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.

But LCD displays only work at ONE resolution.

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if you can afford a 1600x1200 display, like the article header says, that 640x480 game will look like shit because every few pixels, you stretch 'em 2 wide instead of stretching all pixels the appropriate amount. The result is a sloppy looking grid of scuzz, or you run it at native size to see a tiny image on your display, wasting the rest of that expen$ive panel.

LCDs are still a specialized device for specialized needs.

Good Idea

[Wyatt Earp]

"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.

From Macintouch

[Wyatt Earp]

"While Apple will not be offering branded CRT displays from this point forward, displays from third parites will still be available from Apple Store."

heavens, yes

[hawk]

When I was spending 12-14 hours a day staring at my dissertation, I would often transfer it to a flopy,so that instead of using the 19" magnavox (still a current "good" monitor at the time) to my 486 laptop with a 640x480 display for editing. I could get *much* more done before my eyese swam to the poinht of illegibility.

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

but which size is comparable?

[hawk]

a 21" sony is $750 or so delivered--but the 23", whose viewable area (but not pixels) is a better comparison is in the rangeyou mention.

hawk

Re:heavens, yes

[hawk]

It may make a difference that It was a Thinkpad :) AN out of date thinkpad, but still . . . and so is my new laptop that I refer to elsewhere (But it is *not* out of date :)

hawk

But compare Apple's CRT to Apple's LCD

[hawk]

To keep things in context, Apple has always (ok, a couple of notable exceptions) tended to high-end quality on their crt's. In gerneral, if you're choosing with no information other than brand, the correct answer is "apple." (and failing that, "Sony."). Apple has never sold crt's near the commodity price-point--nor have they sold crt's with images down in that range.

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

Re:But LCD displays only work at ONE resolution.

[Malc]

My laptop (Toshiba Tecra 8100) doesn't change the size of the pixels. 640x480 uses the same dot-pitch as the recommended 1024x768, but with a big black border. No problems using low resolution here. It's great with PC-Anywhere connecting to higher resolution screen too: I bump the resolution up to 1280x1024 (or whatever) and then Windows automatically scrolls the screen based on the mouse position rather than having to fiddle with scroll-bars.

Re:Kinda like...

[Gregg M]

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!

22" LCD original price vs. current price

[haaz]

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.

Re:Monitors are profitable for Apple...

[Squid]

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.

Re:What is it about Slashdot and Apple?

[Alan Shutko]

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.

Re:You forget ....

[The Mayor]

Did this happen while Steve Jobs was at Apple? I didn't think so.

Economies of scale

[The Mayor]

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.

Re:Monitors are profitable for Apple...

[jeff.paulsen]

They switched to ADC so you'd have to buy THEIR monitor.

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.

Re:Wow

[sacherjj]

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.

Don't miss Jobs Interview

[Kozz]

Here [bbspot.com]. I guess Jobs was just trying to mislead us earlier.



Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.

Apple FUD

[waldoj]

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

Games on LCD displays

[Lazy Jones]

> try playing a 640x480 game on a 1024x768 laptop LCD? Yucko

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...

Monitors are profitable for Apple...

[mattkime]

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.

LCD screens hard on my eyes

[Goonie]

I'm not a graphics pro, just a programmer (who nevertheless loves big monitors and is about to go buy a 21" - any recommendations?), but I can't imagine going with current LCD technology.

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!

Re:Monitors are profitable for Apple...

[scrytch]

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.

Given the cult following he enjoys, I don't actually see a problem with this reasoning. Might not be logical, but apple has always enjoyed success with the hyper-right-brain thing going on in marketing anyway.
--

Worthy Sucessor

[ansible]

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.

Re:Worthy Sucessor

[ansible]

Yoikes!

I just assumed that since the G4s (like the cube) are relatively recent, that full hardware support wasn't available yet.

That is excellent news.

