Apple’s new Studio Display is a fascinating piece of technology, largely due to the A13 Bionic chipset that powers it — making it as powerful as an entire iPhone 11. But it turns out the internal hardware of the Studio Display is even odder: not only does the Studio Display have an A13 chipset, but it also comes with a whopping 64GB of internal memory, as spotted by Twitter user Khaos Tian.
lol Studio Display has 64GB onboard storage?! pic.twitter.com/XfHGCYUYMG
— Khaos Tian (@KhaosT) March 21, 2022
The Studio Display having some storage is logical, given the extra software that Apple is running on it to enable extra camera and audio features for things like portrait mode and spatial audio effects. But it’s certainly surprising to see just how much hardware the new monitor has.
For those keeping track at home, the 64GB of storage and A13 chip means that the Studio Display has a faster processor and twice the storage as the base model of the Apple TV 4K. It’s basically just a few sticks of RAM and a Wi-Fi radio away from being 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 build for Apple’s phones and tablets.
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23336725/apple_studio_display_internals.jpeg)
There’s a possible explanation for this: the Studio Display has an A13 chip, the same as the one that Apple used on the iPhone 11. The base configuration of an iPhone 11 was 64GB — meaning that it’s possible that Apple is just recycling old parts from the iPhone 11 (complete with its existing soldered on storage) and chucking them in a display.
Does the Studio Display need 64GB of storage? Obviously not. But it’s possible that it was cheaper for Apple to just repurpose one of its most widely produced chipset SKUs for the A13 rather than design a brand-new model with less storage specifically for the Studio Display.
And who knows? Maybe Apple (or an enterprising iOS jailbreaker) will figure out a way to harness the Studio Display’s hardware for some kind of iOS, macOS, or tvOS experience in the future.
