The 5k display would be more versatile, however. Well, I guess that’s relative to …

I can understand why Apple is not in a hurry to sell this just as a display. This display could likely not be driven at all by all of their most popular Macs: all the MacBooks and the Mac mini. Maybe it would work with the Mac Pro, but that’s it. And that Mac Pro is probably not the best selling Mac, by a large margin. So they would basically sell this display that only works with a Mac Pro.

I can understand how that might seem like a wasted effort until at least a couple more widely selling Macs support the display. Maybe when the MacBook Pros can do it they will start selling just the display.

With the iMac the advantage is that Apple is delivering it with a computer that definitely can push those pixels, so you dodge all compatibility woes that will plague these high-res displays for a couple more years. It seems like the still had to get in there and do some weird custom stuff and maybe that’s just hard or impossible to do if you have to do it in a display that is hooked up to some random GPU from Apple’s past Macs.

Can you buy the monitor separately? It looks like a dream display to me, assuming that it's glossy which is usual for Apple. It's very difficult to find glossy monitors these days. I just can't go back to matter after getting spoiled with glossy.

> In other words, buy a Retina Cinema Display, get the computer to power it for free.

Funny thing, it was also the case for the first 27" imac

I think it's a supply issue. Once that's worked out, I'm sure they will release just the 5k monitor. I don't think they like telling customers who ask for a 5k monitor to go buy dell for too long.

I can't imagine it'll stay that way for long. 4k displays are already down to $300-500 at Amazon.