“Can we all agree that Apple makes nice monitors? I think we can. They come in three magnificent sizes: 20 inch, 23 inch and the big daddy of them all, the 30 inch. Surrounded by aluminum goodness they are the ying that completes the PowerMac’s yang. Sadly they also boast price tags of $800, $1,500 and $3,000 respectively, therein lies the problem,” James R. Stoup writes for Apple Matters.
“If you just dropped $600 for a Mac Mini how can you justify spending $800 on a monitor? I could understand if you planned on placing it beside a $3,000 PowerMac, what is a few more bucks at that point right? But for consumers on a budget Apple has severely priced itself out of the display game,” Stoup writes.
“If you are Joe Schmuck then a simple bit of arithmetic will show you that at CompUSA’s website you can get FIVE 15” LCD monitors for $750, THREE 17″LCD monitors for $775 or ONE 20” LCD monitor for $800! Hum, which one should you choose? If you go with option A then you could set up two computers with a dual monitor display and still have one left over for a laptop. If you go with plan B then you could have a very nice dual monitor setup for one station and still have a nice display for another computer. Option C leaves you with one monitor for one computer. You know Apple, your displays are nice, but they aren’t that nice,” Stoup writes.
Full article here.
I’m not really sure why people are talking about brightness. Let’s get a few things straight. Apple displays are intended for professional use. Comparing them and any other high perfermance display to a bargain store special of the week is like comparing a BMW 7 series to a Chevy (Geo) Storm. Both may get you from point A to point B, but a very different experience in each car. I do calibrate video displays for a living. Projectors, televisions, monitors, etc… I have calibrated a few Apple displays and found them to be VERY responsive, fairly accurate (for an LCD), and had way plenty of contrast (the difference between black and white) for what most professionals use them for. For the record the “brightness” control Apple gives you easy access to is actually a “contrast” control. “Contrast”, like on your TV, is actually “white level”. Try this; raise the lovely Apple supplied “brightness” with Safari open on this page which has a white background and pick a black desktop. If you watch the black desktop you’ll notice that it doesn’t change when you’re raising (F15) the “Apple brightness”. This means it’s actually a white level adjustment. Too much of this means you lose details on white images. Think of a white shirt and not being able to see the seams and buttons because the white level is set too high. The “brightness” control on your TV is actually “black level”. Too dark of a setting and you don’t see detail in darker images. Too light of a setting and the native black of the display is turned to grey and you miss details in dark images. With both white and black levels set properly the difference in light out between the displays black and white is called Contrast Ratio. This is the most attractive quality to the human eye. At any given point we can see no more than 800:1. Most LCD computer monitors have about a 200:1 contrast (marketing specs aside). Apple have slightly more than that at about 220:1. This is noticable. However, the human eye is horrible at seeing differences in brightness. An example woule be those bluish headlights on some cars. We think they are brighter because they hurt our eyes, but the only reason they hurt our eyes is because blue is the hardest color for us to see and our eyes and straining to see it compared to the yellowish headlights everybody else has. Anyway, I’ll get off my soap box. The bottom line is don’t knock something you don’t understand. Your ignorance will shine “brighter” than the monitors you’re knocking.
Stoup writes articles that are, for the most part, overblown and without a lot of fact. Go read his past articles, they are so Apple-skewed it’s fucking ridiculous. Time to stop printing this kind of “news”.
Our monitors are for pros, you bozo. Do you know anything? Or do you have crap for brains?
When you look at Sony’s 23″ monitor, and see that it costs more than Apple’s, do you say Sony’s too expensive? Even when you realize they use the exact same LCD inside? Even when you hear that Sony uses LCDs that Apple has rejected?
I didn’t think so, bozo.
I bought a Mac mini about three weeks ago. Plan to buy a standard 19″ LCD display from NewEgg soon. The Apple monitors are pretty and appear to be of high quality, but just too pricy for me (especially when 19″ DVI LCD’s start at around $200.) I really don’t care about HD dimensions and, in fact, don’t like it for anything but movie playback. For regular work, i don’t like the “short” HD format.
I had considered buying an iMac, but just don’t like the fact you basically have to toss your old display out when you upgrade to a newer CPU. In the old days, we used to buy monitors, keyboards and CPU’s separately. So the cost of upgrading to a newer, faster CPU was less (i.e. you weren’t constantly buying new displays and keyboards). The mini brings back this tradition. This is one reason i chose a G4 mini over a G5 iMac.
