Apple’s long-in-the-tooth, $999 Thunderbolt Display — last updated in 2011 — has been discontinued. What’s more worrisome is that no replacement has been mentioned.
“We’re discontinuing the Apple Thunderbolt Display,” an Apple spokesperson told The Verge. “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 spokesperson mentioned no replacement for the display, although I’m betting on a new monitor with 5K support being introduced with new MacBook Pros sometime in September or October. If not Apple is making a serious mistake.
There have also been rumors of a next generation Thunderbolt Display will feature a 5K resolution display of 5120×2880 pixels (as does the iMac with 5K Retina Display) that will integrate a dedicated external GPU into the display itself. This would allow almost any modern Mac to work with such an ultra high-resolution monitor.
Such a display didn’t appear at the recent Worldwide Developer Conference. However, I predict we’ll see such a revolutionary monitor by year’s end.
