Andrew Cunningham
Apple’s Studio Display got dinged for plenty of things in reviews, including its price and its IPS panel technology. But the most consistent criticism was aimed at its built-in webcam, which fell far short of most standalone desktop webcams—and even the front-facing cameras included with iPhones and iPads.
Apple said back in March that it would release a firmware update to address at least some of the problems, and that update is currently available in beta form starting today.
“This beta update has refinements to the Studio Display camera tuning, including improved noise reduction, contrast, and framing,” an Apple spokesperson told Ars.
To download the Studio Display firmware update, you’ll first need to download and install the macOS Monterey 12.4 beta that was also released today. That update is currently only available to developers, but a version for the general public should be available in the next day or so. Once that’s installed, the Studio Display 15.5 firmware beta will download and install separately. The Studio Display includes an Apple 13 chip along with 64GB of internal storage—it’s essentially an iPad in a monitor’s body—so its iOS-based firmware updates are downloaded and installed separately rather than coming down as part of a macOS update.
There’s no word on when the final version of macOS 12.4 or the Studio Display firmware update will be released. But we’d expect them both to come out sometime between now and the time Apple unveils its next major OS updates at its Worldwide Developers Conference in early June.