Re:Worthy Sucessor

[ansible]

The 1600SW does indeed have a better DPI, since both displays have the same resolution but different sizes. No complaints there.

Unless they've been fixed, there are still significant issues with using the multi-link adapter.

The number one problem is that if you want 1600x1024 through the multi-link, you have to use an analog connection.

The other common standards for digital connection (like DVI) don't have enough bandwidth for 1600x1024. This is why SGI and Number Nine went with OpenLDI (the native interface on the 1600SW). But no one else natively supports OpenLDI.

I'm still using the Number Nine cards with my 1600SWs, because it is the only way to get the cleanest display on the 1600SW.

I'm just pissed off at the whole display industry. We could have had a one, decent standard for digital displays, that would have been good for HDTV too. But noooo, everybody has got to push their own standard, and most of them suck (not enough bandwidth). We have wasted years screwing around. Settling on one good standard would mean that in 2001, LCD displays would have only had digital connections, and you'd have multiple graphic cards to pick from.

Fools. Has it occured to these idiots (display and card manufacturers) that they could have made more money with a decent standard than the miss-mash of crap they have now?

Re:Worthy Sucessor

[ansible]

Hmmm... I may have been mistaken. I know at least one of the standards doesn't support really high resolutions, and I thought DVI was one of them.

Maybe they've come out with a newer version of the spec that has better bandwidth.

Re:What is it about Slashdot and Apple?

[benedict]

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.)

--

Reading this from WWDC....

[deeny]

So here I am, sitting listening to a Darwin-related talk at WWDC. Seems to me a lot of the folks on /. simply have hardware envy. Just because you can buy a cheaper monitor doesn't mean that it's really well-supported, especially digitally supported.

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

Re:What is it about Slashdot and Apple?

[daviddennis]

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.

----

Re:LCD vs. CRT prices (and the G4 cube)

[daviddennis]

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
----

Re:What is it about Slashdot and Apple?

[daviddennis]

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.

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 ... um ... I miss ... well, actually, I miss xemacs and hope they do an Aqua version one of these days. But that's it.

D

----

Re:I did own a Mac SE. Useless. No expandability.

[daviddennis]

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

----

Re:Apple WILL continue selling monitors

[daviddennis]

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

----

Re:Apple Displays Versus...

[daviddennis]

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

----

Re:Another way to bilk their customers...

[daviddennis]

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

----

Re:What are you talking about?

[Detritus]

Same here. I believe the Apple display has built-in scaling logic to make the display look good at non-native resolutions.

Re:Classic Apple Marketing

[Graymalkin]

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).

Re:Flat i-Macs??

[mcc]

The Houston Chronicle this morning had an article on Apple's CRT drop. According to this article, iMacs will continue to use CRTs.

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. :)

Re:A better analogy...

[Teferi]

NetInfo?

Re:A better analogy...

[Teferi]

X was beginning to become prevalent at the time, in fact...my (used) slab came with Xnext, an X11R...4, I think...server that ran in a WindowServer window. Also, NetInfo had parallels in the NIS/YP tools in existance at the time...

nice try.

[cygnus]

except that thing weighs nearly 7 pounds. try again!

YOU CAN USE ANY 3rd PARTY MONITOR

[cygnus]

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.

LCDs and desk space

[Midnight Thunder]

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.

Re:Economies of scale

[Midnight Thunder]

I don't particuarlt want to start a flame fest, but I would like to get a few facts straight. At the time of the release of the iMac very few USB devices were available, you could probably count them on one hand. The iMac had a number of self imposed limitations, such as lack of SCSI, lack of removable storage and ADB had been replaced by USB. This meant that USB was the only form of expansion available. Hardware manufacturers were climbing over each other to fill the void in compatible peripherals that the iMac had created, in fact at one point the vast majority of USB devices were Mac only.

Although Win98 did provide support for USB there was not that same urge to transition to this new technology, mainly because legacy hardware was still on the motherboards. From what I can tell the move to add PC suport came from the need to have a decent plug and play technology and also something that was faster and more user-friendly than traditional serial and parallel.

