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Then my eyes are deceiving me and $4K+ all-in-one computer I've bought does not have panel quality comparable to $100 no-name Chinese monitor. Same with a $4K+ laptop computer. Having these issues (and having them described as "normal" by Apple) is exactly "horrible", considering "premium" marketing.

My thick iMac started to develop dust buildup behind the glass - looked like the panel was failing. Was solved by getting it to service to clean (out of warranty, so had to pay money to resolve the issue that should never have been there).

Fact that you've been lucky does not mean that all Apple computers are some sort of fairy-dust-powered miracles.

You can see numerous reports on these issues even here on forums.

P.S. I'm not saying that every Apple display was bad, quite the contrary - Cinema/TB displays are very good, Macbook pre-Retina displays were very good, iMac thick displays were very good. Problem is that new thin displays are really crappy.

P.P.S. I can see you live in USA, maybe it's a first-world thing, I was talking about what's sold in EU/CIS.

No, US sucks just as bad. My second iMac is ghosting like crazy. I have videos and pictures of just how bad it is. Except, I don't need to run some special screen thing for hours to see it. Just open text editor and start a few paragraphs. Switch to another program, and whalla you can still read what you wrote in the editor
 
Long story short, 4k isn't ready for primetime (pun intended) - and will likely require DP1.3 to truly work well (and therefore Thunderbolt 3) and/or HDMI 2.0. Until then it's a hack, but the industry has to start somewhere before HEVC and 4k content become common.

In the mean time, I would just like to buy a refreshed Thunderbolt display from Apple. The current TBD hasn't been updated in 2.5yrs - but it would be great if Apple would give us a TBD2 including MagSafe2, TB2, USB 3 ... and in the thinner form factor of the current iMacs. Maybe drop the price to $800 or so.

Then, in 2-3 years when 4k actually becomes plug-and-play at 5120x2880@60hz, I'll upgrade to the 30" TBD3...
 
Anybody tried the 39" Seiki 3840 x 2160 yet?

I'm running a 2009 Mac Pro with a 39" Seiki 4k tv and Mavericks.
Runs 100% all the time except when Mac wakes up, it takes a few seconds and a few keyboard bar clicks to handshake with the tv. Otherwise I'm very happy with it, I even sold my 30" Cinema Display to keep this one.
 
Yah, it's disappointing that Apple hasn't released their own updated displays. Makes you wonder if they are already doing more than they can manage, or if the issues are entirely in the manufacturing capacity, or maybe they can't get them to a price point that would provide healthy margins?

Read the article.
 
I just want to point out to MacRumors, and to the rest of the community, that MacVidCards pointed this out about a month ago. Unfortunately because he was snuffed out by the overly zealous moderators and silenced by the over-eager fan-boi's who can't see the forest for the trees, his hard work and worthwhile information has gone almost completely unnoticed.

The Mac Pro is a weak design. Pathetic PSU. Outdated GPU's that will only be upgradeable with future over-priced Apple offerings. No keyboard or mouse included for pete sake. No internal storage available with the only real option being over priced slow Thunderbolt peripherals. Current lack of real 4K support despite it being advertised (this will most likely be fixed in a software update, thankfully).
 
I just want to point out to MacRumors, and to the rest of the community, that MacVidCards pointed this out about a month ago. Unfortunately because he was snuffed out by the overly zealous moderators and silenced by the over-eager fan-boi's who can't see the forest for the trees, his hard work and worthwhile information has gone almost completely unnoticed.

Fanbois can silence people?

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I don't understand why we can't just enter the exact screen dimensions we want in System Preferences. Throw in a GUI scaling slider for "retina" support, and we're done.
 
By June 2014 Apple will have their new monitors, any bugs will have been worked out in the new Mac Pro, and all will be fine.

Hell, took me a year to get a 32' optical thunderbolt cable so I could run my noisy stuff to my machine room. (recording studio.)

4k will be awesome soon.
 
The Mac Pro is a weak design. Pathetic PSU. Outdated GPU's that will only be upgradeable with future over-priced Apple offerings. No keyboard or mouse included for pete sake. No internal storage available with the only real option being over priced slow Thunderbolt peripherals. Current lack of real 4K support despite it being advertised (this will most likely be fixed in a software update, thankfully).

