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Desktops (Apple) Apple

Apple Confirms Studio Display Will Work With PCs, But With Some Caveats (macrumors.com) 69

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Apple has confirmed that the brand new Studio Display will work when connected to PCs, but critical new features of the display will not carry over and the experience will be lacking compared to using the display with a Mac. MacRumors adds: Features that require macOS, such as True Tone, will not work when connected to PCs. When connected to a PC, the webcam in the Studio Display will work as a normal webcam, but Center Stage does require macOS.
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Apple Confirms Studio Display Will Work With PCs, But With Some Caveats More

Apple Confirms Studio Display Will Work With PCs, But With Some Caveats

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  • We were too lazy/stupid to write the proper drivers.

    • More like too greedy. But it's going to bite them in the ass again just like it did last time. This isn't the first time they tried sneaking non-standard color mappings into their displays, and the fallout is going to be just as bad as last time if not worse. (When artists in professional situations rely on these things, the usual outcome is none of their colors look right off their own computers, and they blame their coder counterparts for it until eventually enough of their bosses get fed up and there's a

      • I wonder if the truetone and Center Stage is all done on the graphics chip on the computer.

      • There was nothing wrong with Apple's gamma setting. it wasn't different colors, it was a brightness scale issue. Their gamma default was picked for better color match with printing. The idea that they would need to have images interoperate with PCs would have been an afterthought at the time.

        True tone is not a color mapping, per se. It's automatic white balance based on ambient lighting. Very good for artists, because room lighting and natural lighting can affect your perception of color on the screen.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pieroxy ( 222434 )

          I'm pretty sure true tone is done at the GC level (driven by software), not in the screen itself. So much easier !

          • Wouldn't be easier. Screens have a far wider range of brightness values than the 255 levels of 24-bit color or even the 1024 levels of 10-bit per channel. If you adjust colors in software, then you lose color fidelity due to having no headroom for adjusted values. Far easier to just tell the display what the white balance set point is and let it use its built-in color temperature adjustment. Display panel controllers already handle color temperature adjustments. Makes no sense to do it in software.

    • By "lazy/stupid" you mean Apple does not modify Windows or Linux code, then you would be correct. That's like saying Microsoft and Linus is too lazy/stupid to add Time Machine code to their code bases. They add their own features which are often incompatible with other operating systems.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Viol8 ( 599362 )

        " you mean Apple does not modify Windows or Linux code"

        Its rather worrying that someone who reads /. doesn't understand the concept of a 3rd party driver. Are you new to IT?

        • It is rather worrying when someone does not understand what is involved with opening hardware drivers to 3rd parties and why not every company does it. Are you new to IT?

      • That's like saying Microsoft and Linus is too lazy/stupid to add Time Machine code to their code bases.

        Time Machine is mostly branding. Under the hood it's not much different than rsync with hard links to previous backups. I've definitely created a Time Machine style backup script for Linux. Have not tried for Windows, but NTFS does support hard links. It's possible that the newer Time Machine does something different using APFS snapshots. I know that creating hundreds of thousands of hard link entries every hour is the most time consuming part of incremental backups.

        • So is Microsoft too lazy and stupid to implement it? Or do they have their own version that does not work on MacOS, Linux, BSD, AIX,etc.

          • They have "File History" in Windows 10 and 11 that doesn't even support full image backups. They also have Windows 7 Backup still included, which still has a major flaw: when the drive is full, backups stop. It does not prune older backups to make space or set a retention policy. I even tried switching some home users to Veeam with an external hard drive and it does the same thing. If you don't know exactly how many revisions the backup destination will hold, you have to guess at a retention policy and

            • So the answer is despite more than a decade MS does not really have the equivalent of Time Machine. And no they do not have a version that works on Linux, BSD, AIX, or MacOS. Is MS lazy or stupid not to have make a fully working equivalent and exported it to other OSs?

    • Truth is Appleâ(TM)s target audience are Mac users, so supporting other platforms isnâ(TM)t really a priority. The fact the screen works in a basic way, on other platforms, is at least something.

      There are plenty of other devices on the market where manufacturers could be accused of âoebeing too lazyâ to add support for macOS, but in the same way they made a choice on who their target audience is an what makes financial sense to them.

      If there is enough interest I am sure someone will cre

    • We were too lazy/stupid to write the proper drivers.

      Since when is it Apple's job to write a driver for every platform? Should they also write drivers for your Android phone to connect? Should they also make an Atari 2600 cartridge that's compatible?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jeremyp ( 130771 )

        It's normal for hardware suppliers to write drivers for the operating systems they want to support. Clearly, Apple has done this for Windows but their driver isn't full featured.

