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A 1000$ monitor stand? Come on apple
- Thread starter partyboy4357
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I didn't realise Apple were forcing you to buy one.
Choice:- Either buy one or a chunk of metal for $200/£157 or or lean it up against the wall.
Of coarse you could always buy another brand
For two chunks of metal you could buy a laptop, for one stand you can buy a pretty reasonable gaming pc
or a couple of consoles if you are that way inclined, Apple has always been a bit more expensive but under
Tim Cook they have become a money grabbing monster.
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If I'm right it is VESA compatible...
Buy something cheaper then, don't see the problem even if I personally think it is truly overpriced but with VESA nobody forces you to buy it...
And a lot of professionals already have some kind of VESA stand and mounts in there Studios, so I think it is not a bad move to sell it without a stand...
Buy something cheaper then, don't see the problem even if I personally think it is truly overpriced but with VESA nobody forces you to buy it...
And a lot of professionals already have some kind of VESA stand and mounts in there Studios, so I think it is not a bad move to sell it without a stand...
Indeed. If Steve was still alive the stand would have been $2000
No - its not, but you can get a VESA adapter for $200 extra (that's a bigger ripoff than the stand since the argument that a lot of Pro buyers won't need a stand is valid).
However, I've worked out what the stand is for:
Imagine an open-plan office full of programmers/editors/animators whatever - all with Pro displays bolted to their custom VESA mounts... but what about the boss person in the corner office (open-plan offices boost productivity provided you don't have to use one, right?) They can't be seen using a mere iMac so they need a Mac Pro and Pro display too and they'll need a desk stand. $999 - not a problem, that's less than it cost to get the company logo etched into the office window (six months before we paid the image consultant $300,000 to design the new logo but, hey, sunk costs!)
Bingo - an extra $990 of pure profit on every order of 3 or more displays...
You beat me to this.
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Yeah, but this is precisely what lots of Macheads were clamoring for without any forethought about the potential cost. They were clinging to their Thunderbolt and Apple Cinemas until Jonny Ive could ride in and save them from accepting mediocrity. They didn't want some cost cutting LG plastic box that was design agnostic but cost-sensitive. Oh my, vapors... that forehead Ay!
All that precision machined aluminum is gonna cost a pretty penny. The VESA mount adapters for the old school Apple Cinema Displays were nothing to sneeze at either and those had a larger audience to dilute the cost. If I remember correctly, the VESA mount for a 30" ACD was somewhere in the $70 to $80 range and routinely fetched around $200 (if you could find one) after Apple stopped making them.
Certainly a $200 VESA mount is a pretty generous markup, but did anyone not expect this? All Apple monitors have needed VESA adapters. They're all highly designed. They're not going to drill a bunch of holes in the frame and call it a day.
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Not really. I think Steve Jobs was more price-conscious than Tim Cook. Under Steve Jobs, Apple products had an innovative design, and had good internals, but usually not top-notch. The original Macintosh was underpowered and the original iPhone did not even have 3G, although both were revolutionary. Prices were high, but not sky-high. Tim Cook wants to deliver absolutely the best, no matter how much it costs.
Well, its more than twice the cost of the iMac Pro VESA adapter - it's not that anybody doesn't expect Apple to be expensive, its that they're getting worse.
Also - although 4 bolt holes would look fugly in the back of the space-age streamlined iMac, they'd blend in perfectly with the new "industrial" look of the Mac Pro/Pro display (which is its crying out for someone to bolt on a brass pressure gage and centrifugal governor synced to the fan speed...). Absolutely no excuse for not having an integral VESA adapter.
Well... the best I can say about that 'forehead' is that it doesn't stop the display from working - that doesn't make it good. When a large part of your target audience are graphic designers and artists then - news at 11! - aesthetics will be relevant... but a nice aluminium enclosure and black glass front would have sufficed, they didn't have to go all steampunk on us (when I'm fitting out my vacuum Zeppelin I'll know what computer to get).
Actually, my conspiracy theory about the LG 5k display is that it was supposed to be the new Apple TB display - with a metal case and glass front (extend the bezels slightly to accommodate an iMac-style taper, stick a sheet of black glass over the front and the 'forehead' vanishes - put a metal case on it and those pesky E/M interference problems from the early versions vanish, too. Look at the placement of the ports, the lack of additional video inputs - just like the iMac/TB display and very unlike LG).
As for the prices - the crafty thing about that keynote is that the products they were extolling the virtue of were not the products they announced the prices of. The super-nano-whatnot glass on the display is optional, the stand is optional and the base Mac Pro, with a 8 core Xeon is scarcely more powerful than the iMac Pro (which comes with $1000 worth of screen). OK - its a bit difficult to tell when the particular Xeon it uses isn't available yet (but will doubtless be cropping up in Dells and HPs when it is) and I can't find a "Radeon Pro 580x" card on google - except as the middle option on the regular iMac. The only features that really set it apart from any other Xeon tower are the Afterburner ($???) and the Vega II dual-fabric wossname GPU ($if-you-need-to-ask...)
