Apple Says It's Out of the Standalone Display Business (macrumors.com)

The launch and marketing push of the 27-inch 5K UltraFine Display made in partnership with LG all but confirms that Apple is out of the standalone display business. Previously, it was rumored Apple was working on its own branded Thunderbolt Display powered by an integrated GPU, but with the launch of LG's display it appears to indicate Apple gave up those plans. The Verge's Nilay Patel also confirms the news, tweeting: "Good notes by @jsnell. I can add that Apple told me it's out of standalone display biz." 9to5Mac reports: The two new LG displays, which will be available later this year, feature Thunderbolt 3 connectivity for an easy one-cable-solution for new MacBook owners. Apple will sell both displays, a 4K model for $699.95 and a 5K model for $1299.95, on its online store. Back in June, Apple officially discontinued its lone company-branded monitor, the Thunderbolt Display, after it had languished for a period of time without a substantial update. Apple's statement on the discontinuation made it appear as if it may be the last of the Apple-branded display, and this has been seemingly confirmed: "We're discontinuing the Apple Thunderbolt Display. It will be available through Apple.com, Apple's retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers while supplies last. There are a number of great third-party options available for Mac users," said an Apple spokesperson.

Comments

The margins are just too low

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't sell a monitor for $2K these days. Only the most dedicated suckers would buy it.

The old Thunderbolt Display just proved that the product line wasn't worth the trouble..

Re:The margins are just too low

[saloomy]

The Thunderbolt Display was a fantastic monitor, and sold at $1k. I bought two of them back in 2012 and they have served me well, functioning as my primary displays for years. I feel I certainly have had my use of them, and they are no where near the end of their useful life. They have Thunderbolt, USB, Gig-e ports, and pretty good speakers.

Besides, doing design work, programming, web design, and handling a massive amount of information, long code blocks, huge CSV files, etc... etc... $1K was really not a lot for this display. If you were to buy 2 displays and a mac pro to boot, you would be out maybe $6k. That setup would last you for at least 3 years, and Mac's keep going. Especially the desktops. To spend $2k/year on the tools that earn you a really good six-figure salary is pretty stellar.

I don't really understand why people complain about Apple's prices so much. Yes, they are more expensive when you compare the components bit-by-bit, but the whole package is a value proposition that I believe can't be beat. You never have to worry about drivers. Your stuff works perfectly together. Each piece, like the magic trackpad (and trust me, compared to a trackpad on some random PC Laptop, it is magic), or the displays, the backup to time-capsule... it all works so well together. Billing out at $150/hour, you really need to be productive, and not constantly work on being your own Sysadmin. That is who apple makes these devices for, since the high-end highly integrated workstation market pretty much collapsed. You used to be able to get workstations from Sun, etc. Not anymore. Now, only Apple make a truly workstation-class computer. Everyone else just assembles PCs and throws Windows on it.

It sucks to see them back away from that market. Maybe they feel the unit volume they spend is not worth the time, or the market has really caught up with the bar they set. You can still bank on the performance engineering they put into their systems. I remember reading an article a while ago, that benched a MacBook Pro as the fastest Windows Laptop (if you change the OS, obviously).

Re:The margins are just too low

[Anonymous Coward]

My Thinkpad from 2012 has a better processor, over twice the RAM and a bigger SSD than any Macbook Pro ever released. Eat a dick.

Re:The margins are just too low

[lindseyp]

Parent was referring to a MacBOOK pro.

Can't build one of those.

And the Thinkpad referred to by the poster below has shitty battery life and a crap monitor, no doubt.

My MBP retina 2012 is also still doing very well, thanks.

Re: The margins are just too low

[ChrisMaple]

most competitive industry in the world where nanoseconds count

Let's see, light speed is about 1 foot per nanosecond. So you've made sure all your cables are as short as possible, right?

In other words, bullshit.

Re:The margins are just too low

[ShanghaiBill]

Can't sell a monitor for $2K these days. Only the most dedicated suckers would buy it.

I would buy it, but it would have to be a lot bigger than 27". I've had a 27" monitor for 5 years now.

