Apple Is Discontinuing Its Only Monitor

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
Alright, I need one of you guys that are Apple experts to explain this to me. I know these monitors were expensive and all but everyone I know that has one, loved it. So why are they killing off the only monitor they make?

Apple announced today that it is officially discontinuing the monitor, and as of right now, no plans for the future have been announced. Rumors ahead of this year’s WWDC, where Apple usually presents its new products, focused on the possibility of 4K and 5K Thunderbolt monitors — but right before the show, Apple mysteriously removed the Personal Pickup app from all Thunderbolts. The app assists with in-store purchases, allowing users to buy their products ahead of time and grab them at the Apple store.
 
Coming for someone that owned the 27" Apple Cinema Display and used with a PC, that's sad but I think there's so many better options nowadays. Back in 2011 or so, it was the best performing 1440p monitor compared to the HP/Dell equivalents.
 
Upcoming replacement most likely. Rumor mill is fired up that it will be a 5k monitor with a possible built in graphics card to drive it.

Power saving intergrated chip when on road and high power beast when near your desk and an outlet.
 
They'll probably go with some kind of 5k thunderbolt display with HDR. Maybe even an OLED option?
 
The monitor's big claim to fame was it's color accuracy. I just think the rest of the monitor world is catching up and Apple's offerings will not stand out so far from the crowd anymore. As soon as people learn that others can match an Apple's performance and do it cheaper, that special market is common, and Apple doesn't do common, not admittedly anyway.
 
Yeah high powered beast of a mobile Nvidia 950, feel the powa.

I had to laugh..... no ... it's true :ROFLMAO:


I do have to give Apple credit tho.

Nobody can make so much money squeezing performance out of old tech than Apple can.

It's like, "Hey we got this old 8bit sound card but if we open up these two registers and put a higher yield capacitor on the board ... and paint it white ....... it'll run 60% faster than the next generation cards that replaced them..... If it's running on OSX of course.

Just saying.
 
The announcement saddens me, but it might be Apple’s best choice for the near term. I have a feeling the iMac 5k and future 5k versions of the MacBook Pro, will replace the iMac Pro and the external display. But who knows, Apple may wait for 8k hardware to revive the Mac Pro.
 
It was really the only gloss/glass front lg ips of its type for a long time. Great on text but ya can see every little reflection in dark areas without a very dark room. Now there is more competition and its harder to get decent higher resolution panels.
 
The price sucked, everyone else was cheaper for the same level of product. As an example, Dell's Ultrasharp provides better prices, more options and equivalent to better picture (depending on the model). I won't be crying any tears.
 
  • Like
Reactions: N4CR
like this
I suspect they're not announcing anything, because they want to sell out their stock at full price. Once they do that, they'll announce a new monitor around the same time that they finally bring out the new laptops. I'm pretty sure that they're going to have a 5k monitor. And if they do thunderbolt or Display Port, they'll likely have the first one that uses a single port for 5k.
 
Coming for someone that owned the 27" Apple Cinema Display and used with a PC, that's sad but I think there's so many better options nowadays. Back in 2011 or so, it was the best performing 1440p monitor compared to the HP/Dell equivalents.
Exactly. I had one around that same time frame and it was amazing. That said, todays monitors are much better.

I bet Apple just did not make enough off monitors. Not to mention stiff competition has arose from the Korean monitor companies flooding the market and selling dirt cheap to the US.
 
Apple had a pretty good high end monitor that had zero competition for a while. I'm sure this is the original end of the road for the monitor. We may see a 5k competitor down the road, but for now I think they conceded the race.

For the longest time the best flatscreens out there sucked terribly and these helped push better LCDs to the market.
 
  • Like
Reactions: N4CR
like this
The price sucked, everyone else was cheaper for the same level of product. As an example, Dell's Ultrasharp provides better prices, more options and equivalent to better picture (depending on the model). I won't be crying any tears.
No, not really. Maybe in the past year or two, but not when it was released.
 
I remember I wanted to buy one few years ago but lack of connections killed it for me since I need to connect bunch of consoles too :(
 
Apple so wants to dump its PC business and go 100% phone and tablet.
 
Apple so wants to dump its PC business and go 100% phone and tablet.
It kind of already had, with them spending most of their R&D budget on the iPhone. But they use that technology in their other products that expand their line of business too.

They won't drop their PC business though, they need to stay relevant in other areas in order to fight off a decline in iPhone sales should it happen.

One thing is for sure, they have so much money that they could stay in business for longer than a life time while posting nothing in revenue.
 
This story is related to the Thunderbolt display (which I have sitting at my desk at work - not even being used). So, my work got me one of the new Macbooks. It's light (about 2 lbs), has a 12" screen (still usable for many tasks in my opinion), and has enough CPU power for office work, some Xcode. All in all, I like it as its light and gets the job done.
If you will recall, the Macbook only has a USB-C port and a headphone jack (for now!). So, I started looking for a USB-C to Thunderbolt adapter. Nada. Doesn't exist. I went to Apple's forums and thought I had to be overlooking something. Nope, you CAN'T use their brand new laptop on their expensive Thunderbolt display! What the fucking hell???
Long story short, my Macbook is using a USB-C to HDMI adapter, plugged into a much cheaper Dell (which isn't one of the nicer Dell displays - this one is crap).
So, if Apple were to come out with a better display with some type of GPU built-in, this would be a perfect pair for the Macbook. It does not have a good GPU. With the rumored Macbook Pro refresh coming out, who knows what they will do with it. Use the integrated GPU, keep the same price point, and expect you to to shell out some jack for their new display - now that sounds like a business plan! Oh yeah, it will be wireless too - they'll call it macPlay.
 
This story is related to the Thunderbolt display (which I have sitting at my desk at work - not even being used). So, my work got me one of the new Macbooks. It's light (about 2 lbs), has a 12" screen (still usable for many tasks in my opinion), and has enough CPU power for office work, some Xcode. All in all, I like it as its light and gets the job done.
If you will recall, the Macbook only has a USB-C port and a headphone jack (for now!). So, I started looking for a USB-C to Thunderbolt adapter. Nada. Doesn't exist. I went to Apple's forums and thought I had to be overlooking something. Nope, you CAN'T use their brand new laptop on their expensive Thunderbolt display! What the fucking hell???
Long story short, my Macbook is using a USB-C to HDMI adapter, plugged into a much cheaper Dell (which isn't one of the nicer Dell displays - this one is crap).
So, if Apple were to come out with a better display with some type of GPU built-in, this would be a perfect pair for the Macbook. It does not have a good GPU. With the rumored Macbook Pro refresh coming out, who knows what they will do with it. Use the integrated GPU, keep the same price point, and expect you to to shell out some jack for their new display - now that sounds like a business plan! Oh yeah, it will be wireless too - they'll call it macPlay.


I hear this a lot from Mac Pro/Power mac user types that Apple is screwing them royally on bizarre design and spec choices. It's either wayyy over priced and over specced or wayyy under specced and not fit for purpose. There is no happy medium or sweet spot with Apple gear. Every Mac device is a big compromise in some way or another.
 
I hear this a lot from Mac Pro/Power mac user types that Apple is screwing them royally on bizarre design and spec choices. It's either wayyy over priced and over specced or wayyy under specced and not fit for purpose. There is no happy medium or sweet spot with Apple gear. Every Mac device is a big compromise in some way or another.

The Mac Pro needs a major update and I wish the would just go back to the regular old chases. It would be nice to mount them in a rack etc, but Apple seems to be ignoring the Pro market.
 
The Mac Pro needs a major update and I wish the would just go back to the regular old chases. It would be nice to mount them in a rack etc, but Apple seems to be ignoring the Pro market.
It would be fantastic to have a rack mount Mac (like the Apple X Serve). I work with iOS development - I want Jenkins, Xcode, and the like to run in the data closet. Right now, you basically use Mac Mini's.
While I'm at it, I want to virtualize macOS. I want my developers using VMs. Apple has very poor support for this. Since they make money when you buy Apple hardware, I guess this is why they restrict VMs so much. Sigh.
 
