Apple's search for quality component makers

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  • Reply 21 of 23
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    hmm wrote: »
    LCD panels by their nature have uniformity issues, but I would argue that Apple could do more on their end with what they are given. They sit in very comfortable price territory, so I'm not sure why they have not hired one of the better display brands to assist in this regard. NEC, Quato, and Eizo all have some method of uniformity compensation by employing some amount of non-uniform panel blocking, even if they each have different names and specific methods. These brands also seem to further bin panels somewhat based on tolerance levels, but some work on uniformity and drift compensation could go a long way.
    I'd be the first to Support Apple doing better at the various pice points it hits. However that pertains to overall hardware value for the price.

    However to play devils advocate here, how many of Apples monitors are actually being sold for the types of professional uses where a highly calibrated display is used? I pick up my iPad and continue to be amazed at its display quality that apparently does get calibrated somewhat at the factory. However I would never go so far as to call it a "professional display". In my mind a professional display at the very least needs to support user calibration which last I knew couldn't be done on an iPad.

    Now laptops are a different story, as noted awhile ago I sat for an extensive length of time playing with a new MBP at the waiting line for the Genius Bar. It is pretty obvious that Apple has come a long way in display quality since my 2008 MBP. The interesting thing here is that one of the big selling points if the 2008 MBP was display quality just as it is now.
    Apple's tolerance range has been a little high for me, but I don't purchase their freestanding ones. Apple tries to market simplicity for one thing, and they do not provide much in the way of low level controls for their display hardware. They should devote some of their research time to this, as they did when it came to the issue of reflectivity.
    I would agree with this point. However I do believe they are dedicating a lot of R&D to getting these high performance screens to market. The problem is their primary technical goals aren't always the same as the ones many hold here. Not to drop back to the iPad but it is a good example, the new iPads apparently use IGZO screens to lower power demand and to allow for a lighter machine. It apparently took massive amounts of investment to get to IGZO and I would suspect color fidelity wasn't the number one parameter or goal on the list.
    They have some weird inconsistencies. Temperature range used has varied considerably. 27" Cinema displays were around 7000K. Most retina macbook pros are fairly near D65 white in the center. The cMBP was really cold. Measurements were around an 8000K white point. As I suspect you know the topic, I understand black body temperatures, and I'm aware of the range of colors represented by a given color temperature. These descriptions specifically relate to the brightest white measured without intentionally profiling it out by clamping a portion of the range. It confuses users, as they get used to a specific look on one device, then the next looks obviously different. If they turn to tools like the calibration assistant, they'll find that it's horrible. Most of them do not realize that a colorimeter is also not going to fix everything, especially when these contain no LUT system.
    I understand this also but again if somebody buys an Apple laptop expecting a screen that can be calibrated to within an inch of perfection they have bought the wrong machine in my mind. This brings back another discussion that crops up from time to time, which is that a certain class of professional users have unrealistic expectations when it comes to Apple hardware. Apple markets its machines to a wide array of professional users not all of whom are concerned with extreme accuracy in the display. The MBP is very much a mass produced machine targeting many users beyond the so called video professionals.

    Now you might argue that Apple should offer a laptop that is highly calibratable for the professional that need such screens. It is a nice thought obviously but we also know that Apple doesn't like to support many model variants.
    Anyway Apple has a lot of room to improve these, and it's a valid cause for a company that likes their hyperbolic marketing and product simplicity.
    Err this is where I guess I have a problem, a highly calibratable display doesn't lead to product simplicity. I'd go so far as to say a professional class LCD of this nature will always be at odds with the product simplicity and ease of use goals Apple sets for its laptops and even the iMac. I really believe they see the Mac Pro as the choice for these really demanding users.

    I guess I could turn this around a bit and ask who ships better screens in their laptops. Interestingly we got a couple of new laptops at work recently (Dells and Lonovos). These laptops offer a lot of control over the LCD screen but honestly the last thing you want to do is start playing with the default controls as there simply isn't a lot of adjustment there. At least not appealing adjustment. Honestly a wide range of adjustment capabilities does little for you if the display goes ugly outside of some vary narrow parameter settings.