Wait a second. Thunderbolt storage is really fast, first of all, just expensive. And the Mac Pro can drive some 4K displays, just not all of them. As the big bold title of the article says, "Mac Pro/OS X 4K Display Compatibility 'Like the Wild West', Some 4K Monitors Unsupported." And since it's an OS X software problem, not the Mac Pro's fault. I don't know why you're complaining about the PSU. Does the machine just not work when it's running at full capacity? And you're seriously complaining about Apple giving us the option to not buy the keyboard and mouse if we don't want it :confused:

If you had one valid argument here, it was about the GPUs not being upgradeable. Except I'm not even sure if they're outdated.
 
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This is pretty embarrassing considering that the Sharp display is suggested as a companion to the Mac Pro during the configuration process. Slightly less embarrassing is that Apple didn't get a 4k display out with the introduction of the MP. But combine the two together, and Apple is presenting a very difficult situation for Mac Pro buyers wishing to take advantage of the much-promoted 4k support. Historically, Mac OS has always had best-in-class support and user experience for displays, and this is certainly a blemish on that record.

IMO this is a rare drop of the ball for Tim Cook, in addition to the extremely tight production constraints pushing nMP wait times into February.

Im sure someone already pointed this out.

I agreed with everything you said until the part I bolded. I hate to sound like a hater, I really don't want to, but truth is Tim Cook is dropping the ball in general.
 
Where did I say TB2 would provide it? Again, thats why i explicitly said that the connection which would drive x2880 displays would use DP1.3. And yes for Thunderbolt, that would mean a refreshed thunderbolt implementation, and yes that thunderbolt implementation would require a higher throughput.

Either via additional channels, or via the originally intended optical link, since otherwise you will fail to meet the requirements to qualify for DP1.3 - and if it did that it would not be DP1.3. But I would've assumed that to have fallen under 'obvious'.
I think there are lot of implicit assumptions that most people will call obvious. One is that any new version of data transfer protocol will be announced long before it will be available simply because it is something agreed by committee involving several companies that need time to implement it after it has been announced/agreed upon. Which means that since we haven't heard anything concrete about a TB 3, that TB 3 is still some way off and thus 8K displays on Macs are still some way off. It doesn't matter that there is already a DP 1.3 standard, without a TB 3 standard that is irrelevant for Macs.

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It IS actually a retina display. For the viewing distance, it is considered a retina display. Sure, it "works", but UI elements are prohibitively tiny.
If it is a retina display, then operating it in HiDPI mode (ie, as 1920 x 1080 monitor), should be the default way of using it. But somehow people think a 32" monitor should display things (text, buttons, menu bars, UI chrome) smaller than that.

This is a display that is about half-way between a normal and a retina display simply because that display size to viewing distance ratio does not stay constant when going to larger displays. The viewing distance for a 30" display is not twice that for a 15" display. If it were constant, for a given eyesight acuity, getting a larger display would just mean a longer viewing distance but not being able to see more stuff.

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For example my 27" iMac can do 1280x720 in HiDPI mode, but I can't do anything higher than that. I should be able to set it to 1920x1080 in HiDPI mode, but Apple only allows that on retina macbooks.

This is a big problem, because a 4K display at 32" inches is too small at native res and too big at "proper" HiDPI resolution. To realistically use the display, you have to be able to run it half way in between like you can on a retina macbook.
Apple's argument could be that those intermediate resolutions only look good enough if the physical display dpi is small enough to somewhat hide the interpolation smearing, something the 32" 4K display doesn't fulfil.

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So basically it's unusable in Photoshop, and pretty much every program that is on the Mac because you cannot even see the icons in the toolbar they are so small., don't even get me started on tooltips to select different tools.

And of course osx does not allow you to change font size, scale anything... So I'm going to go with unusable unless you want to use he Mac Pro hooked into a 4k tv. Even if there is one program that supports it, the rest of your os worthless.

Retina scaling has nothing to do with the monitor. It's a simple double the pixels and scale down instead of up (like windows). It's just a fast bitblt and there is no reason it cannot be enabled for this monitor. The scaling "resolutions" are just scale factors on the retina MacBook Pro.

Retina scaling can be enabled on this monitor (just in the 2x HiDPI mode only).

And can you see the icons in PS on this display when used on a Windows PC? Does Windows offer this 2x oversampling and then downsampling that is used on the rMBP for intermediate resolutions? Does PS have double resolution icons (which are needed for this kind of scaling)?

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The "failing" really is OSX which never had a global prefs to set sizes for fonts or other UI elements.

Something pretty much any other alt.OS could do for 20 years or more.

"Retina"-scaling is just a kludge to retrofit that feature in a rather clumsy way.

No, retina scaling is the only way to get additional resolutions that look consistently good for all UI elements and all applications because a global preference for the size of fonts and UI elements will never be adhered to for all but a subset of all applications which means you end up in big mess.
 
