Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) officially discontinued the Thunderbolt Display, directing customers to look at third-party displays. This has led to speculations about if this move is a temporary or permanent state of affairs. Now Reddit users are upping the speculations further by pointing to a redirect on Apple’s website.
Temporary or permanent change?
Reddit user Samuhlarik10 noticed that “www.apple.com/displays/”redirects to www.apple.com/mac/. Another user noted that the Cupertino-based giant did not use a 302 code to perform the redirect but a 301. Technically, 302 is used for a temporary redirect, whereas 301 indicates a permanent redirect.
“It’s a permanent (301) redirect. These types of redirects are aggressively cached by browsers and search engines. If there was a chance that this particular URL would feature content again in the future, they would have used a temporary (302) redirect,” the user says.
According to 9to5 Mac, the speculation is exaggerated for two reasons. One is that most SEO sites recommend using a 301 redirect over 302 almost all the time, even when a redirect is temporary. Even Google cannot draw a distinction between the two. Secondly, it seems that Apple’s Online Store has sold out of the discontinued displays, which is a good enough reason to remove the link.
What’s next for Apple users?
Users have expressed surprise over Apple not updating the Thunderbolt Display since 2011. This made the Thunderbolt Display look quite outdated at a time when almost everyone is making 4K monitors across all price points. After the iPhone maker released a 5K iMac, this looked even more surprising.
During the discontinuation announcement about the Thunderbolt display, the iPhone making giant did not recommend that users purchase a specific third-party alternative, but what could be the top picks for Mac? Dell is still the top pick in most price points, but there are some less expensive and newer models available as well. The prices are now more reasonable than ever with newer models and some old models for well under $1,000 or even $500.
9to5 Mac says the company could be concentrating on an external 5K display with an integrated GPU. However, it is uncertain if this would have been unveiled at WWDC. In addition, it has been noted that the WWDC keynote video was launched in a 21:9 format. This probably hints that Apple’s next display will be an ultrawide one. We will need to wait a little longer to learn if such speculations are true or not, but our bet is on a new Apple display appearing in the future.
