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Apple Dropping CRTs for LCDs
Roberto Brega writes: "Steve Jobs, key-note-ing the World-Wide Apple Developer Conference (WWDC), announced that Apple is going to drop CRT monitors alltogether, in favour of all-digital TFT displays in 15-inches, 17-inches (new) and 22-inches (cinema) configurations." And with that 22" costing $2500, you can just imagine how many people will buy their monitors elsewhere. Perhaps that's the whole idea -- maybe Apple wasn't able to turn a profit on CRTs. The real downside to all of this is games. Ever try playing a 640x480 game on a 1024x768 laptop LCD? Yucko. Also, apparently OS X is default for all new Macs.
Actually, 640x480 looks very good on Apple's higher resolution LCDs. The scaling is done digitally and is a very close approximation of what happens to CRTs.
It's not quite perfect, but it is plenty serviceable.
On another note, Apple can't make OS X default on Macs in the US because if they do so, Macs aren't Energy Star compliant due to X's lousy power management and they would have to pay a tax on each one sold. One would presume this would be corrected soon.
Apple is still the computer for "the rest of them". Tou know the ones. People who are unfamiliar with computers. Executives who place their computer on a glass table with thin brass legs and a single wire coming out the back of the machine. They have lots of money to burn, but buy a computer like they buy their cars... as a status symbol. Pretty but useless for real work. My 4-door '85 dually pickup may have a few dings around the bed and tailgate and the paint might be flaked off here and there but it can do work and haul stuff. Oh, and a BMW hit me from behind once and scuffed my rear chrome bumper, which required a rag and some 409 to repair. The BMW was all fucked up as my tow ball had penetrated the outher plastic body parts, grill, and cracked the engine block. Similarly, my PC may not look pretty with it's snarl of wires coming out the back, but it does the job far better than a pretty-boy Mac ever could.
Macs still come with a VGA adapter
:-).
It's not even a adapter. It's a regular VGA output port. All the desktop Macs (G4, Cube, even the iMac) and the Titanium PowerBook have a standard VGA output port (15-pin mini D-Sub connector). The new iBook uses an included adapter (it has a smaller plug).
CmdrTaco definitely messed up the write-up. Mac OS X is not default. Mac OS 9.1 is still default. The new thing is that Mac OS X comes preinstalled on all Macs now (2 months ahead of schedule).
Also, the comparison to laptop LCDs is incorrect. Apple has perfected resolution scaling to such a degree - that while not perfect - games are very playable on Apple's screens.
2 Other Big Things Mr Taco Missed:
Mac OS X Server now shipping (yay
WebObjects 5 Java Application Server now shipping.
what's with all u people talking about playing games as if tha's all u do uless your a rich ass teenage brat, when u have money for a thousand dollar LCD u have better things to do than play games; like get the money for food cuz u spent it on monitors... i thought this was a guru gathering not beerheads coming to talk about gaaaameeees
LCDs are still a specialized device for specialized needs.
-Apple serial ports are standard RS422 which is generally compatible with RS232. In fact, it only takes a port adapter to hook a Mac serial port to a PC.
Except for the silly DIN connector, no problem
-Apple memory is exactly the same as PC memory. Most Macs used standard 30 and 72-pin SIMMs, and later 168-pin DIMMs.
Except for the macs that used parity only, or 168pin [BUFFERED] DIMMs. which cost 50% more.
-Apple monitors are signal compatible with PC monitors. All it takes is a port adapter.
Except for the fact that you had to have the $30 adapter with all the dip switches to make the mac think it had a certin model monitor connected
-Apple microphones are generally identical to PC microphones.
I never understood why they needed the facy, extra long connector on the mac mic.
-Apple floppy drives far more capable than PC floppy drives, as well as being fully able to read PC disks.
Except they also cost 3 times as much.
-SCSI is a generic open standard that is also available on PC. Most workstations also used SCSI.
Except for the stupid DB25 connectors, that people plug paralell printers into, and the other stupid connector that requires a $50 adapter for powerbooks.
Consider that a big reason folks don't purchase from Apple is the cost. In a sense, Apple reduces their market share by pushing technology and bringing new features to the end user without providing alternatives of time-proven (and cost-amortized!) technology.
--
"Yucko".
I think it's a good idea, Apple and the others that invested in Samsung a few years ago (99 I think) will reap the rewards of thier investments.
I recall - can't remember where or provide a line - But I think that LCD production will surpass CRTs in '03-'04.
So I can buy LCDs from Apple and they are not selling CRTs...so what? That doesn't mean that every Macintosh has to come with one of those LCDs. There are convertors to hook up a standard CRT...like the 19" Mitsubishi I have on my G4 533.
Personally...I like the idea of one cable from my case to my screen...but I already had the CRT...so I didn't buy an LCD...
But flaming Apple for such a minor component change is just that, flaming them.
"While Apple will not be offering branded CRT displays from this point forward, displays from third parites will still be available from Apple Store."
The nice thing, as I understand it, is that these new LCDs are completely digital and don't need ColorSync adjustments. Thus you get true color representation on screen that hopefully matches the output of your chosen printer.
_damnit_
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
though *what* they watch might do it.
hawk, renewing his campaign for the "B-chip" to smite the evil dinosoaur
I have a 21" sony coming to attach to the workstation to complement this laptop, but I expect that I'll spend more time ssh'ing in from the laptop, save at debug time . . . mmm, 2048x1536 for watch windows . . . tasty . .
hawk
hawk
Also, as others have pointed out, the adjustments on today's lcd monitors for off-prime sizes are much better than they used to be. For that matter, look at the mask on a color crt--you have those little triangles of phosphor elements in R, G, and B, which function awefully close to pixels--there's less than 1/3 of any given scan line that can take a given primary color, and there's a similar vertical problem as well.
I have yet to notice any artifacts running this screen at sub-prime sizes--but I don't use windows much at all (only for old kids' games), and X will only handle 1600x1200 . . .
hawk
> Not everybody likes to deal with the snarl of
...as far as octopi go, that is the USB and Firewire legacy actually. PC's are big roomy boxes where the "snarl of wires" can at least be hidden most of the time.
> wires, the ugly and intimidating Linux or
> Windows interfaces
WIMP is WIMP, Apple might do it a bit better than the others. However,the end user afraid of "breaking it" will still have that fear when using a Macintosh. An end user's hangups will always be more relevant than well cooked usability studies.
Beyond that, a PC is almost always going to posses a set of interfaces that is a superset to those on any Mac.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It's really time for you people to actually back up this innane drivel. Please demonstrate to us that there is some actual basis in science or medicine to this drivel.
Todays bargin bin tech is usually yesterdays pretentious overpriced tech. It just doesn't have a big pricetag and an Apple logo.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
...actually, ILM is moving towards Linux when it comes to animator workstations. That was actually recent news right here.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
SCSI was always expensive and it still is. Who are you trying to kid anyways? The only SCSI that is cheap is SCSI that is woefully obsolete (like SCSI2). That's just the inevitable march of technology (moore's law and all that) and has little to do with Apple.
USB was meant to be cheap to begin with. It was given away for FREE on PC's for years before Apple even bothered. (vs $30 for SCSI2, $60 for firewire, or $300+ for SCSI du jour)
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
If the hardware can't keep up with a amateur gamer, how is it supposed to do the same for an actual video professional? The professional's expectations (and sensitivity) should be remarkably higher than some "Doom Player".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Do you know what a hard drive cost in 1984? Do you know how big it was?
What were they? 10 megabytes? The floppy was 700k.
Just think of all the PC makers that are out of business today. Apple is still in business. They must do something right.
Maybe your being a little too critical!
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
The Sony 24" widescreen flat CRT is slightly larger than the Apple Cinema Display (but same aspect ratio), and it is about the same price now. Of course, the Sony is MUCH heavier, much deeper, and higher res as well.
CRT monitors are such commodity items that there isn't that much money to be made, and the quality difference between an expensive one and cheap one is a great deal less than it used to be. But the problem with LCD is last time I looked at one (a few days ago at a Sony showroom) they still suck compared to CRT, and I assume color calibration would be a big problem as well. So whether people who need accurate color matching will be happy with the move is a big question.
I think Apple monitors use Sony tubes (used to anyway...) which is one reason they're expensive (not that I think their prices are justified).
I think LCD is still at the toy stage - I'll stick with CRT for everyday use for a long time unless somehow they drastically improve the resolution and the refresh rate.
Kill'em! Kill'em all!
The 22" Apple LCD monitor originally listed for $4000. At the last Macworld Expo, the price was cut to $3000. At WWDC, it has come down to around $2600. Not bad. That's almost 50% off what it was at first.
Look at one before you bash it. It's a thing of beauty, true beauty. Everything from the case to the pixels to the colors. Beauty.
They have introduced my dream monitor, a 17" LCD, also with a beautiful case. Unlike many computer users, I do appreciate what the plastic around my machine looks like. My wife has a grape iMac. I have a blue and white PMAC G3. My PowerBook G3 has a beautiful case as well.
Did you notice a theme there? The color grey is not involved. Neither is beige. There is no beige on our desks!
Adding the 17" LCD to my desktop would enhance the look and feel I'm trying to give my desk -- and I could get rid of my big, hot 17" CRT monitor. And the price isn't too bad. Getting that monitor would be an investment, an investment that I'm sure I would be loving it for years.
Apple has introduced something that no other computer maker has been able to reproduce: style. For years, Apple machines have been distinctive. The only time they weren't was around 1995, with the Performa line of low-cost and relatively bad boxes. It's no surprise that Apple was hurting the most when they tried to emulate the "standard PC case" design. And it's no surprise they're doing well now that they're back on the path of stylistic innovation.
It's not for everyone. But for those of us who appreciate it, it's a little breath of fresh air that we feel every day we see one of these fine pieces of work.
-- haaz.
Now why they use that damn Apple Display Connector, I'll never be able to figure that out. (They tried something similar on the first line of PowerPC macs and it failed miserably.)
Yeah, but it's different this time - STEVE thought of it, therefore it'll work even if the exact same thing didn't work before, because THAT time it WASN'T his idea. </steve_jobs_logic>
Actually the unified connector isn't all that bad an idea - it DOES cut cable clutter. The real reason it didn't take off on the first generation Power Macs is that it was only half-implemented. The cable was supposed to allow the monitor to act as a hub for a whole host of things - a/v ins and outs, ADB, speakers etc. (sound familiar?) but this was never done. They made (iirc) two monitors that used the connector, and some Power Macs whose onboard video (the video actually going to the connector) lacked enough VRAM to make effective use of the monitors. So there wasn't really much point to continuing with it - consumers didn't like it, Apple probably found the connectors were a bit more expensive than the DB15s you can get in bulk at Jameco, and it really offered no advantage over doing it the old way. It would have, if they'd gotten everything implemented before shipping it - instead of half-assed. Once again Apple learned you don't introduce a new standard unless there's a reason to use it instead of the old one.
Funny: most first-generation Power Macs (the 6100AV model and pretty much all 7100s and 8100s) were also shipped with video upgrade cards that used the old-style Mac DB15 monitor connectors. They were thus dual-monitor capable out of the box - but you had one connector of each type.
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
Well, back in the 'good old days' (TM) when there were only a few of us, the ratio of crap to gems was vastly different. We still had all the rants for/against just about everything but 90% of /. users actually knew what they were talking about and, more importantly, happily shared their informed opinions and knowledge with the rest of the community.
Nowadays you can replicate that aspect by browsing at +2 but you then miss out on the rather fun ranting that still occurs.
Too much noise on the signal and too many tech wannabies here I guess. I only pop on to see what the script kiddies are ranting about and then I go and get my news elsewhere.
If one is stuck you can still find the odd informed person around here if you ask the right question in the right way but it's hard to filter the noise out.
Hohum
Troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
Really? Most IBM clone cases and peripherals are all beige - seems like matching colors to me ;)
Personally I'm a Mac user and while I would appreciate a nice case - say something made out of a nice cherry or mahogony - I'm prepared to go with what's cheap and immediately available. OTOH, there are plenty of people on the Windows side of the pond that seriously trick out their cases. You should probably avoid such expansive statements - they're rarely correct.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Don't doubt it. They're not magical, and they do suffer from mild ghosting. I found Quake 3 to be much less playable on the 22-inch Apple LCD, although it doesn't bother everyone.
True prepress professionals don't use Apple CRTs. They use monitors which cost even more than Apple's LCDs. They have features that aren't on any equivalent mass-mart CRT monitors.
If the users aren't professionals or are under a tight budget, they still don't use Apple CRTs. They use a mass market CRT, because Apple's monitors have always been expensive. Nice picture, but expensive. Much like the Sony W900-series they're not for everyone.
Sigh. Frankly, I view this story as another "aaah! the sky is falling! Look!" attempt to get viewers to visit the site. Too many news sites doing this crap today, and it speaks badly of Slashdot that they'd promote sensationlistic journalism. An article about Apple switching from CRTs to LCDs, sure, but this... is ridiculous.
Moof!
I dunno about Apple's 22" widescreen LCD (native res=1600x1024) for games, but I played a lot of Unreal Tournament on my work 24" Sony at full 1920x1200x24 (32MB G2GTS).
I believe the the technical term for the experience is: "spoogeorific".
Mmmm.. Like goin huntin' in a movie...
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
It's not a matter of "You can get LCDs elsewhere for cheaper." It's "You can get big CRTs elsewhere for cheaper."
