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> Ridiculous Option: Apple Pro Display XDR I'll admit, a monitor that costs more than my first car is beyond affordable for 99% of the population. But saying

• jstx1 5y ago
  > I just find that's truly not an unlikely situation to be in. Uhm, I would say that fully remote $300k+ jobs are still unlikely.
  • late2part 5y ago
    fully remote is not a benefit for most serious programmers, it's a choice. I know many dozens of engineers that work fully remote and make >> $300k.
  • throwawaygh 5y ago
    >> untold hours to reach the top of your profession... I just find that's truly not an unlikely situation to be in. > Uhm, I would say that fully remote $300k+ jobs are still unlikely. Well, yes, reaching the top of one's profession is unlikely. But those who fit the preconditions established by GP probably have no issues finding 300k remote. (That said, I would never spend more than $300 on a monitor regardless of income... for me, there is literally no return because cheap monitors have gotten so darn good. The one possible exception would be an e-ink display that mimicked the coding/authoring experience of a standard display, but AFAIK that doesn't exist yet. That said, I'm not exactly paid for my aesthetic intuition ;-) )
  • joebiden2024 5y ago
  • cheeze 5y ago
    Not really. I was pleasantly surprised at the options out there when I looked recently. Entry level dev, yeah going to be hard. Senior level dev with a decent resume? Shouldn't be an issue at all.
    • jstx1 5y ago
      possible != likely
    • oceanplexian 5y ago
      My experience working as a senior engineer in FAANG is you get a 2 year old Intel MacBook and maybe a grand to spend on some accessories. Like 80% of my peers thought their 60hz Dell 1440p monitor was state of the art and couldn’t tell the difference between a Celeron and an i9 10900x if their life depended on it.
      • nine_k 5y ago
        Same experience. You can get nicer stuff, but you should order it specifically, and explain why you need it.
  • bluedino 5y ago
    Think of it as people who earn 300k being able dictate that they work from home, and it sounds a lot more feasible
    • PragmaticPulp 5y ago
      In my experience, the companies able to pay $300K salaries are able to dictate where their employees work, not the other way around. FWIW, I’ve had a remote job in this pay range pre-pandemic, but even I wouldn’t say that it’s easy or common.
• hashmymustache 5y ago
  Home computer displays for radiologists can cost well over $10K. Of course they dont have to pay for it themselves though. And they can make over $600K working from home reading images all day.
• querulous 5y ago
  the problem with the apple xdr display isn't just the price though. it's not a good monitor for a lot of users. it's limited to 60hz, it's response time is really poor, it suffers from really obvious blooming and bleed at high brightness and it has bad off axis color accuracy and brightness. sure, if you care deeply about color accuracy and 6k resolution it's pretty good. these aren't the only metrics on which monitors are judged though apple does a really poor job of supporting external displays. there's virtually no good options if you want something with high refresh, good latency and reasonable pixel density and color reproduction
  • urthor 5y ago
    Fair enough, I wrote the above knowing absolutely nothing about the Apple's specs. I'm just speaking in generalities.
  • kbenson 5y ago
    Yes, the issue is not that it's expensive, it's that it doesn't justify that cost (serious question, what's that stand made out of to cost $1000?) If you can get an equivalent (or better) monitor for the same price (or less), then it's not really about spending an extremely generous salary to have better tools, it's about spending it to have a substandard tool that happens to have an Apple name attached to it. If it's actually the best in enough areas to make it worthwhile, then that's great, and maybe it is worth the cost to some people. Maybe something like the Dell 8k monitor is a better fit for more people in the market for one of these, at a cheaper cost ($4k with a stand), more pixels, and similar feature set (if lacking some named features). Maybe not. I probably don't know enough to accurately judge, but it sure looks like Apple's trying to fleece some people that want the brand name to me.
    • wmf 5y ago
      If you can get an equivalent (or better) monitor for the same price (or less) You can't; that's the point. There are no 6K monitors besides the ridiculous Apple one and the Dell 8K probably needs to be run at 2.5x which I don't know if macOS even supports.
    • 5y ago
• minimaul 5y ago
  I find it's just too much to justify. A bit more than $1k on the Ultrafine 5K was justifiable for me, and I've seriously considered buying another. If it was $2k or so for the Apple Pro Display XDR, or if they did a middle-man option that provided the 6K resolution but wasn't as bright etc, I'd snap one up in an instant - but I want it mostly for text & software development. I don't need perfect colour accuracy (although, I do like it).
  • BoorishBears 5y ago
    The 8k Dell would be that... if it wasn't so horrible to drive. It's ironic, it's probably heavily discounted because no one can drive it... but if it had come out later with newer connectivity options, it'd be selling like hot cakes and just as expensive as an XDR
• xyzzy123 5y ago
  Some work tools get treated like capital or heirloom and some get treated like consumables. Scissors or a hand plane are decent "heirloom" items. Potentially you can retire with the same one you started with, or pass them down. Electric drills start to lean toward consumable. Battery tech changes over the years and they do wear out in non-fixable ways. Screen and computer tech advances so fast that 5 years is a "good" lifespan, and 10 years is exceptional. So a 4k investment in scissors is a lifetime investment, while a 5k screen may be more like "1k / year for good monitor as a service" (plus 2k off your next refresh). I think it can still make sense, but very often when people buy the premium in computers or displays they are getting the same thing everyone else gets 30-50% cheaper 1 year later.
