Well, when you buy third party memory and storage, it then depletes your mfg warranty and for many of us, that's not something recommended.
...
I will gladly pay a little extra for mfg supplied memory and storage because THEY support it under THEIR support contracts and past history has proven to me, that they have better reliability, especially in the area of RAM and Storage.
So, please don't mislead people into thinking that it's the same when you buy cheaper SSD, HDD, or RAM.
The point is that you should upgrade to the SSD and 16GB RAM AND that Apple prices for the upgrade is fair in comparison to 3rd party prices.
But that still leaves you at $1700 not $1300.
I'm surprised that Apple didn't just do Fusion as baseline for the $1499 model and forgo that $200 up charge since it makes a huge difference in performance. That would make the $1499 model even more of a no brainer over the $1299 one.
you want to buy an ASUS monitor instead of an Apple monitor? I don't even want to spend my time researching another brand monitor. That by itself costs money in TIME.
For $500 vs $999? I'd consider it unless I was a graphics designer. I'd pick the NEC over the Apple 27" if I were.
My time is worth around $100 an hour to me. It doesn't take me 5 hours to research monitors and it's kinda fun. It's not like there are THAT many choices.
27" + IPS + reputable company + under $1000 leaves only a handful of choices.
The point is that you should upgrade to the SSD and 16GB RAM AND that Apple prices for the upgrade is fair in comparison to 3rd party prices.
But that still leaves you at $1700 not $1300.
I'm surprised that Apple didn't just do Fusion as baseline for the $1499 model and forgo that $200 up charge since it makes a huge difference in performance. That would make the $1499 model even more of a no brainer over the $1299 one.
Because the SSD is expensive and that would drive their margins below a certain acceptable level. You keep on forgetting they have to have acceptable margins, otherwise members of upper management might lose their job, or the shareholders will get pissed off for not meeting their target profit margins. No one else has AIO or other models with as much higher speed SSD as an offering. I think Apple's the only one. Most of the PC mfg offer less SSD storage and it's typically the slower SSD.
With the PC mfg, it's basically become a problem for them to retain decent margins which is why IBM sold off, Compaq sold off, Alienware sold off, Dell went private, HP is in deep financial crap and they can't even find anyone to buy their PC division. Seriously, decent profit margins is why these PC mfg are in such deep financial $hit if you will. Same thing with most of the Android phone mfg. They sacrifice profits for market share and that will get them into financial trouble every time.
Do you want to buy a company's products where their ability to stay in business remains unclear? Apple already went through that once and they don't want to go through it again.
For $500 vs $999? I'd consider it unless I was a graphics designer. I'd pick the NEC over the Apple 27" if I were.
My time is worth around $100 an hour to me. It doesn't take me 5 hours to research monitors and it's kinda fun. It's not like there are THAT many choices.
27" + IPS + reputable company + under $1000 leaves only a handful of choices.
Really? So you haven't timed yourself on researching every single monitor on the market? I used to get paid to do it, and since I don't anymore, I already know that a similar product from NEC, Viewsonic, etc. to the Apple Thunderbolt display is priced about the same and the time it takes to do the research is far more than a couple of hours.
What NEC monitor that's $500 that has the same specs at Apple's Thunderbolt display? What NEC part number are you looking at? Is it one of their value line 27inch monitors? NEC and Viewsonic have different levels of monitors. They have the low budget POS, then the medium range and then the higher range products which is where the Thunderbolt competes.
BTW, I just went to NEC's website and all of the 27inch monitors they have listed have a retail list price of MORE than $999. The NEC 27inch monitors aren't 2550 x 1440, they are 1920 x 1080. Heck, my iPad has better resolution than a freaking NEC 27 low budget monitor.
Now, I just spent a little time doing, but I am going to charge you $100 for wasting MY time with your BS. You are comparing a much lower resolution monitor to the Apple, hence the big price difference.
The cheapest NEC 27 inch monitor with 2550 x 1440 res is $1200 Retail List, before discount. Sorry, I'll take the Thunderbolt for MOST situations. If I need something the much higher priced NEC offers, maybe i would consider one of their higher priced 27inch, but their $500 27 inch monitors kinda suck. Too bad you can't look inside to see how cheaply made the power supply is.
For $500 vs $999? I'd consider it unless I was a graphics designer. I'd pick the NEC over the Apple 27" if I were.
My time is worth around $100 an hour to me. It doesn't take me 5 hours to research monitors and it's kinda fun. It's not like there are THAT many choices.
27" + IPS + reputable company + under $1000 leaves only a handful of choices.
Have you ever earned $100/hr for any job you've done? If so, what did you do for that money? If you worked for a reseller and tried to sell some lower resolution monitor against the Apple Thunderbolt display trying to pass it off as the same thing, you would NOT have a job for very long. I'v worked in the corporate reseller industry for a LONG time and reps that pulled that stunt would be the entry level reps that wouldn't last long.
I do remember when you mentioned selling some of these. NEC makes stuff over a pretty broad price range. When I mentioned a similar price range, I was thinking of something like a PA271w. It's not my favorite out there, but at that price point, that is what I would buy. I think they've shown up as cheap as 925 at times. Sadly Hitachi panels no longer appear in anything and NEC no longer designs their own panels like they did with some of the more expensive 80s and 90s series displays (used a 2190UXi at one point and a CG211 at a job I held concurrently at the time). They're also on 4 year warranties. I think Applecare may be easier to deal with when it comes to dissatisfaction with something that is on the edge of being within spec yet still bothersome. If NEC agrees to replace it, their more expensive ones have a 48 hour replacement. I just wanted to point out that I was referring to a smaller subset, mostly those in art production fields or in house art departments within ad agencies.
Yeah I understood that.
The PA271W is $1200 Suggested Retail List price. Where can you get a $1200 PA271W brand new, sealed in a box, for $500?
What NEC monitor that's $500 that has the same specs at Apple's Thunderbolt display? What NEC part number are you looking at? Is it one of their value line 27inch monitors? NEC and Viewsonic have different levels of monitors. They have the low budget POS, then the medium range and then the higher range products which is where the Thunderbolt competes.
BTW, I just went to NEC's website and all of the 27inch monitors they have listed have a retail list price of MORE than $999. The NEC 27inch monitors aren't 2550 x 1440, they are 1920 x 1080. Heck, my iPad has better resolution than a freaking NEC 27 low budget monitor.
