“Apple discontinued its Thunderbolt Display last summer after five years on the market, and now Apple recommends the LG UltraFine 5K Display ($974 through March 31, regular $1299.99) for new MacBook Pro customers,” Zac Hall reports for 9to5Mac. “While the industrial design doesn’t match Apple’s hardware, the UltraFine 5K screen is Retina resolution like 5K iMacs and connects using the new Thunderbolt 3 I/O.”
Hall reports, “LG UltraFine 5K Display has a critical usability issue, however, that doesn’t affect other external monitors: the hardware can become unusable when located within 2 meters of a router.”
“The problem is UltraFine 5K Display becomes unusable when positioned within 6.6-feet of a router. I discovered this issue after purchasing my own UltraFine 5K Display last week and thinking something was defective with my hardware,” Hall reports. “Right out of the box, UltraFine 5K Display was hardly usable as it would consistently disconnect and even freeze my MacBook Pro which made it unusable for work on Thursday and Friday. Connecting it to my MacBook Pro consistently resulted in needing to reboot my machine to continue working.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s shortsighted shitshow continues.
As we wrote early this month:
“Apple ceding the display business damages the Apple brand. Apple does not lead in an essential personal computing component and other companies logos are destined to be in Mac users’ faces all day long. Not smart. Cook & Co. should reconsider their decision and make and sell Apple-branded displays. Direct profits aren’t the issue, ancillary profits are; smart executives like Cook should be able to recognize the power of perception.”
SEE ALSO:
Apple censoring reviews of LG UltraFine 5K display due to poor ratings? – January 25, 2017
A real, honest-to-Jobs Apple display with built-in eGPU could be a smart move – January 19, 2017
Where is the 32″ iMac?
why, it’s in Timmy’s magic pipeline, of course!
Tim Cook: Perhaps it is time for him to commit to social justice warrioring full time.
He doesn’t seem to be capable of making Apple create insanely great products anymore.
LG is a sponsor of Putin’s regime
Surrendering a market without a shot being fired.
Why hasn’t Apple simply applied its own bezel and branding to the display?
Because they knew it was not up to their standards and didn’t want their name on it.
gee, Apple doesn’t make monitors anymore…
Stink Different®
Make Great Again, Dump Pipeline Timmy.™
I hope you signed my petition to do so..
https://www.change.org/p/apple-board-of-directors-remove-tim-cook-as-ceo-of-apple
There are good reasons to cede the display market:
1) Not enough margin in it;
2) You’re going to discontinue the Max’s that need external displays, or sales of those products are teeny tiny;
3) You are concentrating on a large number of potentially game-changing technologies and just don’t feel like being distracted by old school tech like external monitors;
4) There aren’t many advances left to be made in the space and the product is about to become a commodity, or has already.
These are the first four items of a list I’m confident could be much much longer.
Could also be taken as Apple is slowly phasing out the Mac by taking out the peripherals that Macs depend on. Next to go may be the keyboard, replaced with a slightly ‘wide’ version of the iPad.
Not surprising.
LG makes good panels but the rest of their hardware sucks. I bought my first and last LG back in 2011. What a pile of crap, had an SMD component develop a cold solder joint 2 months out of warranty. I re-balled it in my lab and was surprised how thin the pcb was and the cheap clips that held the heat sink to the component caused the heat sink to barely make contact.
Get a Sharp. I’ve got 2 that are pushing 10 years old that have never missed a beat and just replaced my problematic LG with another Sharp. They are just better built displays.
well, …. IF mr. apple was going broke, a concern about margins might be a valid consideration, but they are not. not by a long shot !
but there are other considerations to consider, like maintaining the apple ecosystem of apple products that are, or at least were, well built and easy to use – remember the digital hub concept? it was and is a good one.
plus, maybe if they would quit playing wall streets games of depleting capital by stock buy backs, they might have even more resources to explore”a large number of potentially game – changing technologies”… assuming they still have the vision to envision them. and recapture the capability to extract them from the nebulous “pipeline” and ” road map” that we hear so much about.
this is a company that is seemingly hell bent to follow the road previous trod by microsoft – pursuit of growing income at the expense of insightful and ground breaking products.
it is simply shocking that things are coming to this pass.