Re:What is it about Slashdot and Apple?

[Arandir]

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.

Re:quick price comparrison (to counter /. FUD)

[dutky]

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 [mac.com] 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.

quick price comparrison (to counter /. FUD)

[dutky]

A quick romp across the net for similarly configured and priced machines yields the following results:

• Apple [apple.com] iBook DVD $1499
  1024x768 LCD
  128 MB RAM
  10 GB HD
  DVD-ROM
  built-in ehternet
  RGB-video out
  firewire
  
• DELL [dell.com] Inspiron 8000 [dell.com] $1549
  1400x1050 LCD
  64 MB RAM
  10 GB HD
  DVD-ROM
  built-in ethernet
  IEEE 1394
  
• Gateway [gateway.com] Solo 5300 [gateway.com] $1624
  800x600 LCD
  128 MB RAM
  10 GB HD
  DVD-ROM
  ethernet (optional PC-card)
  TV-out
  no fireware/IEEE 1394
  
• IBM [ibm.com] A22e [warehouse.com] $1699
  1024x768
  64 MB RAM
  15 GB HD
  CD-ROM
  built-in ethernet
  unspecified external display port
  no firewire/IEEE 1394
  
• Toshiba [toshiba.com] 2800 [warehouse.com] $1469
  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.

Re:And in other news...

[Moofie]

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?

Re:And in other news...

[Moofie]

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.

Re:Apple FUD

[Moofie]

People who want cheap computers buy iMacs, if they buy Macs at all. Apple has never marketed towards price-sensitive users. They want performance conscious and style conscious users, and with this decision they refocus their attention on the second group. (Most of the performance conscious users don't buy Apple monitors anyway.)

This is going to be a big win for Apple. I bet they're going to get great deals from Samsung since they ONLY sell LCDs, and just like USB, I bet they're going to increase the installed base of a "new" technology dramatically. Good for them.

Re:It's even in the original linked article

[Moofie]

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?

Re:32bit Color??

[Dr. Sp0ng]

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*
--

Re:32bit Color??

[Dr. Sp0ng]

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.
--

Apple Displays scale beautifully

[victim]

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)

Apple WILL continue selling monitors

[victim]

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.

Re:Apple is still the computer for "the rest of th

[znu]

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.

--

It's even in the original linked article

[devphil]

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...

Where's the link?

[Dwonis]

Where's the link to the actual story?
------

LCD monitors cost

[Oniros]

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+

Re:heavens, yes

[jovlinger]

I concurr.

Most stand alone LCD I've seen have been fuzzy, every laptop LCD razor sharp. I suspect it has to do with laptops having digital connections to the LCD, while many standalones go digital-analog-digital. Obviously, apple's new offerings will be all digital, and the few apple 15" LCDs I've seen have been gorgeous.

Does your SGI have a digital cable? IIRC it does.

Flat i-Macs??

[Capt_Troy]

So does this mean the I-Mac will now be flat :)

Re:Wow

[dolanh]

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.

How about scalable UIs?

[Nailer]

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.

Re:Monitors are profitable for Apple...

[iso]

They switched to ADC so you'd have to buy THEIR monitor. Gutsy move...it could bring them more profit or it could make the total cost of owning an Apple too high for some.

well actually a VGA port is available right beside the ADC port on all Macs too so you can use whatever monitor you want. also it should be noted that the Apple ADC connector is an open standard and is a valid "take" on the "Plug and Display" standard. it's just a DVI connection with power and USB as well. the real reason it's used over DVI is to cut down on cable clutter.

sure Apple is the only one using this standard connection right now, but that doesn't make it proprietary as many seem to think. there's nothing stopping other companies from making ADC LCD monitors and as a result it's nothing like the old proprietary monitor interfaces that Apple used years ago.

there is so much Apple ignorance on slashdot these days yet people still seem to find it necessary to spout off any assumptions they have as if they're facts. grab a clue or stop posting, retards.

