Well, phones are subsidized so that's the one area where they can keep charging Apple Tax and still sell crazy mass volumes like in the good old iPod days. With the other stuff there are no airbags to soften the impact on your wallet.
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Apple Says It's Out of the Standalone Display Business
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I could live with the logo, but I hate the idea of going back to black plastic. I spent years phasing that crap out while making the gradual switch from Dell PCs to Macs. Now here I am with a white desk where all the gadgetry and cables are aluminum and white, and I'm supposed to stick some big hunk of black plastic in the middle of it because Apple can't be bothered to make displays anymore? Yay, can't wait to revisit 2006.
OK, at least the design is very simple, clean and angular. That's a relief considering all the baroque curvy stuff LG put out in the past. Many of their monitor stands are hideous. Still, it's black, plastic and ******* thick. For many years I hoped that Apple monitor designs would one day catch up with the iMacs, because it was just so stupid that the thing that had an entire computer in it was always thinner than the product with just a display in it. When the first aluminum iMac came out, there was the 30" Cinema display which was twice as thick as the iMac. And the last few years we've had a razor thin iMac selling alongside an old 27" display with the same thickness as the previous iMac. And what did we get in the end? An LG display that looks even thicker than the Thunderbolt 27".
johnnyturbouk
macrumors 68000
This may have been the case in 2012, however, there some pretty good options out there. For me, I'm waiting for 5K oled panel in juxtaposition with my late 2015 5k iMac. My other concern is that the lack of TB3 on the 2015 machine might preclude me from using a single port connection.
Finally, LG panels are gorgeous, I have an oled 5k tv and it's very beautiful, not as tacky and overbearing as Samsung TVs, more refined and subtle in their grandeur
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You sound as OCD as me, I use to love buying lots of gadget and junk, often given freebies to review, but I would be fastidiously selective on what goes in my temple/work station.
PS did you just fat shame apple displays!
The display market has evolved tremendously yet years working 8-10 hours a day in front of Apple displays has spoiled me. Form and function should be symbiotic, not detrimental to one another. Apple's design aesthetic used to focus on simplicity and performance. It wasn't until the iPhone that Apple became [more of] a status symbol.
I used Apple displays and systems throughout my business as they blended in with the desks and interior aesthetics, not because of the brand, and they were top notch for the money. It was a statement, not of grandiosity but that I take my work seriously. My business ran on Mac's and my setup consisted of 4 mounted 30" displays that fit perfectly together. There was a reason professionals such as Annie Leibovitz and editing studio's used Apple systems - they were designed to work together.
Anyone could walk into an Apple Store and find everything they needed. The displays sold Mac's, Mac's sold displays. Neither ate into iMac's as they weren't marketed for professionals using a workstation Power Mac or Mac Pro and they sold well, especially the 30" displays. We couldn't keep enough in stock. Now the stores are crowded, Mac's are outdated and overpriced, customers will have to find displays elsewhere, and most floor specialists don't know the difference between integrated and dedicated graphics, RAM, HDD vs SSD.
The stores reflected Apple's doctrine - the harmony of form and function. Now they reflect the discord within the company itself. Apple doesn't know what it wants to be, the focus that brought it back to life is gone and it shows.
I used Apple displays and systems throughout my business as they blended in with the desks and interior aesthetics, not because of the brand, and they were top notch for the money. It was a statement, not of grandiosity but that I take my work seriously. My business ran on Mac's and my setup consisted of 4 mounted 30" displays that fit perfectly together. There was a reason professionals such as Annie Leibovitz and editing studio's used Apple systems - they were designed to work together.
Anyone could walk into an Apple Store and find everything they needed. The displays sold Mac's, Mac's sold displays. Neither ate into iMac's as they weren't marketed for professionals using a workstation Power Mac or Mac Pro and they sold well, especially the 30" displays. We couldn't keep enough in stock. Now the stores are crowded, Mac's are outdated and overpriced, customers will have to find displays elsewhere, and most floor specialists don't know the difference between integrated and dedicated graphics, RAM, HDD vs SSD.
The stores reflected Apple's doctrine - the harmony of form and function. Now they reflect the discord within the company itself. Apple doesn't know what it wants to be, the focus that brought it back to life is gone and it shows.
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You could make an argument that the Apple Ecosystem is slightly askew:
1 - If the Touch Bar is fantastic - oh you have an iMac - too bad, you have to wait.
2 - If the MBP is lighter and thinner and a beautiful piece of alyouminium just think how great it will look when connected to the thick , kliudgy, non-alyouminium plastic slab LG monitor.
1 - If the Touch Bar is fantastic - oh you have an iMac - too bad, you have to wait.
2 - If the MBP is lighter and thinner and a beautiful piece of alyouminium just think how great it will look when connected to the thick , kliudgy, non-alyouminium plastic slab LG monitor.
It's starting to look like he doesn't want to run quite the same Apple that Steve Jobs built after his return.
