Wish List: A more flexible Apple display strategy

This display can only be used by its included Mac.

I’ve been thinking about Apple’s relationship with computer displays lately. Maybe it was the report that the iMac Pro might somehow return, combined with John Voorhees of MacStories detailing how he gave up the Studio Display for an ASUS monitor? And, of course, there’s the prospect that we may be seeing new Apple-made standalone displays in 2026.

I don’t want to go back to a world where Apple no longer makes standalone displays. But that said, I think the company’s approach to display technology needs a serious upgrade.

Let’s start with the entire concept of the iMac. Back in the day, you could repurpose a non-retina iMac as an external monitor via a feature called Target Display Mode. When the iMac went to 5K in 2014, that feature got dropped because a retina display has a lot of pixels, and we just didn’t have the technology to connect a 5K display to an external device.

But we do now. My MacBook Pro can drive an 8K display and two 6K displays at 60Hz. It can drive a 240Hz 4K display. It can drive three 6K displays and a 4K display at 60Hz. This is a solved problem. And yet modern iMacs still can’t be repurposed as external displays.

The Apple silicon era is great, but there is no doubt that a modern M4 iMac will become slow and outmoded long before its 4.5K display wears out. As I wrote a couple of years ago:

It’s already a little painful to think about how wasteful an all-in-one computer can be, given that displays can have lifespans vastly longer than the computers they’re attached to. Apple could assuage a lot of that frustration if it would engineer the iMac to double as a display for another device. Given the company’s commitment to the environment, perhaps it’s time to build a new Target Display Mode.

I’ll point out that the Studio Display, Apple’s nearly four-year-old 27-inch 5K display, is powered by an A13 Bionic chip running a version of iOS. Apple should absolutely be able to design any all-in-one Mac it sells with the ability to be placed in “display mode” and accept Thunderbolt input. Surely any modern Apple silicon processor could handle running the same software that’s in the Studio Display.

And as John Voorhees pointed out, the Studio Display itself is not so hot. Voorhees wanted a display that could do more than just display the contents of a Mac. His ASUS display might be a little lower-resolution than a Studio Display, but it accepts HDMI and DisplayPort input, allowing him to hook up a gaming PC, console, or Apple TV as well as his computer.

Anyone who has tried to use the Studio Display for literally anything other than hooking it up to a Mac or iPad will tell you that it’s a nightmare. Why is such a display—still too expensive, and long surpassed in specs by numerous other displays—so inflexible? I’d be much more inclined to buy a new Studio Display if I knew it could be used by other devices. Or if it supported AirPlay. (Yes, you can AirPlay to a Mac—but that’s a really limited use case.) If these displays are going to be powered by iPhone-class processors, they should be more capable!

I’ve bought two Studio Displays. There are a lot of advantages to using an Apple display. But this is an area in which Apple is doing its own brand dirty. The next Studio Display needs to be more flexible, and if Apple introduces a big-screen iMac that can’t ever be used by any device other than its own embedded, non-upgradeable Mac, that will be a tragedy.