- j

Re:Wow

[iso]

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

Re:Wow

[iso]

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

Re:Wow

[iso]

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

Re:Economies of scale

[sg3000]

Not to mention the fact that most USB devices when introduced after the iMac came in the iMac Bondi Blue.

Hard to say that was inspired by Win 98.

Re:What is it about Slashdot and Apple?

[frankie]

I challenge you to find me a high-quality 22" wide-screen LCD for less than $2500.

Heck, it's hard to find another 21"+ LCD at all. For example, Outpost [outpost.com] has an NEC 20" that only gets 1280x1024 and costs $3279. Mysimon [slashdot.org] and cNet Shopper [cnet.com] both list exactly one LCD larger than 18" ... care to guess? [apple.com]

Also, Slashdot previously discussed the Samsung 240T [slashdot.org]. 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).

Re:Don't miss Jobs Interview

[Error27]

Seeing this marked up as informative (instead of funny, since the bbspot article is satirical) reminds me of something else I saw today.

The Weekly World news (the one with the page 5 girl) has a front page article about Tim McViegh's corpse at the morgue. Aparently they printed the article before the excecution was postponed. :P

It's sad really, I mean if you can't trust the tabloids, who can you trust?

Re:Apple FUD

[OmegaDan]

While I agree in principle with your statement -- flat screens are expensive because the technology to manufacture them isn't very mature ... I remember reading somwhere that 40% of lcd panels *Don't work at all* after they've been manufactured ... and I think another 5 - 10% fail within the first month.

So infact your paying for your LCD and another one that broke ... *THATS* why they're so expensive.

Re:Economies of scale

[BradleyUffner]

Just because LCD is the newest technology doesn't mean it's better by default then what we have now. With current monitors you get, IMHO, a much bigger picture, that looks nicer, for much less money. In all of the examples you list there is at least some benifit gained from using the new technology. The only benifit I can see for an LCD screen is the "wow factor". Maby I'm being short sighted, but I just don't see it.
=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\= \=\=\

Re:Wow

[BradleyUffner]

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.
=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\ =\=\=\=\=\

Re:Wow

[BradleyUffner]

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.
=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\ =\=\=\

Apple's monitors were gorgeous...

[alexhmit01]

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

Apple's got that Samsung investment afterall...

[etceteral]

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 =)

Re:Where's the link?

[13013dobbs]

Oh, c'mon. As if anyone on Slashdot actually reads the stories... :)

Read the fine print

[Animats]

Apple® today announced that it will become the first in the industry to move to an all LCD flat panel display pro lineup.

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.

Re:Wow

[donglekey]

I am typing this on a 20" IBM P200 Aperature Grille monitor that I bought for $200. It fucking rules.

Apple's prices were way too high

[stilwebm]

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?

Re:But LCD displays only work at ONE resolution.

[stilwebm]

Don't speak if you don't know what you're talking about. Most LCD's made in the past 5 years have intelligent expansion rather than expanding only some of the pixels. Some even add a rounding (antialiasing) effect to approximate a CRT's masking.

Re:But LCD displays only work at ONE resolution.

[Pxtl]

Dude, umm, there's more then just modern games. Most non-3d games are fixed gui size anyways (like StarCraft, Diablo) and besides, I like to keep my FPS as high as possible, and don't usually see much different between 800x600 and higher res's for 3d gameplay. For one thing, my home lan is all old boxen except for one or two l33ter machines, so older games, which don't support higher rez's, are often preferable.

Re:the real news

[connorbd]

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

Re:Taco a blabbering fool

[connorbd]

You're talking something you could put in your living room and watch DVDs on -- mofo is *huge*.

