[lloeki]

> nor can you change settings on the pro XDR display without a device running macOS.

You can't even natively change brightness nor volume on non-Apple displays, even though DDC/CI is a thing and third party apps can do just that. The Mac Mini M1 HDMI port is even crippled at the hardware level and DDC/CI flat out doesn't work there (works fine via USB-C which uses DP).

The usual public rationale from Apple is that a perfect experience can only be achieved within a fully owned ecosystem.

I don't quite buy that the core strategic intent is intentionally using this to push people into owning only/buying more of Apple stuff, I bet it's more about not having to handle dev, fixes, workarounds, and a storm of support cases for third party hardware that may be of less than stellar quality, and then Apple being blamed for things not working.

IOW brand image control + dev resources, not a sales ploy.