LCDs are expensive, and CRTs are less so. Many people will stop buying Apple displays for that reason.
I think the original poster meant that the LCDs are not able to change resolution. Thus, playing DOOM on a 1024x768 LCD results in this little 340x200 rectangle in the middle of the screen.
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
Why is it everything comes down to games? Do you folks realize that less than 5% of all Mac users play any games on their machines at all, let alone at 640x480 which is a pretty stupid resolution to begin with considering any decent over the counter video card can run quake3 etc... at 1024x768 or better. Grow up, games have very little to do with a platforms viability. If you read the tech specs it very specifically talks about publishing, graphics design and other "work" related aspects before mentioning games.
Is your friends name "Powder"? Just curious ;)
-todd
Also remember MacOS handles colors much differently than any other OS specifically for publishing purposes. Hence the built in color correction on the mac.
Won't this move simply create more demand for LCDs and help drive the prices down more quickly? I realize that Apple controls a measely 5% of the personal computer market but every little bit will help.
Did this happen while Steve Jobs was at Apple? I didn't think so.
--Be human.
Looks like Steve is continuing a tradition that he started way back in 1978. By making state-of-the-art hardware standard on computers, he's creating economies of scale for the hardware, and thus driving down prices. Here's a few for you:
1978: color graphics computers - Apple ][
1979: 5 1/4" floppy drive - Apple ][
1984: 3 1/2" floppy - Macintosh
1985: laser printer - LaserWriter
1986: SCSI - Macintosh Plus
1988: optical hard drive - NeXT Cube
1998: USB - iMac
2000: Gigabit Ethernet - PowerMac G4
2000: Wireless Ethernet - AirPort
2001: LCD monitors
Now, before you get your knickers in a bunch, realize that I am not suggesting that Jobs and company invented these things (except for the tech behind the 5 1/4" floppy--Wozniak is a genious). I'm merely suggesting that by placing these items in mainstream computers (OK, NeXT was never mainstream, but Steve sure thought he could make it so), Steve helped drive down the unit costs of these items until they were common place in computing (he failed with the optical disk). Or, alternatively, Steve had the forsight to buy in to these technologies at a point in the price curve about 1 year (or more) ahead of the competition.
As for LCDs costing too much? Just watch--LCD panels will be cheaper than CRTs in 5 years.
--Be human.
Or so you'd have to spend twenty dollars on an adaptor cable. Or so you'd have only one cable to worry about, instead of three. Bad Apple! I'm shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you.
Warning: the above paragraph may contain "sarcasm", a rhetorical device known to the State of California to confuse some people.
-- Jeff Paulsen
but easier to look at? The resolution possible on LCD's is CRAP. The timing issue's ensure a need to adjust for every machine you connect to :(
I see Apple making another genius marketing move they will regret. Jobs MUST be behind this one.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Yes and KDS make very DECENT monitors, just got one for the spare PC myself.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
what drivel would that be or is it too much to be a wee bit more specific ?? Granted an Apple VS PC flame war is pointless. They BOTH have good uses, depending on the field and need.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I think that this is a lot more similar to what Jobs did with the original NeXT cube: sell the hardware with a CD-ROM (which was exceedingly rare at the time) and no floppy drive (which was the standard distribution media at the time.
I can vividly recall boggling at the lack of a floppy drive when the NeXT was announced, it seemed like such a bad decision at the time. Now I realize that it was exactly the right decision only about two years too early.
This seems the same way. Is there anyone that doesn't think that in 10 years we'll look upon the CRT as a quaint relic and wonder how we ever coped with their size, weight, and power consumption? The LCD will eventually displace the CRT, and Jobs is following his pattern of adopting early at the expense of, well, the expense of the system.
Once again he's trailblazing in the face of product maturity. It's not a bad decision, it's just really aggressively-timed. Let's hope it doesn't affect adoption of the platform like NeXT's design decisions did.
Most graphics professionals I know will not go to LCD. I noticed their reason after trying to work with Photoshop and Animation Master on a good LCD. There is no comparisson in the contrast levels of a good CRT. You cannot tell the difference between white and light grey or other simillar colors and shades with an LCD, unless you tilt the screen the right way, throw the salt over your shoulder and knock on wood.
However, I predominantly write code and find 12 hours with an LCD MUCH EASIER on my eyes than even 8 hours with a good CRT. The LCD panel gives a better focus plane for the eyes than a CRT.
Here. I guess Jobs was just trying to mislead us earlier.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
Well excuuuuse me for not posting earlier.
;)
-Waldo
And with that 22" costing $2500, you can just imagine how many people will buy their monitors elsewhere.
1998: And with USB devices costing 3x as much as their serial counterparts, you can imagine how many people will buy their monitors elsewhere.
1998: And with floppies being the most popular sneakernet standard, you can imagine how many people will have to buy $100 floppy drives for their iMac.
2000: And with Firewire being an unused standard, you can imagine how many people will pay $300 for a Firewire->SCSI adaptor.
This is Apple's schtick. They take a costly and cool technology and produce it in such incredible quantity that it becomes affordable. Flat screens are expensive now because they're not being produced in enough quantity. (In part.) Once Apple ups the demand by 10x monthly, I'm guessing prices will drop in a huge way.
Waldo
How games look on LCDs with a different native resolution depends very much on the graphics card. ATIs laptop graphics chipsets have been great at scaling images for years (ATI Rage LT, Mobility, M1/4 etc.), other chipsets are extremely bad at it (NeoMagic - *cough*). Unfortunately, there's very little information available about this issue...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Monitors must be profitable for Apple. Yes, they are expensive. However, if you're looking for a high quality display, there isn't too much more out there. (Maybe your code looks the same on any monitor, but now try to do color correction on a cheap monitor. You may gain a new appreciation for graphic artists.) Apple's recent line of monitors are among the best looking displays I've ever seen. Now why they use that damn Apple Display Connector, I'll never be able to figure that out. (They tried something similar on the first line of PowerPC macs and it failed miserably.)
As for the switch to LCD, I can only assume its being done for the same reason they got rid of the floppy.
Personally, I have a Sony 19" monitor I purchased half a year ago. I'd like it to be the last CRT I ever buy.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
A couple of my friends had CRT desktop displays, and while they looked incredibly cool sitting on the desktop, what they actually displayed wasn't quite so great. Subjectively, the "refresh rate" seems to be a lot lower, and whites in particular tend to be very "glary". Was it just that the controls were set wrong for my own preferences? Do I need to get used to the LCD?
Go you big red fire engine!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
The new 22" cinema display would seem to be a worthy sucessor to my SGI 1600SWs.
If someone gets Debian running smoothly (with full hardware support) on a G4, that could well be my next desktop system.
It's kinda sad that my SGIs (first produced in 1998) are still state-of-the-art as far as digital flat panels go. I'd have expected something even bigger by now, that costs less than the IBM monsters.
Wow.
You'll note that my purchase did *not* include a monitor.
No regrets though, I wanted to play with Mac OS X and that's what I'm doing -- if I wanted speed, I'd be using a different OS, hardware issues aside.
--
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
I spent two grand on an Apple. What did I get? Two 450MHz G4 CPUs w/1MB L2 cache, 256 MB RAM (half of it was thrown in for free by Outpost), 30 GB ATA hard disk, gigabit ether, 56K modem, case, power supply, keyboard, mouse.
I could probably have gotten a faster PC for that price, but still, that's not shabby. Certainly no other non-PC vendor would have given me that much machine for my money.
(BTW, I did not buy an Apple monitor, I thought they were overpriced.)
--
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
That said, I find the idea of Apple forcing everyone to use LCDs somewhat obnoxious - and it sure isn't going to make Macs any cheaper...
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
I have an iBook (with AirPort, which I'm using atm) and a cube with the 15" LCD.
The ADC connector isn't about proprietary hardware, it's about simplicity. It delivers analog and digital signal as well as USB and power and is superb at signaling the monitor when to sleep or wake. And, for you Californians, LCD monitors uses less power, so it's Better For The State.
The really interesting thing is the number of copies of an open source operating system (at least at its core) that Apple has shipped. Seems the pundits are quick to forget that. I mean, up until now, the single biggest shipper of hardware built upon open source software was TiVo. :)
_Deirdre
This is flamebait to all of you Apple zealots, but I just think back to the early days of the Powermac when the only monitors that were compatible were Apple monitors... of course they were $100 more expensive (no joke) and harder to come by. This is not hearsay either. I was a Powermac owner who was constantly struggling with upgrade problems. Later on, they made adapters that would fit a standard PC monitor to use with the PowerMac... the adapters ranged from $15-$50.
The problem with Apple is that once you've invested a lot of money into their computer and their software, Apple pulls the rug from under you and creates a spin-off of an existing standard in the name of 'progress'. Apple microphones? $35. PC microphones? $1.50. The list goes on and on... parallel ports, serial ports. Yeah, right, progress my ass. Linux will never do this. Apple is in a position of need now... the only reason they won't create Apple computers that use only Apple LCD's is because they don't have the userbase to pull stunts like this. If they ever succeed and do create a userbase... it'll be the same old story.
This is such BS. 'they have made a lot of progress in the past few years' is precisely why this is a problem. Apple's been around for a lot more than just 'a few years' and it isn't until just NOW that they are supporting standards? I don't even know where to begin:
- Nubus slots,
- Apple serial ports,
- Apple memory,
- Apple monitors (pre pci powermacs),
- Apple microphones,
- No parallel port support.
- Apple floppy drives
- SCSI HD's.
Ok, some of these maybe are justified at some level. But still, this meant that almost *everything* that we bought for our Powermacs - part of the proceeds went to Apple licensing. Modem, printers, memory, microphone, monitors, PC cards, Video adaptors, Network adaptors.
So they finally come around in the last 'few years'... gee, I wonder why... could it be because of their sinking userbase is complaining about interoperability? You must understand that the fundamental concept behind Linux -openness- is to PREVENT crap like this from happening. THIS is the reason Slashdoters are unsympathetic to Apple... if, in fact, they are.
The only people who should still buy from Apple are those those who simply can't afford to change anymore, or those who don't have large computer needs. Go ahead and get yourself an iMac if all that you do is Internet.
I think the most notable announcement was probably the 17" 1280x1024 LCD for $ 999. Since LCDs are sharper than CRTs, a good case could be made for this being roughly equivalent to a 20" CRT with a 19" viewable area for $ 699. That's a major step down from the cheapest 17" LCD I've seen, the $1,150 NEC (Fry's price); the $1,895 Sony doesn't even begin to compete.
This is a downright aggressive price; so much so that it's a great pity there's no version for PC folks. I might well consider bugging the boss for an Apple monitor of that size, resolution and price even though the only Mac I run is at home.
D
PS For those curious about the new Apple Stores, http://www.amazing.com/applestore/ has an account of my trip, complete with photographs and video.
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You are right. The first time I saw a G4 cube, it had a beige 17" monitor next to it and looked, well, just totally mismatched.
You really need an Apple LCD to match the beauty and space-saving ethos of the Cube, and at the time it was introduced, LCDs (whether by Apple or others) were too expensive to make business sense.
It wouldn't surprise me if the cube could recover now that chic monitors aren't totally out of the ballpark pricewise anymore.
D
----
It's not implausible that the beauty of MacOS X reminds open source folk of the bitter truth: X Windows under Linux is the ugliest GUI in the world.
...
... um ... I miss ... well, actually, I miss xemacs and hope they do an Aqua version one of these days. But that's it.
Curiously enough, SGI solved the problem some years ago with a very nice looking GUI with cool fonts. It must have taken an enormous amount of time, money and effort to do this, because even the very latest Linux versions with half-assed anti-aliased fonts look awful - especially when compared to MacOS X.
This is why it took me a long time to stop using my old SGI workstation; if it hadn't broken down at a time when I was short on cash, I'd probably still be using it at the office. But every once in a while I get tempted by the cheap used Octanes on eBay, if I could only get one with the IDO thrown in
And I say this as someone who uses Linux at work and MacOS X at home; here at work, I really miss those drop-dead gorgeous fonts. At home, I miss
D
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Oh, come now, that's an ancient machine. And expandability, quite honestly, isn't what it once was; my G4/450 dual processor came with on-motherboard ethernet, memory, FireWire, USB, etc, etc. Unless you have really demanding requirements (like real time video editing), you don't need to use a single card. I remember in the days of the SE, when even memory came on cards. Not anymore.
I was able to add 80GB of bone-standard Maxtor disk space to the system by just switching it off, opening the case and plugging the disk into the IDE bus. No problems; it took about ten minutes and that was it.
Incidentally, my system is SMP and works great under MacOS X.
D
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The Apple Retail Store (see http://www.amazing.com/applestore/ for my pictures) had a 20" Sony monitor on one of the PowerMac G4s.
D
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I was in Fry's about a week ago looking for 17" LCDs.
NEC, 17", display seemed a bit lacking in quality, $1,150.
Sony, 17", display looked better, $1,895.
The new Apple LCD isn't out yet, but I don't think Jobs would sign off on a product that was less than excellent. $ 999.
I'd call that extremely aggressive pricing, wouldn't you?
For most of Apple's life, they have OEMed Sony monitors; I think the more recent ones are Mitsubishi. I haven't noticed them charging much of a price premium for them. Of course the 17" LCD was expensive because their special packaging is expensive; but that's also most likely why they were discontinuing it.
D
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Ah, but then you have to deal with Windows, and who would want that?
:-(.