I know what you mean regarding list price, but I've found them for consistently less from reputable retailers. B+H sells the thunderbolt display for $949. Note its price on the PA271w. NEC is pretty aggressive on price cuts after the first 12-18 months of a display product cycle, and like Eizo and Quato, they do have features to help improve uniformity beyond the limits of mass manufactured panels, and offer what they call hardware level calibration. I call it near metal. It is more effective over the life of the display than tuning everything via the profile. I think I mentioned earlier what Apple could do without adding software complexity. I figured it to be one of the points they would address in their research, much like they looked into reducing reflections through adjusted screen treatments over the past couple generations.
Regarding the iPad, there's a reason I recently started writing software for them. I really like the display, and I have always favored touch screen. It's just that there are too few cintiqs in the wild. I still prefer C++ to Objective-C, but it is what it is. C++ has a lot of really great libraries that are difficult to implement that way, even if you can technically do it as long as the low level bindings use Objective-C. I'm getting off track though. The iPad has higher resolution than a lot of displays. At the top end as of today, you can expect 1920x1200 in a 24" 16:10 display or 1920x1080 on a 16:9 with the same diagonal measurement. The 27" models are also split. I suspect the 1920x1080 types are shared with televisions. The others are also 16:9. The panels are basically a widened version of the 25.5" panels that preceded them. They went from 16:10 25.5 (marketed as 26") to 16:9 at 27". Those are all 2560x1400. They use the same or similar panels, with differing implementations. It's the high level of commoditization that brought prices down, but you don't have anywhere near the dpi available in phones or tablet displays.
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Originally Posted by drblank
Have you ever earned $100/hr for any job you've done? If so, what did you do for that money? If you worked for a reseller and tried to sell some lower resolution monitor against the Apple Thunderbolt display trying to pass it off as the same thing, you would NOT have a job for very long. I'v worked in the corporate reseller industry for a LONG time and reps that pulled that stunt would be the entry level reps that wouldn't last long.
Most jobs don't pay $100/hr. as a wage. Once you move past a certain point the structure typically differs if you are an employee. It's more common in a consultant position or if you're providing a service where the billing metric is in terms of hours and reimbursable expenses. Unless it's a very urgent matter, these things tend to be completed when down time exists, that is when the time wouldn't be allocated to immediate customer or employer concerns. If you are planning to phase in 10 new displays or something of that sort, your constituents still have something to use in the mean time. Depending on the scale of the purchase, I suspect you spend some time on research when it comes to cost to benefit ratio. There are also reviews of these things performed by highly reputable resellers with testing facilities. This one is from Chromix, as they maintain the wiki.
You mentioned the issue of power supplies. You might find other issues with cheap transistors used and various other cost cutting measures. What makes you specifically believe that Apple is immune to this? My own experiences with Apple displays are drastically different when comparing between displays associated with macs and those used in idevices.
Really? So you haven't timed yourself on researching every single monitor on the market?
Nope. Did I say "every single monitor" on the market? No.
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I used to get paid to do it, and since I don't anymore, I already know that a similar product from NEC, Viewsonic, etc. to the Apple Thunderbolt display is priced about the same and the time it takes to do the research is far more than a couple of hours.
The NEC is $800 if you actually READ the discussion you are participating in. The ASUS is $500 and the answer was clearly in response to your question of "you want to buy an ASUS monitor instead of an Apple monitor?"
Yes, for half the price if I were simply going to use it for a larger screen and I didn't have any color requirements. I would also buy the NEC monitor for $800 over the $999 Apple.
BTW, I just went to NEC's website and all of the 27inch monitors they have listed have a retail list price of MORE than $999.
The cheapest NEC 27 inch monitor with 2550 x 1440 res is $1200 Retail List, before discount. Sorry, I'll take the Thunderbolt for MOST situations.
Nobody pay retail. That's the first rule of procurement (yes, there are caveats…there are always caveats).
When I buy Apple gear I don't pay retail either. I get a corporate discount.
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Now, I just spent a little time doing, but I am going to charge you $100 for wasting MY time with your BS.
Your time isn't worth $100. You didn't read the requirements and your analysis was incorrect.
Have you ever earned $100/hr for any job you've done? If so, what did you do for that money? If you worked for a reseller and tried to sell some lower resolution monitor against the Apple Thunderbolt display trying to pass it off as the same thing, you would NOT have a job for very long. I'v worked in the corporate reseller industry for a LONG time and reps that pulled that stunt would be the entry level reps that wouldn't last long.
Back in my consulting days I'd pull anywhere from $70 to $300 depending on if someone was finding me gigs as a computer geek or I found them myself. If I got them myself I'd have the higher end of the spectrum since I was doing all the legwork. Otherwise they usually took a big cut. These days I have a normal job and make a lot less but on the plus side I'm not stressed out and I don't have to live out of a suitcase.
Often I would be the technical weenie responsible speccing the system and doing the AoAs. So I'd be the asshole you'd have to suck up to. Well maybe not you. Reseller? Never dealt with them much. I dealt with IBM, HP, Sun and Oracle reps.
$100 is simply my threshold for deciding if it's worth it to pay someone else to do something I can do but don't want to. If it costs more than $100 an hour and I can do the job but just don't like it then I'll usually bite the bullet and do it myself. Otherwise I'll pay up and do something else.
The PA271W is $1200 Suggested Retail List price. Where can you get a $1200 PA271W brand new, sealed in a box, for $500?
There's obviously no MAP if it's selling on Amazon for $799. I have no idea why you keep quoting MSRP prices. Nobody needs to pay MSRP even for the Thunderbolt Display.
The Dell U2711 is currently $629 on Amazon but I've seen it for around $500. 2560x1440, H-IPS, DIsplayPort, DVI-D, HDMI.
The Dell U2713HM is $699 on Dell and I've seen that less too. Dell runs deals all the time. Checking my personal enterprise discount shows $664. For an actual corporate purchase it's even less.
My Apple enterprise discount gives me a price of $949 for the Thunderbolt display. Which is $20 more than the price I would pay at Adorama ($929). And no tax for Adorama.
Meh. (Just to annoy you)
Still wouldn't buy it. It's due for a refresh and still has premium pricing.