Re: The margins are just too low

[_merlin]

I call bullshit. I actually do work in market making. None of the serious network cards (SolarFlare, Chelsio, etc.) support OSX. The industry standard is to use Linux with various hacks to reduce context switching. Also, there's no Apple server hardware that you can install in a rack at a colocation or proximity site. You can't do low-latency trading from home, the latency of your connection to the exchange will swamp any advantages you can get by tuning your software; you need to have your stuff running on a box on-site. IBM's Intel-based servers were a popular choice until they offloaded that unit to Lenovo. Dell PowerEdge has risen in popularity since then. Yes, I've edited trading system code on a Mac, but only over SSH to a Linux server.

Re:The margins are just too low

[thegarbz]

Can't sell a monitor for $2K these days. Only the most dedicated suckers would buy it.

Not true at all. Firstly you can most definitely sell a monitor for $2k. There are entire companies who have this as a business model. If you're calling suckers people who buy quality gear that lasts a really long time, then I'm going to put my hand up. I'm a sucker right here with my $1.5k but 10 year old monitor. There's also many cases where cheap and shit aren't the most desirable option.

The problem is the volume and the fact that 90% of a monitor is paying money to someone else for everything except a small electronics board. There's no point in designing a $2k monitor if $1.5k goes to the manufacturer of the panel, and apple can't corner the market with something ludicrously high margins they do with everything else.

Re:The margins are just too low

[Bongo]

I like the point about not being your own sysadmin. If someone is willing to pay, I'll suggest a Mac laptop, simply because it'll be less hassle for them.

Much as I respect people's technical skills with fixing stuff, that time is wasted if the thing didn't need to break in the first place. And I say that as a guy who mostly admins a Mac shop, with other stuff where needed.

It's actually a problem I have with Siri on AppleTV and iPhone and now macOS. It fails more often than not. For me it somewhat ruins Apple's brand, in the critical "do I feel good relating to this device" dept. Siri more often makes me feel stupid for even trying.

At some point, I think it would be fair to say that Apple isn't just about putting a brain in a box, it is about also having great tits and arse.

IOW, the device is useful but also aesthetically a joy. But Siri adds a stupid annoying personality to it.

 

Re:The margins are just too low

[jellomizer]

The price argument for Apple is actually quite true. If you try to match All the specs of the Apple and try to find a replacement you are normally paying a bit more. However the kicker is Apple often bundles stuff you don't need or care about.
I don't care about thin or light but I want more CPU. I want a touch screen at the cost of screen resolution.

Re:The margins are just too low

[Gr8Apes]

Yeah, the LG 5K at 27" was like WTF? At 4K I'm looking for a 35-40" monitor. There is a point where retina becomes silly. How many pixels to form a period that you can see?

Re: The margins are just too low

[BronsCon]

If your software bypasses the kernel it doesn't matter what OS you run it on and, well, what OS you run really shouldn't matter to custom hardware, either. You can get faster hardware than anything you can get in a Mac and shave off a few more microseconds, you know.

Re: The margins are just too low

[BronsCon]

No Linux vendor wants to pay for the certification, but most mainstream Linux distros follow the standards and could be certified for a price. This is the problem with pay-for-certification programs.

Re: The margins are just too low

[BronsCon]

+1, nailed it

Re: The margins are just too low

[BronsCon]

Did you time a lengthy 3D rendering process or something that taxed the CPU for more than 5 minutes? My MBP is a secondary machine, despite being less than 2 years old. because anything that pegs the CPU for more than a few minutes causes it to thermal-throttle itself back to Pentium 4 speeds. I bet that's not the case with the, larger and heavier due to having proper cooling, Lenovo. That said, the MSI gaming laptop I bought 9mo after the MBP, which is actually a 6mo older model than the MBP, blows it out of the water in all aspects. It's a actually thinner and lighter, and has a faster, better GPU (GTX 970) with more VRAM (6GB), faster PCIe SSD RAID and supplemental HDD for bulk storage, and a higher resolution and larger display (4k @ 17" vs 2880x1800 @ 15"), in form-factor that's only 1" wider and 1/2" deeper than the MBP to accommodate the larger display. Oh, also, user-replaceable RAM. And it runs cooler at full-tilt than the MBP does at idle.

