A Studio Display never closes
QAlthough I love the image and adjustable stand of my Studio Display, it behaves quite oddly at times. It never turns off, so whenever I connect my MacBook Pro to it, the notebook powers up, and it keeps attached disks running even when it’s off. How can I take control of it? byNICK NORMAN
AApple’s Studio Display is designed to be always on when it’s provided with power, and has no off button at all. This has some unexpected side-effects, in that it will immediately power on notebooks when you connect it to them by Thunderbolt, as it does to any peripherals connected to its three USB-C ports. Currently there’s no way to change those behaviours, apart from supplying it with power from a switched mains socket and turning that off.
For solid-state peripherals, this shouldn’t be any problem. However, it doesn’t appear that it will do rotating hard disks any favours. When you shut your Mac down, the Studio Display does power down the USB-C ports for a few seconds before powering them back up. With a spinning hard disk connected, it would first be spun down, then spun back up, generally considered to be the events that contribute most to mechanical wear, thus to disk failure.
As the display has the full iOS from an iPhone inside it, maybe Apple will provide the user with some control over this behaviour in the future.