There are usually only a couple of higher end monitors I would suggest using over Apple's unless you don't care about getting an AppleCare warranty, which many people do or should when they didn't. Corporate customers I used to deal with eventually began buying support contracts because it was a LOT less expensive during the lifecycle to do it that way. I used to sell NEC, Viewsonic, and maybe a couple of other brands, but NEC and Viewsonic were the two biggest 3rd party. Apple does a nice job with their monitors and to get something with close specs, they are about the same cost, so why would someone not buy an Apple. I know there are a very small group of people that want/need something that Apple doesn't make, but those cases are very rare, otherwise, the people that go for 3rd party monitors are doing so based predominately on price and they don't always look at the specs.
What gets me is that people are NOT talking about the business perspective of buying 3rd party vs the mfg. That's the business aspects of buying a computer. But most techie people don't have much business sense as they only see the price of the item and not the total cost of ownership.
I personally have always bought NEC monitors, starting with CRT. I have had just so much success with then in terms of quality and lasting so long. I also think their color palettes are much nicer then Apples offerings as Apple doesn't use the best LCD panels on the market, their using LG now. I'm also just now getting into 10bit, plus I really, really like monitors that rotate, especially when you have three 30" like I do. I had a 24" Apple monitor with my G4 Powermac and it was nice, albeit gimicky looking but nice none the less. Apple monitors have always been on the expensive side when compared to other high tier monitors and If I'm going to spend a 1,000 dollars on a monitor, I'm going to spend 1300 and get a 10BIT NEC but it's just all about preferences, nothing wrong with the 27" Apple Display, although it is a little bit long in the tooth technology wise. The new 4K monitors should be much nicer.
There's obviously no MAP if it's selling on Amazon for $799. I have no idea why you keep quoting MSRP prices. Nobody needs to pay MSRP even for the Thunderbolt Display.
The Dell U2711 is currently $629 on Amazon but I've seen it for around $500. 2560x1440, H-IPS, DIsplayPort, DVI-D, HDMI.
The Dell U2713HM is $699 on Dell and I've seen that less too. Dell runs deals all the time. Checking my personal enterprise discount shows $664. For an actual corporate purchase it's even less.
My Apple enterprise discount gives me a price of $949 for the Thunderbolt display. Which is $20 more than the price I would pay at Adorama ($929). And no tax for Adorama.
Meh. (Just to annoy you)
Still wouldn't buy it. It's due for a refresh and still has premium pricing.
Because that's how I look up monitors. I compare BOTH company's MSRP. Now, Apple prices their products because the resellers get very little room to discount. This type of pricing practice was done many years ago by the top pc mfg, Apple's only one of them whereby they knock the MSRP down, and remove margins to the reseller so these steep discounting stops which destroys the branding. It's a different pricing model. But Apple does sell refurbished units which come with the Apple warranty from time to time.
But you have to shop around for pricing and you have to watch out for companies that sell already opened/returned monitors. That practice happens a LOT. Have you ever been to Fry's Electronics? Sometimes, that's all they have is previously opened product. Just something to consider.
My biggest beef are the people that think that Apple's products are overpriced, because I honestly think that they really aren't that bad OR those trying to pass off that something a LOT cheaper is "just as good", when it is usually worse specs, not from a name brand top tier company, etc. etc.
It's all how some people are positioning this whole thing.
Sure, I would love to be able to get XYZ for under $1000 that they are selling for a lot more than that, but Apple is simply not going to just drop the price of something that drastically. It's rare when they drop the price of a fully configured system more than $200 from year to year and I think their entry price for laptops is pretty set as are desktop/AIO. I don't how much further they can go down and STILL retain decent profit margins.
The PC mfg are all VERY desperate right now and they are cutting corners all over the place to keep the price down as much as they can, but their margins are pretty much horrible. I'm wondering which of the bigger name PC mfg is going to close their doors. NEC actually got out of the PC industry and recently got out of the smartphone industry.
I'm sure there will be others within the next year, which ones? That I don't know. I'd have to start looking at their trends for profit, sales, etc. and see which are in the worst shape.
Still wouldn't buy it. It's due for a refresh and still has premium pricing.
That's my biggest problem with the current 27" Apple Display, their asking way to much for it. I would dare say that the margins on that display is about 600 dollars, maybe more, they display panel alone isn't worth more then 150 dollars, Apple is spending the money on the Thunderport hub and metal (which is actually a fairly cheap material in itself) at market cost there is about 12 dollars worth of Aluminum in there.
I personally have always bought NEC monitors, starting with CRT. I have had just so much success with then in terms of quality and lasting so long. I also think their color palettes are much nicer then Apples offerings as Apple doesn't use the best LCD panels on the market, their using LG now. I'm also just now getting into 10bit, plus I really, really like monitors that rotate, especially when you have three 30" like I do. I had a 24" Apple monitor with my G4 Powermac and it was nice, albeit gimicky looking but nice none the less. Apple monitors have always been on the expensive side when compared to other high tier monitors and If I'm going to spend a 1,000 dollars on a monitor, I'm going to spend 1300 and get a 10BIT NEC but it's just all about preferences, nothing wrong with the 27" Apple Display, although it is a little bit long in the tooth technology wise. The new 4K monitors should be much nicer.
Well, since they are working with the IGZO screens, it's new technology and it takes a little time to ring out all of the mfg problems to be able to get the yield to bring them to market. Plus, they have to look at calibration techniques used as that's been a big deal for Apple as of late. I think Apple will probably do a 4K monitor release either December or January.
I don't there is anything wrong with the technology, but I think they could probably make the case thinner, and they might replace it with an IGZO panel since that's probably the only thing that makes sense to replace them with.
I personally have always bought NEC monitors, starting with CRT.
They were one of my favorites in CRTs along with Sony.
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I'm going to spend 1300 and get a 10BIT NEC but it's just all about preferences, nothing wrong with the 27" Apple Display, although it is a little bit long in the tooth technology wise.
The ones using 10 bit hardware do have 10 bit paths available in some applications using certain gpus. Some software on Windows supports a full 10 bit path, but even without that if you're using spectraview for calibration, it still helps on internal processing. 10 bpc is enough to basically eliminate the need for hardware dithering, which is why I like it. In my opinion Apple designed the current 27" models like notebook docks. Note the short power cords that started with the 27" cinema display. The thunderbolt display added a full array of ports. The thing I find really dated is that they didn't update the thunderbolt display to match the form and screen treatment of the current model imacs. In terms of panel technology, they have all been on the market for several years at this point as far as I can tell.