Price? $800 less than the MBP.

Re: The margins are just too low

[BronsCon]

has a faster, better GPU

should read

has a faster CPU, better GPU

Re: The margins are just too low

[_merlin]

So he can run a text editor on a Mac. Wow, I'm really impressed, I couldn't imagine editing text on a machine that isn't a Mac. His whole boast about high-frequency trading was irrelevant.

Re:The margins are just too low

[Gr8Apes]

You missed the point, I don't need more pixels for a period. A 5K 40" monitor would be roughly 40% higher pixel density and double the standard screen dpi everyone uses. 220 dpi is closer to photo printing resolution, I guess.

Re:The margins are just too low

[Blaskowicz]

You missed the point too? 5K allows things to look more like print quality than monitor quality (well, supposedly) while still keeping a rather high "emulated" resolution of 2560x1440. (even then, I guess you can shrink down / zoom out things and still be able to read them even though the "logical" resolution is low)

Well, I haven't refuted what you said at all, and I won't or cannot. I think the point is, "high dpi" is overall fairly useless but on a 27" 5K, you have enough size/area and pixel count that it might be useful. I remember a comment about how a 13" (e.g.) high dpi display on a laptop wasn't that useful, because it's too small anyway, especially the screen height is useless because of 16:9 on 13".

The biggest issue is the need for all updated software anyway, you would need everything to use GTK3 or Qt5 and be compatible, or whatever MS and Apple use as toolkits.
I'm curious whether recent Wine developments can do dumb pixel doubling for those 90s/00s apps and how the font rendering would look like.
Other issue is Displayport 1.3 or 1.4 isn't all that common yet (and to boot, they don't make real low end graphics cards anymore)

Re:The margins are just too low

[Shirley Marquez]

Some of those things that Apple systems do well are things that don't matter to all users. Yes, those Apple trackpads are great, but if you're a user who doesn't like trackpads, even the very best ones, and who will connect a mouse to any computer you use, that magic trackpad is worthless. Sometimes it's less than worthless, like on those new MacBook Pro systems where the huge trackpad means that the keyboard has been moved farther back and is harder to reach, not to mentionthat the placement is so far back that typing on the system partially blocks your view of the screen.

And Apple doesn't offer some things that some users DO care about. For example, they don't make any equivalent to a typical PC tower. Want a Mac that will let you have multiple hard drives? Sorry, your only option is an awkward chain of USB or Thunderbolt devices. Want to add some kind of internal expansion like a TV tuner? Sorry, can't do that.

Some of us don't like all-in-one desktop systems because they increase the cost of upgrading. You have to replace your display every time you want to upgrade some other aspect of your computer, since it's all tied together in one box. Displays have a longer useful lifetime than CPUs do, but if you buy an iMac your upgrade path is all or nothing.

Re:The margins are just too low

[Gr8Apes]

What I was getting at is that at 4K or 5K, a really decent monitor size would be at least 35", and likely 40", giving you lots of visual real estate while still having double the "standard" screen 72 dpi. At roughly 150 dpi, it's going to look pretty darn good, going to 220dpi on a 27" monitor is likely to not be very noticeable and reduces available screen real estate significantly since you're not going to be able to comfortably read 2pt fonts. I'm strongly considering swapping out my dual monitor config for a single larger monitor.

Re: The margins are just too low

[beastofburdon]

I think he (she?)

There are no girls on the internet.
On the internet we are all equal.
Someone who claims to be a woman on the internet is attempting to get special treatment which they do not deserve.

"all but confirms"

[tlambert]

"all but confirms"

So in other words, it's not confirmed, it's just speculation and rumor, right?

Re:"all but confirms"

[Entrope]

The quoted statement from Apple about discontinuing the Apple Thunderbolt Display is close to confirmation that they're exiting that line of business. If the displays go fully out of stock for more than about a week, I will take it as full confirmation even if Apple doesn't formally say so.

Re:"all but confirms"

[tlambert]

The quoted statement from Apple about discontinuing the Apple Thunderbolt Display is close to confirmation that they're exiting that line of business. If the displays go fully out of stock for more than about a week, I will take it as full confirmation even if Apple doesn't formally say so.