The Mac Pro is a weak design. Pathetic PSU.

It appears to be properly scaled for the hardware it supports.


Outdated GPU's...

They appear to be the latest spec for a FirePro GPU per the Annadtech review.

And while there is a newer generation of silicon available from AMD, are these workstation-level GPUs or consumer/gaming-level GPUs?

And if there are newer generation workstation-level GPUs out, when did they come out? It's clear Apple finalized this design back in mid-2013 when the announced it at WDCC, but they would have likely made the GPU decision even earlier. So if these FirePro GPUs were what was "state of the art" for workstation-level GPUs in early 2013...


...that will only be upgradeable with future over-priced Apple offerings.

But at least they will be upgradeable, unlike every other current Apple computing product.


No keyboard or mouse included for pete sake.

If everyone used an Apple Bluetooth keyboard and Magic Mouse, then it would make sense to include them. But I would not be surprised if folks doing pro-level work might have personal choices for input devices, which would mean including them would add ~$200 to the price for something they would leave in the box.


No internal storage available with the only real option being over priced slow Thunderbolt peripherals.

I have found TB1 to be anything but "slow" for data throughput - especially compared to FW800 and USB2/3. *shrug*
 
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DVI video and HDMI video are the same. They both suck because they use the scammy DRM known as HDCP :mad:

Yeah, well DVI on Macs never used HDCP.

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Then my eyes are deceiving me and $4K+ all-in-one computer I've bought does not have panel quality comparable to $100 no-name Chinese monitor. Same with a $4K+ laptop computer. Having these issues (and having them described as "normal" by Apple) is exactly "horrible", considering "premium" marketing.

My thick iMac started to develop dust buildup behind the glass - looked like the panel was failing. Was solved by getting it to service to clean (out of warranty, so had to pay money to resolve the issue that should never have been there).

Fact that you've been lucky does not mean that all Apple computers are some sort of fairy-dust-powered miracles.

You can see numerous reports on these issues even here on forums.

P.S. I'm not saying that every Apple display was bad, quite the contrary - Cinema/TB displays are very good, Macbook pre-Retina displays were very good, iMac thick displays were very good. Problem is that new thin displays are really crappy.
The iMac and the 27" standalone monitor from Apple use the same panels (just look it up on the sites that provide the information which precise panel is used in a given monitor model). That glass cover that can get dirty exists in Apple's 27" monitors as well. The only difference is that an iMac has a fan which the standalone display does not have (which likely makes that dirt problem worse).

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hdmi is only ****** on apple. there is a reason its a standard and everyone uses it and it works everywhere.
Tell me again why HDMI (a) replaced DVI or (b) on some PCs even skipped DVI, ie, they went from VGA to HDMI directly and (c) was used instead of DP?

HDMI was developed for the entertainment industry, not for computers, just look at the original consortium, all entertainment industry companies. Somehow PCs got pressured into using it instead of DVI because it made hooking up a PC with a TV easier and because it made the enforcement of DRM easier.

I don't see any reason to use HDMI over DP.

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All Adobe products allow you to increase the size of interface elements. Given the fact that many people are able to work on 1920x1200 15'' display they should be able to work on a 3840 x 2160 27'' one.

In my version of PS that only affects the font size, not the icon size. And this is very much a kludge as this only solves the problem for one application, all other applications are still unusable or look horrible. And even if other applications had something similar, you would have to set it in each application separately, and the enlargement factor won't be coordinated between different applications.

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I'm sure its fine as a second display for working on 4k media in full-screen mode.
I think it is also fine a lot of content-centric retina-aware applications run in HiDPI mode. Yes, UI chrome (and text) will be a bit large but a lot of the screen will show content (images, video) which anyway can and is scaled separately by the user. Take Aperture in fullscreen mode, so yes, the HUD will be a bit large but otherwise you have 32" of sharp images.

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First they'd rather support other screens properly before throwing another overpriced (just apple branded) display on the market.
Damned if they do, damned if they don't. If they do, it will be 'just an Apple branded' display, if they don't, they 'don't properly support 4K'.
 
For all of us broadcast professionals 4k currently is a worthless feature anyway.

What about us film professionals?

And also rubbish... 4K is more about colour depth and than resolution.

4K footage down sampled still looks better than most 1080p, and you have crop room!
 
Speculation is that you would use two TB2 channels to drive each half of a display (similar to Dual-Link DVI). So having six TB2 connectors would allow driving three displays.
If I understood Anand's review correctly, two TB ports share one TB controller.
 