They were one of my favorites in CRTs along with Sony.
The ones using 10 bit hardware do have 10 bit paths available in some applications using certain gpus. Some software on Windows supports a full 10 bit path, but even without that if you're using spectraview for calibration, it still helps on internal processing. 10 bpc is enough to basically eliminate the need for hardware dithering, which is why I like it. In my opinion Apple designed the current 27" models like notebook docks. Note the short power cords that started with the 27" cinema display. The thunderbolt display added a full array of ports. The thing I find really dated is that they didn't update the thunderbolt display to match the form and screen treatment of the current model imacs. In terms of panel technology, they have all been on the market for several years at this point as far as I can tell.
Right agreed, it's a waiting game thought, like you taught me with the thunderport, first comes the hardware.
Right agreed, it's a waiting game thought, like you taught me with the thunderport, first comes the hardware.
Huh? I don't think I taught you that. I don't really offer much in the way of teaching unless you're referring to what I said about iOS hardware capability, but I do link to silly stuff like people playing cellos with lightsabers. That thing still makes me laugh.
Back in my consulting days I'd pull anywhere from $70 to $300 depending on if someone was finding me gigs as a computer geek or I found them myself. If I got them myself I'd have the higher end of the spectrum since I was doing all the legwork. Otherwise they usually took a big cut. These days I have a normal job and make a lot less but on the plus side I'm not stressed out and I don't have to live out of a suitcase.
Often I would be the technical weenie responsible speccing the system and doing the AoAs. So I'd be the asshole you'd have to suck up to. Well maybe not you. Reseller? Never dealt with them much. I dealt with IBM, HP, Sun and Oracle reps.
$100 is simply my threshold for deciding if it's worth it to pay someone else to do something I can do but don't want to. If it costs more than $100 an hour and I can do the job but just don't like it then I'll usually bite the bullet and do it myself. Otherwise I'll pay up and do something else.
Did you ever work for a reseller as an account rep selling to corporate customers? That's my background and I had to know all the major companies and the various discount structure. I did that from the mid-80's to 2000 until I left the reseller industry and went to a enterprise s/w company. During my time at the resellers, we had mfg reps coming in daily and we had to go through constant product training w/ the reps and some of my customers asked questions most people don't ask and they evaluate products differently than your typical consumer. I actually had to "teach" some of my customers how to completely change their procurement structure as they were driving up their own internal costs to manage their IT more efficiently. I've seen some of the biggest blunders even within the customer IT shop. It's actually cheaper in the long run to manage less vendors for IT based products and to standardize on models/brands rather than constantly chasing the lowest price. I've seen too many customers getting burned when they focused soley on price as the vendor was constantly throwing vendors out the door because the vendors couldn't make any money so there wasn't that symbiotic relationship between the customer and mfg./vendor.
People have to learn how to interact with companies and be realistic about their expectations and mfg have to do whatever they can to make better products and better support, but doing that and making a decent profit margin isn't so easy.
Personally, I see too much crap on the market, especially at the retail level. I'm surprised some of these mfg still exist and get away with what they are doing.
That's my biggest problem with the current 27" Apple Display, their asking way to much for it. I would dare say that the margins on that display is about 600 dollars, maybe more, they display panel alone isn't worth more then 150 dollars, Apple is spending the money on the Thunderport hub and metal (which is actually a fairly cheap material in itself) at market cost there is about 12 dollars worth of Aluminum in there.
$12 worth of aluminum? Well at scrap metal prices, but fabrication costs is what escalates $12 worth of scrap metal into $100+ for the case/stand. That's not the cheap beer can aluminum, that's higher grade aluminum.
Have you ever worked for a mfg?
I doubt Apple is making much more than a couple of hundred dollars on that monitor since a lot of them get sold for less money to distributors/resellers. CDW gets them at slightly lower prices than resellers since CDW resells to resellers. So Apple gets around $800 or so from the reseller, and their cost to mfg that product is probably more like around $500 to $600 is my guess. Those panels are probably several hundred dollars. The 15inch Retina display is around $150 to $175 from what I read a while back and I'm sure the 27inch screen is more like $300, maybe more.
Then you have the glass on top of the screen.
Then you have the electronics and other guts inside, plus the box it ships in. I think that monitor costs Apple more like $500 to $600 for finished goods and I actually might still be a little low on it.
Oh, and the various parts are made in different factories and then have to be shipped to one central location to be assembled and calibrated. You have to add in shipping costs, because the parts mfg added shipping charges.
I think you fabricate a bunch of BS to sell your reasoning and I think you are wrong in how you think.
That's my biggest problem with the current 27" Apple Display, their asking way to much for it. I would dare say that the margins on that display is about 600 dollars, maybe more, they display panel alone isn't worth more then 150 dollars, Apple is spending the money on the Thunderport hub and metal (which is actually a fairly cheap material in itself) at market cost there is about 12 dollars worth of Aluminum in there.
Sorry, they don't have $600 of gross profit in that Thunderbolt display. They probably PAY $600 for it fully finished, and I might be a little low.
That panel costs Apple far more than $150. Where do you get your numbers from?
Do you know how much milling time is for fabricating metal? How much milling time is there for that back panel? It doesn't take them 5 minutes just for milling time. And how much metal is lost for each monitor? They have to factor those costs in and Foxconn or whomever may not even make that part, they go with outside suppliers to make each component and Foxconn does the assembly work.
I've spent some time looking at mfg costs of metal. It's not as cheap as you think when you are dealing with the types of metals, fabrication methods and finishing methods Apple has on their products.
If they used ultra cheap aluminum that was stamped, that's much cheaper process, but Apple isn't doing that. They are taking blocks of aluminum and milling them, that's what they use for the iPhones, iPads, laptops and desktops.
The case for the Mac Pro is extruded, so they take the block of aluminum, extrude it, and then it goes through a series of processes in milling it down to precise shape, and then polished, buffed, sand blasted, etc., anodized and while they use robotics, there are operators paid by the hour and each process costs a lot of money per hour. The grade of aluminum that Apple uses, from what I can tell is amongst the highest priced aluminum. It's more like 6061 grade aluminum. Have you priced that grade aluminum lately? It's not $.05 a pound. I assure you. and there is a lot of aluminum that they pay for that gets turned into scrap which they only recoup a small portion.
The cheaper grade panels on $450 27 inch monitors are probably $150 panels, but the higher res 2550 x 1440 are more like $300.