This story is related to the Thunderbolt display (which I have sitting at my desk at work - not even being used). So, my work got me one of the new Macbooks. It's light (about 2 lbs), has a 12" screen (still usable for many tasks in my opinion), and has enough CPU power for office work, some Xcode. All in all, I like it as its light and gets the job done.
If you will recall, the Macbook only has a USB-C port and a headphone jack (for now!). So, I started looking for a USB-C to Thunderbolt adapter. Nada. Doesn't exist. I went to Apple's forums and thought I had to be overlooking something. Nope, you CAN'T use their brand new laptop on their expensive Thunderbolt display! What the fucking hell???
Long story short, my Macbook is using a USB-C to HDMI adapter, plugged into a much cheaper Dell (which isn't one of the nicer Dell displays - this one is crap).
So, if Apple were to come out with a better display with some type of GPU built-in, this would be a perfect pair for the Macbook. It does not have a good GPU. With the rumored Macbook Pro refresh coming out, who knows what they will do with it. Use the integrated GPU, keep the same price point, and expect you to to shell out some jack for their new display - now that sounds like a business plan! Oh yeah, it will be wireless too - they'll call it macPlay.

That's what I thought someone told me was going to happen. The current TB monitor was going away in favor of a cinema display with a built in GPU.


Is there not a newer X Serve you can buy? That is the only mac that was even closely resembling something that would fit into a rack. Haven't paid attention to that segment as it's definitely not something we use.
 
The monitor's big claim to fame was it's color accuracy. I just think the rest of the monitor world is catching up and Apple's offerings will not stand out so far from the crowd anymore. As soon as people learn that others can match an Apple's performance and do it cheaper, that special market is common, and Apple doesn't do common, not admittedly anyway.

Not really, Apple has been bad in that regard for a long time. I mean the fundamental panel is fine, a high end LG IPS unit like most color critical units, but past that it falls down hard. The biggest issue is lack of controls. You can't calibrate the thing. Basically the only thing you can control in hardware is backlight brightness. Everything else is done on the GPU. Ya, that doesn't fly. For real colour work you want a host of hardware controls, including hardware LUTs ideally. NEC, Eizo, and even Dell's high end have that. Software calibration means losing some colour detail. It isn't good enough to work uncalibrated either, having a dE error of around 7 out of box.

Another issue is that it is sRGB gamut. Now that's fine if you are just doing TV or computer work, but if you do print or digital cinema, that isn't going to cut it as there are colours that are out of gamut. What you want is a wide gamut display with 3D LUTs that you can calibrate to the space you need to work in. Again, NEC, Eizo, and Dell all offer that.

It's not a bad screen (well I'm not a fan of the high-gloss glass front but whatever) but it is very much consumer level in terms of colour features. Apple likes to talk a big game about creative professionals and such, but they stopped giving a shit in terms of making hardware actually good for it some time ago.
 
Is there not a newer X Serve you can buy? That is the only mac that was even closely resembling something that would fit into a rack. Haven't paid attention to that segment as it's definitely not something we use.

Nope. Apple discontinued its server products abruptly and hasn't replaced them. Currently they sell one "server" which is a Mac Mini. They are disinterested in the actual server market.
 
It kind of already had, with them spending most of their R&D budget on the iPhone. But they use that technology in their other products that expand their line of business too.

They won't drop their PC business though, they need to stay relevant in other areas in order to fight off a decline in iPhone sales should it happen.

One thing is for sure, they have so much money that they could stay in business for longer than a life time while posting nothing in revenue.
That and I believe they're one of the top 2 or 3 PC sellers in the U.S. and I'd be shocked if their margins aren't significantly more than HP or Dell.

Edit: changed are to aren't.
 
Last edited:
Nope. Apple discontinued its server products abruptly and hasn't replaced them. Currently they sell one "server" which is a Mac Mini. They are disinterested in the actual server market.
Their OS can support multiple users and could be a server OS. Yes, you can buy the "server" addition from them, but it's not quite the same. With all of the developers using Macs (for iOS/macOS), seems like there would be a market (although maybe not big enough to justify Apple's R&D costs). They basically support the consumer market. Our IT department cringes when they have to deal with Apple systems - we are a small minority where I work. We only use Apple for iOS development.
 