Steve's Apple sold crazy expensive premium products too, but they had plenty of affordable stuff as well. A huge part of the company's success and fortune was built on the iPods, particularly the cheaper ones (Mini, Nano, Shuffle). It's how Apple became an everyman's brand. The iMac was reasonably affordable. The Mac Mini was cheap(ish). There were lots of DIY things you could do... upgrade memory, hard drives etc.
Cook is severing the ties with the everyman. He's not content with Apple being a premium brand covering a price range that in car terms would correspond to high-end Volkswagen to high-end Audi. He wants high-end Audi to be the low end, and the rest to be Porsche. It's as if his dream is that Apple Stores will only accept customers who arrive in limos, while anyone arriving by lesser means of transportation will be turned away at the door with a stern "no riff-raff please" look.
The Mac Mini is no longer particularly affordable, it's overpriced and outdated and the DIY potential has been eliminated.
The iMac has shifted from entry-level to luxury item. MacBooks are no longer a $999 back-to-school item, they're a $1299 fashion statement.
Where are they going with all this? I don't know, but here's what I do know: This year, for the first time since I completed the transition from PC to Mac around 2009, I've started to have second thoughts, which I never saw coming. I look at what Microsoft, Google, Lenovo, Sony and others are doing and I'm beginning to sense that feeling I had when I started eyeing the Apple ecosystem around 2005, but with the positions reversed.
I understand where you're coming from- thanks for your perspective. I love my 2012 cMBP and I've come to terms with the fact that nothing in Apple's lineup is going to replace it for me. I purchased an Asus desktop for gaming and I love it (next desktop will not be a prebuilt, in any case). My next Mac purchase will likely be a rMB in about two years, but the rest of Apple's lineup is either outdated, too expensive, or doesn't meet my needs.
Good. Apple displays were overpriced--especially once the competition starting catching up around 2010. Still will have a special place in my heart for the old 30" Cinema Display.
This is disappointing. More and more pros who use desktops use multiple displays, and setting a MacBook next to an LG monitor is not "multi-monitor". Why bother with the premium for Apple design when you have to put an ugly black monitor next to your aluminum iMac? I think this next year will be telling if Apple cares about the desktop market or not.
I do think they are still committed to notebooks, but they seem to be giving up the productivity-class market. Despite everybody's complaining, I think the MacBook is a nice iteration, and if SurfaceBook didn't exist there would be far less griping and far more gushing about the design.
I do think they are still committed to notebooks, but they seem to be giving up the productivity-class market. Despite everybody's complaining, I think the MacBook is a nice iteration, and if SurfaceBook didn't exist there would be far less griping and far more gushing about the design.
Exactly. I have 3 27" LED Cinema Displays with the current gen Mac Pro6,1 which needs a serious update to justify $6k+ for a reasonably equipped model using ~3 year old tech. The fact that [underpowered] MacBook "Pro's" can run displays our top "pro" system cannot is bewildering. Either pull it, lower the price points, or update it.
This weeks announcement surprised half of corporate as well. There are much better prototypes we thought would make the keynote, including new displays. We're hoping Cook decided to launch the new models for the holiday season as sales are down across the board for the first time in 15 years and appropriately powered systems will be released next year with Kaby Lake (-X) as Intel has been the main factor in delayed Mac updates. Display prototypes have been in use for the past ~2 years, ironically using LG panels which are most definitely the same LED LCD panels announced this week.
Angela Ahrendts and Ive retooling retail since 2014 has been a primary focus behind the scenes. With that complete we're hoping this is an intermediary decision until the full Mac line is released. As the new iMac and displays share similar display/GPU components, some of which aren't ready for mass production, that may explain their absence from this lackluster release.
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It's all the more heartbreaking being the day after Microsoft released the sort of display that a lot of us would kill for who work as professional engineers and illustrators... exactly the sort of direction I wanted Apple to go.
They didn't even send Jony Ive to LG to make it look pretty with 'aluminium'.
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Don't forget Magic!
I am seriously considering cancelling my MacBook pro orders, and am pricing up a Surfacebook. I don't code and am OS agnostic in terms of productivity on the applications I use, although I much prefer MacOS.
However hardware makes the decisions for me, and it certainly appears Apple has reached the tipping point of no longer supporting the professional desktop moving forward, and I now forced to have to look at a different options after 20 years of Apple. Very dissapointing.
Just thought, judging by the paucity of oomph in the very-long-awaited MB updates, they might figuratively be out of the laptop business as well. So they're continuing their de-evolition to become soley an iphone company.
You can hook it up to 2 4k external displays at 60hz each
not exactly state of the art technology, I don't know how you will survive.....
Both the Surface Book and Surface Studio aren't quite there for me... but I can easily see the 2nd gen versions due next year becoming my standards. They are both going in exactly the direction I need.
(I suspect a lot of people who use a Cintiq day-to-day professionally are thinking exactly the same)
So two days after Apple introduces new MacBook Pros you are convinced they're out of the Mac business?