Or Linux, but then you have to deal with the hideous aesthetic experience of Linux fonts
I get annoyed by people who judge things only by price. Like that fellow who came up to me while I was checking out the newsstand. He wanted to sell me an ugly belt.
"$4?" he said.
I started walking away.
"$3?"
I continued doing so, because however cheap the product was, it wasn't good enough for me.
That's how I feel about PCs running Windows, and that's why I'm willing to pay more - sometimes a little more, other times a lot more - for a Mac.
D
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Same here. I believe the Apple display has built-in scaling logic to make the display look good at non-native resolutions.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I know they're using TMDS to keep things robust, but does anyone know what the maximum data rate is on that cable?
I believe there are 6 data channels in the cable, according to Apple:
http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/hardware/Devel oper_Notes/Macintosh_CPUs-G4/PowerMacG4Cube/trin-5 7.html
M
and then there's the DVI spec itself (of which ADC is a superset, I believe):
http://www.ddwg.org/register/download.html
but I can't decipher enough of the raw standard to figure out if/what the max. resolution is given current technology.
Never refuse a breath mint.
As long as you can still get a CRT elsewhere, this is no big deal. Unless you need easy color calibration, there is no compelling reason to buy an apple display anyway. If you're not using colorsync then you overpaid for your apple monitor. Apples CRTs are usually 20-25% more expensive than similar monitors from other manufacturers
But even if they do break support for CRTs, watch how the Apple faithful trumped how great it is that Apple is forcing people to go to something better than those "Old antiquated CRT monitors".
Refresh rates? BAH! It's all about toy value.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
First and foremost Apple is a hardware company, they have to sell their hardware at slightly higher prices then Dell and Gateway because they need to make more money off each one since they know they're going to sell a lower volume. Next to that their hardware is a bit more expensive. Motorola sticks a high price tag on their chips because they sell them only to Apple and only make a small number of them (compared to someone like Intel or AMD) which soohts their price way the fuck up. If they dropped their "beggars act" and dropped the prices on their hardware they'd end up fucked in the ass because they wouldn't make nearly enough money to keep their investors happy or pay their bills. On the matter of their cheapest boxes being twice the price of cheaper PC systems, take a look at what they're offering before you knock them. Cheap PC systems offer 32 fucking megs of RAM and come with an OS which is shitty at best. Low end PCs have shit sound and graphics (often times their graphics cards suck up system memory) and a software modem. If you wat a decent PC you're still going to fork over 7-800$. Which is about the price of the cheapest iMac. I think Windows/PC centric people often regard Apple as some minor player in the corporate business world but take a look at a MacMall catalogue or something one of these days. They are jampacked with all the things a business customer needs, besides that Office 2k1 for Mac is really sweet. SO to make a long story short, Macs are nice for business shit because they network easily and readily with a non-routeable protocol (if you look too long into AppleTalk, AppleTalk begins to look back into you).
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Apparently, Mac users were already buying most of their CRT monitors elsewhere.
Around here we ditched several worthwhile 21" displays simply because they didn't "match" the CPU case. No, it had nothing to do with the display quality -- they were all high-quality Sony displays -- the users just complained that they didn't match.
I think it's a conspiracy on Apple's part to get people to buy the more expensive component because it fits their aesthetics model.
I'm here at WWDC, and this is correct. OS X will be installed on all shipping statements, but they will still boot into OS 9 by default. The idea is that new users will find it an easy task to switch into OS X. On Macs, holding down option on startup will scan all devices (including the network, I believe) for bootable volumes. Other items of note.. OS X Server will be shipping, and WebObjects 5 is shipping.
If apple reworked their iMac to use an LCD it would be absolutely amazing-- they could take their desk footprint down to a fraction of what it is now-- this would be problematic considering the iMac is a low-end machine, and LCDs are expensive.
What i think would be cool is if apple made an imac with a cinema-proportioned widescreen, then included an HDTV tuner. That way they could justify the higher price. :)
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I dont know if thats the best idea, i've had a Dell flat panel for about 4 months, and i just noticed that the expensive SOB has a image of SETI@Home burned in because i thought that power-saving LCDs could be left on 24x7 without me needing to worry about the long-gone burnin problems from yesterdays CRTs.........
so now what with their new monitors? expensive to have problems such as burnin (Dell and Apple use the same screens)
www.atacomm.com - The Leader in VoIP Product Distributi
find me a pc laptop that has all those I/O options onboard, a 1024x768 display, weighs less than 5 pounds, at that price. or even for $500 more.
Just raise the taxes on crack.
how can you tell? you're looking at those screenshots on your blurry/drab CRT!
Just raise the taxes on crack.
I was saying that the offered Toshiba counterexample weighs nearly 7 pounds, not the Apple one.
Just raise the taxes on crack.
someone incorrectly modded a later comment in this thread up. if you browse at 1, you'll see what i was talking about.
Just raise the taxes on crack.
except that thing weighs nearly 7 pounds. try again!
Just raise the taxes on crack.
That said, I find the idea of Apple forcing everyone to use LCDs somewhat obnoxious - and it sure isn't going to make Macs any cheaper... every mac still has a VGA port. their CRTs were too expensive and weren't turning enough of a profit. so now people can either spring for an apple LCD, or go buy a CRT from another vendor. nobody's being forced to do anything.
Just raise the taxes on crack.
If you buy a brand name like IBM, Dell or Compaq, you will probably find yourself spending as much. The only time that you see PC prices less than Macs are on anonymous boxes that are usually based on last years technology - I am probably over generalizing but you get the idea.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
With CRT surface area getting larger, so are their front-rear sizes. This means that you either need a bigger desk, or you end up touching nose to screen. LCDs are definetly the way to go and if you take into account the larger desk that you would have to buy for your new CRT, then the price difference is probably not too bad.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Most graphics professionals never bought Apple monitors anyway.
Yes, they did. All the CRT Apple Studio Displays were Trinitron tubes, ie very excellent monitors!
Every single design company I've worked at bought *complete* Apple systems, monitors included.
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I am continually amazed at the degree of ignorance and FUD that gets posted here about Apple. Apple is not perfect by any means (their legal team should be fired), but they have made a lot of progress in the past few years and come out with some really interesting stuff. When other companies do that sort of stuff, everyone cheers. When Apple does it, it's nothing but bitching and moaning. Why?
Well, because Tacoboy and his minions hate anything that is not Linux, GNU or the GPL. IBM is okay because they use Linux. HP is okay because they use Linux. SGI is okay because they use Linux.
So what does Apple do? It bases its new OS on FreeBSD instead of LinuxOS, and uses the APSL instead of the GPL. To the kill-it-if-it-ain't-linux crowd, this was a mortal insult that can never be forgiven.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
> "...Apple has now made beta-quality software
> the de facto standard on all its shipping Macs."
Beta-quality has been the default on Dell boxes for a while...Win98? God, that was HORRIBLE...and Win2k locks up (can't move cursor, have to do a hard reboot) when I start RealPlayer (latest version).
Of course, I'm used to RedHat 6.? and BlackBox...only time I've had that lock is using Together/J (let's hear it for Java, the productivity-enhancer) and a couple random BB segfaults.
OSX is pre-installed, the default is still OS 9.1.
And oddly enough, there's a Mitsubishi DP 73 for sale in the education store, but not in the general public store... Odd. We never bought apple monitors anyway, seeing as they are quite large and more expensive than other brands. Maybe they didn't sell enough to justify it...
$2500 for an Apple Cinema display is *extremely* low. I bought mine in December for $4,000, which was the going rate then. A month after I bought it they dropped it to $3,000 and now to $2,500.
But guess what.. it was worth every damned penny. It is the most beautiful display I've seen. Don't knock it till you try it, Taco, which is exactly what you tell people about your favorite tech items (cough*debian*cough).
And yes, I play Quake III on this thing and it looks pretty damned good. This isn't no 1995 laptop monitor.
Mea Culpa: I was largely guessing on the specs for the DELL inspiron (DELL's site sucks for extracting information from the sales-babble, and I spec'd the systems in the reverse order from which they are listed, so I was getting fatigured by the time I came to the DELL site) and I didn't think to check the weight or battery life of the different systems (simply an oversight: I do consider weight and battery life an important factor in a laptop).
As for the fellow who pointed out that I missed the most important differentiating factor between the 'PC' laptops and the iBook: I was assuming that the 'PC' laptops were to be purged of the Taint of Redmond and innoculated with something a little more palatable (Linux or a BSD variant).
In fact, I'm half considering an iBook as a Linux system. I've been running LinuxPPC on an old PowerComputing system at home and it's very nice. The only drawback with the iBook is that, if I'm going to run X on the beastie, I want three mouse buttons (so far, this requirement, along with the desire for built-in ethernet, has vetoed all contenders, Apple or otherwise).
Side note: I've been running Mac OS X on the afore mentioned PowerComputing box (upgraded PowerWave w/ 300MHz G3, 128MB RAM, etc. I used the instructions at Ryan Rempel's page to install OS X on a 'oldWorld' system) and it is damned slow. Unless Apple can optimize whatever parts of OS X that make it seem to drag so badly, I'd say that LinuxPPC has a secure position as an alternate OS for Apple PPC boxen. Running LinuxPPC, the PowerWave was easily the equal of my AMD K6-500 box, even before the G3 upgrade (it was originally a PPC604 132MHz). Under Mac OS X, even the simplest things seem to take forever.
Another Disclaimer: Yes, I know my system is unsupported, and I know that the memory sub-system sucks, and I know that things would probably be faster with a bit more memory (fer cryin' out loud! I've already got friggin' 128MB on that thing, that should be enough for anybody!). Still, LinuxPPC was quick and spry where Mac OS X is slow and plodding. Anyone that was concerned that OS X would be the death of LinuxPPC should rest easy.
A quick romp across the net for similarly configured and priced machines yields the following results:
1024x768 LCD
128 MB RAM
10 GB HD
DVD-ROM
built-in ehternet
RGB-video out
firewire
1400x1050 LCD
64 MB RAM
10 GB HD
DVD-ROM
built-in ethernet
IEEE 1394
800x600 LCD
128 MB RAM
10 GB HD
DVD-ROM
ethernet (optional PC-card)
TV-out
no fireware/IEEE 1394
1024x768
64 MB RAM
15 GB HD
CD-ROM
built-in ethernet
unspecified external display port
no firewire/IEEE 1394
800x600 LCD
128 MB RAM
10 GB HD
DVD-ROM
built-in ethernet
TV-out
no firewire/IEEE 1394
(I have omitted some features either becuase we all know how the contents turns out -- i.e. the CPU on the iBook is much slower than the competition -- or becuase the specs were substantially the same -- everyone has USB ports and modems, so why mention it?)
The Apple offering seems to stand up to the competition pretty well, with the notable exception being the DELL Inspiron 8000 which just kicks butt up and down (1400x1050 LCD! profanity, blasphemy, and disrespect! that is some nice hardware! I wonder how well it does with Linux). Most of the stuff I saw that was significantly cheaper than the Apple system didn't come with built-in ethernet and had only SVGA resolution on the LCD, which are two features near and dear to me.
While you can't get a new Apple laptop for the $900 that some models from some manufacturers are going for at the moment, you are certainly not getting ripped off. I'd say that the old saw about overpriced-underpowered Apple hardware is clearly more myth than reality.
Disclaimer: I'm an old Apple hand (my first real computer -- the kind that didn't store its data on cassette tapes -- was a Lisa 2 running MacWorks back in 1984) who has drifted far into the Linux camp of late (though I do own some Apple stock). I went into this comparisson intending to show that Apple was a clearly better value for the price than PC laptops with similar features, but the truth has bested me.
P.S. what I wouldn't give to have support for the TABLE tag on Slashdot.
Hopefully, the next thing gone will be all cables. I LOATHE the wad o' cable I have snarling itself behind my desk.
Come on, though...you weren't REALLY going to buy a Mac anyway, were you? So this decision doesn't really affect you at all, right?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I didn't say infrared. I said "no cables". There are several good RF keyboards and mice out there (I'm using one now on my PC). There's no reason that the receiver couldn't be built into the case, much the same way as the new Apple laptops incorporate AirPort antennas.
Bluetooth might be the answer. We'll see.
Just because IBM did something poorly, doesn't mean it can't be done.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
That reminds me of my favourite joke.
A man walks into a strip club and sits down at the bar. The man says to the bartender, "Would you look at all these losers? I see these same guys in this same skanky joint every damn day."
If it's a joke, why are you wasting your time?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
And it is just one word: Sorensen.
Dumbass! Sorenson != Apple. Sorenson is a codec made by an entirely different company that happens to be popular with Apple's (completely open, BTW) Quicktime format. Apple has no control over the openness of Sorenson's codec.
There are plenty of reasons to bash Apple (you can start with their patent fiascos), but Sorenson's proprietary video compression algorithm isn't one of them.
--
You're mostly right. The extra byte is often used for other things, like an 8-bit alpha channel, or four bits of alpha plus four bits of Z-buffer.
Really? That's interesting. Most of what I know about lowlevel graphics is from the 486-era, because that's when I was really into the whole thing. The only graphics coding I've done since then has been OpenGL stuff.
Makes me wonder, though. The de facto standard in the cinema world is 12 bits per pixel per channel-- 36 bit color. I wonder why no vendor has sold a PC-class product that does 36-bit color?
I thought that there are very high-end digital monitors and video cards for PC-class machines that could do this, but they're very expensive (quite obviously... this isn't the type of feature that the average computer user needs).
