Apple’s new Studio Display is fascinating tech, thanks in large part to the A13 Bionic chipset that powers it, making it as powerful as an entire iPhone 11. But it turns out that the Studio Display’s internal hardware is even weirder: Not only does the Studio Display have an A13 chipset, it also comes with a whopping 64GB of internal memory, as spotted by Twitter user Khaos Tian.
The Studio Display having some storage makes sense, given the additional software Apple runs on it to enable additional camera and audio functionality for things like portrait mode and spatial audio effects. But it’s certainly surprising how much hardware the new monitor has.
For those keeping track at home, the 64GB of storage and A13 chip means the Studio Display has a faster processor and twice the storage of the base Apple TV 4K model. It’s basically just a few sticks of RAM and a Wi-Fi radio far from a full-fledged Apple Silicon iMac (or a giant 27-inch iPad that doesn’t have a touchscreen). If that wasn’t enough, the Studio Display also literally runs iOS 15.4, the latest software release for Apple phones and tablets.
There is a possible explanation for this: the Studio Display has an A13 chip, the same used by Apple in the iPhone 11. The base configuration of an iPhone 11 was 64 GB, which means that it It’s possible that Apple is just recycling old parts from the iPhone 11 (complete with its existing soldered storage) and inserting them into a display.
Does the Studio display need 64 GB of storage? Obviously not. But it may be cheaper for Apple to simply reuse one of its most widely produced chipset SKUs for the A13 rather than design an all-new model with less storage specifically for the Studio Display.
And who knows? Maybe Apple (or an enterprising iOS jailbreaker) will find a way to exploit the Studio Display hardware for some sort of iOS, macOS, or tvOS experience in the future.