Just in machine time, from start to finish, it probably eats up about $75 or more per case, plus the price of aluminum, plus shipping, so it's probably ends up around $100 or more JUST for the case before it goes to final assembly.
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Well, when you buy third party memory and storage, it then depletes your mfg warranty and for many of us, that's not something recommended.
...
I will gladly pay a little extra for mfg supplied memory and storage because THEY support it under THEIR support contracts and past history has proven to me, that they have better reliability, especially in the area of RAM and Storage.
So, please don't mislead people into thinking that it's the same when you buy cheaper SSD, HDD, or RAM.
The point is that you should upgrade to the SSD and 16GB RAM AND that Apple prices for the upgrade is fair in comparison to 3rd party prices.
But that still leaves you at $1700 not $1300.
I'm surprised that Apple didn't just do Fusion as baseline for the $1499 model and forgo that $200 up charge since it makes a huge difference in performance. That would make the $1499 model even more of a no brainer over the $1299 one.
you want to buy an ASUS monitor instead of an Apple monitor? I don't even want to spend my time researching another brand monitor. That by itself costs money in TIME.
For $500 vs $999? I'd consider it unless I was a graphics designer. I'd pick the NEC over the Apple 27" if I were.
My time is worth around $100 an hour to me. It doesn't take me 5 hours to research monitors and it's kinda fun. It's not like there are THAT many choices.
27" + IPS + reputable company + under $1000 leaves only a handful of choices.
The point is that you should upgrade to the SSD and 16GB RAM AND that Apple prices for the upgrade is fair in comparison to 3rd party prices.
But that still leaves you at $1700 not $1300.
I'm surprised that Apple didn't just do Fusion as baseline for the $1499 model and forgo that $200 up charge since it makes a huge difference in performance. That would make the $1499 model even more of a no brainer over the $1299 one.
Because the SSD is expensive and that would drive their margins below a certain acceptable level. You keep on forgetting they have to have acceptable margins, otherwise members of upper management might lose their job, or the shareholders will get pissed off for not meeting their target profit margins. No one else has AIO or other models with as much higher speed SSD as an offering. I think Apple's the only one. Most of the PC mfg offer less SSD storage and it's typically the slower SSD.
With the PC mfg, it's basically become a problem for them to retain decent margins which is why IBM sold off, Compaq sold off, Alienware sold off, Dell went private, HP is in deep financial crap and they can't even find anyone to buy their PC division. Seriously, decent profit margins is why these PC mfg are in such deep financial $hit if you will. Same thing with most of the Android phone mfg. They sacrifice profits for market share and that will get them into financial trouble every time.
Do you want to buy a company's products where their ability to stay in business remains unclear? Apple already went through that once and they don't want to go through it again.
For $500 vs $999? I'd consider it unless I was a graphics designer. I'd pick the NEC over the Apple 27" if I were.
My time is worth around $100 an hour to me. It doesn't take me 5 hours to research monitors and it's kinda fun. It's not like there are THAT many choices.
27" + IPS + reputable company + under $1000 leaves only a handful of choices.
Really? So you haven't timed yourself on researching every single monitor on the market? I used to get paid to do it, and since I don't anymore, I already know that a similar product from NEC, Viewsonic, etc. to the Apple Thunderbolt display is priced about the same and the time it takes to do the research is far more than a couple of hours.
What NEC monitor that's $500 that has the same specs at Apple's Thunderbolt display? What NEC part number are you looking at? Is it one of their value line 27inch monitors? NEC and Viewsonic have different levels of monitors. They have the low budget POS, then the medium range and then the higher range products which is where the Thunderbolt competes.
BTW, I just went to NEC's website and all of the 27inch monitors they have listed have a retail list price of MORE than $999. The NEC 27inch monitors aren't 2550 x 1440, they are 1920 x 1080. Heck, my iPad has better resolution than a freaking NEC 27 low budget monitor.
Now, I just spent a little time doing, but I am going to charge you $100 for wasting MY time with your BS. You are comparing a much lower resolution monitor to the Apple, hence the big price difference.
The cheapest NEC 27 inch monitor with 2550 x 1440 res is $1200 Retail List, before discount. Sorry, I'll take the Thunderbolt for MOST situations. If I need something the much higher priced NEC offers, maybe i would consider one of their higher priced 27inch, but their $500 27 inch monitors kinda suck. Too bad you can't look inside to see how cheaply made the power supply is.
For $500 vs $999? I'd consider it unless I was a graphics designer. I'd pick the NEC over the Apple 27" if I were.
My time is worth around $100 an hour to me. It doesn't take me 5 hours to research monitors and it's kinda fun. It's not like there are THAT many choices.
27" + IPS + reputable company + under $1000 leaves only a handful of choices.
Have you ever earned $100/hr for any job you've done? If so, what did you do for that money? If you worked for a reseller and tried to sell some lower resolution monitor against the Apple Thunderbolt display trying to pass it off as the same thing, you would NOT have a job for very long. I'v worked in the corporate reseller industry for a LONG time and reps that pulled that stunt would be the entry level reps that wouldn't last long.
I do remember when you mentioned selling some of these. NEC makes stuff over a pretty broad price range. When I mentioned a similar price range, I was thinking of something like a PA271w. It's not my favorite out there, but at that price point, that is what I would buy. I think they've shown up as cheap as 925 at times. Sadly Hitachi panels no longer appear in anything and NEC no longer designs their own panels like they did with some of the more expensive 80s and 90s series displays (used a 2190UXi at one point and a CG211 at a job I held concurrently at the time). They're also on 4 year warranties. I think Applecare may be easier to deal with when it comes to dissatisfaction with something that is on the edge of being within spec yet still bothersome. If NEC agrees to replace it, their more expensive ones have a 48 hour replacement. I just wanted to point out that I was referring to a smaller subset, mostly those in art production fields or in house art departments within ad agencies.
Yeah I understood that.
The PA271W is $1200 Suggested Retail List price. Where can you get a $1200 PA271W brand new, sealed in a box, for $500?
What NEC monitor that's $500 that has the same specs at Apple's Thunderbolt display? What NEC part number are you looking at? Is it one of their value line 27inch monitors? NEC and Viewsonic have different levels of monitors. They have the low budget POS, then the medium range and then the higher range products which is where the Thunderbolt competes.