You beat me to this.
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Certainly a $200 VESA mount is a pretty generous markup, but did anyone not expect this? All Apple monitors have needed VESA adapters. They're all highly designed. They're not going to drill a bunch of holes in the frame and call it a day.
Doesn't the monitor attach magnetically to the stand? If that's the case, does it magnetically attach to the VESA mount as well? Might explain the cost of it. And will the VESA mount allow the monitor to rotate?
Yeah, I think you're right. From the appearance of the mount adapter, it does appear to mount magnetically.
It's impossible to tell just from that photo, but I wouldn't think so because the VESA compatible arms usually allow rotation so allowing two joints to rotate may make the monitor adjustments unstable.
Well, they have essentially just created a third party market for monitor stands out of thin air. Talk about innovation
TBH I don't think $999 for the highly engineered stand is outrageous. It really does seem that a lot of thought, design, and expense went into it. I'm sure it's going to feel luxurious and smooth as butter in operation. Many pro users will already have a mounting solution, so including the stand and jacking up the price of the bundle wouldn't be optimal. For them the VESA option is good. While expensive, it's really a drop in the bucket with a purchase like this.
That being said, I do think that they should quickly come up with a cheaper stand that they can include in the box. Just a hunk of aluminum (like the iMac stand). It would completely shut down all the criticism they're getting for not including ANY sort of stand/mount solution in the box. They have until the fall to do this, so it's not like they have to stop shipping product to make this change. They can go about it two ways. Either announce that it was intended all along ("of COURSE we're going to include a stand!"), or they can make it seem like they heard the criticism and are changing their decision based on consumer feedback. Either way will make Apple seem less out-of-touch than it does at the moment.
That being said, I do think that they should quickly come up with a cheaper stand that they can include in the box. Just a hunk of aluminum (like the iMac stand). It would completely shut down all the criticism they're getting for not including ANY sort of stand/mount solution in the box. They have until the fall to do this, so it's not like they have to stop shipping product to make this change. They can go about it two ways. Either announce that it was intended all along ("of COURSE we're going to include a stand!"), or they can make it seem like they heard the criticism and are changing their decision based on consumer feedback. Either way will make Apple seem less out-of-touch than it does at the moment.
The monitor stand looks pretty well engineered. $1000 is not that much to pay for a stand that includes what I believe to be a rotatable small gas spring custom magnetic mount. Gas spring mounts are already nearly $120 by themselves. The new magnetic mount is probably more easily “travel capable” and packable than any mount currently on the market. While this represents almost $700 more expensive than current offerings, I can’t argue that Apple’s stand would not be better in the field. The VESA mount should also be good since 3rd party vesa mount retrofits for iMacs were really bad before. I think Apple learned a lot about over-engineering brackets and mechanical things now.
If that's what makes you feel vindicated, then yeah. Do that. Otherwise, a VESA adapter and a monitor arm is the recommended course of action.
I hope that's the case, but I don't believe anyone has seen proof of that yet. If you have please share it!
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I'm confident that Apple has done the work to determine the best ergonomics and built the stand to accommodate that.
Some Apple keyboards and every Apple mouse I've used leads me to think that they're not in fact big into ergonomics
Some Apple keyboards and every Apple mouse I've used leads me to think that they're not in fact big into ergonomics
Ha, fair enough!
I don't doubt that the pro stand will be of high quality, probably the best of its type. And I'm also sure that the design and components don't come cheap, and I'm happy for Apple to make a good margin on it.
But the problem is perception. The idea that if you aren't shopping around or don't want to go to another supplier for what is a fairly basic requirement for a nice monitor (hight and tilt adjust), you are forced to spend $1k, now that deserves ridicule. If the new Mac Pro was a bit cheaper and a bit better specced, I might just be thinking about getting one. So am I in the market for the monitor? Hell no. But if tens or hundreds of thousands of people like me think of Apple as the company that charges a grand for a monitor stand the next time they make a buying decision, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple lose money compared with just including it in the box for free.
But the problem is perception. The idea that if you aren't shopping around or don't want to go to another supplier for what is a fairly basic requirement for a nice monitor (hight and tilt adjust), you are forced to spend $1k, now that deserves ridicule. If the new Mac Pro was a bit cheaper and a bit better specced, I might just be thinking about getting one. So am I in the market for the monitor? Hell no. But if tens or hundreds of thousands of people like me think of Apple as the company that charges a grand for a monitor stand the next time they make a buying decision, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple lose money compared with just including it in the box for free.