[Kraetos]

Right, exactly. The Studio Display is a base level 9th-gen iPad with a 5K 27" screen. It is literally that, it just never sends the iOS springboard to the display so you can't use it like that. Apple silicon dev kits were running on A12Zs, so the Studio Display is a Mac, hardware wise. With an A13, the computer in the Studio Display can probably run macOS better than the average Intel Mac still being used.

The 9th-gen iPad is $329 and the Mac mini is $699. It's a $370 difference, although not a perfect one, the iPad has a screen and a battery, the mini has a much bigger power supply and array of ports, so lets just call it a wash. So if you just throw that $370 on top of the Studio Display you're at $1,969, a totally reasonable starting point for a 27" M1 iMac whether you round down to $1,899 (use the 7-core GPU M1 and you're there) or up to $1,999. Bring back Target Display mode and make that the external display for the Mac Studio.

Of course had they done that you would have had a bunch of people complaining that Apple's long awaited standalone external display has $700 worth of computer attached to it that they don't need, in which case they could have just sold it without the Mac for $1300, i.e. directly replacing the Ultrafine 5K. Same chassis, same panel, $600 or $700 difference between the two.

But this whole "the onboard A13 does spatial audio and center stage," man, what a bunch of nonsense. It's crazy to me that anyone inside Apple thought this was something people would get excited about rather than something people would just see as a wasted $300. The M1-whatever in the Mac it's connected to should just handle that and save everyone the price of a 9th-gen iPad, and just leave those features disabled when connected to an Intel Mac. Who cares about Intel Macs at this point anyways? Who the hell is rushing to connect a brand new, underwhelming $1600 display to their Intel Mac?

Bonus points, do the same thing with the 24" iMac. That starts at $1299, so just take the M1 out and you have a nice $699 or $799 4.5K display.

iMac-sans-Mac. That's all Apple had to do here. Splitting the price difference by bolting on an iPad that you can't even use... just.. why?