’s so dramatic that when you’re standing right in front of it and looking at the display, there’s a vignette effect over the whole thing.

Having worked a lot with the Sony X300s that Apple compared the displays to when they announced them, it was especially jarring to see how the Apple display stacked up to the Sony in real life. This is not a display that I would ever buy as a reference monitor for serious color work.

That off-axis luminance fall-off is definitely there — and the display is so big that if you’re sitting in front of it on a desk at a normal working distance, you’re always viewing the sides off-axis, which is what produces that vignette effect. If you back up, it goes away, but most of our desks didn’t really allow for that in a normal working setup.

This is the photo I sent to Apple, showing the brightness fall-off at the edges of the Pro Display XDR. Since the display is so big, you’re almost always looking at the edges off-axis at a normal working distance. Photo by Nilay Patel

Our friend Marques Brownlee noted the same off-axis luminance fall-off in his review of the Pro Display XDR, so I asked him to double-check, and it’s definitely there. Other reviewers who have done more rigorous metered testing have also seen it.

Ultimately, I ended up sending a photo of what we were seeing to Apple and talking to the company several times about it. And basically: it’s real and fundamentally inherent to how LCDs work. You can see a similar effect right now if you’re reading this review on an LCD screen or have an LCD TV around. Just move your head around to the side, and you’ll see the brightness change and the colors shift a little.

Again, this doesn’t seem fatal to me. Most people are happy with the LCDs they have, and this display is brighter, sharper, and more accurate than those screens. And most people are not, in fact, doing serious color work on their display. But Apple invited that comparison, and I don’t think the Pro Display XDR necessarily holds up to it.

After several conversations, Apple told me that the goal with the Pro Display XDR was not to replace that Sony X300 OLED, but to provide a professional display with reference color modes and HDR capability so that more people could work on a display of this caliber. That’s a very noble goal, and viewed through that lens, the Pro Display XDR basically sits in a category of one: you would never, ever, use that Sony OLED reference display to crank on Excel or write code. It’s just not meant for that. The Pro Display XDR is far more flexible, can be used all day for office tasks, and be used for reference HDR color work in a pinch if you set it up exactly right.

So this is a puzzle: Apple has to convince all of the people who gasped at the idea of a $5,000 monitor and $1,000 stand that the upgrade to the Pro Display XDR is worth it and convince the people picky enough to spend $43,000 on a reference monitor simply for color use that this display can hit the marks. To be completely honest with you, I have no idea how that’s going to go. But I personally love looking at this thing, and I’m happy Apple’s back in the game. I just think you should go look at one yourself before deciding to buy one.