Cool trivia: the smallest pixels you can use on the Onyx2 IR2 system I have in my lab are 128 bits deep. That's 12 bits per channel RGBA, times two (double buffered) plus 32 bits of Z-buffer. Yowzers.
Holy hell. That's an interesting way of doing double buffering, though - is it really doing it the way you're implying, or like it was generally done in the 320x240x256 VGA programming days (i.e. one big contiguous block of memory represents the screen, and then a second contiguous big block of memory represents the offscreen buffer, and the display offset is just changed to flip)?
The method I think you're talking about gives me bad vibes of the 4-bit color days and bit planes. *shudder*
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This is just a question. But i thought apple users beeing the l33t computer graphics people that they are would require a monitor that can show 32bit color?
24-bit color is visually identical to 32-bit color; the extra byte is simply to speed up accesses by aligning pixels on 32-bit boundaries.
And monitors always display 24-bit color (at least monitors made in the last decade). The video card may store its pixel data in 8-bit or 16-bit format, but it sends full RGB data to the monitor.
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Let's see... here's a scene at the secret Apple marketing headquarters:
...uh, don't you mean machines "for the rest of us"?
Marketroid 1: Hmmm... let's see, Apple has successfully carved out a niche market for the last 15 years based on grotesquely overpriced hardware.
Marketroid 2: Well, we do have superior technology and are very popular among a certain subset of die-hard totally loyal users. Plus there was the Superbowl commercial with the big boobs.
Marketroid 1: Yes, there is a 93% market overlap between Apple Computers, Birkenstock incorporated and owners of Volkswagen Microbusses.
Marketroid 2: Don't forget the coupon for a free pint of Cherry Garcia in every copy of OS X.
Marketroid 1: Yes, but, compare that to the ridiculous hype leading up to the release of Windows 95. I mean, people were lining up at midnight to buy software that told them when it was safe to turn their computers off.
Marketroid 2: Well, our market dominance will be secured when the lucite octohedron mouse works its way through the usability labs. When everyone sees how cool it looks, Apple will sweep the PC market by storm.
Marketroid 1: Not to mention the $500 lead crystal version with a 18 karat gold button. I gotta get me one of those. However, Shiny Product Development says that's at least a year away and we need something now.
Marketroid 2: I know. The most visible part of the computer is the display! Let's get rid of those clunky CRT's once and for all and limit the users strictly to LCD's! They're so 1990's.
Marketroid 1: You know, I think you're on to something, because we all know Apple's success has always stemmed from the fact that people recognize the value of expensive hardware. We can even add gold trim for a few extra Benjamins. By effectively doubling the price of a basic machine, people will come pounding down our doors to buy more machines "for the elite among us".
Marketroid 2:
Marketroid 1: What did I say?
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I take this to mean that you've actually played games on the Apple 15/17/22 lcd displays? Can you give some particulars? (which lcd, games, vid card).
In most reviews of the 22" ACD, the reviewers go ga-ga over the picture quality, wide viewing angle, minimal color distortion (for an lcd), etc., but I have only seen one review specifically mention game performance, and in this review, the conclusion is: "Gamers, this is not your monitor."
So does anyone have first-hand experience with games like Quake3 or Unreal that contradict this?
I was an Apple advocate/zealot for 15 years. Finally in the past year, I saw through the haze and realized I was paying a fortune for Apple hardware and software that was no better than what I could get on the PC side of things.
Now I see, Apple is taking their customers to the cleaners again. I cannot believe that they would expect their customers to want to pay hundreds more for a monitor. Granted I've seen their 22" (@ $4000!) in MicroCenter and it is Gorgeous - but still.
So, now a quick check of the Apple Store shows that the cheapest 466 mhz Power Mac G4 w/Apple Monitor is $2299. I can get one amazing Athlon or P4 system with monitor for that cost. We're talking 1.3ghz or faster, oodles of HD and RAM, and a sweet 21" CRT.
Its insanity, pure insanity. I cannot believe that they haven't scared away all of their customers with "advancements" like this. Please, before you buy, look at Dell, IBM or HP and see what you'd get for that same $2299. You'll be very surprised.
Brian
Consulting and Hosting Services -- http://www.assortedinternet.com
Here ya go:
Toshiba Satellite 1755:
Processor Mobile Intel® Celeron(TM)
Speed 700MHz
Display XGA 13.3" Active Matrix
Memory 64MB SDRAM
Graphics ATI Mobility-C graphics controller with 4MB SGRAM
Hard Drive 10 Gigabyte
Multimedia 6x max speed DVD-ROM
Modem Integrated V.90/56K modem
Retail: $1199.
Add a $25 10/100 Ethernet Card, and if for some reason you actually have a Firewire drive, add the appropriate card. For 99.9% of the computing population, that won't be necessary.
Total Cost: $1224, with a larger, better screen, and a DVD Player
If you can't deal with the track stick, add an optical mouse for $25 more. Still, its a better deal than an iBook anyday.
Brian
Consulting and Web Hosting Services -- AssortedInternet.com
Actually, it has 2 USB ports.
And if 6.9 lbs is too heavy, you need to eat your wheaties.
Brian
Consulting and Hosting Services -- AssortedInternet.com
The Apple LCDs have always been noted for scaling well. The old analog ones have convolution filters and do no display chunkiness lower resolutions. I have played hundreds of hours of TeamFortress on an original Apple LCD. (It is also gorgeous when displaying NTSC video.) I prefer to use my original iBook at 640x480 for games that have smallish displays (like Snood).
The new digital interfaces use filtering in the video card, I'm told it is good.
One of those little features that a company can build in when they have a few extra dollars built in to the margins.
(As long as I'm countering CmdrTaco's unfounded steering statements... I fail to see how the price of the very high end display is going to turn off the price concious buyer. The price concious buyer is getting an iMac for $899 and not spending anything on a montior. 22" LCD@$2500 is a damn good buy (if you need it). Nec 20" is $3500, I'd quote other prices, but I can't find anything else of 18" at uvision.com)
I noticed that there is still a sentence of the original article that hasn't been refuted...
Apple will continue to sell CRT monitors. They will not have little Apple logos stuck on them and they won't have custom plastics, but the AppleStore will have monitors from an as yet un-named monitor manufacturer as an option on purchases. Just like they sell things like external disks, tape drives, mp3 players, hubs, UPSs, and such.
Right. This Mac OS X box, which lets me run Photoshop, Illustrator, BBEdit and Dreamweaver alongside Apache, Perl and MySQL is just a totally useless status symbol. Certainly not useful for web development, or anything.
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This space unintentionally left unblank.
I've got an Inspiron 5000e with the 15" UXGA LCD - it does 1600x1200 wonderfully, and handles scaling to lower resolutions quite well (much better than the XGA LCD on the 5000).
it's a conspiracy to keep my stock price down.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I swear, he must've read perhaps eight words of the article when he wrote that it's the "default" OS. More than once it's made perfectly clear that OS 9 remains the default setting.
/.'s proofreaders must not get paid very well... (When I left work two days ago for lunch, I overheard a conversation in the hallway; one guy was finishing up relating a technical piece of news which was clearly ridiculously bogus, and the other co-worker said, "So, you read that on /. right?" and both guys laughed when the first one answered, "yeah, and the Weekly World News." I would've laughed if I hadn't been drinking soda pop.)
It's pretty lame when your name becomes synonymous with "lack of journalistic standards." Kindof expected for infotainment magazines like WWN, but this is supposed to be a legit site...
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Where's the link to the actual story?
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2500 is actually fairly inexpensive for a 22" LCD with 1600x1024 resolution. The other LCDs with that kind of res (1600x1200 and more) are 5000+
Why don't you just get a Mac and a 3rd party monitor? Mac's still have VGA ports (iMac's and iBooks too). Or maybe you're just a anti-Mac troll and didn't think that far ahead.
Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
Apple Dropping LSD? Tell me something I didnt know!
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
Well, since the iMac is a monitor and a computer in one, I don't think that the LCD monitors are for the I macs, but rather the G4 and dual G4 machines.
The following sentence is TRUE. The previous sentence is FALSE.
LCD's currently suffer from two major flaws which make them unsuitable for the traditional Apple high end graphics market.
1. Variance. LCD screens are considerably less uniform in illumination from edge to edge compared to CRTs.
2. Calibration No one has developed a way to calibrate LCD's for accurate color. Ironicallly, although Apple invented ColorSync, a standard which is now cross platform and works hand in glove with ICC, whiat will now be Apple's standard monitor line will no longer be ColorSync compatible.
I can't see why people would gripe about this. If apple sells more flat panels the cost will go down and the quality of flat panels will go up.
one third the desk space, one third the power consumption, one third the heat. Maybe this could stop rolling blackouts in California with the reduction in energy usage. (G.W. Bush certianly can't fix the problem, maybe apple can.)
Ever since I saw the kitchen/dining area in "Total Recall" I have wanted some huge flat panel displays. We get closer to this.
It'd also be nice if I could just roll up my monitor and tote it to the next lan party. Sherman Peabody had a kick-ass chalkboard, I want that in a monitor!
So does this mean the I-Mac will now be flat :)
oh fuck it I'm bored.
But those that want to do more are not BLOCKED by the OS. A Mac is like a car with the hood welded shut. The Wintel box, gives me a choice, though.
What on my green earth are you talking about? I know I can do anything on my Mac that Windows can do (and I know this is true it takes me a good 10 minutes to figure out anything on Win9x that I do everyday on my Mac), probably with my eyes closed, and possibly with out my hands on the keyboard or mouse. depending on what I wanted to do, how in the hell am I limited by the OS? I don't use a command line? no wait, I can't have a web page as my desktop, that's it, I can't use the fucking active desktop. That's gotta be it, cause your post is so well thought out.(and don't give me that bullshit about being able to install Linux on x86, 1. there are a couple different distros for PPC that work with the Mac, 2. Mac OS X kinda has FreeBSD under its skirt)
ahh, I feel better.
11 was a racehorse
12 was 12
1111 Race
12112
if apple wasn't able to make a profit on their CRT's then i suppose dropping them was the way to go, but LCD's are by no means mainstream yet and dropping affordable mainstream technology in favor of the expensive alternative.. i don't know bout that. i guess apple is just refining their share of the market to include only people who have loads of cash to spend on computers. increasingly apple products seem to me to only makes sense for professional multimedia (esp. graphics/video) production.
Just want to remind you that your $200 19" CRT probably won't even do 1600x1200, and if it does, it will end up costing you more in the long run in optometry bills from the eyestrain the low refresh rate would cause. God forbid you actually have to do any color matching either. I paid $500 for my 19" Mitsu flat CRT, and wouldn't even think of spending a penny less. My eyesight sucks enough already, thank you very much.
just my blog and pix
I don't think any intelligenmt resizing (resampling) should be necessary. Games with brains (ie, Quake 3) render all their menus using the in game engine and freetype, making the menus appear the same at all resolutions.
Why aren't modern application toolkits the same way (okay, because the designers are lazy). Why are we still creating UIs in pixels - it makes as much sense as using the web without DNS (ie, making the users speak the computer language rather than the computer speak the suer language).
With a 1600 x 1200 desktop, life still isn't worth living in Linux, Win2K, or other OSs. There's this bizarre combination of controls for font size and icons size in different apps (which, due to a severely broken UI split in Linux which makes me configure everything in 2 places, makes it even harder on Linux), and that doesn't affect other things, like the gradients used on buttons and menus, and the titlebar for this theme. Opera (on all these platforms) is the only usable web browser due to its zoom option (and again the qualkity of the resampling isn't great).
*Everything* should be vector (UI, but SVG should be used as much as possible on web sites and browsers soon too).
This comment was posted in Mozilla 0.9, but retrospectively it was a poor decision as the browser will not let me use my left cursor key and is slow in a Athlon 900 w/ 384Mb RAM.
I wonder where all the functional goodies (cpu, HDD, RAM, etc.) are going to be put when Imacs start using these LCD screens.....
it's just not so obvious when you get it wrong - the analog effects in the phosphors tend to smear out the nasty artifacts
The data CD - apple announced they'd only ship developer support on CDs and all future machines would come with an integral CD - at the time I think we figured out they were basicly stuffing them in with 0 margin in order to get enough machines with CDs out there to make CDs be a viable distribution medium
Folks, I don't remember where I read this, so TIFWIW: Apple's Apple Store customers opt for an LCD 75 percent of the time over a CRT, and this number is increasing over time. It makes perfect sense for Apple to drop the CRT business and focus all their energy on their oh-so-cool LCDs.
The real question is why were they charging $500 for a 17" tube? It seemed very non-std. (weird case, Apple Desktop Connector, digital input(?)) and my guess is it cost quite a bit to make. They could have started re-badging $200 19" , but then the cases would not have matched the computers, and they would not have had the cool one cable connection to the tower/cube...which may not be important to the average slashdoter, but if you care about atheistics....
Man, beats me. I don't do a huge amount of graphics processing (not for work anyway - UT, anyone?), but all my friends who do publishing said they'd never switch to TFT. Good ol' CRT just has better saturation. And given that this market has long been a mac stronghold, I really, seriously, honestly can't imagine what they're thinking.
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Let the flame begin.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Here are some price comparisons.
