In the news received this morning, a developer discovered that Apple’s recently released new Studio Display monitor contains 64GB of built-in storage space, but only 2GB is actually used.
Developer “Khaos Tian” mentioned on Twitter that the Studio Display only uses 2GB of its 64GB NAND storage. Firmware updates may require some free space, but the 62GB of unused space appears to be sitting idle for now.
Apple doesn’t confirm the Studio Display’s internal storage capacity in its technical specifications. This finding is perhaps not surprising, considering that this monitor has an A13 Bionic chip inside.
The A13 is the main chip of the iPhone 11 series, and later used in the second-generation iPhone SE and ninth-generation iPad, and even now, its performance is not outdated.
Some people say it’s because of compatibility issues, but it doesn’t seem to work. The more difficulty is “economies of scale”. The combination of A13+64GB is ready-made. If Apple needs to equip it with smaller storage separately, the production cost may be higher. (equal to the redevelopment of this part)
It’s also possible that Apple isn’t currently using this monitor’s full capabilities, as it was discovered last week that the Studio Display runs the full version of iOS 15.4, the exact same version used by the iPhone and iPad, meaning it has the ability to stand alone run.
Overall, the Studio Display includes the exact same 2.65 GHz A13 Bionic chip as the ninth-generation iPad, a 12-megapixel front-facing camera, and 64GB of storage. That said, this monitor has better specs than the second-gen Apple TV 4K.
Further reading: