The only reason they even broke out the pricing like this is because the target audience is media production houses in Hollywood and other high budget environments where they already have their own rigs and mounts. It’s just a line item on an invoice. This monitor is competing against $25k+ reference displays. And the price is very competitive.
The only difference here is that no other company does large scale press events for products meant for such a niche professional audience.
MKBHD said it best in his video. If Apple had said “This is a $6k monitor” and then during configuration time provided a stand-less option for $1k less, then we wouldn’t see any of these dumb articles.
This is everything that is wrong with journalism today.
What makes people think that if it's a "hollywood" production house (most of them aren't in Hollywood) that they are ready to buy a $1k monitor stand, no questions asked? It won't happen, unless they are a) stupid (they aren't) b) flush with cash (they aren't) c) for a client room (maybe).
What is interesting is that new monitor. Spec-wise it's not the same as a good Sony or even Flanders, but it's not that far off and it's not $35k+. Now, that's something that those studios would buy plus a stand - when you put it like that - 6-7k monitor that's 95% there of a 35k monitor.
I really wish people would stop comparing this monitor to the $35k monitors. Yes, it's almost as good, maybe even 95% as good, but guess what? People are not paying $35k for the sake of it, that 5% is really bloody important. If it isn't important to you, you weren't going to buy the $35k monitor already. The reason they're so much more expensive is because they have features and specs that a small number of people find really important and will pay the premium for it. If we want to go down that line fine - but people can just as easily point to $2k displays that are 95% as good as the Apple one.
Having worked for eons in production, I can tell you that's not true. You see, coloring and tech prep work can be done on 95% monitors (compared to sony for example). Certain broadcast techies need 100% (broadcast engineering isn't in studios), and I would definitely challenge that as well - knowing and working with these people over the years.
What is happening in studios is this a) there needs to be a monitor that one can work on (95% IS FINE, broadcast engineering isn't in studios) b) wow factor for clients and dick showing contest in-front of them.
In fact the actual point should be that those production houses will never buy this stand because they already have their stands. (this is what MKBHD said anyway).
And to be honest, if I had the money I would buy that stand, I always loved these move-around-stay-in-place gadgets.
Look... I hear this argument a lot and I've used it myself.
But after a few days of considering it, I do think the general consensus is correct. The price is completely bonkers.
I haven't read the article BTW.
But it's not correct that production houses are so minted they don't care and just soak up the costs (I work in marketing, I work with these people). Margins can be thin and equipment costs matter.
A grand for a stand is mental and will be questioned on the PO when it goes past the CFO or the person signing the cheques.
This was a weird move by Apple and totally tone deaf for the market the audience at the event.
And the WWDC event is important. They should have known better... the fact they didn't predict the reaction to this speaks volumes. The multi millionaire and billionaire senior management are massively out of touch in some ways.
In other ways they got it right: They actually spoke to the people who wanted this Mac and they got it right.
But WWDC is their premier public international marketing stunt of the year. The grand for a stand is a bad look and just reinforces Apple as a brand for elitists when that is the last thing they need globally.
> This monitor is competing against $25k+ reference displays. And the price is very competitive.
No it isn't. That's just the framing. Yes, reference monitors are expensive. It's not a reference monitor. A reference monitor is a very specialized piece of equipment that fits into infrastructure that you may find at a broadcasting studio:
It's not necessarily the panel itself that makes them so pricey (though OLED vs. LCD does make a difference). Rather, it's the fact that they're niche products.
People keep saying this: Is this monitor actually competitive with $25k+ reference monitors? Because the specs seem to indicate "no" to me, but I'm not a professional user so can't judge what's important.
Also, to be able to use your own mount you still need the $200 VESA mount.
So you're not a professional user and you can't judge what's important. But your gut feeling is telling you that it isn't a good deal ?
I wonder what someone from Apple Product Marketing would think about comments like this when they would've spent the best part of 5 years working closely with potential customers in the product design and specifications.
Come on, it's a fair question, this person said "the specs" seem to indicate, not their gut feeling. As they read the specs it can't literally replace a $25K+ reference display.
If you are not a professional user how can you interpret the "specs".
You're not seriously saying that you can compare two products that you have no clue about simply by comparing random numbers and picking which is the highest.
It's the equivalent of picking a camera based purely off megapixels whilst ignoring dynamic range, sensor size, lens quality, in camera processing etc.
if Tesla said about a car "this one can compete straight in a nascar race, stock" and really seemed to mean it and kept repeating it, then absolutely it would be a fair question whether it is literally true. Because it's such an unusual claim.
It's yes/no: can it literally go where only a $25k can? Or not literally, no.
> If Apple had said “This is a $6k monitor” and then during configuration time provided a stand-less option for $1k less, then we wouldn’t see any of these dumb articles.
Yes we would! People aren't too dumb to do the math.
If they simply made it a $6k screen, always with the stand, then that's something that would change perception. It would mean slightly less excitement. Probably not much less. But critically, it wouldn't be insulting.
> This is everything that is wrong with journalism today.
What? It's not manufactured hate by journalists. Minutes after the presentation Twitter, reddit etc buzzed with this. So they only report on what people are reacting to.
If the article and reactions are dumb because Apple could have spun this as a $6k monitor, then that's Apple's fault.
Maybe Apple is taking a page from the fashion playbook - every runway show has 1x outrageous item to create buzz & PR. Like that wearable inflatable swimming pool..
Well said! Pasting my comment from Facebook where this was reposted:
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Idiots. The new monitor and stand isn't made for you. Not even you, clueless Engadget journalist. It's made for graphics, movie studio pros whose company pay $18000 currently for Reference monitors. Compared to that and the fact that this is 6k with that fancy nano coating, this thing is cheap.
And I'm not buying it, because I don't need it. If you don't understand the price, it's not for you either. Move along.
It's not the pricing itself that's wrong, but how Apple presents it. The way Apple presents it puts focus on the ridiculously expensive stand. Apple used to be the master at presenting these kind of new products, but they seem to have lost that edge.
The rise of Apple computers latest era started with the ad campaign "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" which made computing choices a cultural signal, mocking PC users as stodgy and out of touch corporate types. It worked.
The timing is right where a computer manufacturer with a solid build at a reasonable price could play this same strategy against Apple. I'm thinking an ad campaign which pokes fun at Apple at being over priced and pretentious, with out of touch super fans paying thousands for a basic laptop and accessories.
The cornerstone of the campaign could be this image:
I just started a discussion here [1] about the "I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC" advertising campaign. I didn't know Microsoft ran a campaign as a response to it also.
That being said, the problem is that even if another vendor could produce hardware that’s on par with Apple, but at a reasonable price, they would still lack the OS. Windows is still doing 1 hour updates on reboot, and is filled with telemetry spyware... Linux still requires a lot of hacking, often has audio and trackpad issues, etc.
Right now macOS is the only sensible operating system for creative pros. Period.
Sorry, somebody must call out these myths. A less than 20 year old Linux desktop is the most plug and play operating system there is. Stick with supported hardware and there aren't even any third party drivers to mess about it. It doesn't get any easier than that. And hardware support is a lot broader than with MacOS.
The reason more Macs are used with the creative industry is mostly cultural. The operating system isn't really a choice for a professional, you choose your tools and use whatever is required to run them. There are some exceptions with products such as Lightworks, but I get the impression that these are sold mostly as appliances.
It's different for us who do IT for IT's sake. It's more of a personal choice which desktops we want to run. It's absolutely possible to deploy on Linux and develop on a Mac as long as you don't touch anything close to the machine. You probably need to install things like Brew and keep things updated and reasonably secure, but it's not only possible but something many people find worthwhile.
I think you're probably coming from a "I have a billion years of experience with linux, so it's all easy" point of view.
Linux first install CAN be smooth sailing till the first roadblock. Then you see a few things happen:
- User gives up because a decent chunk of people don't even know to google the error message
- Error message gets googled, you now receive 2-3 different solutions
- Solutions require diving into the terminal, changing and tweaking annoying settings. Terminal use alone makes things a PITA for your average user.
Perhaps, but having a corresponding billion years of experience with some other operating system doesn't make the comparison more fair.
Buy a cheap out of the box laptop with poor hardware and you are going to have to google error messages no matter what operating system you put on it. I've had enough of Windows laptops with flaky wifi or that doesn't resume from suspend properly, for example. Mac users like their boxes primarily, and rightly, because of the premium hardware.
The fact remains, that if you have a non-techie friend or relative that wants a computer that just works for surfing the web and writing documents, get them a decent Linux box. That might mean ChromeOS these days, or it might mean Fedora on a Thinkpad. As long as they don't stray into tweaking those weird settings, they're set for life (figurately speaking, of course).
Those of us who develops software, and especially for "the cloud" (i.e. Linux), we have our own choices to make. Just give up that old Linux-requires-tinkering narrative. That hasn't been true since the early 00s, when editing xorg.conf and manually setting IRQ lines was a thing (which was true of PC hardware mostly before the PCI Express era).
So much noise about the stand. This is the stand of a $5000 monitor, not just any stand.
Any random piece of plastic on a Porsche is more expensive than on a Ford. That shouldn't be the case in a perfect world, but we don't live in a perfect world.
People have complained for years that Apple is no pro enough. The Mac Pro and XDR display are so pro-level that the vast majority of the WWDC public was not the target demographic either.
Is it too expensive? Yes. Does that matter? No, it's only because it has an Apple badge that we hear about this at all, and people entitlement with Apple is just off the charts.
I'm happy that Apple is aiming at the pro market again. I wish their next step was to release more products for programmers, not just designers.
For example, big 2k 16:10 monitors have been wiped out from the market as manufacturers can't be bothered to produce panels in that aspect ratio, instead of 16:9. More vertical space makes such a difference.
I only know of two old 30 inch models from Dell and NEC that will be soon not possible to purchase. Apple, with their scale, could get custom orders.
I am not sure that 2K 16:10 30" is the sweet spot for users. Five years ago before 4K worked properly then yes, but not now.
4K on 31" works great, plenty of vertical resolution for code plus the pixels are not too small. Anything larger and you will be getting neck ache peering up/down the screen. Or you would have to push the monitor further away than what a regular desk affords, adjusting font sizes accordingly, going into painful letter box territory.
I promise you won't look back if you go 4K on 31", there is no need for a dual monitor setup unless you are editing movies!
But with scaling, are you not simply getting effectively a 16:9 2k but a bit crisper with 4k?
I have tried one of those old 30 inch Dells with 16:10 2560x1600, and it's amazing how much nicer it feels than having just 1440 vertical pixels. The aspect ratio is closer to sqrt(2). I guess that's the difference.
I don't have scaling and all application font sizes are stock. 31" is goldilocks for me, it is about having 2160 pixels good for programming, not smoothed out 'retina', but native pixels!
I have a failed product according to the marketplace - cinema 4096 x 2160 resolution @ 24Hz with extraordinary colour accuracy. Perfect for code, useless for gaming and 60+ Hz video.
I am not sure I would want a 27" 5K monitor, even if it did work properly (mine has an early DisplayPort interface, pre-dating useful standards). If you get a chance to look at a 34" 5K monitor then I reckon that could be what you are looking for. Any bigger and you have to crane your neck or push the monitor further away.
How would you feel about having 1692 vertical pixels instead?
Aspect ratio isn't what matters, it's vertical pixels and vertical inches. A 32 inch 16:9 screen is almost exactly the same height as a 30 inch 16:10 screen.
I don't think either one is a sweet spot, once software is taken into account. Most programs can only competently scale to 1x or 2x, and nothing in between. And for a 4K 31" screen, 2x is too big.
In my opinion, 31 inches, if you were at 1x DPI, is a perfect fit for 1440p. So double the pixels to make a 31" 5K screen and you're in a great spot. Text is a good readable size. Everything is extremely crisp. Compared to a 1920x1200 screen you have 20% more vertical space, and 33% more horizontal.
I’ve been running 4K at 31” for quite a while with Windows.
It’s a sweet spot in the sense that I don’t need scaling. On the other hand this means there’s not so many pixels per inch.
