So last week Apple did their "Peek Performance" event, and yeah, I know, "Apple did a launch event" is not exactly a hot take. Every tech site on earth already ran the roundup with the bullet points and the embedded YouTube video. I'm not doing that. What I want to talk about is one specific line item that's been bugging me since March 8th and hasn't stopped bugging me: the Studio Display stand.
Quick context for anyone who skipped the keynote. Apple announced the Mac Studio, a new desktop that comes in two flavors: one with the M1 Max starting at $1,999, and one with the new M1 Ultra chip starting at $3,999. Fine. Steep, but this is a machine aimed at video editors and 3D people who bill by the hour, so I get it. Alongside it they announced the Studio Display, a 27-inch 5K monitor for $1,599, which on its own is actually not a crazy price for a 5K panel in 2022.
Here's the part that got me. That $1,599 price is for the base display with a fixed tilt-only stand. If you want the stand to also adjust height, that's another $400. Four hundred dollars. For hinges. You can also skip the stand entirely and get a VESA mount adapter instead, same price difference, which at least makes some sense if you're wall-mounting it, but most people buying a $1,599 monitor are putting it on a desk and would like to raise it more than an inch and a half.
I remember when the Pro Display XDR came out in 2019 and the internet lost its mind over the $999 stand (sold separately from the $4,999 display, and yes I know the joke's been made a thousand times already, "the stand costs as much as an iMac"). At the time I figured that was a weird one-off, a pro-tier accessory for a pro-tier monitor nobody but studios were buying anyway. Turns out it's just how Apple prices monitor stands now. Consistency, I guess.
I actually went and dug up my own desk situation while writing this, because I've got an old VESA arm from Ergotron that I bought used off Craigslist back in maybe 2016 for $60, and it still tilts, swivels, and adjusts height on basically any monitor I clamp into it. It's ugly. It's got a visible gas spring mechanism and it looks like something out of a dentist's office. But it does the actual job of a stand, which is letting you put the screen where your eyes are, for a fraction of what Apple wants to charge for the privilege of doing that with their branded aluminum arm instead.
None of this is really about whether the Studio Display is good. From the specs it probably is good — the panel itself, the 12MP camera with Center Stage, the six-speaker sound system built into a monitor, that's genuinely unusual stuff for a display. Preorders opened on the 11th and it ships the 18th, so nobody outside Apple's own review program has actually used one yet, and I'm not going to pretend I know how the webcam performs or whether the speakers are as good as they sound on paper. I just think it's funny, in a slightly irritated way, that a company sitting on something like $200 billion in cash reserves keeps finding new ways to make you pay extra for the thing that lets your monitor go up and down.
The Mac Studio itself I actually like conceptually. A dense little box, no visible fans if the thermal design works the way they claim, way more ports than the Mac mini it's replacing on desks, and the M1 Ultra thing where they fuse two M1 Max dies together is a genuinely clever bit of engineering even if I can't afford one. If you're already all-in on the ecosystem and you were going to buy a 5K display anyway, sure, get the Studio Display and eat the stand cost, it's probably still cheaper than the XDR route. I just can't get past the fact that "goes up and down" is treated as a premium feature in 2022 pricing, same as it was in 2019. Some habits Apple just doesn't break.
Anyway. Back to it — I've got an actual review post half-drafted for later this month once I get my hands on real hardware instead of just keynote screenshots.