Whew! It’s a good thing APPLE decided to play it safe and stop making their own monitors.
Say what you will MDN. The facts are that there never was an “Apple” monitor – they have always been rebranded items from other manufacturers. Apple may have contracted for special models with particular ports and display qualities, but they were not manufactured by Apple.
You keep telling Apple to focus on Macs, then you turn around and tell Apple to make displays. You need to reconsider and refine your message a bit. There is absolutely no reason that LG or another manufacturer cannot provide great monitors for Macs. I have two LG plasma TVs at home (no Samsung for me!), and they have been awesome. If LG dropped the ball on these 4K and 5K monitors, then slam them. The only part that is Apple’s responsibility is that they should spend more time testing a third party device before recommending it. But, perhaps, the test units that Apple received worked a lot better than the mass produced units distributed for retail? I don’t know. But I sure am tired of the hypocrisy and hate on this forum. Far too many people are eager to rush to judgment based on hearsay and insufficient evidence.
You know by that argument ALL Apple products are ‘rebranded’ items manufactured by other companies.
I don’t see any discrepancy for not doing displays as a focus on Macs. The displays are integral to using any desktop Mac. By not branding it their own regardless of manufacture, they are also saying “We’re not responsible for quality since we’re not betting our name on it.”
I truly wonder whats going on at Apple? How many screwups does it take to wake them up???
I swear , Sometime it feels as if they want to deliberatly destroy themselves out of the market… thats how crazy and stupid some of their devisions have been in the past 2 years or so .
Its getting real embarrassing!
HellooOOOooooo?! Apple?! … anybody home?
Sorry for reposting and being redundant .. but it fits…and i feel compelled :
Apple axing its displays is a marketing idiocy …. besides if Im investing in Apple premiums i like to have a complete comprehensive lineup of products with a consistent high end estetics too….. not patched up, mismatched uncoordinated mess.
On one hand Apple prides themselves in their design and merger of liberal arts and technology………on the other hand they tell us hey who cares if your desk looks messed up with all the clutter moved from our devices to the surface of your desks …… and now we have to add this ugly black thing next to our meticulously designed beautiful macs… or macbooks .. etc.?
Where is the coherence in philosophy there?
Apple axing monitors makes no sense no matter how one looks at it… its Stupid..
And again… it does not need to be an item for direct profits… do it for marketing reasons… do it for visibility… ….
do it to look good…do it offer a complete and coherent elegantly designed lineup .. . Isn’t that a big part of Apples moto that we buy into at a premium ? !
Agreed, if anything “Image” is Apple’s focus. Why distort it by forcing someone to have mismatching HW designs.
It appears that the product was not tested very thoroughly! This is becoming a trend. NOT GOOD!
I purchased the monitor and it’s less than 1 meter from my router without any issues. The only problem I had was once it had gone into sleep mode and I couldn’t get it to respond.
I personally don’t care that it’s not an Apple branded monitor and having it sit next to my Thunderbolt Display, it’s clearly better than the TB display.
One advantage over the Thunderbolt Display is you can adjust the height and another is the display
The demos at the Apple Store look nice, but the casing is not very flattering. They look like cheap plastic with a hole cut in for a camera. The 5ks were also tilted, like they are loose. They are not sitting horizontal. Either way, the store didn’t have any in stock to buy. Looks like a fringe sale that has to be done on line and shipped.
Apple’s obsoleting its products before others do and replacing them with better gadgets is good for Apple. Apple obsoleting itself before others do is a surrender to vision and to competition even if done inadvertently. That’s not a viable business model and it cheats Apple’s enthusiasts out of a continuous positive vision it used to provide.
So I have to conclude that apparatchik Tim made the mistake of listening to Jobs when the latter advised Tim to be himself. Tim is himself when he should be like Jobs.