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Apple LCD Updates

eric_n_dfw said:
Sound to me like you had a crappy CRT.
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if you want to call nokia displays crap, just go for it. i don't care. my eyes just hurt whenever i look crt:s - my tv included - so i guess i have had it for good. i will replace my tv with a projector and never look a crt again.

not all people feel the same than i do, and i know they never will. some people have such eyes that it is completely ok to watch a really old 60hz monitor and not have headaches.

but hey... we're individuals. not everyone has average seeing and average hearing - my eyes are so bad and so much exposed to crt:s that watching one gives headaches, so that's me and i have to put in some money to get rid of the crt tv i still own. be lucky if you can stand bad monitors.

(i also have ears that hear sounds well over 20khz in controlled blind tests made by finnish army as a routine operation - they tested how good a hearing each person had before the army service and then after service, and the people who had suffered hearing loss were compensated afterwards. despite high sound pressure levels, my hearing did stay intact while many of my friends suffered bad hearing losses. so i can understand some of you have eyes too good, as i have a good pair of ears. can you?)
 
eric_n_dfw said:
Sound to me like you had a crappy CRT.

I've been using the same Dell 19" CRT's (dual monitor setup) with flat-front trinitron tubes for almost 3 years and don't see any "moving target" issues.
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yeah, i think the 'moving target' he's referring to is the CRT scan lines being redrawn.

i use both, i have a Cinema Display at home & a Viewsonic CRT here at work and you would have to pry that LCD from my cold, dead, "real graphic designer's" hands. i know someone stated earlier that CRTs provide "truer" colors compared to a LCD. that's assuming you have an excellent CRT that has been calibrated properly (and how many people really do that? i mean, calibrated, not setting the brightness/contrast...)

i hate futzing w/ this CRT's mess of controls: horiz/vert position, H/V size, pincushion, tilt, and convergence, jeez. have you ever tried to stare so closely at each little pixel on the CRT to make sure that R, G + B all line up???!? drives me nuts. none of that cr@p w/ a LCD. just a colorful, crisp picture every time.

also, on a side note, i've seen some of these new display mockups that people have posted. my opinion would be that the new LCDs do NOT have sharp, angled corners. like this one:
attachment.php

that doesn't match the G5 at all. curves...
 
Apple Store now has the "We'll be Back Soon" Sticky. (11:32 AM EST)

displays already?
 
sinisterdesign said:
yeah, i think the 'moving target' he's referring to is the CRT scan lines being redrawn.

attachment.php

that doesn't match the G5 at all. curves...
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If that turns out to be the final design, I would be disappointed. That is fugally. Would indicate a need to purchase now.
 
Still! nobody seems to boder that no current display card except from the very very expensive ones wich are not available for Mac can support the supposed 2500 x 1600 pixels from the 30" display!!!

 
Ge4-ce said:
Still! nobody seems to boder that no current display card except from the very very expensive ones wich are not available for Mac can support the supposed 2500 x 1600 pixels from the 30" display!!!
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There is actually a limit to the bandwidth available to DVI. It's somewhere around 2500x1600. This casts serious doubt on the rumors as it appears the reported resolution _seems_ to be higher than what is physically supported by DVI.

I guess we'll know soon though.
 
orangedv said:
I am a 'serious' graphic designer and I feel I need to make a point here. Several people have commented on us serious designers avoiding flat displays because of colour accuracy. This is simply untrue. Various ads and web sites tell us that there are all sorts of clever gizmos and software that will match the colour on screen with printed output. Ok confession time......NONE OF THEM EVEN COME CLOSE TO WORKING! There said it. I, and every pro I know works 'colour blind' on whatever montior is at hand. We check our colours with pantone calibrated print proofs off the office laser. We decide which colours to use with a pantone swatchbook, never ever ever with one we mixed up on screen. That is suicide! You show a client a proof on screen and he agrees to it, then send it off to the printers, you can bet your bottom dollar you will get a reject along with a comment along the lines of "Hey! That's not what it looked like on screen!" I know one designer who had to swallow the cost of 3 new power macs for making this mistake. Whole print run rejected.