I’m still dreaming of a ”PC” screen which would give me the ”wow” feeling I get using Macbooks with retina displays.
Right now there’s very little choice on market if you want high DPI for desktop. Could not find modern options, only Dell 8K/32” and 4K/24”, both of which are bit old (24” has very wide bezels unlike newer screens).
So you're saying we should look at it proportionally? Because that still makes it look terrible. Nobody else makes their stand cost 20% as much as the screen.
I'm saying we should look at it from the people in that market perspective and the value it brings them or not. The fact that Apple is not including by default is significant. They expect the vast majority of their customer to no need the stand. The option to have a stand at all is probably only for very small shop, like youtube star, and for them they have to see it as buying a 6K monitor, which is probably still a good deal for them as it gives them an affordable alternative to a reference monitor.
In general, it is a specifically designed stand for a monitor targetted at a very small part of an already niche market. So yeah, it's expensive.
I disagree with some of the points there, but that's not what I was posting about. I was disagreeing with the car analogy.
If a car costs 25x as much as a normal car, some random piece of plastic will cost much more than it normally would. But it won't be a much higher percentage of the car's price. The total percentage still has to be 100 at the end of the day, and there are extravagant body/engine/luxury features that eat into it.
This screen is at most 4x the cost of reasonable competition. It is not at all common for products that cost 4x as much to have accessories that cost 20x as much.
Is it because it is a story about Apple that we need to forget everything about how pricing works ?
According to your theory, Ergotron should charge me different prices depending on the price of monitor I'll put on it. Or a restaurant should charge you more if you have skipped a meal that day.
I was just placing limits on how much prices differ! I don't think it's good for them to differ much at all. Aren't you the one defending the price difference here?
Yes, the people who sit in $1,000 Aeron chairs with $10,000 workstations hooked up to $42,000 monitors and $5,000 speakers (each) in $100,000 - $1,000,000 studios working on movies and songs that make $100,000,000 to $1,000,000,000 each are going to be so pissed off about this atrocious pricing.
But how many people are those? 1,000 worldwide? 10,000? I am sure it is a tiny fraction of the entire audience of maybe a fifty million people who hear about it. So they should do it in a separate event or direct market it to those studios, but the news didn't fit the audience.
Because WWDC is a conduit for Apple to flex while the whole world is watching. WWDC is a major event, yes for developers but also for Apple in general to release new products and services.
Maybe this exact situation is rare, but the point still stands. For some people the value of a top of the line monitor exceeds its price. Apple is expensive compared to the competition, but still relatively cheap for the monopoly they hold and the value it provides.
The people making things aren't necessarily the ones to profit from their commercial success. VFX studios seem to be squeezed very hard by big studios.
They just won't buy the stand. I'd assume most offices already have VESA stands like [1] built into the furniture, which is why Apple isn't even bundling a stand with the monitor. It would just be wasted.
A lot of professionals not in those categories will probably also be interested in it. I think it's disingenuous to pretend it doesn't matter as only people buying $50k monitors are interested.
I could see a lot of designers buying this screen at this price point, that normally have $1-2k screens. Then that $1k stand is atrocious.
Is the monitor actually in the same category as existing "reference" monitors that cost 5 figures?
If the answer to that is yes, then the fundamental mistake is presenting the monitor at a show watched by consumers. Because that's just a recipe for bafflement and mismatched expectations.
It is very expensive. But it's based on the tried-and-tested Apple pricing approach: as high as the target customer will jump. I assume Apple is trying to milk large business customers for all they're worth, it is the “pro” market after all. The $800 saving by going for the VESA mount is peanuts compared to the overall cost of a fully-configured Mac Pro setup.
I think it's a misrepresented discount. Like, most pros have VESA mounts already. So they discount the monitor... So you don't have to pay for it if you don't need it.
But the message about that reason is not there and therefore it sounds like nickel and diming.
Instead we should consider it as:
$6000 for the monitor with stand OR
$5200 for the monitor with VESA mount
Can you link to this “same type of stand”, please? It needs to have:
- floating counterbalanced vertical positioning for a screen of this weight.