    The other part of this discussion that bothers me is that yeah some displays fail. That is going to happen no matter who uses the display guts. People really shouldn't be getting bent out of shape from display failures if Apple properly supports their warranty. By the way poor display quality can also be due to cable or GPU card failure. People might have an argument with me if there was a massive issue, but if you have a machine that was 1 out of a 100,000 sold that weak,that had an out right failure then I don't see a justification for all the noise about these display issues.

    I mentioned Rolls Royce in a previous post, but they are just one manufacture of high end cars, many coveted European brands. All of these cars have been known to to get towed from time to time. We really have two separate issues here in my mind which people try to bundle together. An outright failure of a display is not the same thing as a display that doesn't meet somebodies demand for a "professional display". I just have the feeling that the two issues are rolled into one to magnify the problem in some minds.
  • Reply 22 of 23
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    winter wrote: »
    Stuff is made everywhere as part of the global economy however I would say China worries me as well as Pakistan. India might be on that list as well. There's also Mexico and Bangladesh. Something has to give with all the clothing factory fires/collapses over there.

    You can't stuff all of these countries into one box. One of the reasons China has been so successful is that they don't have the massive corruption issues that some of the countries you listed have. The thing that worries me about China is the high probability they will touch off another global war due to their expansionist activities. In this regard Russia is nothing like China.

    Some of the other countries have huge issue with corruption and social problems. Mexico is probably the most glaring example of a place businesses simply don't want to move into. When NAFTA was introduced people worried about jobs going to Mexico, I mean people where really scared to death over this, but in reality very little finally moved to Mexico and in fact China got the lions share of what Mexico was hoping to get. Corruption, lack of work ethic, safety issues and a number of other factors have resulted in some companies actually pulling out of Mexico. Sad really because a built up economy would have helped them along.

    As for Pakistan and Bangladesh to different but extremely poor countries. Personally I try to avoid anything with a label coming from those countries even though I don't always think that that is the right thing to do in the case of Bangladesh. It is an ugly choice really, if you don't buy the product you are making things measurably worst for the people living in the country. Fires aside, jobs, even poorly paying ones are better than eating scraps from the local dump.

    As for India I have a hard time adding them to your list of countries to be concerned about. Their government isn't completely hostile to the existence of the USA. Sure they have problems, that is why it is often still called a developing country.

    In any event you can't look at the rest of the world without looking at the good ole US of A. Frankly we have some really significant issues that will lead us to conditions more like Bangladesh than what we are used too. To much money is being stolen by the government to support non productive members of society. It produces a mentality of "give me" in people that is corrosive to society. So when you look out the window and gaze upon these other failed societies just realize that we aren't far from slipping into such a quagmire here.

    So what can Apple do? Diversify production across the globe avoiding those countries obviously at odds with us. They really need to find alternatives to China, the faster the better. I'm not looking at this from the perspective of doing social good, removing production from China is not at all good for the people that work there. Rather I'm more worried about Apple loosing its ass due to political issues that could see them completely cut off from their manufacturing capacity.
  • Reply 23 of 23
    hmmhmm Posts: 3,405member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post









    Now you might argue that Apple should offer a laptop that is highly calibratable for the professional that need such screens. It is a nice thought obviously but we also know that Apple doesn't like to support many model variants.

    Err this is where I guess I have a problem, a highly calibratable display doesn't lead to product simplicity. I'd go so far as to say a professional class LCD of this nature will always be at odds with the product simplicity and ease of use goals Apple sets for its laptops and even the iMac. I really believe they see the Mac Pro as the choice for these really demanding users.

     

    That isn't quite what I wanted to convey. I've used (not necessarily owned) everything from $100 lcds to Barco reference grade crts (in case you remember them). I didn't suggest they should entirely follow the brands that focus on professional equipment. I suggested they consider some of the things that would be of benefit to all users. That is something Apple-like. They're often about making various features more mainstream. Examples would be uniformity compensation, as lcds by their nature are not perfect. I don't see this changing in the near future, especially if the search is limited to cost effective components. They could try to build in some compensation for drift. Regarding calibration, my issue is that they include crappy tools that most people do not understand. It's there so they try messing with it, the same way some people try to correct graphics artifacts by repairing disk permissions. Apple likes to make things behind the scenes and simple. This would contribute to that mantra. I suggested they do work on their out of the box settings. I do encounter a very large number of Macs, so I do see some of these issues up close. I don't update my own hardware that often.

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