Watch the weirdest dongle flex yet allow a Mac Pro to work with three ancient Mac displays

Apple Studio Display Video Screenshot (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

The Pro Display XDR isn't the first multi-thousand-dollar Apple display.
Apple has been making them for twenty years.
Watch three of them being hooked up to a Mac Pro.

Apple still cops a lot of flak for the Pro Display XDR's $4,999 asking price. Yes, plus the $999 for the stand. It's hugely costly, but 2019 wasn't the first time Apple charged thousands of dollars for a display. And Stephen Hacket has three of the other displays that paved the way for Pro Display XDR.

Because of course he does.

But that's not the best part. Hacket was recently tasked with trying to connect an old Apple Studio Display to his 2019 Mac Pro. And the rest is very literally, history.

Give the video a watch for one of the craziest things I've seen in a while – a twenty-year-old display connected to a Mac Pro via two different dongles. And it's all magical in the very best way possible.

I wish I had three random Apple displays in storage. My wife probably doesn't.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.