Rene Ritchie:
“We’re discontinuing the Apple Thunderbolt Display,” Apple told iMore. “It will be available through Apple.com, Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers while supplies last. There are a number of great third-party options available for Mac users.”
The only monitors I would consider buying today, while waiting for a future Thunderbolt Display, are NEC’s and Eizo’s better 4K options, which actually work in Retina mode.
Rene Ritchie:
There’d been some speculation on Twitter and rumor reports about Apple possibly introducing a display with an integrated eGPU. Theory being, it would take some of the graphical processing overhead off MacBooks and/or facilitate a single-cable connection that could drive 5K. It sounds cool, but I asked around, and it’s not happening at the keynote or any time in the immediate future.
So that’s that. I can’t wait to see the backlash from the internet that no new hardware will be introduced (reportedly).
Benjamin Mayo:
At first, the idea of Apple including a GPU in the external display may sound crazy. Our sources explain that the reason for it is primarily for compatibility with as many future Macs as possible. Due to the immense graphics needs required to push 5K worth of pixels, normal super high-resolution displays require connected computers to include significantly powerful GPUs.
If the GPU is used only to push the display’s pixels, and not add any more ‘oomph’ to a connected Mac, then I can see this happening.
I will however consider this a lost opportunity. The ability to use a regular MacBook 12″ for Final Cut Pro X, gaming, etc. would be too good to pass up for me personally.
John Gruber:
A 27-inch standalone retina display will be a genuine finally. If they announce it at WWDC, the crowd will go nuts. But just how they’ll drive it is a fascinating question. Using two Thunderbolt cables would be clunky. Maybe one cable that forks into two Thunderbolt adapters at the end?
UPDATE: Best guess so far, from Stephen Foskett:
@gruber What if Apple put the graphics card in the monitor? It would work with most (all?) Thunderbolt Macs and wouldn’t require 2 cables…
I’d bet on this.
The problem with this solution is that the GPU would have to be upgradeable. People buy screens for years, while GPUs tend to get updated much more often, and newer models usually boast significant gains.
I wouldn’t bother spending 1-2K (or more) on an LCD which doesn’t have a GPU I can replace. Nor would I want to buy a new screen every few years, just to get the latest and greatest GPU. And looking at Apple’s history, I seriously doubt a newer model of GPU would be introduced regularly and in a timely manner.