shareef777

darkvader said:

shareef777 said:

The best display is the XDR and it’s not meant for people in general, it’s meant for professionals. Just because it’s not sold in volumes doesn’t mean higher end (low volume) products shouldn’t be made. The average monitor today is 2k one going for ~$500. Apple offering a “lower cost” smaller XDR at $2500 doesn’t fit that average, not even on the high end. The high end consumer monitor is a monster 49 inch curved one by Samsung and it “only” goes for $2000.

An M1 iMac sans Mac parts is EXACTLY what people would go for. $700 for the 24”, $1000 for a 27”, and $1500 for a 32”.

No, it's not meant for professionals.  I work with video professionals, folks who do TV stuff that there's a decent chance you've seen.

They don't have monitors like that ridiculous $5000 Apple screen.

Those are for rich idiots.

tht said:

blastdoor said:

tht said:

Apple is certainly taking their time on this. It was a strategic error to discontinue a branded Apple monitor+dock. They should have shipped an Apple Thunderbolt 5K display in 2018. They really should have done it in 2016, but I digress. 

I can understand the wait for XDR miniLED versions, but a 27" 5K monitor, sourced straight from the iMac, should have been shipping 2 years ago.

Would love to hear how their product marketing and finance folks made all these decisions. Better be a book. It would be a horror book, but those are fun to read too. Maybe it was a bargaining chip with LG for monitor development?

I’d say tactical marketing error rather than strategic error, but otherwise I agree.

An apple branded monitor is a marketing tool. Marketing-wise it’s nuts to have Mac users staring at a Dell logo all day. If they’re going to do that, then might as well put “intel inside” stickers on Macs too.

Who knows what the difference between tactics and strategy are here, but Apple left billions of revenue off the table by discontinuing monitors.  A typical desktop setup in modern times, and I'm going back about 10 years here, is to have a laptop with an external monitor or two connected to it. When the 4th gen Macbook Pros came out in 2016, it should have been when this type of setup is mature, no dock dongle needed as it would have been in the monitor. Plug in the TB cable, everything is lit up, plug-n-play, and theoretically more "reliable" if it came from Apple. This is more or less how it works with my LG UF27, except that it only has 3 USBC in back. It could have Ethernet, SD card, the usual.

Apple sells about 20+ million Macs per year that could use an external monitor. With a take-up rate of 5% for a $1000 Apple monitor, 1m units per year, that's $1b per year in monitor sales alone. That's huge! Wasn't thinking about branding purposes at all.