Apple's probably going along the right lines dropping the CRTs anyway -- every current CRT-based Apple monitor I've seen is just flat out ugly. They're a lot deeper than they really need to be, and they're a funny cone shape. I sincerely think they've lost their edge when it comes to designing monitors...

/Brian

Re:I did own a Mac SE. Useless. No expandability.

[connorbd]

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.

-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'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)

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

Wow

[bonzoesc]

Are they going for the high-end users or what? With 19" CRT monitors at $200, LCDs are looking more expensive all the time. Sure, they're more reliable, easier to look at, and smaller, but you can't get a 15" one for $200, let alone a 19". I'll run X at 1600x1200 for now, thank you.

Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate

Re:Apple FUD

[kirkb]

They take a costly and cool technology and produce it in such incredible quantity that it becomes affordable

Remember that it's Apple's customers that subsidize the cost of new tech so that it ends up being affordable for the rest of the marketplace.

This year, mac buyers will shell out an extra $600 to get an LCD instead of a CRT.
Next year, they'll pay an extra $300.
In two years, LCD's will be cheap and commonplace, and PC's will ship with LCD's by default.
Should PC owners thank our wealthier (or less thrifty) mac bretheren for this?

Tacoisms Deconstructed

[table and chair]

"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... ;)

Apple Displays Versus...

[piecewise]

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.

Re:of course they are.

[Golias]

heavier, bulkier, slower, more fragile, less battery life, with a shitty graphics card, half the video memory, no firewire, no USB.

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.

Apple Links

[Alien54]

There is a brief mention of this on the Apple hot news page:

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/

But the press release is here: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2001/may/21display .html [apple.com]

Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

LCDs and games

[vukicevic]

Ever try playing a 640x480 game on a 1024x768 laptop LCD? Yucko.

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.

What is it about Slashdot and Apple?

[apm]

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?

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.

Re:LCDs and games

[b1t r0t]

The ATI Rage in my Pismo (Powerbook G3 Firewire) does this as well. So the result of viewing 800x600 on a 1024x768 display is a bit fuzzy, but it's not that horrid chunky effect you get from LCD monitors that run off of analog SVGA inputs.

I'm pretty sure that these monitors that Apple will be selling do not have a VGA connector, but instead have a direct digital interface. That means that the video chip will know what resolution of LCD is being driven, and can interpolate-scale the picture accordingly.

I think this is a good move by Apple. The margins on CRT monitors are probably not all that great, and there are a lot of competing SVGA monitors available. I have two monitors on the tower Mac back at my apartment, and neither one has a picture of a fruit on it.

I can't believe all the whining about "but I'm a graphic artist and LCD doesn't give reliable colors!" Well, DUHHH, you don't have to be a mind numbed robot and only buy monitors from the same company that made your computer! And if you only use Pantone colors, it doesn't really matter how accurate the monitor is; you should be picking colors out of your swatch book.

I am worried about one thing, though. Since these monitors will all be direct digital, that brings us one step closer to the perfect world as defined by the MPAA and RIAA, where everything will be encrypted right up to the display and speakers.

Life Imitates Segfault.org

[sparcv9]

This story reminds me of this [segfault.org] 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.

I somewhat doubt that

[Sycraft-fu]

LCD technology, while cool, is a dead end. I feel that organic LEDs [slashdot.org] or something of the like will be the eventual future of monitors. LCDs simply have too many problems.

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.

Re:Where's the link?

[orionpi]

Here is a link [yahoo.com].

Correction: Default OS

[orionpi]

Just read this [yahoo.com] on yahoo. Mac OS 9 is the default but OS X is loaded also.

iMac?

[janpod66]

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.

Re:What is it about Slashdot and Apple?

[mveloso]

Becuase Apple fundamentally upsets the free software folks. Why?

It's simple. Apple reminds them that aesthetics, elegance, and design are things that you very rarely get for free, anywhere.

It may also be that people, for the most part, are cheap...and nobody wants to be reminded that they get what they pay for.