I just want to point out to MacRumors, and to the rest of the community, that MacVidCards pointed this out about a month ago. Unfortunately because he was snuffed out by the overly zealous moderators and silenced by the over-eager fan-boi's who can't see the forest for the trees, his hard work and worthwhile information has gone almost completely unnoticed.

The Mac Pro is a weak design. Pathetic PSU. Outdated GPU's that will only be upgradeable with future over-priced Apple offerings. No keyboard or mouse included for pete sake. No internal storage available with the only real option being over priced slow Thunderbolt peripherals. Current lack of real 4K support despite it being advertised (this will most likely be fixed in a software update, thankfully).

Sorry why are the GPU's outdated? They are 7,000 tf... not many cards can do that.

Mouse and Keyboards are never included with Workstations. They have always ben an add on. Even with Dell etc.

4K is a bit of pain a with any machine at the moment. The standards have not caught up yet.

The PSU is Enough!? What are you talking about - Half the point of this design is to cut power consumption. I have a PC that eats 1400 watts at full pelt... might not matter for one person.. but when you have 50 in a studio it will.

Thunderbolt slow... er...what?

Of course MacVidCards is going to moan - He makes a lot of money from Hacking PC cards and selling them on eBay. I have one. but if Apple are sticking this power for $1000 in then I am more than happy
 
If I understood Anand's review correctly, two TB ports share one TB controller.

Not quite. There's 6 TB ports that share 4 controllers. So if you are using 2 ports, they use 2 controllers. If you use 4 ports, they use 4 controllers. If you use 6 ports, they use 4 controllers, so things might slow down if you're using all 6 at max. But if you use 4 at max and 2 are idle, you'll never notice any slowdown.

Think of it like a highway. You have 4 lanes, and 6 on-ramps. If all 6 on-ramps are full, you'll have trouble. But if all 6 on-ramps are only at 2/3 capacity, there won't be a traffic jam.
 
For years Cinema Displays led the field, featuring IPS panel monitors exclusively when most others only had inferior TN panels. Clearly Apple has dropped back from that position in past years, but to say Apple doesn't know anything at all about displays is hyperbole at best. To suggest it weakens any argument you have on the subject.

The problem with these comparisons is that people always compare to cheaper PC offerings or default product offerings from other brands. What you suggest was not the case if you compared within a similar price range. Apple was not always the best value, and I'm familiar with all of their displays back to the late CRTs. In case you meant the imacs, those started with IPS during the G4 era, went to larger TNs with the G5s, then slowly migrated back to IPS starting with the 24" displays. These were still cheaper LG IPS panels, back when LG wasn't the only thing available, and they had other flaws. The ones I used (used not owned) always ended up with edge discoloration, and many of the pre-aluminum types had short lifespans.

The 4K compatibility is really an issue of its own. 4K is bleeding edge right now so incompatibilities & quirks really should be expected. The pioneers (early adopters) always take the arrows. But a fix and improvements will come soon.

Further in the article actually mentions some points which aren't standardized.

Kinda. Apple monitors tend to be in the middle of the spectrum, and most monitors you buy within that same price range have been well tested for screen quality before rolling out the door.

Apple makes quality, well designed monitors, no doubt. But Eizos they ain't.

I usually compare against NEC due to much more overlapping price territory. NEC is typically more expensive on launch, then dips below the price of Apple after some time.

Fanbois can silence people?

He meant macvidcards ended up in time-out. If he's not already back, he should be soon.
 
So, it's the wild wild west

It's usually like that when a new standard begins to take shape. There are far too many standards in everything, in retrospect, but only after the various companies of the world compete in the market does a standard emerge. When did the Mac start to make money? When they offered a cheap way to print with Postscript and lasers. Imaging. Quicktime.

They're holding back until they have their ideas together about 4K, and first, everybody else shows their cards. Then they synthesize and show you their idea. It's ridiculed and then becomes the standard.

It's not that Apple wants to dictate. But the best platforms happen after jostling with each other. Apple holds their play, and out comes their iPhone. Unless the "They can't do it without Steve Jobs" crowd, who were generally not his fans when he was living, are actually correct. But I don't think so.
 
The iMac and the 27" standalone monitor from Apple use the same panels

This is just not true.

Right now in front of me are TB display (thick, circa 2011) and iMac 27" (thin, circa 2012) - panels are completely different. iMac has image ghosting and slightly warmer backlight color temp, TB display is just perfect.

Even more, even in same-generation iMacs and MacBooks Apple uses panels from different vendors.
 