Their OS can support multiple users and could be a server OS. Yes, you can buy the "server" addition from them, but it's not quite the same. With all of the developers using Macs (for iOS/macOS), seems like there would be a market (although maybe not big enough to justify Apple's R&D costs). They basically support the consumer market. Our IT department cringes when they have to deal with Apple systems - we are a small minority where I work. We only use Apple for iOS development.
Devs use Macs, because they're easy to when developing *nix back end software. I'm sure Apple servers exist, but I don't know anyone that's worked on a network with them.
 
It's all about the panel. Response time, color gamut, pre-calibrated.... Everything else is fluff. Apple can't keep up with that.
 
Their OS can support multiple users and could be a server OS. Yes, you can buy the "server" addition from them, but it's not quite the same. With all of the developers using Macs (for iOS/macOS), seems like there would be a market (although maybe not big enough to justify Apple's R&D costs). They basically support the consumer market. Our IT department cringes when they have to deal with Apple systems - we are a small minority where I work. We only use Apple for iOS development.

Well if they weren't complete assholes all they'd need to do is allow OS-X to be virtualized. I mean face it: Most servers aren't run on actual hardware these days, you run them in a VM. So if OS-X would run in a VM, no issues you could just run it on your cluster and call it good. There's no technical issues, VMWare virtualizes OS-X fine in their Mac client version, but Apple won't allow them do it on vSphere servers. So it won't run on your existing infrastructure, and they don't sell things suitable for a datacenter. There are good reasons (that's not the only one) IT hates supporting Macs. Despite being a huge enterprise, Apple has shit for enterprise support/services in their devices. They've made them in to expensive, fashionable, consumer electronics toys just like all their i-devices. Makes integration in to a big environment a problem.
 
Another piece of Apple hardware that has stuck around for far too long... kind of like the nMP unfortunately. I think the hardware graphics card inside a 5k monitor solution might actually work pretty well for them if they were going to put in a desktop card... but a man can dream right? :)
 
Not really, Apple has been bad in that regard for a long time. I mean the fundamental panel is fine, a high end LG IPS unit like most color critical units, but past that it falls down hard. The biggest issue is lack of controls. You can't calibrate the thing. Basically the only thing you can control in hardware is backlight brightness. Everything else is done on the GPU. Ya, that doesn't fly. For real colour work you want a host of hardware controls, including hardware LUTs ideally. NEC, Eizo, and even Dell's high end have that. Software calibration means losing some colour detail. It isn't good enough to work uncalibrated either, having a dE error of around 7 out of box.

Another issue is that it is sRGB gamut. Now that's fine if you are just doing TV or computer work, but if you do print or digital cinema, that isn't going to cut it as there are colours that are out of gamut. What you want is a wide gamut display with 3D LUTs that you can calibrate to the space you need to work in. Again, NEC, Eizo, and Dell all offer that.

It's not a bad screen (well I'm not a fan of the high-gloss glass front but whatever) but it is very much consumer level in terms of colour features. Apple likes to talk a big game about creative professionals and such, but they stopped giving a shit in terms of making hardware actually good for it some time ago.

I am sorry to disagree.

I'll explain, it's not about the reality of what the monitor is, it's about what the market base believes. I've seen it so many times, user reviews on Apple Cinema displays talking about why they needed this monitor because they needed better color rendition. To a business selling monitors, reality doesn't trump marketing. That's why their monitors have "fallen from grace" as you have explained. I'm not disputing the reality that you have explained to us, I am disputing the effect that reality has when a market base believes otherwise and how it explains a company's decisions regarding their products. Apple doesn't care that their monitors aren't the Bee's knee's anymore, Apple only cares that their market still believes it and that it translates into sales and profit.

Apple will ride that pony as long as it's winning, and then it's off to the glue factory for old faithful.
 
Back
Top