- 90 degree rotation
Apple first released this kind of mechanism with the Pixar lamp iMac, to float its screen above the hemisphere base; I haven’t seen it for any consumer or prosumer monitor since.
Whats truly odd is that it doesn’t matter whether the stand alone is worth so much — why didn’t they just add the price they wanted into the monitor itself, where price variability is less sensitive? Did they really want $5k pricetag that badly?
Instead they’ve created this ridiculous and unnecessary situation. It’s done as if they don’t actually want you to buy the stand.., but I don’t know what the alternative is? Is the mount significantly higher margins?
As Linus from LinusTechTips pointed out, if they had just bundled the whole thing for 6k with an option to buy the monitor alone for 5k (thus "saving" 1k) people would probably be less angry.
I don't really see the point of getting angry however: for once Apple is trying to charge 1k$ extra for a thing that you don't really need and that you can easily and happily live without.
Just use a compatible one that you can get for like $100 or less off Amazon.
It doesn't come with a stand, and isn't VESA compatible without an additional $200 adapter, and it's all proprietary.
It's just such a ridiculous thing to nickle and dime, or in this case, hundreds and hundrends and hundreds of dollars.
It's not justifiable and just looks like continued contempt for the consumer.
There's no way the stand costs $800 more than their VESA adapter, which means they're taking the piss. Most monitors include a stand and many include VESA functionality for free.
Apple have produced a monitor that places an arguably otherwise unobtainable level of capability within reach of a budget conscious Apple fan who would actually save up and buy this. One for whom it's not a mindless line item purchase. For whom it's a once-in-three-years or even once-in-a-decade purchase. It is a prosumer price. Brilliant.
I can't justify one, but a couple of my photography buddies could. It'll sting them, and they'll have to skimp and save for a while, and it won't be at launch, but give it a year or so of saving hard...
Except it's pretty useless without either a stand or a mount. And instead of including a stand one for free like everyone else, the price is eye watering to anyone who actually cares about price.
And by doing so, they've made the monitor pricing look like bullshit because it's effectively unusable without overpriced proprietary bullshit.
And if you were to sum up what emotion "effectively unusable without overpriced proprietary bullshit" is going to make someone feel...
Why do you make such a snide remark on a reasonable statement? $200 for a metal cross with 4 screw holes is egregious no matter whether it has a picture of a partly eaten apple on it or not. This is unrelated to any other qualities the monitor might have, it is still nothing but a VESA mount which could be included in the box or sold for a token price. They'd make a profit if they sold it at $20.
Yes. It's odd that they wouldn't use a vesa mount if they are targeting this market that often uses custom display mount grids. Or at at least include the bracket in the packaging. You can use a vesa mount and still support custom mounting brackets. Like my Dell 4ks all support vesa but use an alternative hook to actually connect and remove the monitor from the base.
Don't underestimate how people feel about having a complete Apple-design desktop solution.
Eg: people are also falling out about Apple selling a LG thunderbolt display as companion for their Macbook instead of a proper Apple-design display.
Will that display work the same when hooked to a different stand? Yes.
BTW I'm currently using a 15" macbook pro hooked to an old 24" 1920x1200 HP display (using DVI connection via a Thunderbolt docking station). I can't really complain, I am able to do whatever I need with this monitor.
For those people it's not just about functionality, but purely the looks. They know a different monitor will work just fine. For them having a different brand monitor on the desk next to a apple screen/device would be like tiling your bathroom halves with 2 completely different kind of tiles without regard of the overall look. Of course most of those people also keep complaining about how expensive Apply stuff is.
There are tripods that cost way more than this, professional equipment has a markup, justified or not.
It's funny how so many people are complaining about something they were never going to buy anyways.
At some level it is Apple's fault, they were marketing the "Pro" line to general public for so long that somehow they have set an expectation which makes no sense.
You can't possibly be serious. It is WWDC i.e. a developer's conference after all. And amongst developers and power users it was by far the best ever.