The calibrators can only accurately match on part of the spectrum at the expense of another part. Usually you end up with very yellow whites if you fine tune it to match most colours. Most of us gave up on that and trust the printed output. Screens and printers use different colour mixing physics. (additive and subtractive) any attempt to make one pretend it is the other will have limits. Beware!
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Yeah! I totally agree. The original post from areyouwishing made me laugh and that person is completely FOS. I've been a graphic designer for 10 years and I know that you can't rely on either a CRT or LCD for print critical jobs. I also use the Pantone swatches and a great printer and have only had problems back when I used a CRT. I can also say that LCD's are far superior in almost every aspect, including eye strain. I noticed the reduced eye strain right away and no longer have bloodshot eyes all the time. I use dual LCD's, an Apple 20" Cinema display and the Formac 20" LCD. (the Apple is better, but not by much). Not blowing my own horn or anything, but I make a great living at this and certainly consider myself a "serious" designer.

Why people are still hugging onto their CRT's I'll never understand. Get with the times.
 
andrewh said:
Why people are still hugging onto their CRT's I'll never understand. Get with the times.
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Some of it is simply due to cost, and people not being able to afford them, but this is becoming les and less of an excuse, as the prices on LCDs are coming way down and are so much more commonplace. I can understand the hesitation of some people, when they look at buying a new PowerMac for instance for $3000, then they have to add on an additional $2000 or whatever for a nice LCD, making the purchase/overall system cost-prohibitive, but the other thing with monitors is they last forever, essentially! ;) A nice LCD will last you for a few systems and quite a few years in most cases, so they are definitely sound investments as long as you purchase high quality ones (i.ee. Apple ones!)

But yes, I agree - get with the times and get an LCD - the benefits are so numerous it's a no-brainer! :cool:
 
~Shard~ said:
Some of it is simply due to cost, and people not being able to afford them, but this is becoming les and less of an excuse, as the prices on LCDs are coming way down and are so much more commonplace. I can understand the hesitation of some people, when they look at buying a new PowerMac for instance for $3000, then they have to add on an additional $2000 or whatever for a nice LCD, making the purchase/overall system cost-prohibitive, but the other thing with monitors is they last forever, essentially! ;) A nice LCD will last you for a few systems and quite a few years in most cases, so they are definitely sound investments as long as you purchase high quality ones (i.ee. Apple ones!)

But yes, I agree - get with the times and get an LCD - the benefits are so numerous it's a no-brainer! :cool:
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Yes, you are correct, the LCD's are still expensive and I don't mean to ridicule anyone who isn't able to make the switch due to cost. I'm just saying that I completely disagree with anyone who claims that CRT's are better overall and that LCD's are not used by "serious" designers. That was ridiculous.

But also, on the cost issue, Apple equipment has never been cheap and never will be. It's not for everybody, plain and simple. There are other good brands out there as well.
 
andrewh said:
But also, on the cost issue, Apple equipment has never been cheap and never will be. It's not for everybody, plain and simple. There are other good brands out there as well.
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I'd have to say that Apple has actually been pretty competitive when compared to other LCD dealers. The price of their 17" model hasn't been the best but their 20" Cinema beats anything else, IMO and until recently, so did the 23" Cinema HD. Too bad Apple basically crippled these displays with ADC, otherwise I think they would have been very hot sellers. I'm hopeful that the new line expected soon, with DVI, will put Apple displays on the map on both platforms. Look what happened when they allowed the iPod to work with WinPCs!
 
Shipping times on new displays (if any)

Does apple use the same methods for announcing and shipping displays as they do with computers? As in "They are announced today, shipping within 2 months..."..

Or are they usually available at the same moment?
 
areyouwishing said:
It seems to be a common misconception that LCDs are easier on the eyes... that depends on a lot of factors. LCDs by nature only display about 266,000 colors, whereas CRTs display about 16 million colors. To simulate 24-bit color an LCD takes the 2 closest RGB values and flips between the 2 of them for the given pixel.. the problem with this is that sometimes these 2 values can be very close, and sometimes they can be very off... so you don't have very accurate color, because vast amounts of color look the same.
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LCD's definitely have less subtle color differentiation, but I was under the impression that this was because of the lower contrast.

That LCD's are easier on the eyes is not a misconception, it's fairly well documented in the medical literature, and it's considered an ergonomic improvement to go from CRT->LCD. The reason for this is the fact that LCD's don't have the convergence issues of CRT's. Even the highest quality CRT will have some issues with convergence (trying to get each color beam to converge on exactly the same pixel.) This gets worse the larger the CRT. Of course, a crappy LCD compared to a high quality CRT will minimize this difference (as a crappy CRT compared with a high quality LCD will minimize the difference in color differentiation.)