Apple------------------Other
$2,199.00--------------$1,995
533MHz-----------------400Mhz SparcII
PowerPC G4-------------Sun Ultra 5 400
1MB L2 cache-----------2MB L2 cache
128MB SDRAM -----------128 SDRAM
40GB Ultra ATA---------20G 7200rpm EIDE
CD-RW Drive------------48x CR-ROM
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX-----PGx24 Graphics
Gigabit Ethernet-------10/100 Ethernet
56K internal modem
$2,499-----------------$2,600
Dual 533MHz------------Dual PIII 933MHz pc133
PowerPC G4-------------IBM xSeries 220
1MB L2 cache-----------256kb L2 cache
128MB SDRAM memory-----128 MB Ecc Reg SDRAM
40GB Ultra ATA---------18G Ultra160 SCSI
CD-RW Drive------------48x CD-ROM
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX-----Integrated 8Mg video
Gigabit Ethernet-------Gigabit Ethernet
56K internal modem-----10/100 Ethernet
$2,999-----------------2,027
733MHz-----------------1.7GHz
PowerPC G4-------------Dell Dimmension 8100
256K L2 & 1MB L3-------256K L2 Cache
256MB SDRAM memory-----256 SDRAM Memory
60GB Ultra ATA---------60GB Ultra ATA
CD-RW drive------------CD-RW Drive
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX-----NVIDIA GeForce2 MX
Gigabit Ethernet-------10/100 Ethernet
56K internal modem-----56K modem
Someone you trust is one of us.
Hmmm... so I must be imagining the fact that I've not been forced to reboot either my G4 desktop or my G3 PowerBook since installing OS X on March 25th?
:-)
I have to say my Linux box is just as stable when it's not booted into NT
Actually, the parallel port can handle twice the throughput of the USB port, although I will admit that its not as simple to set up...
It's not even a adapter. It's a regular VGA output port.
sorry, that's what i meant. you're right: it's a regular VGA port and an ADC port. sorry about the confusion.
- j
And given that this market has long been a mac stronghold, I really, seriously, honestly can't imagine what they're thinking.
they're thinking that real professionals can get a pro-level monitor elsewhere for cheaper perhaps? besides, i've never seen a true graphic designer that had a monitor under 21" and Apple hasn't made a 21" monitor in years (they only just now dropped their only CRT, the 17"). professional designers have always bought 3rd party monitors. nothing has changed here.
- j
well i think what it comes down to (as was alluded in the story) is that Apple didn't really make much money selling CRTs. it's a commodity market with not much room for margins and they decided that CRT vendors could make CRTs better and cheaper than Apple can.
i completely agree with this. if you want a good CRT, go buy a Sony, a LaCie or something similar (incidentally while you can get a 19" for $200, they're really shitty monitors). if you want a great LCD (and the Apple LCDs are great) then buy from Apple. but really, your computer vendor doesn't need to be your CRT vendor.
this "LCD-only" story is being blown way out of proportion on all the news sites. Macs still come with a VGA adapter and you can buy any monitor you want. it's not like Apple is forcing LCDs down your throat. the only down side is that your 3rd party monitor doesn't match your pretty cube. boo hoo.
also as others have noted the slashdot write up is incorrect: MacOS 9 is still the default, but MacOS X is now available too.
- j
BZZT. Apple owns an EXCLUSIVE license to the codec. Sorenson is perfectly willing to release Linux/Posix/whatever binaries, but Apple isn't interested. Read it and weep:
I'm usually a rabid Evangelista, but the codec is being withheld by Apple for market purposes (aka evil).
Heck, it's hard to find another 21"+ LCD at all. For example, Outpost has an NEC 20" that only gets 1280x1024 and costs $3279. Mysimon and cNet Shopper both list exactly one LCD larger than 18" ... care to guess?
Also, Slashdot previously discussed the Samsung 240T. It costs over twice as much, and came from the drool-flows-continuously dept. Apple's 15" is a bit over the average LCD price (about $500), and the 17" is dead on ($999), but the Cinema Display is an amazing deal (if you can afford it).
I think Taco is a little confused...there is a huge difference between LCD's in laptops and desktop LCD displays. The former is optimized for a low power situation, whereas the latter is not.
I agree, though, that it is a shame. I have a 17" flat-screen plugged into my Cube, and it's gorgeous. It even has its own automatic ColorSync color correction via the ADC connector. I wish Apple would have at least kept this monitor in production.
Then again, the iMac is targeted towards budget-conscious consumers, not graphics professionals. I'd still say though that an iMac monitor is better than most of the el cheapo 15" CRT's on the market.
Well, with all the other idiot decisions that this company has made, and with that retard Jobs at the helm, we can all expect Steve to shit on the customers as he has always done. In fact I think that Steve is a Microsoft plant in the Apple board. Eventually he will be exposed and the board will find out what a worm he is. The rest of us will know already from taking it in the ass and just right n ......
Hey, you think your house is cool?
Every Mac that has the ADC port also has a standard VGA port. You only have to buy the Apple-branded monitor if you want the features/style/etc. that it offers.
-A.
What did the walrus say to the penguin? "No soap, radio."
Well, can you blame them? FreeBSD isn't REALLY Free you know. Now if only they GPLed it..
Haha, I'm just teasing you! Mod me down if you like.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Dell 1.7 Ghz from Dell with DVD-CD/RW and 19" .24 dp trinitron monitor, 256 more RAMBUS memory, Geforce 3 from Gateway.
The full computer was $2050 shipped and after taxes. Apples doesn't have anything that beats in in cost or performance.
Not to take anything away from them on their new flat pannel decision. I think it's great.
$2,999-----------------2,027 733MHz-----------------1.7GHz PowerPC G4-------------Dell Dimmension 8100 256K L2 & 1MB L3-------256K L2 Cache 256MB SDRAM memory-----256 SDRAM Memory 60GB Ultra ATA---------60GB Ultra ATA CD-RW drive------------CD-RW Drive NVIDIA GeForce2 MX-----NVIDIA GeForce2 MX Gigabit Ethernet-------10/100 Ethernet 56K internal modem-----56K modem The Dimension 8100 comes with RAMBUS memory which is quite fast -- not regular SDRAM. You also get quite a nic monitor. Mac is about $1000 behind on this comparison.
ahhh, thank you for showing me what I was missing! Although I'll have to add oner con for LCDs. They really bother my eyes when I look at them for long periods of time, even teh high quality ones from Apple.\ =\=\=\=\
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I work for a school district so we use almost exclusivly Macs. My laptop provided by the school is a Powerbook G3 with a nice size LCD screen at 1024x768. After spending the entire day looking at this screen my eyes get so tired it almost feels like they are "buzzing". It's easier on my eyes to be at home looking at a monitor set to 1600x1200 at 70mhz, it almost makes my eyes feel better. Also as a school district teh added cost of these LCDs will cause us problems budget wise. It's hard enough for us to get funding for any computer equipment at all, let alone trying to get 60 computers all with LCDs through.\ =\=\=\=\=\
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My boss actually has the TiBook. He's making everyone in the tech deparment drool over it. The display is nice, but I havn't had much of a chance to use it myself, so I don't know how it would work with my eyes. I've used a few of the cinima LCD displays while I was setting up some new G4s for the office staff, they worked pretty well, but still put stress on my eyes. I havn't found anyhting that feels as good to my eyes as a monitor running at a high refresh rate. Maby some day LCDs will work for me, but not yet.\ =\=\=\
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I wonder what Apple was making on the CRT's... most of their revenue comes from the machines themselves... so this gives them one fewer item to produce. Maybe they won't run out of computers so quickly now. Yeah right. :-)
If that is the keynote news, I am glad I didn't go to the conference...
We have a 21" Apple CRT from about 9 months ago, it's simply stunning. The color quality is incredible. With them pushing more LCDs, I may replace my ugly 19" CRT on my Cube with a 15" or 17" LCD, and move the CRT back to my Windows machine.
Their HUGE CRTs had the best color that I have seen. However, I mostly used consumer CRTs. Apple's ability to push LCDs in the high end is terrific.
As another poster commented, the iMac is for the price conscious, and they have a monitor. Additionally, Apple isn't including the monitor on the workstations, but they have a line of monitors. If you want a slick LCD for your Cube, get one of these. If you toss your G4 workstation under the desk, then buy whatever monitor suits your fancy.
This is the right decision.
And including OS X is great... it means I don't need to push off my Macintosh purchase for another 6 weeks to avoid paying an extra $140 for the OS. For those of us looking for OS X workstations, this is a $140 price drop.
This is great. With a nice Mac OS X workstation, I don't need to run my office applications under windows and connect to a Linux or BSD box for my Unix ones, I can just compile them locally.
Alex
Slashdot's editors perhaps should stop commenting on physics, motorcycles and Apple. Their CRTs havn't been selling well lately. The LCDs, however, have been doing quite well. Although most people won't get the 2.5 large 22" cinema (yummy wide screen goodness), more can afford the 17" 1280x1024 for $999 and even more the 15" $599 one. Of course, some people will go eBay or to other sources to get CRTs, but most of the non-iMac crowd likes the LCDs and appreciate the added choice. I had the privilage of playing Quake III on my father-in-law's dual 500MHz G4 with a Cinema Display. If you've ever seen a setup like that, you would not be comparing the laptop to the Cinema Display. I don't know what's different about the pixels, but there was zero ghosting that I could see. Running it in a mode that required next to no dithering probably helped with the clarity-- that may have been why you compared it to a laptop. Most of Apple's market, however, is not filled with avid gamers who may be able to discern better than I. They are either hobby gamers, graphic artists (who appreciate the zero color drift and crisp clarity of LCD) or just home users who don't have the space.
Look, anyone who knows anything about Apple knows that their CRT monitors were crap. And I am a Mac fan. So going to LCDs is no great surprise - they look great, they take up little space, and will only add to the bottom line.
Eric Aitala
www.f1m.com
With that $100 M investment they made, they shouldn't have the same supply/quality problems other companies have been having... Smart move, Apple. Once again, they lead the industry into Bold New Worlds... 4 years from now LCD screens will be pretty much standard =)
------------
"...and Maddest of all, to see Life as it Is, and not as it Should Be."
wow, geek music!
~~~Please pass the salt, I hate unsalted MD5s
..is with MAME.. all those old games with whacky resolutions which don't translate well to LCD..
That's news to me. I was able to plug my VGA monitor into my G4 cube using the same cable I'd previously used to plug it into my PC. No adapter was required -- the video card has both ADC and VGA outputs. I'm sure that what you say may hold true for some Macs, though.
However, the idea of picking up one of those 17" LCDs is starting to look rather appealing.
So machines not defined as "pro" may still come with CRTs. This probably means the iMac line.
It's a reasonable move for Apple. They need some new product differentiation. Apple can now repackage its product line to look good with a flat-screen display. The real news, though, is that they apparently have a supplier of low-cost big LCD displays. That's a step forward. (Of course, Jobs has been known to make product announcements with unrealistically low prices before. The original Mac and the NextCube come to mind. So it's best not to take that price seriously until the thing actually ships. There might be some kicker here, like "after CompuServ rebate".)
They also have a technical advantage, in that they don't have to emulate VGA. They can drive an LCD display as an digital display, not as an emulated CRT.
Calibration was one of the things you paid for. The monitor knows how long its been on, and what hues have been displayed for how long. Cross that with colorsync and the decay curve of the phosphors in the tube, and the monitor kept itself calibrated for life.
I don't work in an office, it doesn't make a sound, it gets a little warm, and $400 is the cheapest LCD I have seen so there's no comparison.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
I am typing this on a 20" IBM P200 Aperature Grille monitor that I bought for $200. It fucking rules.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
Actually I'm sitting in the hall in San Jose at WWDC right now and I can tell you first hand that playing games on Apple's LCD screens is nothing but ebjoyable (esp the 22" ones) They have a games section setup here to try out some of the latest games (Inc Quake3, FAKK2, ONI) and the latest hardware (GeForce 3 and ATI cards) all running on LCD screens (15", the new 17" and the 22") and thy all play very smoothly with no problems, I'm a hardcore gamer and I'd give up my old CRT for one of these babys anyday.
So with Apple now being aggressive about digital (LCD) displays, and seeing as they already push their computers as multimedia tools, will they be the first to jump on the bandwagon of keeping media streams encrypted up to the point where the bits are turned into light?
Considering that they wanted $499 for a 17" CRT, it would not be surprising if they had trouble selling sufficient volumes of CRT's. A lot of die hard Macheads I know thought their CRT's were ugly (and most everyone else agreed). Considering $499 buys a 15" LCD these days, why should anyone want one of their overpriced bulging CRT's?
I saw the SGI 1600SW on display once. It was showing some full-screen 3d demo, and looked pretty damn good. I couldn't see any of the ghosting or other problems you get with the typical LCD monitor. There are quality LCD monitors out there, they just cost more.
I don't really get this. I mean I desperately want to have an LCD panel (don't want a mac tho) but I can't really afford one. Now what's the point of putting these still rather expensive pieces of equipment on top of what were meant to be great budget machines (the iMac)? I guess Job's ego has grown out of proportion again, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. Imagine what he could of done if he had just taken an economics class... :-(.
And see through crt's were soooo sexy
Lemure, wtf! Don't you mean Lemur?
that is my point, and the way that I know apple, they screw good things up by forcing a lot of people to buy expensive shit that they don't need (SCSI is another example). No I can't afford an LCD monitor, and I bet a lot of other people would like a mac without an LCD, just because it would be cheaper.
That said, I think the LCD's they brand are excellent (I had the good fortune to look and touch a HUGE one), just wish they were cheap enough.
Lemure, wtf! Don't you mean Lemur?