Project Catalyst allows you to build Mac apps from your iOS code base with a checkbox and some minimal code. SwiftUI is a true game changer for app developers bringing Flutter style development. iPad OS with long overdue features like desktop Safari with download manager, USB drive support, 9ms pencil latency. iOS with Dark Mode, 2x app launch time, clever use of ML in Photos. Sign in with Apple is an extremely clever way to combat privacy. Apple Maps looked really strong.
I could keep going but mundane is not the way I would describe it.
I also agree. This was one of the best WWDC’s in recent history. No matter what Apple does, it’s a lose-lose situation. HN was complaining for ages about how the 2014 Mac Pro sucked. Now that Apple has hit it out of the park, HN is still complaining about pricing. We’ve seen this since the introduction of iPhone. People said it sucked and it went ahead and changed the world. $499 for a phone!!!!! Are you kidding me?
It’s disappointing that HN continues to complain, often without basis. It’s a ritual. A positive comment has to, has to be combated with an opposing view even if it isn’t justified.
This Mac Pro is amazing in my view. Design, aesthetics, features, thermal design, engineering, EVERYTHING.
But, fuck Apple. The monitor didn’t have a 120hz refresh rate. I’m disappointed. Everyone is doing it, even Asus. How can Apple ignore our needs! For $5000!!!? Are you kidding me?
I'm not typically one for conspiracy theories but this thread got tanked at the weekend [0] and I'm not seeing much in the news about the actual story [1]. I'll certainly be watching the company I pay a premium for privacy for with great interest.
That's the other way around really. The WWDC was quite good, software wise (as it should).
All you hear about is outrage about the stand of a pro-monitor outside the budget range of even the most enthousiast consumer. That's how you know it was a good WWDC.
I don't think I'm going to buy one but here is a thing: Is it made of Aluminum or other expansive metal?
I bought a desk with Aluminum legs. The legs were empty from the inside. The desk was already expensive comparing to the standard model (It was custom made, I asked for the Alu legs). I asked the manufacturing guy why the legs were not full and he laughed. He said the price will be astronomical if they were full and that the metal is very expensive.
I forgot the price but it was definitively over $1,000. The non-Alu version was less than half.
So depending on the metal and heaviness of the stand, Apple might not be overcharging on this one.
Aluminium is actually rather cheap. Precision CNC machining on the other hand.. not so much. Especially when the design is intricate and tolerances are tight, that means a lot of machine time == a very high price point.
Although I am disappointed that Apple hasn’t made a display for “the rest of us”. I’d love an Apple monitor instead of the LG ones but without all the stuff only high end video pros need. Maybe they’ll do one after everyone buys the 6k version already.
On the actual monitor side you don’t seem to have much competition on this category. If you want large screen with high DPI, the only ”massmarket” option seems to be the couple of years old Dell 32” 8K display which sells for like $4k.
Seems to be all the 5k displays have been discontinued.
Maybe it's also more to be seen as a reference, the LG models were also quite top notch. Probably better than making/advertising low end reference models.
For example it's great that they advertise USB-C so much. This will finally end the mass of mutually incompatible docking station solutions and create less electronics trash. By the way, there is are Dell display stands with USB-C charging, integrated Ethernet, USB-A ports etc and VESA mount. So the stand I got (DS1000) was 200 $ and the screen I got for 75 $...
I wonder how many people complaining about the price of the stand, is even considering buying the monitor. My point is, why to complain about something I'm not going to buy anyway.
I was very tempted to buy a MacBook Pro last year. If the keyboards would actually work, it would have been pretty much perfect except for the price. I have no experience with the touch bar, but it didn't look so bad in the store.
I hope they can fix the keyboard issues...
(Just to make a counterpoint to the "everything Apple does sucks" tone of the article)
The only reason they even broke out the pricing like this is because the target audience is media production houses in Hollywood and other high budget environments where they already have their own rigs and mounts. It’s just a line item on an invoice. This monitor is competing against $25k+ reference displays. And the price is very competitive.
The only difference here is that no other company does large scale press events for products meant for such a niche professional audience.
MKBHD said it best in his video. If Apple had said “This is a $6k monitor” and then during configuration time provided a stand-less option for $1k less, then we wouldn’t see any of these dumb articles.
This is everything that is wrong with journalism today.