They just came out with a whole bunch of USB-C stuff... and you are concerned about the Thunderbolt display? Looks to me as if actual Thunderbolt is about as dead as actual Firewire.

Re:"all but confirms"

[ShanghaiBill]

So in other words, it's not confirmed, it's just speculation and rumor, right?

Apple never confirms anything, so speculation and rumor are the best we can do.

Re:"all but confirms"

[tlambert]

all 4 of those USB Type-C ports also function as Thunderbolt numb nuts.

You are talking about thunderbolt 3, numb nuts.

So you can connect with a thunderbolt 32 dongle, yes. But it's a chipset feature, and it's going to put us in the same position HDMI put us in, where not all ports behave the same with all possible peripherals and dongles.

Can I use the dongle with a USB-C on some third party SOC chipset to get Thunderbolt 2? No, I can't. Can I plug a Thunderbolt 3 device into any USB C port? Yes, I can ... but the damn thing isn't going to work.

The only reason it's there in the new MacBooks is to handle legacy switchover.

Intel has failed to sell the industry on Thunderbolt.

That's all there is to it.

There will likely be USB C displays.

There's unlikely to be a hell of a lot of Thunderbolt 3 peripherals, apart from Thunderbolt 2 conversion dongles.

Say you were selling a commercial video editing deck -- you know, the kind that have historically used FireWire 800. Are you going to bring out a Thunderbolt 3 version, or will it be USB-C?

Exactly, numb nuts. No one in their right mind will do anything with Thunderbolt 3 except plug in a converted to use their legacy Thunderbolt devices, and that includes Apple continuing to sell Thunderbolt displays.

Apple still need huge-ass displays for their iMac line. They need large amounts of real estate, with zero dead pixels. The only way to drive that going forward is economy of scale. They just won't be connected via Thunderbolt 3.

It's be like distributing Mac OS X Sierra on DVD. Will Mac OS X Sierra run on machines that have DVD drives? Yes, there are some where it will still run fine. Should Apple distribute on DVD, just because some older hardware that runs Sierra has a "DVD port" on it? No, no more than they should continue to ship Thunderbolt displays.

Thunderbolt is dead. Thunderbolt 3 exists sole to allow you to utilize earlier Thunderbolt devices at a considerable penalty (dongle/cable cost).

Re:"all but confirms"

[Entrope]

I'm not "concerned" about any of Apple's products, but the Apple Thunderbolt Display is the last Apple-made standalone display. When it's gone, they are out of the display business.

As a docking interface, Thunderbolt is nicer than USB 3.1 because it provides more bandwidth over a single cable, with the same power delivery capacity (100W). Can you find a 5k monitor that connects to a laptop via USB 3.1? An external GPU enclosure? As far as I can tell, they all use Thunderbolt 3.

And nothng of value was lost.

[SeaFox]

Apple's monitors (featuring panels obviously not made by them) were nice, but not nice enough to justify their patented Apple-brand pricing. They weren't kept up to date technology-wise either compared to competitors.

The strongest reason to get an Apple display for your Mac was so it wouldn't be connected to a monitor that said "Dell" on it.

Re:And nothng of value was lost.

[thecombatwombat]

I disagree. I'm typing this on a Fedora desktop attached to an Apple Cinema Display. I've had this 27 inch cinema display since whenever they came out six or seven years ago. It's still going strong. If you wanted a large monitor you'll use for a long time, it was a great option. Mine still has great picture, awfully good speakers, a web cam, useful ports, the best laptop connectivity around, and a metal and glass frame that's really nice. It cost around $1000 but considering how long it's lasted and probably will last yet, I have no regrets.

I figure that's the real reason they're getting out. Few people buy them, and they last forever. I think I'm on my fourth iPhone in the time I've owned this monitor, and it will probably outlast my current one..

Re:And nothng of value was lost.

[SeaFox]

Well, I'm typing this on a homebuilt machine attached to a Samsung T240HD. It's eight years old now, and still works fine. It was a little pricey when I bought it ($510 per my NewEgg invoice) because it has TV hardware built in (ClearQAM and ATSC tuners, Component input, better speakers than most monitors, and a full remote). I think about replacing it now because of the better contrast and color reproduction in modern LED backlit displays, but the fact it's still working the same as when I bought it (and my wish to keep with a 16:10 ratio display) stops me from doing so.

