Apple’s new Pro Display XDR ($5,000) is not a successor to the Apple Cinema Display, it’s a competitor to $30,000 monitors from Sony and Flanders Scientific, and it’s an insanely great deal, Jason Hiner writes for CNET:
The announcement of the new Apple Pro Display XDR was greeted with stunned enthusiasm during the WWDC 2019 keynote in June. But the stunning wasn’t done. A few moments later the crowd learned the price tag — $5,000 for the base model and $7,000 if you also purchase the matte finish along with Apple’s pro monitor stand. You could feel the enthusiasm deflate a little bit when the price went up on the screen at the San Jose Convention Center.
But what the audience didn’t realize — and Apple didn’t explain all that clearly at the WWDC keynote — was that this is not simply the 5K display from the latest iMac ($1,727 at Walmart) couched in a fancy new box to match the revival of the new Mac Pro. This is also not a successor to the 2011 Apple Cinema Display ($789 at Amazon) or the 2016 Apple Thunderbolt Display — which each measured about 27 inches and cost around $1,000.
This is a 32-inch 6K display that is brighter (1,600 nits) than almost any display that any of us have seen before and offers groundbreaking color accuracy that could make $30,000 to $40,000 “reference displays” from Sony and Flanders Scientific obsolete. The fact that some of the world’s most creative professionals can now put one on their desk for $5,000 is incredibly disruptive, and unexpected.
MacDailyNews Take: Hiner seems to agree with our earlier takes on the subject, writing: Despite all the social media shade thrown at the price of the Pro Stand, the fact that Apple has created such an aspirational product has created plenty of demand in the Mac ecosystem for a less expensive Apple-branded display. And since Apple has clearly invested so much into making a cutting-edge computer monitor, it would be surprising if the Pro Display XDR is the only product it makes. A separate (lower-priced) prosumer monitor and improved displays of future versions of the iMac would make a lot of sense…