Apple Studio Display webcam issue is getting patched, but there’s a catch

A commonly reported issue with the Apple Studio Display is the sometimes poor quality of the webcam. The tech giant promised that the webcam issue would be fixed in a future update, and that update finally dropped today.

According to an Apple spokesperson’s statement to The Verge, “an update to the Studio Display firmware is now available with today’s beta release of macOS Monterey 12.4. This beta update has refinements to the Studio Display camera tuning, including improved noise reduction, contrast, and framing.”

While we didn’t have any issue during our Apple Studio Display review, many other users might have encountered the frustrating problem. If you’re looking for a fix, you first need to install the MacOS public beta in order to install the Studio Display Firmware Version 15.5 (Build 19F5062g), then update your display by going to System Preferences > Software Update, and the improvements will be there.

Analysis: For the price, these issues are rather ridiculous

The Apple Studio Display currently retails for $1,599 (£1,499 / AU$2,499), an incredibly steep price for a monitor. It should run flawlessly given the high cost, and yet two major issues have already plagued it since launch.

The first is the aforementioned webcam issue, which finally received an update today. But even with this fix users will be forced to run a beta version of macOS, a problem for those needing the display for work where they might not have control over suftware updates. Not to mention that fact that not everyone wants to run a Beta version of their OS.

Needless to say, it’s a solution that is hardly ideal.

Then there’s a broader issue, which hints at a larger problem with the Apple ecosystem as it juggles more interlocking products. On March 30, a firmware update caused the monitor to malfunction since Apple stopped signing iOS update 15.4 after it pushed down update 15.4.1, with the company apparently forgetting that the display could not use the latter update. 

Apple’s main justification for the high prices of its products are their quality and ease of use. The Studio Display’s persistent issues, however, run counter to that promise as customers who paid a lot of money for it are still having to download patches to fix problems that shouldn’t have been there in the first place.