As nice as your Cinema Display is, have you considered there were likely other monitors built for other makers with the exact same panel. You could have gotten the same features and as reliable a device for less cost. That's why Apple didn't really bring anything special - they didn't have exclusivity to justify their pricing.

Re:And nothng of value was lost.

[Anonymous Coward]

The monitor you mention is much smaller than the 27 inch cinema display, much lower resolution, lacks a webcam, USB ports, and a number of other features. If you're holding it up as evidence of "You could have gotten the same features and as reliable a device for less cost. That's why Apple didn't really bring anything special - they didn't have exclusivity to justify their pricing " it doesn't seem to be a very good example.

The Samsung monitor has other features, as you said it's a TV, and it's cool if people want that, but it by no means has the same features the Cinema Display had for cheaper.

Re:And nothng of value was lost.

[RubberDogBone]

And my main PC monitor is a $300 37" 1080P TV monitor I got from Costco. It works great for the computer -gaming on this thing is surreal. But it also works great for movies, spreadsheets, porn, etc. And it works great as a TV. The speakers even work very well.

I am sure your $1000 screen is nicer and probably better, but I'll settle for "good enough for me" for 1/3 the price.

Re:And nothng of value was lost.

[thegarbz]

I've had this 27 inch cinema display since whenever they came out six or seven years ago. It's still going strong. If you wanted a large monitor you'll use for a long time, it was a great option.

And yet there are a whole host of companies who produce high end panels that last many MANY years which offer better value for money than Apple displays.

The Cinema Display was great for the receptionist at a design studio, and for people who want to make a statement. But it was far from the only high end product, and it wasn't the best value one out there.

Re:And nothng of value was lost.

[NormalVisual]

And yet there are a whole host of companies who produce high end panels that last many MANY years which offer better value for money than Apple displays.

Hell, they don't even have to be high-end panels. I have a pair of Sceptre X20WG displays that I bought for less than $200 each and are still going strong 11 years and three moves later. Those displays outlasted a Power Mac G4, an iBook, and a MacBook, all of which experienced hardware failures of one kind or another.

Re:And nothng of value was lost.

[Fahrvergnuugen]

Few people buy them, and they last forever.

To your point, I'm still using using a 30" Apple Cinema display HD.

I paid $1600 for it and I've used it every work day for the last 10 years. I only wish it didn't require dual link DVI - it's becoming a huge pain to find the necessary adapters to go from Thunderbolt3/USBC to Dual Link DVI.

Re:I'm waiting

[Ol Olsoc]

Defensive much?

Not as defensive as you are humorless. C'mon dood - after all of the whining about the missing headphone jack, the macbook connectors and how it must be impossible to get a multi-outlet USB dongle (I have 12 USB outboard ports on my Mac, and a similar number on my Dell, ave 4 extra on my Pi3) y'all deserve a little rbbing.

But thanks for playing - you win a brand new Samsung Galaxy S7, it's the hottest gift this Christmas season.

Apple Abandons Yet Another Market Segment.

[Bing Tsher E]

How soon before they announce they will no longer make Desktop or Desksite workstation boxes?

They nearly already have. The Mac Pro is a boutique computer in a novelty case.

They're making fewer MacBooks lately, too. Mobile Gadgets are where the money is, it seems.

That's what Wall Street often refers to Apple as these days. "Apple, the gadget maker..." Check it out, you see stock-market oriented journalists referring to Apple as a gadget maker all the time.

Re:Apple Abandons Yet Another Market Segment.

[LynnwoodRooster]

Apple makes more revenue and profit on its services (which are driven by iOS devices) than it does on the Mac line. Macs are around 10% of the total revenue stream for Apple, and it's a shrinking stream at that.

Re:They're done with anything NON-Mobile

[Anonymous Coward]

+1. In fact, in a few more years, there won't even be a Mac. I've said this ever since they dropped the word "Computer" from the company's name, and been duly modded down to goatse.cx territory for saying it.

