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Mac Pro will be 'easy-to-upgrade,' debut in 2019 alongside 31.6-inch Apple 6K display

LG's UltraFine 5K monitor, built in collaboration with Apple.

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Among three all-new Mac products expected to debut from Apple in 2019 are an "easy-to-upgrade" Mac Pro and a 31.6-inch Apple 6K display with high-end backlight technology, according to well-informed analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

Ming-Chi Kuo shared the details in a research note late Sunday evening in which he provided no further details on the design of the Mac Pro, but said the 31.6-inch Apple 6K3K display will feature "outstanding picture quality thanks to its adoption of the Mini LED-like backlight design."

Pros have been clamoring for an updated Mac Pro after the last left few options in terms of upgradability. The promised design will please many, but not all, of those critics.

A 6K3K display refers to standard 6K resolution of 6,144 x 3,072 which at a 31.6-inch diagonal size will yield a pixel density of roughly 217 ppi. The 15-inch MacBook Pro has 221 ppi, with the iMac 5K coming in at 218.

Apple discontinued its previous display — the Apple Thunderbolt Display — in June of 2016 with no successor in sight, instead ceding the market to third parties. Reports still trickled out indicating Apple was indeed working on new displays, possibly with an integrated eGPU.

During the time since, Apple has partnered with LG on a pair of high-end monitors that while impressive, left much to be desired in the aesthetics department. The LG UltraFine 4K and 5K displays connected over USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 respectively. They did support many of Apple's features normally reserved for its own hardware such as TrueTune.

In April 2017 Apple first teased its newly redesigned modular Mac Pro. At the same time, and reiterated when the iMac Pro shipped to customers, a new pro-level display was also said to be in the cards.

In Apple's stead, third parties monitors have been picking up the slack. AppleInsider recently went hands-on with the BenQ Thunderbolt 3 HDR monitor and the LG UltraWide 5K2K Thunderbolt monitor.

In the same, note, Kuo also said Apple plans to release a new 16- to 16.5-inch MacBook Pro targeted at professional designers, gamers, and so forth.



73 Comments

netrox 12 Years · 1510 comments

That would be an extraordinary product if it manages to produce 6K3K display with Mini LED.

tyler82 18 Years · 1107 comments

abolish said:
What is a “6K3K” display?

how much it will cost

bobolicious 10 Years · 1177 comments

abolish said:
What is a “6K3K” display?

Exactly - will this be yet another proprietary 'bag of hurt' from Apple like the 5K displays ?

My vote would be for 40" 4K @ 110 dpi and 40" 8k at 220 dpi pro retina - this would tie in with cinema, thunderbolt, scaled retina, apple tv 4k (8k?) and so much more... After using the former (40" 4k) I find 27" anything surprisingly ineffective and inefficient in comparison.

I look forward to an effective upgrade to the 17" mbp, hopefully @ 4k...

...and please a mini that has a discrete gpu to match the upgraded cpu, and all with flexible internal industry standard upgradable storage & ram options... 'Pro' computers 'for the rest of us'...?

I guess time will tell...

mattinoz 9 Years · 2488 comments

There should be a second version of the display with enough of an eGPU to allow it to be driven by a Laptop or long lenght thunderbolt cable.