BTW, I just went to NEC's website and all of the 27inch monitors they have listed have a retail list price of MORE than $999. The NEC 27inch monitors aren't 2550 x 1440, they are 1920 x 1080. Heck, my iPad has better resolution than a freaking NEC 27 low budget monitor.
I know what you mean regarding list price, but I've found them for consistently less from reputable retailers. B+H sells the thunderbolt display for $949. Note its price on the PA271w. NEC is pretty aggressive on price cuts after the first 12-18 months of a display product cycle, and like Eizo and Quato, they do have features to help improve uniformity beyond the limits of mass manufactured panels, and offer what they call hardware level calibration. I call it near metal. It is more effective over the life of the display than tuning everything via the profile. I think I mentioned earlier what Apple could do without adding software complexity. I figured it to be one of the points they would address in their research, much like they looked into reducing reflections through adjusted screen treatments over the past couple generations.
Regarding the iPad, there's a reason I recently started writing software for them. I really like the display, and I have always favored touch screen. It's just that there are too few cintiqs in the wild. I still prefer C++ to Objective-C, but it is what it is. C++ has a lot of really great libraries that are difficult to implement that way, even if you can technically do it as long as the low level bindings use Objective-C. I'm getting off track though. The iPad has higher resolution than a lot of displays. At the top end as of today, you can expect 1920x1200 in a 24" 16:10 display or 1920x1080 on a 16:9 with the same diagonal measurement. The 27" models are also split. I suspect the 1920x1080 types are shared with televisions. The others are also 16:9. The panels are basically a widened version of the 25.5" panels that preceded them. They went from 16:10 25.5 (marketed as 26") to 16:9 at 27". Those are all 2560x1400. They use the same or similar panels, with differing implementations. It's the high level of commoditization that brought prices down, but you don't have anywhere near the dpi available in phones or tablet displays.
Have you ever earned $100/hr for any job you've done? If so, what did you do for that money? If you worked for a reseller and tried to sell some lower resolution monitor against the Apple Thunderbolt display trying to pass it off as the same thing, you would NOT have a job for very long. I'v worked in the corporate reseller industry for a LONG time and reps that pulled that stunt would be the entry level reps that wouldn't last long.
Most jobs don't pay $100/hr. as a wage. Once you move past a certain point the structure typically differs if you are an employee. It's more common in a consultant position or if you're providing a service where the billing metric is in terms of hours and reimbursable expenses. Unless it's a very urgent matter, these things tend to be completed when down time exists, that is when the time wouldn't be allocated to immediate customer or employer concerns. If you are planning to phase in 10 new displays or something of that sort, your constituents still have something to use in the mean time. Depending on the scale of the purchase, I suspect you spend some time on research when it comes to cost to benefit ratio. There are also reviews of these things performed by highly reputable resellers with testing facilities. This one is from Chromix, as they maintain the wiki.
You mentioned the issue of power supplies. You might find other issues with cheap transistors used and various other cost cutting measures. What makes you specifically believe that Apple is immune to this? My own experiences with Apple displays are drastically different when comparing between displays associated with macs and those used in idevices.
Really? So you haven't timed yourself on researching every single monitor on the market?
Nope. Did I say "every single monitor" on the market? No.
The NEC is $800 if you actually READ the discussion you are participating in. The ASUS is $500 and the answer was clearly in response to your question of "you want to buy an ASUS monitor instead of an Apple monitor?"
Yes, for half the price if I were simply going to use it for a larger screen and I didn't have any color requirements. I would also buy the NEC monitor for $800 over the $999 Apple.
BTW, I just went to NEC's website and all of the 27inch monitors they have listed have a retail list price of MORE than $999.
The cheapest NEC 27 inch monitor with 2550 x 1440 res is $1200 Retail List, before discount. Sorry, I'll take the Thunderbolt for MOST situations.
Nobody pay retail. That's the first rule of procurement (yes, there are caveats…there are always caveats).
When I buy Apple gear I don't pay retail either. I get a corporate discount.
Your time isn't worth $100. You didn't read the requirements and your analysis was incorrect.
The requirements were clearly delineated:
IPS panel
27"
Under $1000
Have you ever earned $100/hr for any job you've done? If so, what did you do for that money? If you worked for a reseller and tried to sell some lower resolution monitor against the Apple Thunderbolt display trying to pass it off as the same thing, you would NOT have a job for very long. I'v worked in the corporate reseller industry for a LONG time and reps that pulled that stunt would be the entry level reps that wouldn't last long.
Back in my consulting days I'd pull anywhere from $70 to $300 depending on if someone was finding me gigs as a computer geek or I found them myself. If I got them myself I'd have the higher end of the spectrum since I was doing all the legwork. Otherwise they usually took a big cut. These days I have a normal job and make a lot less but on the plus side I'm not stressed out and I don't have to live out of a suitcase.
Often I would be the technical weenie responsible speccing the system and doing the AoAs. So I'd be the asshole you'd have to suck up to. Well maybe not you. Reseller? Never dealt with them much. I dealt with IBM, HP, Sun and Oracle reps.
$100 is simply my threshold for deciding if it's worth it to pay someone else to do something I can do but don't want to. If it costs more than $100 an hour and I can do the job but just don't like it then I'll usually bite the bullet and do it myself. Otherwise I'll pay up and do something else.
The PA271W is $1200 Suggested Retail List price. Where can you get a $1200 PA271W brand new, sealed in a box, for $500?
There's obviously no MAP if it's selling on Amazon for $799. I have no idea why you keep quoting MSRP prices. Nobody needs to pay MSRP even for the Thunderbolt Display.
The Dell U2711 is currently $629 on Amazon but I've seen it for around $500. 2560x1440, H-IPS, DIsplayPort, DVI-D, HDMI.
The Dell U2713HM is $699 on Dell and I've seen that less too. Dell runs deals all the time. Checking my personal enterprise discount shows $664. For an actual corporate purchase it's even less.
My Apple enterprise discount gives me a price of $949 for the Thunderbolt display. Which is $20 more than the price I would pay at Adorama ($929). And no tax for Adorama.
Meh. (Just to annoy you)
Still wouldn't buy it. It's due for a refresh and still has premium pricing.
