2026-03-13 06:31:07
A funny thing happened when Apple stopped making external displays for Macs: The competition did not rush in to steal Apple’s thunder. It was almost like Apple had itself invalidated the entire category.
But after Apple shipped the Studio Display in 2022, the competition seemed to heat back up. It’s almost as if the opportunity to compete with Apple (and undercut it on price) was enough of a motivation to get in the game. Today, there aren’t a ton of displays that have Mac-appropriate screen resolutions out there, but there are far more than there were back in 2021. If you’ve bought a Mac-friendly display that wasn’t made by Apple in the last four years, you probably owe thanks to the Studio Display anyway.
Now here’s the successor to the 2022 Apple Studio Display… the 2026 Apple Studio Display. While it does offer a few improvements over its predecessor, perhaps the most important thing about it is that it remains a product in Apple’s line-up—and provides a target for other display makers to outdo.
As someone who owns two of the 2022-vintage Apple Studio Displays, it’s hard for me to say that the new model is very different. It looks the same, and the most important feature of the product—the 5K LCD panel—seems to be the same.
This is not to say it isn’t a good panel. It is. It’s not going to offer the peak brightness, HDR features, and refresh rate of fancier displays (including the displays on MacBook Pros), but a lot of users don’t need those features. I never miss ProMotion when I’m sitting in front of a Studio Display, for instance.
But it’s also almost the same panel that debuted with the 5K iMac more than a decade ago. I guess this shows that displays can remain viable for a very long time, but Apple has shown no interest in upgrading the Studio Display to improve it in any of the ways it’s improved the stock display on a MacBook Pro.
Apple has upgraded the most controversial component in the original Studio Display: Its 12-megapixel Center Stage camera, which didn’t look great in low light and many other situations because pretty much every image that came out of it had to be cropped. The new camera is still 12 megapixels, but Apple says it has larger pixels and a wider aperture—and in head-to-head comparisons, yes, it looks much better.
Thunderbolt support on the new models has been upgraded to Thunderbolt 5, which is probably only relevant if you’re daisy-chaining multiple devices together. The fact that you can daisy-chain devices is because of what might be the single biggest upgrade to the display: a second Thunderbolt port. So if you want to run two Studio Displays, you can plug a computer into one, and then run a cable from that one to the other one. (I did this with my old Studio Display and the new one, and it worked like a charm.)
The whole thing is powered by an A19 chip, which is an upgrade from the A13 in the older model… However, these chips are really irrelevant when it comes to the user. Apple’s reaching into its existing bin of parts to build these devices, but they don’t really take advantage of the computing power, nor do they get in the way of you using them as dumb displays. (It is something to think that the Studio Display has more computing power and memory than a MacBook Neo… and yet you can’t do anything with that. Wouldn’t it be nice if it did something, like maybe offer an Apple TV mode so you could watch videos on it without needing to attach a Mac?)
These are meager upgrades that allow Apple to keep the Studio Display on the price list for years to come, but don’t really advance it in many meaningful ways. If you’ve already got a Studio Display, there’s no real reason to upgrade it to this model. And at $1599, it’s not a very good buy if you’re willing to shop around and buy a non-Apple monitor.
The Asus ProArt Display PA27JCV lists for $799, and I found it on sale at Amazon for $729. It’s a 5K 27-inch display with an adjustable screen and Mac-friendly controls. Is it as nice as Apple’s display? Almost certainly not, but it’s also half the price.
So if Asus will sell you a pretty nice 5K 27-inch display for half of what Apple is charging, why does the Studio Display exist?
I think it exists because some people really don’t want to shop around and like the fact that Apple makes products that really integrate nicely with other Apple products. If you’re at the Apple Store (in person or online) and buy a new Mac, you can add a Studio Display right then and there. Some people aren’t really interested in shopping around and saving money. And yes, Apple’s fit and finish will almost always be better than the competition: I considered buying an LG UltraFine display instead of a Studio Display and decided I’d rather pay a small premium to get the really nice Apple display. (Then again, the UltraFine didn’t cost half of the Studio Display back then.)
