So if I can't buy an LG, what do I buy for less than a couple grand, Apple?
Subjective, but that's also the ugliest piece of hardware Apple has ever created.
I agree that the stand might be the ugliest thing they've ever made.
Ever bought a Sony reference monitor?
The 5k LG display is still MIA and there isn't a competitor. (and as someone who bought a 5K LG display on release, I'm surprised that's still the case)
It also explains why Apple didn't do a 27" Apple Pro Display XDR and just went ahead with the 32". They still intend on having the LG monitors as "budget" mainstream options. If you look at the design of the Apple Pro Display XDR it's obvious LG was involved in it's design and manufacturing. Even the USB-C port placement is identical to the 4K/5K just on the other side.
I'm not sure what you mean by that... I'm using one right now and they seem to be available on amazon..
I think they'll end up selling the new displays to two market segments: (1) people who actually use the high-end features in their work, and (2) people who have deep/corporate pockets and want to show off that they can afford the most expensive tech imaginable.
There are quite possibly more people in the second group than the first.
This display is for a completely different audience. For the audience you're talking about, Apple sells pretty great LG UltraFine 4K and 5K displays already.
The Cinema was a high end great monitor for professionals, as opposed to a monitor for professional graphics/video people.
The two are radically different, and this time, Apple just went for that niche (albeit making a pitch to do your coding on it, which was kinda dumb in my view).
The LG (or equivalent) is a replacement for the old Cinema Display, and is probably great for doing everything. I don't know anyone outside of photo/video (or devs at Adobe making sure their apps look great) working on the new XDR.
They also have those amazing 1:1 1920x1920 that are widely used in air traffic control.
I'm running a 1:1 right now and holy cow. I know it's probably bias but I will say it's actually the best monitor I've ever used... I'm a developer so the balance between LOC on screen at full width is AMAZING. Color isn't fantastic on it but honestly I have two monitors flanking it on the left/right that are calibrated enough for basic print/photo needs.
The thing is - I'm still using it for things like PS and Illustrator because 1:1 works so well for complex applications like that... I just check color on a better monitor.
I want another one of those, only moar pixelz. And not five thousand g-ddamned dollars.
I was prepared to buy a new Apple display today knowing that it would be quality in all those aspects. Instead it'll be trial and error to discover a good monitor that works as well as Apple's aging thunderbolt display.
https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/6kj0oh/use_the_real_br...
The thought of some dev buying this thing just to stare at xcode all day is kinda hilarious.
That section of OP's comment seems to clearly show this understanding.
The crowd laughed at that line.
Edit: My bad. Actually, it's the new mac pro that look like a cheese grater.
For me the last line in the article obnoxiously sums up Apple's attitude towards pricing.
The bill of materials is probably $50-100 or less to turn an iPad Pro into a viable stand for the Pro Display.
Apple is certainly pushing themselves up-market with this one.
Fairly predictable. Commodified tablets for consumers, laptops for developers (still working on that...), hugely expensive thoroughbred (status symbol) hardware for professional content creators with professional budgets.
Problem is, there's much more money in the prosumer niche than there is at the high end. For every successful LA movie score composer there are thousands, even tens of thousands, of bedroom DAW users.
What "pros" really want is outstanding performance at an affordable price. This is outstanding performance at a painful price - which is a novel combination of aspirational and incredibly annoying.
If Apple's quality control game leaks over into this new Pro line, then there will be lots of unhappy professionals staring at their $11k paperweights while shopping for something else.
Not sure why you want the Mac Pro to be dumbed down for non-professionals.
With luxury pricing you're used to purchasing a complete package or product, then you may put expensive add-ons on top. If you had to add $[high number] add-on for what's typically a standard part, for ex: a seat-belt of a Mercedes or a zipper on a Hermes hand-bag, in order to even buy the bag or car, it'd take some people by surprise. Even if it's basically the same markup as any luxury / high-end purchase.
Whether releasing this without an upgraded consumer/prosumer level display was a good idea is another question.