There are usually only a couple of higher end monitors I would suggest using over Apple's unless you don't care about getting an AppleCare warranty, which many people do or should when they didn't. Corporate customers I used to deal with eventually began buying support contracts because it was a LOT less expensive during the lifecycle to do it that way. I used to sell NEC, Viewsonic, and maybe a couple of other brands, but NEC and Viewsonic were the two biggest 3rd party. Apple does a nice job with their monitors and to get something with close specs, they are about the same cost, so why would someone not buy an Apple. I know there are a very small group of people that want/need something that Apple doesn't make, but those cases are very rare, otherwise, the people that go for 3rd party monitors are doing so based predominately on price and they don't always look at the specs.
What gets me is that people are NOT talking about the business perspective of buying 3rd party vs the mfg. That's the business aspects of buying a computer. But most techie people don't have much business sense as they only see the price of the item and not the total cost of ownership.
I personally have always bought NEC monitors, starting with CRT. I have had just so much success with then in terms of quality and lasting so long. I also think their color palettes are much nicer then Apples offerings as Apple doesn't use the best LCD panels on the market, their using LG now. I'm also just now getting into 10bit, plus I really, really like monitors that rotate, especially when you have three 30" like I do. I had a 24" Apple monitor with my G4 Powermac and it was nice, albeit gimicky looking but nice none the less. Apple monitors have always been on the expensive side when compared to other high tier monitors and If I'm going to spend a 1,000 dollars on a monitor, I'm going to spend 1300 and get a 10BIT NEC but it's just all about preferences, nothing wrong with the 27" Apple Display, although it is a little bit long in the tooth technology wise. The new 4K monitors should be much nicer.
There's obviously no MAP if it's selling on Amazon for $799. I have no idea why you keep quoting MSRP prices. Nobody needs to pay MSRP even for the Thunderbolt Display.
The Dell U2711 is currently $629 on Amazon but I've seen it for around $500. 2560x1440, H-IPS, DIsplayPort, DVI-D, HDMI.
The Dell U2713HM is $699 on Dell and I've seen that less too. Dell runs deals all the time. Checking my personal enterprise discount shows $664. For an actual corporate purchase it's even less.
My Apple enterprise discount gives me a price of $949 for the Thunderbolt display. Which is $20 more than the price I would pay at Adorama ($929). And no tax for Adorama.
Meh. (Just to annoy you)
Still wouldn't buy it. It's due for a refresh and still has premium pricing.
Because that's how I look up monitors. I compare BOTH company's MSRP. Now, Apple prices their products because the resellers get very little room to discount. This type of pricing practice was done many years ago by the top pc mfg, Apple's only one of them whereby they knock the MSRP down, and remove margins to the reseller so these steep discounting stops which destroys the branding. It's a different pricing model. But Apple does sell refurbished units which come with the Apple warranty from time to time.
But you have to shop around for pricing and you have to watch out for companies that sell already opened/returned monitors. That practice happens a LOT. Have you ever been to Fry's Electronics? Sometimes, that's all they have is previously opened product. Just something to consider.
My biggest beef are the people that think that Apple's products are overpriced, because I honestly think that they really aren't that bad OR those trying to pass off that something a LOT cheaper is "just as good", when it is usually worse specs, not from a name brand top tier company, etc. etc.
It's all how some people are positioning this whole thing.
Sure, I would love to be able to get XYZ for under $1000 that they are selling for a lot more than that, but Apple is simply not going to just drop the price of something that drastically. It's rare when they drop the price of a fully configured system more than $200 from year to year and I think their entry price for laptops is pretty set as are desktop/AIO. I don't how much further they can go down and STILL retain decent profit margins.
The PC mfg are all VERY desperate right now and they are cutting corners all over the place to keep the price down as much as they can, but their margins are pretty much horrible. I'm wondering which of the bigger name PC mfg is going to close their doors. NEC actually got out of the PC industry and recently got out of the smartphone industry.
I'm sure there will be others within the next year, which ones? That I don't know. I'd have to start looking at their trends for profit, sales, etc. and see which are in the worst shape.
Still wouldn't buy it. It's due for a refresh and still has premium pricing.
That's my biggest problem with the current 27" Apple Display, their asking way to much for it. I would dare say that the margins on that display is about 600 dollars, maybe more, they display panel alone isn't worth more then 150 dollars, Apple is spending the money on the Thunderport hub and metal (which is actually a fairly cheap material in itself) at market cost there is about 12 dollars worth of Aluminum in there.
I personally have always bought NEC monitors, starting with CRT. I have had just so much success with then in terms of quality and lasting so long. I also think their color palettes are much nicer then Apples offerings as Apple doesn't use the best LCD panels on the market, their using LG now. I'm also just now getting into 10bit, plus I really, really like monitors that rotate, especially when you have three 30" like I do. I had a 24" Apple monitor with my G4 Powermac and it was nice, albeit gimicky looking but nice none the less. Apple monitors have always been on the expensive side when compared to other high tier monitors and If I'm going to spend a 1,000 dollars on a monitor, I'm going to spend 1300 and get a 10BIT NEC but it's just all about preferences, nothing wrong with the 27" Apple Display, although it is a little bit long in the tooth technology wise. The new 4K monitors should be much nicer.
Well, since they are working with the IGZO screens, it's new technology and it takes a little time to ring out all of the mfg problems to be able to get the yield to bring them to market. Plus, they have to look at calibration techniques used as that's been a big deal for Apple as of late. I think Apple will probably do a 4K monitor release either December or January.
I don't there is anything wrong with the technology, but I think they could probably make the case thinner, and they might replace it with an IGZO panel since that's probably the only thing that makes sense to replace them with.
I personally have always bought NEC monitors, starting with CRT.
They were one of my favorites in CRTs along with Sony.
The ones using 10 bit hardware do have 10 bit paths available in some applications using certain gpus. Some software on Windows supports a full 10 bit path, but even without that if you're using spectraview for calibration, it still helps on internal processing. 10 bpc is enough to basically eliminate the need for hardware dithering, which is why I like it. In my opinion Apple designed the current 27" models like notebook docks. Note the short power cords that started with the 27" cinema display. The thunderbolt display added a full array of ports. The thing I find really dated is that they didn't update the thunderbolt display to match the form and screen treatment of the current model imacs. In terms of panel technology, they have all been on the market for several years at this point as far as I can tell.
They were one of my favorites in CRTs along with Sony.