Actually, in many applications, the last byte of those 32 bits is used to store transparency information, and is referred to as the 'alpha channel'.
I can imagine some situations where having each pixel consume exactly one word might give you a slight increase in speed when doing large copies in memory, but that last byte is actually used by some programs to store useful information.
-----
Free yourself. Everything else will follow.
Are they going for the high-end users or what?
Are you kidding? Hell yes, they're going for the high-end user! Why do you think their high end computers have some of the fastest processors in the industry, and some of them even have TWO! Come on, these computers are for people who need to do graphics editing and need a more reliable screen that fits on their desk. LCD, anyone?
Oh yeah, and by the way, Apple's new LCDs will probably be able to scale down to 640x480 for their games, judging by the fact that the newest iBook (which in case you guys didn't know uses an LCD) smoothly scales down from 1024x768 to 640x480 without the black edges to which PC hardware is prone.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
What does this mean for the iMac, now that the CRT is being forgone? Will the iMac line be dropped, or will the new versions of the iMac cost a few hundred extra bills and be a nice slim little mac that you can hang on a wall or something? Before you answer, bear in mind that if Jobs does this, it will be considerably more difficult for him to put idiotic designs on the case (woohoo), but if someone somehow manages to succeed (woop-dee-double-hoop!) it will look absolutely fantastic!
Can't you just imagine a flat-screen iMac hanging on the wall, with a disc coming out of each side, and a tuft of USB cables hanging from the bottom? With the right screen saver (better yet: desktop background), it could look like a person staring at you!
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Just my 2 cents
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Refurbished+some 10% discount thing I got.
Either way I'm happy with it.
And I don't mean to sound defensive, but I do spend +8 hours a day in front of it.
Just my 2 cents
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
IBM Solves Major Problem In LCD Monitor Production - Slashdot Article
IBM Article
Emacs?!?! You should just use vi in a terminal.
Just kidding.
Got a G4 (is it a coincidence that the $ is above the 4, I think not) and I REALLY thought anout one of those cool LCD screens and then I remembered, they suck; but my 19" Sony does not.
Further I said screw it and got OSX think, hey I like Linux, I'll like this.
Wrong.
Which way to the Yellow Dog site?
---
This
Rememembr IBM's poor attempt at infrared...
They had the cool black case? No Wires, supposedly you could go up to six feet away WITH obstruction?
I was working at Price CLub when they came out. Sold about 200 in two weeks, 210 came back.
---
This
I realize this will seem all flamey but:
W2K = 0 Problems
OSX = Many, many problems.
---
This
I like how they slipped Samba in, too. I would love to know how they plan to actually enforce the "ten-client license" package, though -- I thought the whole point of flat-fee licensing was that you couldn't regulate licenses on an open-source product? (And don't tell me a reasonably motivated Darwin hacker couldn't get around the licensing restrictions easily...)
/Brian
533 mHz dual G4. Upgradable on build-to-order. Darwin is SMP-capable, and thus OS X is as well.
GeForce 3 is, I believe, the current standard video card for high-end G4s (or at least it's available).
You could get NuBus breakout boxes back in the day; might still be able to get them used, but there's a very good reason Apple went to PCI. Besides, I don't think any performance-conscious Mac user wants to be saddled with an 8mHz bus.
I reiterate: you're either horribly misinformed or you're a troll. Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time.
/Brian
Hey, I can put OpenBSD on my SE/30 too. Admittedly I can't find an Enet card for it either, but they do exist. (If all else fails, there's always a PPP connection...)
/Brian
Not total users allowable on the system? (And that's still a silly limitation -- can't you just hack around it with netatalk or something similar?)
/Brian
I'd mod this as a troll if I had the points. Either that or you haven't used a Mac since at least 1995. But I will clarify anyway, because I can afford the karma hit.
/. you'd prefer to be a build-your-own kinda bridgedweller, but of course not everyone can.) And in any case it's starting to become the case overall; I blame Intel for patenting Slot 1, and then we have Slot A, and FC-PGA, and Socket A, and DDR SDRAM... (Brian fades off into a long babbling list of hardware-level features that change so quickly that motherboard swaps are inevitable when making major upgrades)
-The current crop of G4s are five-slot systems. It'd be nice to have six or seven, true, but given that you've already got Ethernet, USB, FireWire, and sound on the motherboard you have all those yummy extra slots for things like a GeForce 3 card and other fun stuff.
-Western Digital 20 gig (Ultra ATA/66, though I don't think it takes full advantage) in my 6500. Aftermarket. No problems whatsoever.
-RS-422 serial ports disappeared with the B&W G3s. But you know that as well as I do. Go back under your bridge.
-Mobo swaps? Try box replacement. I grant you it's ugly, but it's the same for Compaq, HP, and a number of other PC makers. (Obviously if you're on
You've *got* to be a troll. Nobody, and I mean, nobody, who posts here can act this clueless and actually mean it. I admit that it is kind of tough to find ethernet for an SE, but... aw, fsck it. I shoulda flamed you instead.
/Brian
Many people who buy Mac like the design, the style. If you buy a Sony, Hitchai, et al monitor, it won't match the style of your G4. This is going to be somewhat of a turn off for some people. A few of my Mac using friends are none to pleased with this turn of events.
It would seem that Apple would have been in a better light with these people had they not been so protective of their trademark transparent plastic cases. No third party monitors that match their shiny cube?
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
First the floppy, now the CRT - where will it stop?
--
In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
I have a 15" LCD Apple monitor. I play Diablo II on it. DII displays in 640x480 only (until LOD expansion comes along). It looks great! But it might have something to do with the fact that it straight digital. There is no analog signal any where between the graphics card in my Mac G4 and the monitor. No color banding, no sloppy refreash. But for me, I don't see a problem here.
-- What's this '-r *' file doing here? -- Oh well, a simple 'rm' should do the trick.
One thing that was neglected in this article was the other annoucement that happened alongside this one at the coference, that Apple was dropping all the prices on the LCD monitors.
You think $2200 is too expensive for a cinema monitor (18 x 23, 16.7 million colors), then that is fine, don't get one of those, get a normal sized monitor. But they are dropping those prices too. Have you actually seen one of these? When I saw it in the store I nearly shorted it out with the drool.
oops. feeding the trolls, but.. its a $1299 laptop now, not a $1600.
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
I keep seeing posts claiming that new Macs cost $5000+ and that Apple hardware isn't compatible with anything, etc, etc.
;)
Most of the FUD is filtered by moderation... I'm actually surprised at how pro-Apple the general moderating trends seem to be around here.
You got moderated to 5, after all.
"And with that 22" costing $2500, you can just imagine how many people will buy their monitors elsewhere."
;)
;)
It costs about $500 more than a comparably-sized CRT from Sony (remember, unlike CRT's, advertised size=viewable size (roughly) with these displays). Jobs also promised to continue cutting prices, though of course it isn't hard to predict that flat-panel tech will get cheaper.
Oh, and there are two other, much cheaper displays available which Taco somehow forgot to mention.
"The real downside to all of this is games. Ever try playing a 640x480 game on a 1024x768 laptop LCD? Yucko."
Games on these displays are gorgeous.
"Also, apparently OSX is default for all new Macs. "
No, OS X is installed on all Macs sold today and beyond, and boxed with all the Macs currently in the channel. But OS 9.1 is still the default when you switch on these new machines.
Funny how someone always has to do this...
A few things.
1) Yes, Apple was beginning to see difficulties turning profits on CRTs.
2) These displays are BEAUTIFUL. I use them every day. They're absolutely incredible and of the highest quality in the industry.
3) Playing 640x480 games on 1024x768 could suck on certain flat displays (even the older iBook), because I believe you're talking about the fact that the blown -up pixels look "fuzzy." However, it's not so bad when you switch to 640x480, instead of blowing up the image (or at least 800x600, which most games support), or simple make the game 640x480 IN 1024x768, or whatever, and just have a black border. I do this with WarCraft. So it's really not "Yucko." But that is with any display.
4) Even so, don't you think the truly relevant post would be about the OTHER announcement:
Mac OS X Server was released today, which is based on Darwin, Apple's open-source platform. OS X Server uses the Apache web server, which I've had a lot of success with. www.apple.com/macosx/server
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Let me correct myself before someone else does. Technically, the new OS X Server 2.0 was released today, which is essentially VERY different than Server 1.x. It also uses the Aqua interface, which I've fallen in love with (and am looking at right now:-)
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Typical response. (unfortunately)
It's obvious you've never used the displays, so you have no opinion on them. They are amazing -- the best in the industry, and I've worked with a lot of monitors.
The point is, these monitors are not Eclipses, they ARE Porsches, but certainly not very expensive Porsches, which is an additional bonus.
Typical "macblindness." Are you STILL caught up in "I hate Macs!" or "I have PCs!" Give it up. This is like the apartheid, and it's pathetic.
Jobs isn't a brainwasher, but he makes a damn fine product. Why everyone thinks Apple products are SO overpriced is beyond me. They're simply not, and you get a much higher quality product.
I can't believe I'm even replying to you.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Lots of monitors where I work, and luckily I am surrounded by Apple displays.
These LCDs are absolutely gorgeous. Not only their design, but the display itself. It is so sharp, so bright, and has such a wide viewing angle, that when I return to other monitors, they're a complete blur.
I cannot explain well enough how great Apple displays are. And games on them are BEAUTIFUL.
I pay $499 for 17" monitors. I'm HAPPY to spend $599 instead. It's very, very worth it.
Yes, Apple is pushing consumers a little by only offering LCD. But think about the other end of that.. It will, in the long run, push LCD prices down, and LCDs will more quickly become the norm.
I'm just a believer in pushing markets. Sorta like not including a floppy drive in the original iMac -- and I haven't missed floppies in YEARS. I never even think about them. And if I have to transfer a file, or need a backup, I just use a Zip disk or my free iDisk.
I think it's all really great.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
98% of the things you listed were supported by Apple either because there was no standard, or because the standard in place was brain-dead.
For example, NuBus was chosen because ISA was a *terrible* architecture and still is. Until PCI came along, the PC world lived with that *crap*. However, the PC won the marketshare war and users had to live with ISA until something better came along. (And when a widely supported, better standard came along, Apple switched)
Too bad it weighs 6.9 lbs, so you lose.
(BTW, I had to dig quite a bit at Toshiba's site to find this information, which is their way of saying IT'S HEAVY.)
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
I'm in the consulting business had a laptop on my shoulder for the last 5 years. Those 2 pounds make a difference. Another thing learned in consulting is to not ignore user requirements (such as the parent's 5 pound requirement).
Not that I would or could use a Mac, but is nice to see someone break the normal cost/weight equasion in this market (as in, weight is the primary upsell for laptops, and a 7 pounder is pretty much bottom of the market).
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
The G4 may not be twice as fast as the Pentium 3, but MHz-to-MHz, the G3 is clearly more than twice as fast as the typical Celeron chip which is put into most PC laptops.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
If you want an inexpensive Linux CLI portable, the Toshiba is quite spiffy... but not comparable.
The iBook is a subnotebook with the feature set of a full notebook. Turn a sheet of notebook paper sideways on your desk: that is the total footprint of the iBook. (Set the same sheet of paper on the keyboard of your Toshiba, and you will see that it is much smaller.)
It weights 4.9 pounds (counting the battery and the drive).
It has a battery which, in real-world use, runs about 5 hours between charges when using OS 9. (Running OS X costs you about an hour of that time, because of the less efficient power management, but that still blows the doors off my HP Pavilion, which is lucky to get past 65 minutes.)
No laptop which matches it's features and weight can be found for under $2k. Nice try, though.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/
But the press release is here: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2001/may/21display .html
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Not true. Intel made USB standard on Pentium II motherboards, after all they invented it. I was building USB capable PCs in 1997, the year the Pentium II debuted. Problem was OS support was lacking, Win95 at the time only partially supported it. Plus there were many ways to add devices to PCs USB just didn't seem that important. Then Win98 came out followed shortly by the iMac. Finally there were two OSs with full USB support. But Apple's decision to limit expansion on the iMac to USB helped kickstart the USB peripheral market.
Conclusion, PCs were first with USB, Apple helped to make it a success.
I love it. The only thing stronger than anti-Mac stories on Slashdot is the horde of Mac Zealots jumping in to show the facts. Heh. :)
:)
And yes, I can be a Mac Zealot when the need shows itself.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
"Look at us. We're expensive. We're eccentric. We 'think different'. A more expensive computer is bound to be better than that taiwanese bargain junk you'd find at a thousand other shops. Buy Mac, buy better."
Yes yes, go ahead and mod me down. Karma is vaporous.
Anyways, 2500$ for a simple monitor is about 7 times what I paid for my same-sized CRT that kicks 1920x1536 @ 75hz. No fuzz, no artifacting, just pure luminous ecstacy. If only Apple offered choice, then maybe I'd bash them less, but they prefer to tell the user what they should want. "You sir, need a 1000$ iMac to surf the web and read email." When they could be saying "Look at our competitive low-end desktop at 500$" like every damned PC retailer on the planet. Sure, their boxen are cute, but they're about twice as expensive as any equally performant PC-based system, and you're going to be hard-pressed to find someone to help you out if your expensive piece of transistor art starts acting funny.