Those downvotes are coming a bit less often these days for some reason.

too bad

[j-beda]

I suppose if they didn't sell well enough, then I guess it doesn't make sense to sell them at all, but while expensive they were nice devices. I

  am still hoping that SOMEONE will start producing an attractive, high quality display with the docking features that would work well with a laptop or MacMini (power, Gig ethernet, USB ports). The LG models do not have ethernet ports or cameras, and while the 5k model does have USB 3.1 ports, the 4k model's downstream ports seem to be limited to USB 2.0. While I understand that people have a variety of style preferences, the black plastic LG models will not match some people's tastes.

Call them shallow, fashion idiots, or just people with more money than sense - I know a number of people who will not be upgrading their current Apple displays with LG models. I've had calls from clients looking into using some slighly older iMacs in "Target Display Mode" to work with new laptops who would prefer to spend the money to purchase new Apple displays.

Re:too bad

[Blaskowicz]

The docking functions can be on a standalone box, random vendors sell thunderbolt docks and you can look for the absolute best display you'd want but without the dock (the monitor can still have e.g. a USB hub that you can use as well)
To think of it, a VESA compatible dock so that you can screw it behind the monitor would be more tidy, perhaps not the absolute best looking thing if you want people to ohhh and aahh and your desk is facing people, not a wall. But there wouldn't be a supid octopus box on the desk surface.

Re:too bad

[j-beda]

My mistake: it seems as though the 5k LG displays do in fact have a camera and mic.

Next in line

[hcs_$reboot]

2019: laptops, 2020: phones

Out of the iMac business, too?

[lindseyp]

Are they also out of the standalone computer business? The Mac Pro is a dinosaur, the iMacs are still OK but looking terribly underpowered right now. Even if the computer essentially 'comes for free' with the 5k monitor.

Wide gamut

[ChrisMaple]

These are P3 gamut monitors, about halfway between sRGB and Adobe 1998. This helps justify the higher price, although it really should be Adobe 1998 to justify the premium.

finally, 30 bit color panels

[maynard]

I have confirmed that 30-Bit color is working on a 27-inch iMac. A 16-Bit greyscale ramp was used to test. Applications which support this capability are quite sparse. At the time of my testing Preview worked and Pixelmator did not. It is likely that applications need to optin to use this feature. The standard 24-Bit pipeline is indicated with Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888). New 30-Bit color pipelines will show Pixel Depth: 30-Bit Color (ARGB2101010) or Pixel Depth: CGSThirtyBitColor. I have also been able to get 30-Bit color working on my Dell U2713H via DisplayPort. Support seemed sparse and intermittent in earlier versions, but as of 10.11.3 everything works well in my experience.

http://www.astramael.com/

The apple website notes these LG panels are P3 color gamut compliant. Which is a smaller color space than Adobe RGB, but probably sufficient for 10bit per channel. While the OS has supported 10 bit since a recent update to El Capitan, there are almost no Mac applications that make use of this. Unlike on Windows, where 10 bit color support and display panels have been available for several years. And note, the latest MacBook Pro panel still doesn't support real 10 bit. And if you want to use wide color with a secondary panel, you'll need to buy a laptop with a secondary GPU.

On the PC side, it's much easier to get the right hardware and get Adobe tools to display a wide color space. Apple is still far behind on what has become absolutely necessary for photographers and filmmakers.

Apple made displays?!

[dohzer]

Well there you go...!

Apple has made this tradeoff before

[laird]

Apple's done this many times before. The introduce Apple-branded products (printers, monitors, digital camera, networking, etc.) where they do so to make a dramatic improvement over the state of the art, then they're willing to kill off their Apple-branded products in order to get third parties to support Apple.

For example, Apple's LaserWriter was the first consumer networked printer, with Postscript, and they also had a highly profitable line of lower-end printers. Apple killed off their entire line of printers because they got all the major printer manufacturers to support the Mac, so even though it cost Apple $1B/year in printer sales revenue, broader industry support ultimately benefitted the Mac platform's growth.

Apple introduced the first easy to use consumer digital camera, which triggered competitive innovation in the industry, which was Apple's goal, after which they killed their camera product and sold partner cameras.

