Its Cinema Displays have been pretty much the most expensive things out there for a long time, no? Everyone had better deals than those...
That's nonsense. Yes, everyone had better deals but that's just because other companies like Eizo sell everything from high end displays (which are actually much more expensive than the Cinema Displays) to mediocre office lanterns. Apple on the other hand sells only one line of very good but not really high end displays at a (for the image quality they offer) highly competitive price. It's just your own ignorance of the Cinema Displays' quality and what other manufacturers charge for their non-consumer displays that makes you believe otherwise.
FWIW, my Eizo HD2441W cost over $1500 at the time, way more than Apple charged for the Cinema 23". It's a stunning display though and I never regretted the expense (it also has a 5 year limited warranty). At the office I have a 23" Cinema Display which is really neat, too.
Let me quote Ars Technica Creative Director Aurich Lawson:
I suspect that the false comparison with the paper stock argument feeds another persistent myth, which is that glossy screens are not for professionals. Let's just leave aside the the fact that an image on a monitor will never entirely match an image printed on paper no matter what kind of screen you have, for a variety of reasons not least amongst them the differences between subtractive and additive color cited above.
Sorry, but Lawson has it all wrong. I happen to have some insight into the photography business and I know that photographers sneer at glossy displays. Ironically, Lawson himself explains why. The color saturation and contrast you get from a glossy display (under good lighting conditions) have nothing to do with what the final result will look like on paper anyway. Even "glossy" photo paper isn't actually more glossy than the matte displays of the previous generation MBP. Put otherwise, the matte displays give you a more realistic impression of what the paper version will look like. And so far I didn't even mention distracting reflections (I saw an episode of GeekBrief TV where Cali Lewis unwraps the new MBP somewhere in a patch of forest, and boy was it depressing to see how reflective the display actually is).
The bottom line is that if you make a living editing digital photos for print, glossy displays have exactly zero advantages but a lot of major disadvantages.
By the way, I believe you that the new MBP has a fabulous screen all in all, but my Penryn MBP (matte) has a fabulous screen, too, so what does it prove? The MBP's screen happens to be a lot less matte than that of me olde PowerBook G4, which is fine. I consider it a great compromise. I know for sure my iPod touch is next to unusable in certain lighting conditions despite the incredibly bright display, and I certainly don't want that on my work notebook.
Or you could learn the difference between DisplayPort and DVI/HDMI, and the technical reasons why such adapters are impossible, which has been discussed to death elsewhere.
No, it must be that Apple "abuses" its customers... unreal.
Yes, Dual Link DVI to/from DisplayPort requires signal conversion, but the 24" Cinema Display has a resolution of 1920x1200 anyway which is exactly the max. resolution of Single Link DVI. We know from the new MacBook that passive adapters from DisplayPort to Single Link DVI are possible (the MacBook's graphic card is smart enough to emit a DVI signal in this case), and there is no technical reason why this could not be done on the input side. The Cinema Display would just have to be smart enough to process a DVI signal coming from a passive DVI-D SL to Mini DisplayPort adapter. It may require some extra logic but it's far from impossible. The fact that others haven't done this doesn't prove anything. The new Cinema Display is probably the
only display that has
only a (modified) DisplayPort input connector so others simply didn't have to care about this use case.
