The whole idea of "reference monitors" seems incredibly fishy to me. I've never heard of this and I highly doubt that studios are paying $42000 for monitors as was claimed at WWDC. Can anyone confirm that this is real and not just a framing tactic?
In a broadcast operations center, or a less-than-handful number of transfer houses, would monitors costing 10K+ be found.
Average cost of ingest bays would be minimal with 12" or less screens for doing a little QC on intake. Edit bays would be dual screens costing 1-2K a piece from 1999-2010, then gradually less as LCDs matured. Color calibration was taken seriously, but not to a science level. 500 for a calibration device and run it 2x a year.
Money went to chairs/couches/desks, then other room aesthetics. Never spent more than 5K on a single workstation, and at that price point were nearly fully loaded.
Storage is where it gets steep now. Apple used to offer solutions, but they were baaaaad.
I still say, good for Apple releasing this gear. They employee a lot of bright people so this really can't be a fail. It sure looks pretty too.
[0] https://pro.sony/ue_US/products/broadcastpromonitors/pvm-x55...
They had a guy called a 'colourist' - a specialist in color grading' [1] - and he had a screen which (subjectively) seemed to have an extremely good picture. I was assured it was very expensive.
Of course, there's still good cause for skepticism: Manufacturers will gladly co-opt any term to make their products sound better, as the wealth of 'studio monitor' speakers and headphones shows.
Examples: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?setNs=p_PRICE_2%7c1&Ns...
I think there'd be very few places that could justify the cost of a 42000 monitor when current 4k TVs are measurably accurate after calibration.