--D
 
klaus said:
Does apple use the same methods for announcing and shipping displays as they do with computers? As in "They are announced today, shipping within 2 months..."..

Or are they usually available at the same moment?
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Yea do updated displays sound like they would ship immediately, or like a two month wait?

ps- Klaus, I get the impression we're in a similar predicament. I just ordered a 2.5 G5 three days after release, and now I'm waiting for a new display to go with it. Only difference is I live in the states. I just hope I get mine before 8/02... :eek:
 
yep soire, we are in the same booth :), waiting, longing, and eventually amazed! (when it finally is on my desk)

I have an order in for the 2.5 (stock), 1 gig extra ram, griffin powermate, dvi-video,
and now i'm waiting for the displays, 20" or 23" depends on the price, and i'll take applecare, to be sure ;)

but I guess patience is a virtue, at least i get to buy all of this through my boss, so I don't have to pay the vat, that saves me 21% on the total price, and it's quite a sum :eek:

guess i'll be using my 1900xp for a while until it arrives

cheers!
 
Dave00 said:
LCD's definitely have less subtle color differentiation, but I was under the impression that this was because of the lower contrast.

That LCD's are easier on the eyes is not a misconception, it's fairly well documented in the medical literature, and it's considered an ergonomic improvement to go from CRT->LCD. The reason for this is the fact that LCD's don't have the convergence issues of CRT's. Even the highest quality CRT will have some issues with convergence (trying to get each color beam to converge on exactly the same pixel.) This gets worse the larger the CRT. Of course, a crappy LCD compared to a high quality CRT will minimize this difference (as a crappy CRT compared with a high quality LCD will minimize the difference in color differentiation.)

--D
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I'm also surprised no one ever mentions video-shielding when referring to the LCD-CRT debate. My Yamaha ns-10m studio monitors used to pucker up a CRT even when spaced pretty far away from the CRT display. It eventually got so bad that I packed away the NS10's- can't wait for a new display so I can bring 'em out again next to my video-shielded KRK's.
 
Dave00 said:
LCD's definitely have less subtle color differentiation, but I was under the impression that this was because of the lower contrast.
Click to expand...
And of course, the accuracy for an LCD is highly dependent on the viewing angle too.

One fun bit of trivia about CRTs is that tubes with correctly colored phosphors haven't been produced in volume since the 1950s. Modern units fart around with levels to compensate for red phosphors that are really orange, and greens that are closer to yellow -- and as andrewh noted, you aren't going to get the full spectrum matched up accurately with variations like that. You might be able to get an accurate CRT monitor custom made today, but expect to pay far more than you would for those LCD panels.
 
Soire said:
Yea do updated displays sound like they would ship immediately, or like a two month wait?

ps- Klaus, I get the impression we're in a similar predicament. I just ordered a 2.5 G5 three days after release, and now I'm waiting for a new display to go with it. Only difference is I live in the states. I just hope I get mine before 8/02... :eek:
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Are you saying that there is a delay on your Cinema Display order? If so it would seem to mean that they are running out of the current model. That would be the best of two worlds.
 
AndrewH -

You said you make a great living being a designer - Im interested. Are you in a design house or are u self-employed? Sorry for the off topic question.

BTW - if I could afford an all LCD setup I definitely would. Heres hoping the revision of the Apple line up with come with price reductions...(probably not).
 
wdlove said:
Are you saying that there is a delay on your Cinema Display order? If so it would seem to mean that they are running out of the current model. That would be the best of two worlds.
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No, I think he's just waiting for apple to announce new displays, so he can order one to go along with his shiny new computer... i'm in the same situation
 
Best Buy

How long does it usually take Best Buy to get the new stuff? I will wait to order the new 23" display until they do - just in case there are pixel problems - Best Buy has a no questions asked return policy. I can order on-line and return at the store. I gave up after two 20" displays had problems last November. This time I won't quit until I get a perfect display. Hopefully on the first try :D
 
klaus said:
No, I think he's just waiting for apple to announce new displays, so he can order one to go along with his shiny new computer... i'm in the same situation
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It's important that you get the display along with you new Mac so that you will have AppleCare coverage.

I had no choice with my new 17" from last January, wasn't ready to purchase at the time. A G4 isn't much good without a monitor.
 
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