> Why not buy the LG then 5 years ago for cheaper?

The LG Ultrafine 5K is notorious for its high unreliability (WiFi interference), low build quality (creaky plastic), and low durability (flaky ports).

The target market for Apple Studio Display does not look to trade price for lower quality. Rather, Apple's target market are premium buyers, people looking to pay a bit more for higher quality.

As a counterpoint, I absolutely love my LG Ultrafine 5k. I bought a second one even. Never had any issues at all, and I love taking video calls, doing design work, etc. on them.

Not only is the UltraFine 5k’s chassis creaky, it can’t handle the heat the display produces and has an extremely high rate of cracking with pieces flaking off. The whole product is abysmal in terms of quality, I don’t know how LG thought it was ok to release.

What's weird to me is it doesn't take a genius to guess at what an Apple monitor would have looked like.

Why can zero other companies execute on something like this? Sure Apple has advantages with scale, but it's not like they're squeezing tight margins. There was a lot of room under the cost of the Pro Display XDR.

I'm not sure why none of these other companies can really execute on high quality hardware.

Hell, just take the same LG panel that's used by both the LG UltraFine and the Apple Studio Display, put it in a well-built metal case, don't waste money on things like the A13 CPU, 64GB of flash, 13 megapixel camera, high-quality speaker system, etc, don't spend as many engineering resources on making the monitor as thin-and-light as possible. You could've made the standard monitor for anyone who wants a 5k 27" screen.

I don't understand why the only manufacturer in the 5k 27" screen market was LG for half a decade and now only LG and Apple. There should be so much room here.

IIRC there was a Dell monitor that used this panel too, but its availability was extremely brief and Dell EOL’d it not too long after release. I believe it had issues with waking from sleep and its picture blinking out sometimes, I guess they had QC issues with their driver board.

There might have been a Dell, but the company I remember was Planar. The panel even had the webcam cutout (but no webcam) as I recall.

https://www.planar.com/media/439284/planar-ix2790-specsheet....

Maybe the demand isn’t there? There might not be a big intersect between those who are willing to spend > $1000 on a monitor and those who wouldn’t want to buy non-Apple hardware.

Maybe? There were years without any viable option where I think people would have.

Now that Apple is back in the game you're probably right.

Inexplicably, Apple buyers trade price for less functionality.