Not quite. There's 6 TB ports that share 4 controllers. So if you are using 2 ports, they use 2 controllers. If you use 4 ports, they use 4 controllers. If you use 6 ports, they use 4 controllers, so things might slow down if you're using all 6 at max. But if you use 4 at max and 2 are idle, you'll never notice any slowdown.

Think of it like a highway. You have 4 lanes, and 6 on-ramps. If all 6 on-ramps are full, you'll have trouble. But if all 6 on-ramps are only at 2/3 capacity, there won't be a traffic jam.

Yes you will, because some idiot will try to merge from the far right lane to the far left at 10mph when everyone else is going 75mph.
 
This is just not true.

Right now in front of me are TB display (thick, circa 2011) and iMac 27" (thin, circa 2012) - panels are completely different. iMac has image ghosting and slightly warmer backlight color temp, TB display is just perfect.

Even more, even in same-generation iMacs and MacBooks Apple uses panels from different vendors.

Ironically, they are LG or Samsung panels (I think they might be using sharp as well). LG panels are awful and Samsung is wonderful (I know it's an opinion, but I believe most people will agree, at least based on these forums).

I just wish Samsung and Apple will stop fighting since I believe Apple will try to move away from Samsung panels to Sharp or LG (both of which so far are subpar quality. I have had issues with ghosting, horrible saturation even with color correction and flickering).
 
Wait a second. Thunderbolt storage is really fast, first of all, just expensive. And the Mac Pro can drive some 4K displays, just not all of them. As the big bold title of the article says, "Mac Pro/OS X 4K Display Compatibility 'Like the Wild West', Some 4K Monitors Unsupported." And since it's an OS X software problem, not the Mac Pro's fault. I don't know why you're complaining about the PSU. Does the machine just not work when it's running at full capacity? And you're seriously complaining about Apple giving us the option to not buy the keyboard and mouse if we don't want it :confused:

If you had one valid argument here, it was about the GPUs not being upgradeable. Except I'm not even sure if they're outdated.

All my arguments are valid. For the price the damn thing had better come with a mouse and keyboard, even the Apple crappy ones. Second, the PSU can't run the CPU's and the GPU's full blast at the same time, thus limiting the amount of work one can do at any one time. The previous Mac Pro's had 1000w PSU's, now it's 450. Also, because of the old Mac Pro design, it was extremely easy to either install a more powerful PSU internally, or run one outside the box with cords running in through the back of the machine. You can't do that anymore because the damn thing is shaped like a trash can.

And, yes, this article says that running 4K monitors on this thing currently is like the wild-west...but Apple sure as hell has not stated that. According to them this thing can run 4K no problem.
 
And, yes, this article says that running 4K monitors on this thing currently is like the wild-west...but Apple sure as hell has not stated that. According to them this thing can run 4K no problem.

Um, you have to be fair, it's not Apple's fault at all. It's the problem with 4K being in its infancy and not having proper standards.

And Mac Pro will run 4K at 30Hz just fine on any display methinks.

But DP MST, which is required to get to 60Hz, is not standartized for this purpose (because this "60Hz support" is a hack) - so every display manufacturer may interpret left/right streams as it likes. Thus forcing Apple to hard-code display spec for each display model.
 
Sorry why are the GPU's outdated? They are 7,000 tf... not many cards can do that.

Mouse and Keyboards are never included with Workstations. They have always ben an add on. Even with Dell etc.

4K is a bit of pain a with any machine at the moment. The standards have not caught up yet.

The PSU is Enough!? What are you talking about - Half the point of this design is to cut power consumption. I have a PC that eats 1400 watts at full pelt... might not matter for one person.. but when you have 50 in a studio it will.

Thunderbolt slow... er...what?

Of course MacVidCards is going to moan - He makes a lot of money from Hacking PC cards and selling them on eBay. I have one. but if Apple are sticking this power for $1000 in then I am more than happy


The PSU is important if you want to run things off of the computer rather than having external plug-ins with extension cords running all over the place, like you will need to have with the new Mac Pro. Before, everything was nicely concealed within and powered by the box. Now, no.

Thunderbolt is bleeding slow when compared to PCIe speeds. It's not that the new Mac Pro doesn't have PCIe, it's just that it is not accessible for the majority of peripherals. Everything needs to be run through Thunderbolt now, and it's about only PCIe 2 4x speed. No, thanks.

MacVidCards may be moaning because he had a business selling PC cards for the Mac, but that does not negate the fact that he still made some very valid points about the limitation of this new machine.
 
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