The curious pricing of the 27" iMac

http://www.marco.org/222434049

by AndrewWarner • 17 years ago

167 141 17 years ago

jrockway8• 17 years ago

$1700 seems like a pretty good price for that. I hate Apple, but could almost see myself replacing my 4-year-old laptop (which I never undock) + 24" monitor with one of these. (I would not keep OS X, of course.)

chrischen• 17 years ago

Why? Are you a Microsoft programmer?

jrockway8• 17 years ago

No, but OS X does not work for me. It powers a computer under my TV that I use for watching movies, but it doesn't even do well for that task. (OSX's VLC often crashes, NicePlayer can't play partial AVI files, the built-in DVD player doesn't let you skip the ads at the beginning, etc.)

For development, I could never use OS X. I rarely use the mouse, and I need a package manager for installing random libraries. I tried this on OS X and it just doesn't work as well as Debian. Emacs also doesn't work right.

A unique monitor with generic Intel hardware running Linux is a great computer. That with OS X and it's just a paperweight. Your mileage may vary, but I have to say that my eyebrow raises itself a bit when I hear a developer say they use OS X.

timtrueman• 17 years ago

Keep the 24" monitor, you can use it as a second display on the iMac.

Andys• 17 years ago

I found the price strangely low.

As usual with any Apple release, I started some friendly banter with my Apple-loving friends about how poor the value is compared to a regular PC, until I got to the 27" Imac and realised you couldn't buy a screen that good, elsewhere - at any price.

elblanco20• 17 years ago

Here are two.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824005...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824176...

randallsquared3• 17 years ago

No, both of those appear to be 2560 at 30", which is a lower DPI than the one under discussion. Since that's the only way that the 27" screens are better than the pre-existing 30" screens, it must be the metric that was meant.

yread• 17 years ago

I dont think the price is that low. If you look at these cheap (and smaller) (E-)IPS panels that are popping up (NEC EA231WMi 23"for 300 euro, dell's ips for 200 or samsung c-pva for 200) i think its pretty obvious that its possible to produce an inexpensive screen. The computer on the back might cost like 300 so I think there is still a decent margin for apple

elblanco20• 17 years ago

LG Claims that their e-IPS panels should be the same price as TN parts.

http://www.displayblog.com/2009/01/28/lg-display-lpl-23-e-ip...

vegai• 17 years ago

Perhaps the price of LCDs is about to drop sharply?

davidmathers10• 17 years ago

The price of IPS displays is dropping because LG has developed a new technology called e-IPS that costs much less to make than s-IPS, which it's replacing. The e-IPS displays still cost more than TN displays I think.

gcb3• 17 years ago

And by LG track record, it also saves tons of money ditching quality control completely.

lyime• 17 years ago

LCD display(not panels) makers manufacturers still make decent margin. There is a reason why these guys keep selling these things with a lot of competition on price.

Apple is most likely still making a nice ~20% margin on the 27" iMacs.

etherael• 17 years ago

I never thought I'd find something that I'd actually consider buying from Apple, this is the first product to break that rule, it's a really nice monitor for a real computer, and if I feel like having a fap about how designer I am, I can use the free mac... :D

davidmathers10• 17 years ago

there’s an entire high-end computer stuck to the back of it

Actually, there's an entire discount-parts ($150 cpu, $70 video card) computer stuck to the back of it. If you configure it with high-end parts the price goes up to $2200 and even then you're getting a previous-generation video card (radeon 4850 rather than the new 5850).

It's not really so curious. Apple does the "make exclusive deal with a supplier and beat the rest of the market by 6 months in order to look cool" trick all the time. They did it with Intel for the Macbook Air CPU for example.

What it must mean is that e-IPS panels cost much less to manufacture than s-IPS panels. And that a new generation of higher-res e-IPS displays will be arriving in 6 months.

EDIT: I googled "e-ips" and found this at http://www.displayblog.com/2009/02/13/lg-display-e-ips-lcd-p...

LG Display has developed what it calls e-IPS. e-IPS is a version of the company’s trademark IPS technology that brings the cost down. Way down. LG Display target market is toward the larger LCD monitor market that is currently dominated by TN (Twisted Nematic) technology. LG Display has stated that its e-IPS LCD panels will be price competitive with TN LCD panels.

davidmathers10• 17 years ago

Until we know why the panel is so cheap

I love my Apple products, but Apple fanboys..come on. It took me less than 5 minutes to find out why the panel is so cheap. Seriously, why must you always be so...gushing?

