“It has a resolution of 2560×1440, which no other monitor in the industry seems to have (that I can find). 30” LCDs are the same width but 1600 tall,” Arment writes. “Shrinking 2560-wide into a screen that’s 3” smaller diagonally yields an impressive pixel density, especially given the panel’s still-immense size.”
“It has an IPS panel. IPS is the best and most expensive LCD type, giving the best viewing angle and the least color- and brightness-shifting as the angle increases in any direction. Nearly every panel on the market, including every laptop panel, is the cheap TN type. (TN panels wash out as soon as you move your head slightly, especially vertically, which is why it’s so hard to find a good viewing angle for your laptop lid while watching a dark movie.) Other 27” TN panels exist (only at the lower 1920×1080 resolution), but I can’t find any other 27” IPS panels,” Arment writes. “It’s also LED-backlit.”
Arment writes, “So it’s a very high-specced, brand new panel that’s apparently not being mass-produced yet (since no other monitors for sale are using it)… A standalone monitor with the new iMac’s panel would be perfectly reasonably priced at about $1500. From Dell. Apple’s only charging $200 more than that for theirs, and there’s an entire high-end computer stuck to the back of it.”
“When they mentioned on last week’s quarterly earnings call that they expected lower profit margins for a new product, I don’t think anyone expected a change of this magnitude,” Arment writes. “How are they making anything — or even not losing money — with the base-model 27” iMac?”
“I bet we’re going to see a lot of Mac Pro owners buying 27” monitors for $1700 and trying to figure out what to do with the free computer stuck to the back,” Arment writes. “Maybe Apple wants to push more buyers away from today’s default system-type choice — laptops — and show them why they should consider getting a fast, spacious desktop instead. And, for the time being, it’s a desktop with absolutely no equivalent in the PC world.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “since1984” for the heads up.]