Would have prefered a G5 mini, but then i would prefer that an attractive young naked woman deliver and set it up for free too. Sometimes you just have to settle for less than you want.
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re:”APPLECARE will not cover that EXPENSIVE display. To me the bottom line is that APPLE is walking away from its displays the minute is sells one because it knows the quality control is terrible. When I go into any real store the only broken or damaged displays I have seen–ever–are APPLE displays even though those stores are filled with displays made by other manufacuterers. COMPUSA will sell you INSURANCE for any display but an APPLE display–When I say INSURANCE, I mean a policy that will cover you even if your own negligence is what caused the problem to the display–they will replace the display. NOT WITH AN APPLE LAP TOP OR DISPLAY. What does it mean when APPLE wont back these products? I say it means that APPLE knows too many of them wont last. And dont get me wrong–Im not knocking APPLE–I want to buy an APPLE display–BUT IM NOT GOING TO TAKE THE RISK—Go look at the new zhongguo think pad price list–right on there is warranty for the screen and right on there is insurance for the screen–TRY TO GET APPLE TO REPLACE A DISPLAY–GO AHEAD.”
I bought the original Apple Cinema Display 22 inch at $4000.00, ouch. It had Apple Care as it was bought with a Dual 500 G4. After two years the display developed 8 or 10 bad pixels. Apple exchanged the Cinema Display for a New One. ( I think it was a new one as the turn around was only 3 days or 4 at the most. ) I am still using it with a Mac Mini now. When I was awaiting the Apple DVI to ACD adapter ( $100.00 ) to use the Cinema Display I used a 17″ SONY monitor (CRT) which was a trip to the past. It made me appreciate the 22 inch Cinema Display even more.
John
what about dpi’s
most monitors are stuck at 72dpi, while apples are 100 dpi. (as far as i know)
Apple wants to have it both ways. They want to sell their monitors for high prices while providing bare bones functionality. They should either reduce the prices or start including the functionality found on many other high end monitors, such as:
Dual or triple DVI inputs for connecting more than 1 computer.
S-Video or Component video input.
Pivoting capability for using the monitor in portrait orientation.
And why is it that you can only buy AppleCare for an Apple monitor if you buy a new Mac at the same time?
baz: Most monitors have more than 72 ppi. To calculate the ppi of the monitor, divide the screen resolution (1024 pixels or whatever) by the number of inches (physical size of the viewable part of the screen). If the aspect ratio is correct, it should have the same ppi horizontally and vertically (but it is not uncommon to find the values are different since many people have their monitor settings messed up, having never adjusted them from the factory settings). Most monitors I would guess are 80-110 ppi these days. Changing your screen resolution changes the ppi of your monitor (virtual pixels, not the physical ones, of course).
About warranties, MacMall offers 1, 2, and 3 year warranties on Apple Cinema Displays. Not sure what their dead pixel policy is.
re:”APPLECARE will not cover that EXPENSIVE display. To me the bottom line is that APPLE is walking away from its displays the minute is sells one because it knows the quality control is terrible. When I go into any real store the only broken or damaged displays I have seen–ever–are APPLE displays even though those stores are filled with displays made by other manufacuterers. COMPUSA will sell you INSURANCE for any display but an APPLE display–When I say INSURANCE, I mean a policy that will cover you even if your own negligence is what caused the problem to the display–they will replace the display. NOT WITH AN APPLE LAP TOP OR DISPLAY. What does it mean when APPLE wont back these products? I say it means that APPLE knows too many of them wont last. And dont get me wrong–Im not knocking APPLE–I want to buy an APPLE display–BUT IM NOT GOING TO TAKE THE RISK—Go look at the new zhongguo think pad price list–right on there is warranty for the screen and right on there is insurance for the screen–TRY TO GET APPLE TO REPLACE A DISPLAY–GO AHEAD.”
You are VERY OBVIOUSLY knocking Apple.
Why the hell should Apple be willing to replace a piece of hardware that’s broken because of your own negligence or misuse? Apple backs thier products, they just don’t back people’s stupidity. No one should have to. (Try buying a $500 dress at a department store, spill red wine down the front and then try to return it. Do you think they’d take it back just because you spilled on it?)
IMO those sorts of insurance policies sold through stores is a scam. If you have decent homeowners/renters insurance or purchase it on a credit card that does insurance, it’ll cover broken hardware to some degree or another