Heck, they had the first cheaply and easily networked computer, and they killed off their proprietary technology in favor of Ethernet as soon as it was possible. Same with USB replacing their proprietary keyboard and mouse connectors.

They just replaced their Thunderbolt with USB (specifically, USB-C with the latest USB bandwidth), now that it's finally fast enough to drive monitors well.

I'm impressed that Apple is willing to innovate ahead of the marketplace, and then to kill off their innovations when, years later, the marketplace catches up. Even more, Apple usually actively works to advance the state of the art in order to be able to kill off their proprietary innovations, because it's ultimately best for customers.

Re:Apple has made this tradeoff before

[PapayaSF]

Very insightful. Too bad I don't seem to get mod points these days.

Re:Apple has made this tradeoff before

[puto]

No they did not, they had several other companies release them before apple, Apple was the first one that cost under a grand. And it was a designed by Kodak and manufactured by Chinon, and was just a blip on the digital camera radar. Logitech, Kodak, and Kodak working with Nikon. /I work for Apple

Re:Apple has made this tradeoff before

[fastasleep]

They just replaced their Thunderbolt with USB (specifically, USB-C with the latest USB bandwidth), now that it's finally fast enough to drive monitors well.

No they didn't, those are Thunderbolt 3 ports which use a USB-C connector.

Re:Apple has made this tradeoff before

[tlhIngan]

They just replaced their Thunderbolt with USB (specifically, USB-C with the latest USB bandwidth), now that it's finally fast enough to drive monitors well.

No, Thunderbolt was not replaced by USB.

Thunderbolt 3 runs OVER USB-C.

USB-C is more than just a form factor change - USB-C carries extra signal lines - it can support DisplayPort natively (you can have both DisplayPort and USB on a USB-C port) as well as other signalling functions.

Intel moved their Thunderbolt spec from (mini) DisplayPort to USB-C ports, so all Thunderbolt 3 ports are on USB-C. Intel also reduced their requirement that Thunderbolt not support GPUs, which is why laptops are now sporting "GPU Accellerators" (Dell and Razer make one) which is a full length box containing a couple of PCI-E slots for a GPU. It connects to the laptop via USB-C cable, and when plugged in, the laptop can utilize the GPU while the user only has to bother with a single cable.

USB is not replacing anything - Thunderbolt is running just dandy over USB.

Re:Apple has made this tradeoff before

[laird]

Apple helped invent and continues to lead the USB standards. Apple worked with Intel to get USB to the point where they could consolidate Thunderbolt into USB-c - the capability to run DisplayPort and Thunderbolt within the USB-c connector and protocol isn't an accident, it was Apple's intention, allowing them to kill off and old, less widely adopted technology, and consolidate multiple ports into one (the proprietary power connector, Thunderbolt (mini-DisplayPort, not quite proprietary but not widely adopted outside of Apple), and USB. That was the point of my post - Apple kills off old tech in favor of new tech, and in particular has a habit of innovating ahead of the market (Thunderbolt, the magnetic power ports) and then killing off those innovations when the industry catches up. And, even more impressive, Apple leads the standards that allow the market to catch up and displace Apple's innovations! That's pretty gutsy!

Re:I'm waiting

[FunkSoulBrother]

Not at all, the new MacBook Pros come with a 2nd 2170x60 monitor built right it! :-P

Re:I'm waiting

[Ol Olsoc]

For the haters to chime in....

WHAT? you have to buy a display if you want a second monitor on your MacBook? Goddammit! is there no end to Apple's bullshit?

Troll eh? We's had shittin hemmorages because you have to plug in a headphone to a plug in device, that Apple gives you for free.

We've had wails of righteous indignation that you would have to buy an adapter for multiple USB ports - I have a 7 outlet USB adapter on My Mac, and a 7 Outlet on my Dell, the Mac i unforgivable, th e Dell - hey it's Windows so O-Tay! Windows users have had that attitude ever since Amiga days when they gloat about a 16 bit soundcard they could buy for their machine, but if I bough one for my Amiga, that was unacceptable. If there is one thing about Windows Troolarenas, they have no sense of humor. Now quickly, show your dimwittedness, and troll me down. Merely a mark that you cannot handle the truth.