I understand the whole "money is no object for real professionals" line of thinking, but:
a) it's unlikely that the $1000 stand improves productivity in any appreciable way over a regular stand and
b) if you had 10 employees and you found a way to significantly cut down on that $1000 stand price (say, with that $200 VESA mount, what a steal in comparison!), you could pay for an extra Mac Pro with the savings
I think Apple has managed to price something so poorly that even "I'm such a professional I don't care what it costs" professionals have to do a double take.
Apple has, rightly, been under fire lately for forgetting about the pro market. This display, in the context of the presentation, is intended to demonstrate that their professional focus is back.
The LG UltraFine 5K which has sort of been the de facto "Apple monitor" over the past few years since they stopped making their own is $1300.
Dell has a 32" 8K wide gamut color accurate monitor (UP3218K) which is higher resolution but doesn't get anywhere near as bright. MSRP is $3900, it currently sells for $3400 and includes a stand.
https://pro.sony/en_FI/products/broadcastpromonitors/bvm-hx3...
So about $11k for a complete editing computer with the power to handle multiple 8k streams isn't expensive at all in the context of those industries.
The Mac Pro isn't a "web developer" machine or an advanced spreadsheet runner -- it's a computer designed for people that actually need that sort of power in a desktop workstation. The last thing people in the AV industries are complaining about with this new machine is the cost. It's a bargain.
Also the stand part was funny.
OLED makes for terrible monitors to use for hours on end, with all the stationary UI elements causing burn-in. It's an unsolved problem.
OLED also isn't all that bright, especially on a smaller screen. You want those nits for bright HDR content, like the sun, not to stare at it all day.
OLED also isn't substantially more energy efficient.
OLED visibly degrades in quality well within its lifetime.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love OLED TVs to watch films on, but they don't make for good monitors.
I guess I’m stuck in the past and Apple is really a different company now.
HDR so far only seems supported by Windows, xBox, and PS4. Linux/X11 and Mac still have no HDR support.
It can't support Dolby Vision (requires 12 bit color), which means that it can't replace reference displays for professionals.
Also HDR playback has been supported for awhile on MacOS, since high sierra it's been one of those "it just works" features.
1) Being able to fine-tune the height of the monitor
2) A monitor arm that's not a flimsy piece plastic that shakes whenever the table moves
Who knows if the new mount even fulfills those 2 things but if they did, that would be pretty cool. I don't think I could ever afford this in my lifetime though.
I mean there's that.
Just give the people a OLED panel subscription instead of this LED unifomity nightmare waiting to happen.
To me this looks like a overengineered consumer device, with insane macro-scale part count and failures/uniformity issues just waiting to happen. Besides local contrast issues with in a LED driven pixel area and the borders between them. You can do this, but comparing it reference class seems quite the claim to live up to.
The $40k Sony device mentioned is OLED btw.
https://www.apple.com/105/media/us/pro-display-xdr/2019/1e43...
...and it still burns in, degrades, etc. It's not supposed to show a desktop.
Even with a replaceable panel, it would be a very costly affair. LCD panels are mass market products, even if they happen to be (cut as) 6K or 8K.
??
That's a bargain compared to the LISA, which was only $25k adjusted for inflation!
If they sold smaller resolution displays at more appropriate price points, I would be more inclined to buy it. They offer similar pricing structures for their iPhone and MacBook lines, so why not apply the same to monitors?
Can we not do that?
Their site is very hard to browse these days, and there are plenty of better options.
As a software engineer, I just can't quite figure out when the "Pro" label might apply to me these days. The iMac Pro and MacBook Pro labels seem apt, but the Mac Pro and Apple Pro Display labels do not.
It just feels kind of "un-Apple" that it takes research to figure out what works for me, and their product categorization is now rather opaque.
After all the dell UP3218K has been available for a while now and its 8k (and actually priced less, and comes with a stand). Frankly, it looks nicer too as they seem to have overdone the industrial cheese grader look IMHO.
Maybe this is a big middle finger up to all those asking for Apple's pro line up to be more 'pro'.
Who is their target market? I'd like to know.