I don't mean to bash Macs, really they're fine machines with a clean, idiot-proof OS, but the problem is marketing. If they'd just quit the stupid beggar's act and try being competitive for a change, maybe they'd gain enough market share to be recognized as a decent corporate standard, instead of losing it all to Dell and their pathetic unstable bastardized PC's, print shops excluded of course. Heck, I'd love to see a bunch of Macs at my workplace (as long as they're not on my desk of course). It would make my job a hell of a lot easier, I wouldn't be spending hours every day telling people to "Reboot" or "Right-click" or "clean your temp files". The only way that could happen is for Apple to stop flashing absurd pricetags and start chasing more 3rd party software alliances. I'm no economist but this stuff is too damned obvious to get wrong.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Now don't get me wrong, I like the looks of apples and I found their iMacs quite cute. I even considered buying one for experimentation, but honestly all iMacs I saw on display had horribles monitors: flickering, too much contrast... Really :-(
I by far prefer my 15" Sony LCD screen attached to my home box (Not even that expensive, about 1150$). Of course the 21" aquarium here at work doesn't suck either, but then I'm glad I don't have to move it.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
And I only smoke cigars :-) Nothing stronger.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Well, in that case: as a consumer I woudn't even consider buying a 15" CRT that flickers that much. Perhaps the refresh rates were set on the lowest possible value, could be? The screen my sister uses is a 'Cheapo 15"' monitor I recovered from the garbage can: that one flickers less! And my sister is a "consumer", and she is very happy with it. :-)
Besides, I'm not a designer, I'm a lamo-o-programmer
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
With reference to the 640x480 argument, many people run at 640x480 in order to achieve a higher framerate. I know that if I don't run games @ 640x480, I can get MAX 25 fps
- Ando
You are the weakest link, goodbye.
I don't buy this. I regularily play games such as Diablo II on my laptop. However, the laptop in question (IBM X20) uses ATI's Rage Mobility M chipset, which does hardware upsampling to 1024x768, so 640x480 appears as a quite smooth image. (800x600 doesn't fare so well, but it's still quite decent.)
Even without that, you have the ability to simply use a 640x480 chunk of the middle of your screen, or specify a constant multiplier; hopefully the video cards apple uses to drive these LCDs -- currently ATI Radeons, I believe -- will allow you to say "I want to view 640x480 pixel-doubled on my 1280x1024 LCD" or similar.
The big problem with LCDs and games is if the pixel speed on the display is too low, thus not allowing the LCD to keep up with the frames that the game is displaying because it can't change pixel colors fast enough. I doubt any of Apple's displays would suffer from this problem, since they are intended to be used for things like video editing.
LCD pro & CRT con: CRTs require digital to analog conversion in the graphics card, LCDs can go straight digital if you have the right equipment.
interesting- I always get PISSED when I hear numbnuts saying- "we don't need LCD's, there too expensive," or better yet "no-one needs more than 128 mb of memory, it's just rediculous" I don't understand how people piss on the companies that push the technology- LCDs are a GREAT thing that we ALL need. I don't think I have to extol the virtues to this crowd. And, BTW, the sentence at the end- "ever play a 640x480 game..." are you kidding? when the F did we last play a game that didn't have a resolution of at least 1024, or at LEAST 800. god save us from those holding us back.
You're mostly right. The extra byte is often used for other things, like an 8-bit alpha channel, or four bits of alpha plus four bits of Z-buffer.
But you're main point is correct: 8-bit-per-channel RGB is what we're talking about.
Makes me wonder, though. The de facto standard in the cinema world is 12 bits per pixel per channel-- 36 bit color. I wonder why no vendor has sold a PC-class product that does 36-bit color?
Cool trivia: the smallest pixels you can use on the Onyx2 IR2 system I have in my lab are 128 bits deep. That's 12 bits per channel RGBA, times two (double buffered) plus 32 bits of Z-buffer. Yowzers.
Ever try playing a 640x480 game on a 1024x768 laptop LCD? Yucko
I play Half-Life in 640x480 on my 15" laptop screen and it looks alright. It all depends on if the video card can do the interpolation so that it can stretch the 640x480 graphic to fit the 1024x768 by multiplying the pixels. If the video card can't do this, the machine is not worth buying not because of the LCD screen problem, but because it's got a sucky video card.
While many applications have come to use the extra byte for alpha, depth, etc., this is a secondary use.
The original use was for alignment, remember computers & video cards were much slower when 32-bpp modes were introduced. 486 and above (I don't know about the powerpc series) processors cand multiply by 4 with no (or almost no) speed penalty, but multiplication by 3 is much harder.
A close friend of mine bought a top of the line G4 system (DVD burner, LCD, etc). Great machine except he kept having the machine shut down automagically. Returned the machine several times and finally got the repair crew to replicate the shutdowns when he sent his LCD monitor along with the machine. Repair shop sent the monitor back to Apple and they returned it and said it was in perfect shape. Further investigation reveal the power button on the LCD monitor (whole system power, not just LCD power) was extremely sensitive to static and/or magnetic forces. Basically he could come within 1/8 to 1/4 inch of the power button and it would shutdown. Extremly bad, but Apple is resisting his complaints so far. He loves the machine other than this annoying habit. The repair shopped hooked the machine to a regular monitor and everything was just fine. So buyer beware until Apple addresses this problem.
Religion and science are both 90% crap..but that doesn't negate the other 10%.
Let's see... a 17" flat screen CRT from Apple costs $500. A generic 17" flat screen costs $250-$300. But a 15" LCD from Apple costs $599, which is pretty close to what other manufacturers are charging. As a Mac user, I would pay $50 or maybe even $100 more for a high-quality LCD that matches my Mac and has a built-in USB hub.
-Apple serial ports are standard RS422 which is generally compatible with RS232. In fact, it only takes a port adapter to hook a Mac serial port to a PC.
-Apple memory is exactly the same as PC memory. Most Macs used standard 30 and 72-pin SIMMs, and later 168-pin DIMMs.
-Apple monitors are signal compatible with PC monitors. All it takes is a port adapter.
-Apple microphones are generally identical to PC microphones.
-Apple floppy drives far more capable than PC floppy drives, as well as being fully able to read PC disks.
-SCSI is a generic open standard that is also available on PC. Most workstations also used SCSI.
Basically, you seem to think that Apple should have thrown their hands in the air in 1984 and adopted the ISA bus and parallel ports, but they had (and have) no reason to do so. Apple remained backwards compatible with its own hardware for far longer than most PC manufacturers do, for better or for worse. But most of what you're talking about is simply FUD. Or maybe a troll.
I keep seeing posts claiming that new Macs cost $5000+ and that Apple hardware isn't compatible with anything, etc, etc. I don't know where this is coming from, given that most of Apple's hardware costs well under $2000. (You can get a damn nice laptop for $1300). And I challenge you to find me a high-quality 22" wide-screen LCD for less than $2500. I also find it interesting that Apple dropped its price on the 15" screen to $599, but that shows up nowhere in the article. $599 is hardly a bad price for an LCD display.
If this were coming from SGI, the article would have originated from the "drooling-on-my-keyboard department," but instead we get the "you-gotta-be-kidding department." Very cute, guys. Mod me down as flamebait, but the knee-jerk reactions against everything Apple get a little irritating after a while.
LCD pros:
Size
Power requirements
Digital clarity
CRT pros:
Price
LCD cons:
Viewing angle limitations
CRT cons:
Heat generation
Refresh rate limitations
Analog degradation
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
I actually prefer the LCDs to CRTs, though I do know I spend entirely too much time in front of computers.
Another Pro someone else mentioned:
LCDs are pure digital, from source to display
CRTs convert from digital to analog.
But I think that may have been covered in my 'digital clarity' and 'analog degradation' comments.
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
c+???ac discussion showing up on Slashdot? This is a heavily biased Linux site so of course it is no surprise everyone has such a cynical, pessimistic opinion of Apple here. I've seen some of those new LCDs and they're beyond amazing... OS X is still a little buggy, but of course all operating systems have their problems. Cheer up people! This is not the end of the world.
--
Blessed are the geeks for they shall Internet the Earth.
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So we bought some other machines, HP, IBM, etc. Everyone realised how the drab Dell boxes had been depressing. We like our computers more, because they are all different. Of course, the DELL problem applies somewhat to Apple now that they are all blue, grey, or hideous.
OK, let's see you enter a corner at 45MPH and pull off a perfectly controlled 4-wheel drift with your POS pickup. OK, now do it while averaging 29 MPG. I can do that with my Beemer. The BMW wasn't designed as a battering ram, or even a status symbol. They are driving machines that beg the driver to flog them more, harder, more harder! (sorry getting carried away.) Some yuppie scum see a high price tag and don't hear the car's requests for a day at the track . Oh well.
BMW is a good automotive parallel to Apple. Both do their own thing without having to answer to a domineering overlord. And both fill a niche that other manufacturers absolutely can't fill, no matter how hard they try.
BTW, when doing my work, I highly doubt your PC could do "the job" better than my G4. And I'd roll over a pickup truck/SUV around the first corner I attempt.
The 15" LCD, which would be comparable to a 17" CRT costs $100 more than Apple's 17" CRT. Since OSX is now shipping with all new Macs($129), consumers are actually saving money($29) on an all apple solution purchased today versus yesterday. Of course, no one has to buy an LCD if they don't want to.
My other sig is extremely clever...
Like, now. After all, all (!) of the info posted has been shown as either inaccurate, inflammatory, or both. Plain sloppy journalism is not as irresponsible (rephrehensible) as poor follow-up and lack of accountability. Come on Slashdot, live up to your mission!
An AC wrote:
;) ;) ;) ;)
> Yet Apple zealots happily shell out
> thousands and thousands of dollars for the
> "priviledge" of a fully-closed (hardware *and*
> software) "solution".
In case you didn't read *all* the news attached to this thread: From this day forward, all Macs are to be shipped with an OS based on an Open Source core.
Now explain to me again just how Open Source is "fully-closed " software?
;)
"No one's going to die, Mister. Mothra's going to come and save us."
Taiki Goto in "Mothra"
December 14, 1996
BTW. If I had the money I'd be all over a G4 for video
So this year when I needed a monitor small and light enough to put atop a stage piano in my home studio, I revisited the LCD. I bought an NEC 1530V a few months ago and now I am a believer.
The ghosting is gone. Despite the digital-analog-digital signal chain, my 1530V renders native resolution images with eerie precision. I can't see any more of the echoes and fuzziness that were a "feature" of the early generations of analog interface LCD monitors. The monitors's "auto adjust" feature is, from appearances, magical. It must be doing some kind of adaptive filtering that cancels the echoes, sharpens the pixels, etc. I had convinced myself that a digital interface was necessary for high quality but obviously that is no longer true.
The price is right. I paid $700 for my (1024x768) monitor and the same monitor is now more like $550. Prices are expected to drop further through this year.
The picture quality is incredible. Eyestrain from reading slightly fuzzy text, forget that, that's in the past.
Non-native resolutions are not "chunky." They are anti-aliased with a decent interpolative algorithm. Alternate resolutions fill the screen (and the auto-adjust magic works fine on them too) and games look just fine on them. Not perfect, but very good.
The monitor turns on from sleep fast. Just a few seconds for the backlight to turn on.
And you can afford enough pixels. My venerable 20" Trinitron is showing its age, a little fuzzy, the convergence no longer perfect, a little slow to come on and a little dim. I'll be replacing it with a 17-18" 1280x1024 monitor very soon. The question is, whether it will be an 18" NEC or the 17" Samsung with the built-in resizable PIP TV tuner. Both are in the $1000-1250 range now. By year end I expect some 15" LCD monitors to be under $400 and the 17-18" should be $800-1000, maybe one or two going for $750?
My new monitor will be 20-40 lbs lighter than the one it replaces, will be a miserly user of power, will not require degaussing, and will give me all the happy Mac OS X pixels I need.
If you haven't tried an LCD monitor within the past 12 months, now's the time. Where my house is concerned, the CRT is on its way out.
-joseph
And it is just one word: Sorensen.
(And let us not forget the past case of infringing on their UI design and whatever other crap their legal dept. pushes...)
But serioisly, I'd rather be using Apple or any other hardware but x86 crap that we're mostly stuck with now --- due prices.
If Apple really wants to save energy, they aught to sell reflective LCDs. If you've played a Game Boy Color (or better, Neo Geo Pocket Color), then you know that reflective, color LCDs do look decent under a bright light. In addition, they use far less energy than even a backlit LCD (it's how Game Boy Advance plays higher-than-SNES-tech games for 20 hours on two AAs) and cost slightly less. If Apple made them an option for use in any of their systems, they could probably get 10 hours out of their notebooks and very low consumption out of their desktops.
Ultimately, OLEDs/LEPs are better than everything, but they're a few years off.
When will large (>= 15 inch) screens hit the market, and at what cost?
This story reminds me of this article on Segfault, entitled Steve Jobs Now Officially "On Crack". Now, while I love the results of Steve's NeXT venture, I haven't been able to take the man seriously for over half a decade.
This is not a Fugazi
Unfortunately I don't have a link for proof, but I can verify this from personal knowledge. Until recently, IBM had a dropout rate of almost 70% across it's TFT display line. It's still up fairly high. Remember that there are more almost a million pixels on the average LCD, and close to two million on newer ones, only a few of which can be defective for a screen to pass. In fact, some companies will not ship an LCD if it has even one bad pixel.
They're getting there, though.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Graphic artist types should get a nice Sony/Mitsu/NEC type thing, set their inkjet to SWOP, and calibrate that way. You'll never get too far off. For vector stuff, you proof it and tweak the color list, which should take very little time. In Photoshop, save the fiddling for the end, while you're proofing. Adjust as much as you can via histograms and such, rather than what you see.