  • I'm shocked that Apple would do such a thing! /s

  • Ok, I'm sure for some professions these high-tech features are worth the money, but if they are missing, is this screen really better than top-of-the-line screens from other brands that cost less than half that money? Apperently somebody wanted this screen so bad he was willing to risk it would not work... or are we now in an age where $2000 for a screen is accepable for regular use?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by splutty ( 43475 )

      To be fair, in the 80's a good quality screen cost a lot more than $2000 (adjusted for inflation), so we're still doing pretty well.

      But not having working Windows drivers for it feels like Apple's shooting themselves in the foot.

    • I was just pricing out 5K screens yesterday. Where are you finding screens like this for $800 (half price)? I am finding competitors starting at around $1200. So we are talking about a $300 premium for the added features (camera, great speakers, microphone array, etc). They may not be worth it for your purposes, but letâ(TM)s not pretend that Apple is not delivering value here.

    • Ok, I'm sure for some professions these high-tech features are worth the money, but if they are missing, is this screen really better than top-of-the-line screens from other brands that cost less than half that money?

      Can you can find any for "half the money" of the studio's $1599 price?
      LG 5K Display: $1295 [amazon.com]
      Dell 27" 5K: Unavailable [dell.com]
      Iiyama ProLite XB2779QQS: $900 (if you can find it) but "unsuitable for photo or video editors" [slashdot.org]

      Apperently somebody wanted this screen so bad he was willing to risk it would not work... or are we now in an age where $2000 for a screen is accepable for regular use?

      1) The price is $1599 not $2000. 2) This is for professional use not "regular use". That's like saying a professional Canon R5 [canon.com] which the body alone is $1799 is the same as a more consumer grade Canon [amazon.com]

  • It makes a lot of sense that Apple would use a Mac-first approach for this. Itâ(TM)s the only decent 5120x2880 display on the market, so if you want it, youâ(TM)ll probably also want a Mac to go with it.
    • Seems like a dumb decision to be the only one with that resolution. You're not going to use it for film and video, since most conform to 2k/4k -- it'll look odd on that display.

  • TLDR (Score:3)

    by JBMcB ( 73720 ) on Thursday March 10, 2022 @10:58AM (#62343823)

    Features that are dependent on MacOS won't work when you are using Windows or Linux. Thank goodness someone cleared that up.

    TrueTone - Auto adjusts screen color curves based on ambient light
    Center Stage - Keeps your portrait centered when using a web cam, nVidia has a similar technology built in to their Windows drivers

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Malc ( 1751 )

      TrueTone is one of those things I immediately disabled on my new MBP last year. Red-shifting the image is an issue when working with videos and photos. I haven't missed the feature.

      • The feature is literally intended for working with videos and photos. Your brain adjusts its internal white balance from the ambient light in the room and affects your perception of the picture on the screen. If you're constantly using the laptop in different lighting conditions, like a mix of sunlight and artificial lighting, it can help. If you have a good consistent environment, then of course manual calibration is better.

    • Center Stage - Keeps your portrait centered when using a web cam, nVidia has a similar technology built in to their Windows drivers

      This might seem like an off-the-wall suggestion, but for some people, like me: I bought an Insta360 one x2 [youtube.com] and besides being an amazing video camera with incredible stabilization, and I really like how the all the 'aiming' of the camera takes place in post-production at home with a big monitor and beer...

      It also has a webcam setting that functions as you described, and it

    • Your TL;DR is longer than the /. summary, just saying.

  • The features that Apple seems to not support are features specific to OSX. Apple has always crippled aspects of their hardware over features like drivers. Time Capsule NAS drives? Time Machine required. Apple trackpads and such? There are literally third-party subscription drivers licenses to get full support under Windows.

    To understand what's going on means understanding Apple's position: Apple doesn't sell computers; they sell Macs.Macs look and feel like computers, but Apple puts them in a class of th

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Junta ( 36770 )

      Basically, the display and components fully function. The 'disclaimers' are really trying to reiterate 'look at this cool stuff we did in macOS while you are thinking about not using macOS'. Both mentioned features are pure software, and I know at least in the case of the 'zoom into an image and pan to track a face', Apple doesn't have exclusivity.

  • I never saw Nvidia being over backwards to make Mac compatible drivers, but I'm sure that's viewed as Apple's fault too.
    People here like to imply that only Apple peripherals work on Macs, ignoring that mostly everything from PC world will just plug in and work.
    In most cases, devices that require a driver install with Windows will just work on a Mac without needing any drivers (or bloatware) installed.

  • Depending on how the various devices appear on the bus, I am sure third-party drivers could step in here. For example if the webcam appears as a UVC device, then Iâ(TM)d imagine a wrapper driver that adds support for face detection could do the same?

  • No thanks. I'll stick with my 4x 4k displays that, in total, cost a fraction of that price.

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