Anyway, the Studio Display is nice. But it feels like it should be better, or cheaper, or both. But it’s neither. I have bought two, and I still like them. But if I needed to buy a new display right now, I’d look at other options.
Apple claims it’s a champion of accessibility. But in my opinion, part of accessibility is ergonomics. Different people need displays at different heights, and we are all shaped differently. Apple’s continued insistence on shipping displays and iMacs that aren’t height-adjustable by default is frustrating. You spend all this money on a pricey Apple display and then, what, put it on an old dictionary? Meanwhile, even the cut-rate competition offers height adjustments.
The review unit Studio Display Apple sent me came with the height-adjustable display, and it’s glorious. That thing is a smooth, pivoting marvel of mechanical engineering, and Apple should be proud of how nice it feels to use. But it’s essentially a failure, because it adds $400 to the price of the already-expensive display. Apple should be working to engineer affordable ergonomic features on its displays and iMacs, not building luxury stands that make a $800 display cost $2000.
If Apple wants to charge users more for a smooth, luxury display stand, who am I to stop them? But basic height adjustment should be built in, period.
Apple addressed the biggest issue with the Studio Display by swapping in a new webcam that looks a lot better than the one in the old model. That’s great. What the company didn’t address is the fact that the Studio Display felt like it was selling outmoded display technology for a cutting-edge price—and it still does.
If you want to buy a Studio Display because you love the Apple aesthetic or because it’s just convenient to do so, I can’t stop you. But anyone willing to put up with non-Apple annoyances in order to save more than the cost of a MacBook Neo might want to shop around. As for me, I hope the next Studio Display update is more meaningful than this tepid set of improvements.
2026-03-12 21:47:33
Tim Cook pens a letter about the 50th anniversary of Apple, linked from the company’s homepage, and tips his hat to probably the best Apple advertising campaign of all time:
At Apple, we’re more focused on building tomorrow than remembering yesterday. But we couldn’t let this milestone pass without thanking the millions of people who make Apple what it is today — our incredible teams around the world, our developer community, and every customer who has joined us on this journey. Your ideas inspire our work. Your trust drives us to do better. Your stories remind us of all we can accomplish when we think different.
If you’ve taught us anything, it’s that the people crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
So here’s to the crazy ones.
There’s been a lot of speculation of how Apple would mark the anniversary, which has also been recognized with David Pogue’s recent book and an event, last night, at the Computer History Museum that featured several notable Apple figures.
Cook had earlier said that the company had to “build a new muscle” for looking back, something that Apple isn’t exactly known for. The company also announced in a separate press release that it would be celebrating the anniversary over the coming weeks, though it didn’t share any further details.
While this is a notable milestone for the company, it’s a shame that it comes at a time when Apple’s reputation—and particularly its relationship with those vaunted values—are feeling marred by its close association with the current United States administration.
2026-03-12 03:30:50
Who Apple’s new MacBook Neo is for, what will ruin our USB-C utopia, the value of LEGO’s new Smart Bricks, and our feelings on loot boxes.
2026-03-12 00:46:18
Kourage Kundahl, writing for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum:
Among the artifacts recently accessioned into the Museum’s permanent collection is an authenticated iPhone 17 Pro used during an Apple TV broadcast of Friday Night Baseball. The Sept. 26, 2025 matchup between the Boston Red Sox and Detroit Tigers incorporated live game footage from four devices, marking the first use of an iPhone as a primary camera in a professional sports broadcast.
Apple integrated iPhones into its last couple of baseball broadcasts last year, and it’s only appropriate that it would donate one of them to the Hall of Fame’s collection. (Please note: Lots of things are in the Hall of Fame Museum’s collection, and it does not make them “hall of famers,” though technically you could say that an iPhone 17 Pro is now in the Hall of Fame. Probably more than one right now, given all the people who work there.)