P.S. Instapaper is brilliant!

davidmathers10• 17 years ago

No, seriously. Have you seen the followup response at http://jimcloudman.tumblr.com/post/223517306/re-the-curious-... ?? It's so amazingly ridiculous. You have to read the whole thing, but here's an excerpt:

I think another part of it, though, is that the panel manufacturer must be drooling over the fact that this is really the only way to move a lot of high-end panels, and therefore gain access to serious economies of scale, driving the prices down and bringing IPS panels to a more mainstream market. ...This is what I love about Apple. Nothing is driving innovation anymore in the PC market - the average computer today has little more capability than a computer from five years ago. Apple, however, is using the brute force of its market share to drive technology forward...Then, the rest of the industry follows suit in a vain attempt to catch them...

What compels people to turn their total ignorance of the hardware industry into love letters for Apple? Not only do Apple's economies of scale have nothing to do with the cost of e-IPS, Dell was the first out of the gate with an e-IPS display ( http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/15/dells-2209wa-lcd-monitor-... ) but of course these fanboys didn't notice.

So now, because they don't know there's a difference between s-IPS and e-IPS, it's Apple's business strategy that is changing the world, rather than the scientists and engineers at LG. The ones who actually invented this new low-cost technology.

elblanco20• 17 years ago

The breathless claim of a "high end computer" stuck out to me also. The iMac computer parts are one step up from bargain bin. They aren't the cheapest possible, but on a scale with two ends, they aren't near the "high" end of that scale.

I also like the author's math, a 25% price difference isn't much?

sigh

bitwize• 17 years ago

It's high-end because it's Apple. Any more performance, and it'd be a supercomputer.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4182/is_19990907/ai_...

maukdaddy2• 17 years ago

To be fair they don't do it to look cool. They do it to make shit loads of money at impressive margins.

edit: By "it" I meant exclusivity deals.

potatolicious8• 17 years ago

Bear in mind that the iMac uses almost exclusively laptop parts, which are more expensive (but have better thermal profiles, and are of course smaller).

The only thing in an iMac that is desktop-sized is I believe the HDD (and maybe the RAM? I'm not sure).

ptomato• 17 years ago

The ram is laptop-sized. (Which also means, by the way, that Apple is not gouging you for the RAM nearly as much as they usually do. They're still gouging you, they're just taking out your eyes instead of half your head.)

protomyth• 17 years ago

That isn't true in the new 27" iMac http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac-Intel-27-Inch/1236/1#top

ZeroGravitas• 17 years ago

Can you use this as an external monitor?

A few folks, including this article, make it sound like you're buying a monitor and getting a computer for "free". But if it's like previous iMacs then you're buying a monitor that can only be used with the "free" computer.

If that is the case then that's a good reason for Apple getting a good deal. There's no way for this to cannibalize sales of actual monitors, unless the buyer was planning to weld it irreversibly and permanently to a Mac mini.

Which also renders any price comparison moot. It's a thing unto itself, only really directly comparable with other iMacs.

yardie3• 17 years ago

Yes, you can. The display port is bi-directional. In a sort of quirky way. Apple has addressed one of the longest lingering questions of the iMac line (and basically all AIO lines). People upgrade the PC but could reuse the display. With an AIO everything had to go.

elblanco20• 17 years ago

This is definitely a cool feature.

edit okay, go ahead and downvote, apparently bidirectional connection ports in lieu of mono-directional ones are not a cool feature to somebody.

maukdaddy2• 17 years ago

The one problem, at least environmentally, is that you can't use the display without also having the entire "computer" part running. This means you're consuming XX extra watts the entire time.

barrkel3• 17 years ago

The Dell monitor pricing he quotes - $1200 for LCD - is pretty gougey too. Dell hardware is generally bad value unless it's on special offer, a bare-bones system (in which case it'll lack extensibility), or part of a corporate purchase.