The ones using 10 bit hardware do have 10 bit paths available in some applications using certain gpus. Some software on Windows supports a full 10 bit path, but even without that if you're using spectraview for calibration, it still helps on internal processing. 10 bpc is enough to basically eliminate the need for hardware dithering, which is why I like it. In my opinion Apple designed the current 27" models like notebook docks. Note the short power cords that started with the 27" cinema display. The thunderbolt display added a full array of ports. The thing I find really dated is that they didn't update the thunderbolt display to match the form and screen treatment of the current model imacs. In terms of panel technology, they have all been on the market for several years at this point as far as I can tell.
Right agreed, it's a waiting game thought, like you taught me with the thunderport, first comes the hardware.
Right agreed, it's a waiting game thought, like you taught me with the thunderport, first comes the hardware.
Huh? I don't think I taught you that. I don't really offer much in the way of teaching unless you're referring to what I said about iOS hardware capability, but I do link to silly stuff like people playing cellos with lightsabers
Back in my consulting days I'd pull anywhere from $70 to $300 depending on if someone was finding me gigs as a computer geek or I found them myself. If I got them myself I'd have the higher end of the spectrum since I was doing all the legwork. Otherwise they usually took a big cut. These days I have a normal job and make a lot less but on the plus side I'm not stressed out and I don't have to live out of a suitcase.
Often I would be the technical weenie responsible speccing the system and doing the AoAs. So I'd be the asshole you'd have to suck up to. Well maybe not you. Reseller? Never dealt with them much. I dealt with IBM, HP, Sun and Oracle reps.
$100 is simply my threshold for deciding if it's worth it to pay someone else to do something I can do but don't want to. If it costs more than $100 an hour and I can do the job but just don't like it then I'll usually bite the bullet and do it myself. Otherwise I'll pay up and do something else.
Did you ever work for a reseller as an account rep selling to corporate customers? That's my background and I had to know all the major companies and the various discount structure. I did that from the mid-80's to 2000 until I left the reseller industry and went to a enterprise s/w company. During my time at the resellers, we had mfg reps coming in daily and we had to go through constant product training w/ the reps and some of my customers asked questions most people don't ask and they evaluate products differently than your typical consumer. I actually had to "teach" some of my customers how to completely change their procurement structure as they were driving up their own internal costs to manage their IT more efficiently. I've seen some of the biggest blunders even within the customer IT shop. It's actually cheaper in the long run to manage less vendors for IT based products and to standardize on models/brands rather than constantly chasing the lowest price. I've seen too many customers getting burned when they focused soley on price as the vendor was constantly throwing vendors out the door because the vendors couldn't make any money so there wasn't that symbiotic relationship between the customer and mfg./vendor.
People have to learn how to interact with companies and be realistic about their expectations and mfg have to do whatever they can to make better products and better support, but doing that and making a decent profit margin isn't so easy.
Personally, I see too much crap on the market, especially at the retail level. I'm surprised some of these mfg still exist and get away with what they are doing.
That's my biggest problem with the current 27" Apple Display, their asking way to much for it. I would dare say that the margins on that display is about 600 dollars, maybe more, they display panel alone isn't worth more then 150 dollars, Apple is spending the money on the Thunderport hub and metal (which is actually a fairly cheap material in itself) at market cost there is about 12 dollars worth of Aluminum in there.
$12 worth of aluminum? Well at scrap metal prices, but fabrication costs is what escalates $12 worth of scrap metal into $100+ for the case/stand. That's not the cheap beer can aluminum, that's higher grade aluminum.
Have you ever worked for a mfg?
I doubt Apple is making much more than a couple of hundred dollars on that monitor since a lot of them get sold for less money to distributors/resellers. CDW gets them at slightly lower prices than resellers since CDW resells to resellers. So Apple gets around $800 or so from the reseller, and their cost to mfg that product is probably more like around $500 to $600 is my guess. Those panels are probably several hundred dollars. The 15inch Retina display is around $150 to $175 from what I read a while back and I'm sure the 27inch screen is more like $300, maybe more.
Then you have the glass on top of the screen.
Then you have the electronics and other guts inside, plus the box it ships in. I think that monitor costs Apple more like $500 to $600 for finished goods and I actually might still be a little low on it.
Oh, and the various parts are made in different factories and then have to be shipped to one central location to be assembled and calibrated. You have to add in shipping costs, because the parts mfg added shipping charges.
I think you fabricate a bunch of BS to sell your reasoning and I think you are wrong in how you think.
That's my biggest problem with the current 27" Apple Display, their asking way to much for it. I would dare say that the margins on that display is about 600 dollars, maybe more, they display panel alone isn't worth more then 150 dollars, Apple is spending the money on the Thunderport hub and metal (which is actually a fairly cheap material in itself) at market cost there is about 12 dollars worth of Aluminum in there.
Sorry, they don't have $600 of gross profit in that Thunderbolt display. They probably PAY $600 for it fully finished, and I might be a little low.
That panel costs Apple far more than $150. Where do you get your numbers from?
Do you know how much milling time is for fabricating metal? How much milling time is there for that back panel? It doesn't take them 5 minutes just for milling time. And how much metal is lost for each monitor? They have to factor those costs in and Foxconn or whomever may not even make that part, they go with outside suppliers to make each component and Foxconn does the assembly work.
I've spent some time looking at mfg costs of metal. It's not as cheap as you think when you are dealing with the types of metals, fabrication methods and finishing methods Apple has on their products.
If they used ultra cheap aluminum that was stamped, that's much cheaper process, but Apple isn't doing that. They are taking blocks of aluminum and milling them, that's what they use for the iPhones, iPads, laptops and desktops.
The case for the Mac Pro is extruded, so they take the block of aluminum, extrude it, and then it goes through a series of processes in milling it down to precise shape, and then polished, buffed, sand blasted, etc., anodized and while they use robotics, there are operators paid by the hour and each process costs a lot of money per hour. The grade of aluminum that Apple uses, from what I can tell is amongst the highest priced aluminum. It's more like 6061 grade aluminum. Have you priced that grade aluminum lately? It's not $.05 a pound. I assure you. and there is a lot of aluminum that they pay for that gets turned into scrap which they only recoup a small portion.
The cheaper grade panels on $450 27 inch monitors are probably $150 panels, but the higher res 2550 x 1440 are more like $300.
Just in machine time, from start to finish, it probably eats up about $75 or more per case, plus the price of aluminum, plus shipping, so it's probably ends up around $100 or more JUST for the case before it goes to final assembly.