In non-coincidentally related news, Apple announced the first half of its Friday Night Baseball schedule on Wednesday, marking the fifth year that Apple will be streaming two MLB games to 60 different countries and regions, exclusively on Apple TV. Apple says that iPhones “will be further integrated into the broadcast camera lineup for select games” this season.
2026-03-11 23:55:58
So I had a pretty weird January.
While planning for a week on vacation, two things happened that totally derailed me. The Wall Street Journal asked me to review David Pogue’s book “Apple: The First 50 Years,” which pretty much wrapped up most of my beach reading. The book is long!
And then there was the text message I got from John, who claimed to be a contestant producer for Jeopardy!
In early 2023, after many years of curiosity, I took the venerable quiz show’s “anytime test” on the Web. I had no idea how I did, though I was sure I got a few wrong. Anyway, it was fun! My in-laws have been watching Jeopardy! religiously forever, and they turned me into a regular viewer. Despite being a bit game-show obsessive as a kid, being on a game show was never part of my plan. I liked the challenge of the anytime test, though.
A few weeks later, I got an email from Jeopardy! asking me to take the test again—this time with a group on Zoom, cameras on, presumably so they could watch us take the test and make sure we had passed it without any assistance.
And a few weeks after that, in June 2023, I got the call: Appear on Zoom to play a sample game with a bunch of other potential players. At this point, they told us that we had all qualified for Jeopardy!—the Zoom call was really so the producers of the show could see us and hear us playing the game.
It makes sense. Jeopardy! is a TV show, and that Zoom call was essentially a casting session. Maybe 100,000 people apply to be on Jeopardy! and only a tiny group qualify, but there are a minuscule number of slots on the actual show. Jeopardy! producers really do want the show to reflect a cross-section of North America, and the casting process helps ensure they get the right contestant mix, week in, week out.
Two and a half years passed. After a year, I assumed I was not going to make it on Jeopardy! and stopped watching every episode with a clicky pen standing in for the Jeopardy! buzzer. Ah well, it was a fun idea while it lasted.
And that’s when John texted me. His phone number was from the correct area code, and when I did a web search, I found a podcast transcript that also described getting a text from John. (I had expected a phone call, which led to an exciting moment not too long after my audition—I got a 90-second voicemail from the 310 area code. It was, of all things, a fax machine.)
I checked in with Dan Moren, who played Jeopardy last year, and he confirmed that he knew John. So I texted him back, and then we talked on the phone, which is when I got “the call”—I was going to be on Jeopardy! in one month. (And yes, future contestants searching to find out if John Barra is a real person who might text you about being on Jeopardy!—he is.)
My vacation reading suddenly consisted entirely of David Pogue’s book and trivia-themed children’s books. (That’s a pro tip from Ken Jennings himself: Children’s books are very high-density on facts. Good for trivia studying.)
So here we are: Six Colors now has three Jeopardy! players as contributors. I can’t say anything about what went down in early February in Culver City (though I can reveal that Ken had fish tacos after), but I can echo Dan’s comments about the experience: The other contestants were wonderful, and the Jeopardy! staff was supportive above and beyond the call of duty. It was a surreal experience to essentially step inside the television and play the game, for real, in front of a live studio audience. I am adding it to the memory bank of amazing experiences I never really expected I would have in my life.
So please tune into Jeopardy!—either on your local station, or the next day on Hulu or Peacock! (That’s a new development.) My good friends from the Jeopardy! contestant green room will be competing the entire week of March 16, and you can tune in to see me on Thursday, March 19.
When all is said and done, I’ll break down what happened on The Incomparable and Upgrade and, who are we kidding, the Six Colors podcast, too.
I don’t know what else 2026 has in store for me, but it’s already been a very interesting few months.
2026-03-11 22:00:00
This week we discuss the weather, what happened last week and Lex’s door.