Tichy7• 17 years ago

My 24'' monitor from Dell is great, it was not very expensive, and it has served me well for years now. I think you generalize too much (also, never buy from the consumer section). My X1 from Dell is also great, I love it much more than my generic MacBook.

barrkel3• 17 years ago

My Dell 2407WFP is great too, but I bought it at a 40% discount. The price fluctuated between list and discount at seemingly random intervals.

elblanco20• 17 years ago

Dell is usually a good benchmark to compare against. But yeah, you can usually find anything Dell is selling a bit cheaper elsewhere.

barrkel3• 17 years ago

A little bit? If you spec out a decent system, I mean not bare-bones, and it's not a corporate purchase, you can easily find yourself paying over 100% extra. As I mentioned in my other comment, I bought my Dell monitor at a 40% discount. I wouldn't be surprised to see a $1200 Dell monitor on sale at random intervals for $799.

eleitl3• 17 years ago

Dell 27" sells for 879 USD. Dell's 30" for about 1200 USD.

So, no, the computer at the back is not exactly free.

jbellis3• 17 years ago

The dell 27" is much lower-resolution, though.

eleitl3• 17 years ago

Completely, entirely irrelevant. It's the panel size and type that matters.

potatolicious8• 17 years ago

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/products/Monitors/product...

"Panel Type: VA - Vertical alignment"

The Apple screen, on top of being higher resolution, is also a IPS panel, which gives much better viewing angles as well as color reproduction. It is the only type of LCD suitable for photo/video work.

For a bunch of people who complain a lot about getting good value for your dollar (and how Apple doesn't do that), you sure are misinformed about the gear you're buying. I suppose as long as it throws some kind of image up on screen it's good right?

eleitl3• 17 years ago

Nice that you assume I don't know what kind of panels Dell uses (currently e-IPS and S-PVA, 8 bit) while Apple hitherto was, to put it politely, not known for using quality panels in their offering (TN <cough> 6 bit <coughcough>). I'm glad to Cupertino is at least up to snuff when it comes to Dell. Took sure their sweet time doing that.

The only kind of displays suitable for professional work are the expensive kind that comes with an external calibrator. Neither Dell nor Apple sells these.

Next time, please don't assume people are ignorant.

jbellis3• 17 years ago

Great, a new resolution with even _less_ vertical pixels.

I still miss 4:3. Much better for programming.

NikkiA• 17 years ago

I disagree, I use emacs with vertical splits (ie 1|2|3 layout) and 16:10 and 16:9 is great for that, also it means that spreading over onto the second (16:10) monitor isn't a change in layout policy.

I could never go back to 4:3 layout for programming, as I discovered last year when one of my 16:10s died and I had to use an old 4:3 I had laying around.

pfedor• 17 years ago

In my experience using a small monitor with X configured to use a virtual screen (i.e., the monitor just shows a small part of a much bigger desktop and you can scroll it with a mouse) is just as good as the giant monitors. I don't feel I really gained that much using 30" or 2x24" in comparison with the 15" monitor and 2000x2000 pixels virtual window I used to use in the past. Of course it's hard to argue that large monitors aren't nice, but I think the benefits for writing code are overstated.

potatolicious8• 17 years ago

Apple IMHO has done much better with the widescreen format than Windows has - the UI paradigm does not encourage full screen use.

Look at, say, Visual Studio - the thing is practically unusable without being fullscreened (unless you enjoy 200 pixels actual code editor). I've always felt widescreens to be a bit useless on Windows in that regard - the overfocus on fullscreen apps robs widescreen of its primary strenght: multitasking.

pmjordan2• 17 years ago

I use a 2-column layout on a 30" Apple Cinema display. Each of the columns has a 4:5 (8:10) aspect ratio, which is actually excellent for programming. If you did this on the new iMac, you'd get 2x 8:9, which is still pretty good. You soon don't want to miss the high number of vertical pixels.

What puts me off is the reflective finish. I can live with it on a 13" MacBook, but I'd find it impossible on that sort of size, where you're practically guaranteed to get a light source into view. Oh, and the fact that the HDD isn't user serviceable. Two hard drive bays would be nice, too, considering there's no eSATA or ExpressCard.

asciilifeform• 17 years ago

> What puts me off is the reflective finish.