I think Apple's strategy is pretty sound, especially considering their plans to open up retail stores:
Art At Home
1984: And with hard drives being noisy and expensive, you can imagine how many people will buy their computers elsewhere.
And the rest is history. Apple's schtick is to leave out essential components for no apparent reason. They did it with the original Mac and everyone has paid for it since....
"Chill, Orrin!"---Trent Lott
I gotta take issue w/ the ps. I have been driving my 328iS for a couple years now, and it'll still smoke most anything on the road, unlike your big "manly" muscle cars that can get blown away by a Honda Accord. And, my top end (w/ governor chip replaced) is 162mph.
Ceci n'est pas un sig
Oh no, I never see daylight...how am I going to get a tan?
You must remember that an lcd, you can view the WHOLE screen, so a 15 in lcd is comprable to a 17 inch CRT.
I do agree that color is slightly inaccurate when using lcds, but graphics pros already know to pick colors out of an ink book. Although this is true, it still helps to have a crt. My little solution to this problem is placing an old 15" crt on the floor (which is what i did for awhile til i got tired of kicking it)
I own an apple 21" crt, and love it. Apple makes better monitors than most oems. I also remember that that crt cost about $1200 when it first came out. (I brought it used)
Also, these are VERY good prices. A (very) nice 17" monitor will cost you about $400. The 15" lcd costs 600. The 17" lcd is revolutionary. I dont believe i have EVER seen a 17" lcd (and a nice one at that) for $999.
My ONLY complaint. The propriatery mac-only interface. Thats why the sgi monitor just makes more sense. It takes digital and analog input, and works on both a pc and mac.
Also remember that apple pcs still come with vga connectors. The adc is just VERY CONVIENENT. It turns 3 wires into 1. (Usb, video, power). The usb hub in the monitor is also nice
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
> the ugly and intimidating Linux or Windows
Aqua
> interfaces, strange error messages,
System Error 10
That's what I get when I try to run the Darwin installer on my PMac. OS9 just give me a "This won't run on this computer" read the docs. The docs say nothing.
Now that I've started playing with my PMac I'm begining to love Apple hardware, it's truely beutiful stuff. Software, not so much so, but there are definatly a few hardware people with their heads on strait.
And for the record I've been trying to find a way I could aford a TiBook or new iBook, because they are sweet little notebooks. And with Sawfish and Eterm it'll be quite comfy.
Apple has been a 'cult' brand for quite a while now. It's no surprise that they'll play that up even more with their hip new, 'chic' all LCD systems. So drink your stupid red Kool-Aid, quit quoting CoS literature out-of-context, and move on with life.
This is just a question. But i thought apple users beeing the l33t computer graphics people that they are would require a monitor that can show 32bit color? Especially people in print etc.. I thought that max on an LCD was 24 bit and that is on a wicked SGI LCD. How many colors are these LCD's pumpin out?
Oooh... Another thing to make Macintoshes prohibitively expensive. This kind of knee-jerk standards-changing is what got Apple into their 5% market share mess in the first place. The only people who buy Macs nowadays are schools, and no school I know of is going to plunk down 2 grand for a monitor that'll probably be broken in a year... What'll they think of next? Obsoleting old apps with Mac OS X 10.1? Color requirements for iMac software?
Want Linux games? HERE.
Many people who buy Mac like the design, the style. If you buy a Sony, Hitchai, et al monitor, it won't match the style of your G4. This is going to be somewhat of a turn off for some people. A few of my Mac using friends are none to pleased with this turn of events. Also, I can't believe that having custom monitors really costs Apple that much. You have to remeber that EVERY major PC manufacturer does. It's cheap because they just outsource it. Do you think Dell builds their monitors? Of course not, Sony does. Dell specs how they'd like them built, and Sony builds them and sends them to Dell. Apple ought to go for a similar strategy.
You do a bit of research. Yes, there certianly are many places that need monitors far in excess of anything Apple ever sold or anything you normally see on the market. However, by in large, most print shops do not. I've worked for two printshops and a newspaper and, at both places it was all Macs and the monitors in use were by and large Apple CRTs (with some Sony's and Viewsonics thrown in).
All that regardless, I still feel this is a bad move for Apple. Think for a minute on what has long been a mainstay for Macs: prepress. Well walk into any prepress shop and look at what they use. All CRTs. Currently LCDs just have too many problems when you're dealing with matching colours to print. Well, it seems kind of silly to me to cut out tubes from your lineup when you are pitching to a market so tube dominated. Perhaps this will indeed work out to the better for them, but this seems to be a bad move to me.
That's right folks... I'm just a bitter B&W G3 user who is still pissed about the firmware upgrade, disguised as a performance/stability enhancement, that disabled G4 support on my motherboard. Sure, there are workarounds from the upgrade companies, but jesus it would be nice to see Apple publicly admit this mistake (if you want to be real forgiving and call it that - I consider it more outright hostility towards your customers) and issue a new firmware upgrade that takes away any restrictions. An isolated incident you say? Forgive and forget you say? Right. I laughed my ass off when I heard of that recent firmware upgrade for their newest products that disabled a ton of third party memory. These are concious decisions, folks! Deja vu. How about giving people a choice and asking them if they wish to continue using memory that is possibly out of spec? Possibly being the operative word since most of that memory was, in fact, fine. Luckily, I haven't purchased a new Mac since my B&W, otherwise I coulda got screwed again. Of course, that's for our own good... trust them, they're Apple. They know what's best. Yeah, I trust Apple about as much as I would trust politicians to operate without adult (taxpayer/voter) supervision.
Question Authority. Question Apple. They're no better than Microsoft or the IBM of yesteryear... they're just not as powerful.
Actually, the difference between Apple and Microsoft is that Apple feels free to fuck you because they think you love them. Apple therefore alienates anyone and everyone. Microsoft doesn't want to fuck you over, because they know you already hate them.
Just read this on yahoo. Mac OS 9 is the default but OS X is loaded also.
Whilst maybe not everyones cup of tea, the majority of PCs in offices don't need to play games etc.
I applaude Apple for this and hope that LCD displays do become the standard in time.
Just my AUD$0.02
This is the real shocker to me. I've been using OSX since the Public Beta and I've been pretty satisfied with it. But is it really ready for everybody?
Today's OSX page at MacFixIt seconds these thoughts and even includes a quote from an Apple employee saying that OSX is still only beta-quality and that apparantly "...Apple has now made beta-quality software the de facto standard on all its shipping Macs."
Personally, I've adjusted well. The only time I have to boot back into 9.1 is to run VPC. I have no need to play DVD's even though my G4 has a DVD player, so I don't miss that. I do miss CD burning on my external SCSI burner, though, and I find it annoying that I can't put my computer to sleep because Apple doesn't seem to support the SCSI PCI card that they installed themselves as a BTO option.
I'm still of the opinion that Apple needs to wait until 10.1 is released (X.I?) and iron out some of the bigger bugs first.
The IBM stuff probably failed because it was overpriced. There are other IR keyboards still on sale in many places.
I suppose for the time being, the iMac wil still come with a CRT? That may be good enough for their low-end offerings. An iMac with a low-cost LCD would be kind of nice, though.
i wonder if apple will stop building-in regular video-out on the motherboards and go for digital only. (not that i would object, seeing as how crts are really clanking big valves and belong in 1930s horror movies alongside the van de graaf generators and jacob's ladders.)
Seems like they're focusing their limited manufacturing power on area of greater profit-margin. Sure, people will get their CRTs elsewhere, but if they can increase their LCD volume by a significant amount, who cares? If they make $100 on a 17"CRT and $800 on an LCD they can actually make more money selling fewer monitors if they can meet the lcd demand.
Very true, in my father's office at work he has a Cube and a 22'' apple flat-screen cinematic display (way to spend grant money) It is definately different than a laptop screen. 1) It is not that light 2)if u look at a side angle at a laptop screen the colors will be distorted greatly, on the apple displays you can look at almost any angle and have the same colors.
I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class. Especially since I rule. -Randal, Clerks
True, you definately get more crashes and smiley faces for your buck with the Mac.
I'm sure if Steve Jobs called it 'super-smiley-face-bus' you'd love it. probably literally.
The worst thing about these beauties is that they run only with macs. I'd definately love to get me one of those for my BeOS-PC! IMHO LCDs are much better than CRTs, that's why I'm willing to spend more money on them. In '97, I spent ~$600 for a good 17" CRT, why shouldn't I be spending the same price for a good 15" TFT (same viewing size FIY)? When it comes to text work, I often find myself using my old Notebook with a 10.4" 800x600 TFT display, just because the picture is much sharper and by far more stable than on my 17" 1152x864@90Hz CRT. The SGI SW1600 looks like a great thing too, but unfortunately the german resellers add ~80% to its price :-(
--
Seems to me like the Real News here that most /. readers would be interested in is today's release of OS X Server 10.0.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/server/specs.html
Out of the box, this thing does a ton of services, will restart the services if something happens, and will even reboot the whole darn machine if something goes horribly, horribly wrong. Sweet.
~Jeff
OK, so i really like the new nifty TFT monitor (the 17inch is a TFT, the 15" and 22" are LCDs). But how do you connect it? All these new monitors come with their DVI connector, there is an adapter for the earlier ADC connector, but I don't see any others. So in my case, i have an early AGP G4, which came with a VGA connector. Therefore I can't get any of apple's flat panel displays. I'm assuming that making an adapter that took from the power outlet for the monitor, USB port, and a digital out from a Radeon card wouldn't be too hard to make. But I can't find one either. Oh, also can't insall one of the Nvidia cards since it requires AGP 4X. So, do I need a new computer to use all this? I don't think this is the best way of doing this...
Fuck all the consequences, can't afford to care
Fuck all the consequences, can't afford to care
And angel rectums continue to bleed...
Hell, I can hold out on buying my next used car for another year...
________________________________________________ __
Art Schools Dietzilla
Rather than modding that comment up, could we have a corroborating link? Facts that "I remember reading somewhere" are likely reliable enough to be considered worthy of a Slashdot front-page story...
The original Mac's 128k of RAM was the truly inadequate part. And Sculley's unnecessary increase of the base price of the Mac ($2599, IIRC) didn't help at all.
NeXT, on the other hand, was a different story. They very much hung themselves with the slow-optical-drive-and-no-floppy NeXTCube. 1988 was too early to pull the floppy drive.
The key in advancing your hardware is detecting when the state of the art is advanced enough to support your desires. The floppyless, USB-promoting iMac arrived at the right time (or maybe even a little late).
My HO is that it's a year too early to be selling CRT-less Macs (although I'm using a PowerBook G4...), but, unlike Apple, I don't hold any Samsung stock, so what do I necessarily know?
Yeah, they're going for the high-end users.
I mean, if you think about it, the only computers they need to sell monitors for are the g4s. The low end one, the cube, is probably getting pThe notebooks go without saying, and the imacs have monitors, built in. The only lower-end system they make that needs a monitor is the cube, and that's most likely being phased out too. So that leaves only the G4 towers, and I'd bet they're not selling all that many of their crts with them. After all, the only crt they were still selling was the 17" studio display. The upshot of this is that hopefully I'll be able to get the flatscreen studio display at a bargain price. those things are sweet!
Actually, many older Macs are quite expandable and once they started using PPC processors, it got really easy. The processor is on a card and can easily be replaced, dual G4 cards are available (or have been announced) for old Macs from 7500 series (originally PPC 601) thru to the latest models. Clever work by third party processor companies has also allowed for the upgrading of Macs previously considered upgrade impaired, some 68K Macs are upgradeable to PPC 601, fast G3 processors are available for old PPC NUBUS Macs, G3 upgrades for Performa 5500 and 6500 series and even G4 upgrades for the first three series of (non upgradeable?) iMac. FireWire,USB and ATA-66 (soon ATA-100) PCI cards are available and directly supported by Mac OS. I own a futuristic Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (LCD, Bose sound with Sub,TV, FM radio,S-video, MODEM,Ethernet, PCI and SCSI) now over 5 years old it is still wowing people who see it. Once considered not upgradeable, I have installed 128 MB RAM, 10 gig IBM HD and a 500 MHz G3 processor. Mac upgrades are fast and easy too. I can upgrade the RAM, HD and processor, including initialising, and partitioning (if required) the HD and installation of the OS in about 20 mins. Want to put a duplicate OS on a second partition or HD?, just drag and drop. Your comments on hard drive choices are as out of touch with reality as your processor argument. Apple's "Drive Setup" HD utility supports every modern IDE/ATA drive I have tried with it - and Apple delivers real "plug and play". For older SCSI Macs, third party utilities like FWB Hard Disk Toolkit allow the use of drives "unsupported" by Drive Setup. The floppy stuff sounds weird too. I have never needed to buy "Mac certified" disks but have seen plenty of PC floppy drives spit the dummy. Maybe your floppy drive was faulty. Current Macs as noted elsewhere have gigabit Ethernet, FireWire, USB, 16 bit audio I/O, ADC and VGA out and use industry standard IDE/ATA hard drives and PC-133 SDRAM. 4 PCI slots in a beautiful super accessible case and a true plug and play OS completes the picture.The "680x0 support?" thing is way off base too, I am amazed at how much really old software runs fine on new Macs. "SMP?" Been around for some time now and dual processor Macs are now a standard stock item. Macs do not suck.