You have to really need it in order to justify the cost of an M5 Ultra Mac Studio, but there are reasons why you could use up all eight display options, and they may not be obvious.
Sometimes you wonder if Apple adds something just because it can. So the new M5 Max version of the Mac Studio, for instance, is being promoted as being able to run up to five displays, while the M5 Ultra Mac Studio can handle eight.
There’s more to it than that, there are specific limits on the types of displays, but it’s true that there are five or eight available. And it’s true that few Mac users need more than one or at the absolute most two.
Yet you can be certain that there are Mac users even now who have maxed out how many displays they have. And you can bet money that there will be users who buy the new Mac Studio models expressly for the extra displays.
Multiple displays
It’s not, though, that many people want to plug their Mac into a bank of eight monitors, looking like they’re running a shopping mall’s security system. There’s more you can do than use ordinary monitors, but even before then, multiple standard displays can be useful.
Video editors, for instance, will typically be using editing software that just works better when you can lay out all of their tools and options. Instead of having to open and close panes, instead of having to hide and unhide features, it’s better to have everything you need at hand.
Then it’s also better to have a totally separate display for whatever you are editing. Final Cut Pro, and all of the other non-linear editing apps, include a small window that shows your final footage but it’s not enough.
Especially if you are editing a production that is going to be shown in a movie theater, a postcard-sized preview window is not going to cut it. You want that preview to play back on the largest monitor you can get.
If you’re doing color grading, all professional video editing apps include a scopes view. This is where images are displayed as complex graphs that show, and let you adjust, fine details such as color balance or saturation and exposure.
Engineers need precision displays and large ones. Surgeons can want one display for themselves and others for their team.
Or then with video or other editing, while you will probably be doing most of your work using a keyboard and mouse or trackpad, there are reasons to use drawing tablets too. Complex graphics work is better, more precise and generally just easier, with a tablet.
Which is more relevant than you might think because, yes, a drawing tablet is a display. It doesn’t necessarily look like one, but these tablets can be mirroring your display to let you draw just where you need.
So they are displays, so that’s how they connect to your Mac.
Which means that quite quickly you can have a need for one large editing display, one large preview monitor, and a drawing tablet. The M5 Ultra Mac Studio’s eight-monitor limit still seems a bit much, but suddenly the M5 Max’s five-display limit is a little constraining.
You can buy racks to hold even a dozen displays – image credit: B&H Photo.
There are also times when it just isn’t enough. There are cases where people need more.
For instance, that there are racks available that hold 12 monitors.
Not just for you
Then all of this is for you, all of these options are to help you work, and the Mac is also a performance tool. That can be in your own living room if you want a home theater setup.
It can be on a film set. All of the displays on the bridge of the USS Enterprise in “Star Trek: Enterprise” were powered by Macs, for instance. More recent shows have done the same.
And it can also be on stage. The Mac backstage may be showing sheet music on your monitor, and those of your fellow performers, and also play back video across the projection screen at your back.
Or that enormous video wall filling one side of an auditorium or an Apple Store. It should look like it’s a single display, but it’s more likely to be made up of several.
Or on a smaller scale, you could be giving a presentation and need the Mac to show you what your next slide is. But you want the audience to see only the current one.
It all adds up
None of this is cheap, as it involves multiple displays and also Macs that can run them. But considering how unnecessary it seemed for Apple to support eight displays on one Mac, it’s startlingly easy to reach that number.