Apple sells stick-on "de-glossing" film. The one I bought works fairly well.

brunoc• 17 years ago

I flipped both my 4:3 monitors (19") to display vertically. They are 1024x1080. I don't think I'll ever go back to horizontal.

eli• 17 years ago

I've been thinking of doing that. Was it a pain to reattach the mount?

talvisota• 17 years ago

I flipped my monitor at work to 1200 x 1920. Excellent for almost everything, except working with some dusty old collaboration tool which has problems with flexibility.

presidentender• 17 years ago

At my college job, my development machine had one vertical monitor for coding, a horizontal monitor for testing in the web browser, and another horizontal monitor for email, SQL server manager, or word processing. I miss that setup.

cyman• 17 years ago

This is it. I think I am converting to a Mac. The last reason I didn't was because there's a common perception that they're priced too high. Unless this is a misprint, that time is over.

elblanco20• 17 years ago

$1700 for the next to lowest end offering is too high. Dell doesn't even break $1000 territory until you get to their upper end offerings. For $1700 you could buy two computers and a laptop (or two computers and two netbooks).

davidmathers10• 17 years ago

Dell doesn't sell a 27-inch 2560 by 1440 LED display. I would pay $1000 for it today if it were for sale. Some people would pay more than me.

gits_tokyo• 17 years ago

Be forewarned, if you're a heavy user, stay clear of the all-in-one iMac's.

Tichy7• 17 years ago

I would guess the real reason is mentioned at the end: there really is not much of a point in buying a desktop PC anymore (unless you are a hardcore gamer). It makes much more sense to buy a notebook and attach it to an external monitor when working at home.

Also prices for flatscreens are dropping all the time. If the Dell 30'' also has the special panel, and only is lacking in some other specs, maybe enhancing those other specs is not as expensive as adding the better panel type (whether they are important or not is another matter - if you WANT to spend a lot of money, you can always find a reason, like "this audio system does not have gold coated cables" or whatever).

In any case this makes me hope for a price drop of the 30'' Dell displays...

Retric• 17 years ago

I have a laptop from work that can I take with me on trips.

I also have an iPhone for internet access on the go. So I don't see the need to buy another portable computer.

Tichy7• 17 years ago

The point is not having to sync stuff between multiple computers. Of course if you fully embrace "the cloud" it might be less of an issue, but that is not for everyone.

morphir2• 17 years ago

when I got my Macbook Alu - I got baffled by its high quality and sleekness. The 13" Macbook Alu was a bargain relative to its quality. When I experienced the unboxing, I felt like a 16 year old virgin girl..and I'm a boy.. ehehe

One year later - and there are still no other company that can offer a similar high quality laptop. Thinkpad has pretty much crashed and burned after china got their hands the product management.

I guarantee you that this 27" will provide a first time apple owner with a unboxing experience you will never forget. It will simply raise the bar for how you perceive quality.

Tichy7• 17 years ago

"It will simply raise the bar for how you perceive quality."

Unless you have to return it three times before you receive one that has no extreme production flaws (happened to a friend with his iMac - mind you, he is still an Apple fan boy despite of that experience...).

morphir2• 17 years ago

all mass production companies have products that fail now and then. But ok, what computer/brand would you recommend?

mechanical_fish• 17 years ago

This is making me wish I'd read the article that went by a couple days ago with a headline like "Are new Apple iMacs a harbinger of the new Apple TV?"

Because if I felt like mongering a crazy Apple-related rumor on a subject which I know nothing about [1], I'd guess that one good way to get a manufacturer to grant you a crazy price break is to tell them that, as soon as they can ramp up production to the necessary levels, Apple will release an Ive-designed Apple-branded TV with their parts inside it and have Steve Jobs stand on stage to promote that TV.

---

[1] Which, according to the empirical evidence of this post, I apparently do. I need to get some more sleep.

kburn4• 17 years ago

Apple would have to get their playback environment up to media center standards. Even the Apple TV was a usability nightmare by home theater standards.

zandorg• 17 years ago

This 15" HP Omnibook 6100 (made in 2001) has a huge (1400x1050) screen - I can't find anything like it.

mbreese• 17 years ago

That's a common resolution. I have a Thinkpad T42 with that same 15" screen, although, that resolution equally common at 14" (my wife has a T43 with that resolution).

The iMac 27" is really a unique resolution, largely due to I believe, the change in aspect ratio.

kajecounterhack• 17 years ago

I have a 15" Dell Precision M70 (4 years old now, overheats regularly) with 1920x1200 res, haha. Yeah, things show up pretty small but really clear.

elblanco20• 17 years ago

$300 Mac Netbook.

http://gizmodo.com/5389166/how-to-hackintosh-a-dell-mini-10v...

The curious pricing of the 27" iMac

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