  • urthor 5y ago
    Excellent point.
  • minimaul 5y ago
    This is a good comment in general, but: > I think it can still make sense, but very often when people buy the premium in computers or displays they are getting the same thing everyone else gets 30-50% cheaper 1 year later. I'd normally agree, but the article's point is that this isn't happening with displays - we're stuck at 4K as the best available except for a handful of displays that are still expensive even years after introduction. I bought my LG Ultrafine 5K in 2018, and it launched in 2016. There's still no real alternative - we seem to be in a monitor progress limbo.
    • gumby 5y ago
      I got one of the 4K ones last year and it was the same price as when introduced. The only price reduction was due to inflation. I assume the desktop monitor business is so low margin that it’s barely worth investing in these days.
    • gfxgirl 5y ago
      There's a market of at least 1 (me) waiting for an HD-DPI wide display. All of the 34 - 38 inch displays are LD-DPI :( My LG 38" is 3840x1600. I want it to be 7680x3200 in the same size monitor
• mhh__ 5y ago
  Well obviously if you have that kind of cash you might as well, but it's a bit like drugs. You think "I need this to be productive" when you're really just stroking your vice - where does it stop?
• aronpye 5y ago
  I think the issue is most employers are unlikely to buy a monitor like this for anyone except video editing professionals. That leaves it on the employee to purchase it out of their own salary, even though it is almost certainly a work only expense.
• FpUser 5y ago
  >"Without reference to the technical merits of the Apple Display, I don't think dropping $5000 on a monitor is outlandish for any professional in the situation I've described." I can afford $5000. But I would not pay this money. I do away just fine with 4K 32" BenQ at $700. I use it for programming and for this task that $5000 brick offers no advantages for me. And it is not ever real pro display. Those go for much more than 5K. Try 20K and up.
• applethrow736 5y ago
• peanut-walrus 5y ago
  I call bullshit on the $4000 scissors. The very very highest end goes to $1000 and most hairdressers use scissors around the $100 mark, which are still extremely good professional tools. Furthermore, if you have a very expensive pair of scissors, you are not going to be sharpening them twice a day... More like twice a year (and you take them to a professional, you don't do it yourself) .
  • palmetieri2000 5y ago
    Playing devils advocate, they probably strop the edge twice a day with a leather strop or a super fine grit whetstone. This isn't really sharpening as such, very little material will be removed from the blade (as you probably know), but to an observer would appear to be 'sharpening' and would theoretically assist in maintaining the very minor burrs that would occur from daily use on hair, if the scissors have some bypass this may also be desirable as a burred edge can interfere with the bypass action. Caveat, am an Amateur bladesmith, not hairdresser so I don't actually know much about scissors specifically and dont have a frame of reference for how much damage hair does to an edge.
  • washadjeffmad 5y ago
    Give OP a break, they're planning to show responses in this thread to their spouse later to get permission to buy themself a nice toy. If they say their hairdresser uses $4000 scissors because that's what the real professionals pay, hey, let them dream.
  • TaylorAlexander 5y ago
    I got in to sewing recently and none of my cheapo scissors actually worked for cutting fabric properly. I spent $20 for a two pack of fabric scissors at the fabric store and they work great. I can definitely see how $100 scissors would be just fine! Also sharpening twice a day sounds more like a ritual than a real need. But what do I know I’m not in that industry.
    • dylan604 5y ago
      Sounds like they cut the hair of people with hair like mine. My old hair dresser used to joke about needing to get her shears sharpened every time she cut my hair.
• JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
  “Let them eat cake” is all I hear from this comment.
• washadjeffmad 5y ago
  The startup dude with the Embody and topped out M1 Max with four roommates mates is such a meme today, though. That's because it's incomplete. A $5k screen is not so much a tool of the trade as an accessory for someone signalling themself to be valuable or valued. More commonly, coming to own these things is the result of little professional envy. Our software engineers spend all day developing. They sit in $2-300 chairs and work on their preferred displays (last gen dual Apple TB displays for the Mac guys, dual anythings for the Windows, 1440p ultrawides for the java team). You know who the only person in our org with an XDR is? The CIO with a MacBook Air, for writing emails and teleconferencing. They got theirs because another C-level made a big deal about how they couldn't work without their dual 5K UltraFines, also for sending emails and teleconferencing. None of our enployees who could make use of an XDR display owns one because they either own a more industry-capable professional display (Flanders Scientific, Dolby, Sony pro series) or got an iMac Pro when they existed for under $5k. I don't fault anyone who admires the XDR any more than I fault myself for liking any of the niche luxury items I do, but I wouldn't delude myself for even a moment into believing that an $8k watch is an essential investment because time management is an important skill to have.
  • henriquez 5y ago
    I use a Pro Display XDR with my MacBook Air because of people like you who write long posts about how dumb it is.
    • BoorishBears 5y ago
      I do the same because I wanted the best productivity experience out there and have tried just about any monitor anyone could name before landing on this... but I might start claiming this too.
    • random314 5y ago
      You showed him!
    • washadjeffmad 5y ago
      Thanks, Apple pays me a commission every time someone uses that arrangement. I never get a check, though, because they bet me back that they could slap a logo on a towelette and sell it for $20. Uncanny how evenly it cancels out.
• TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  Someone could also buy a really nice monitor for $2k and donate the other 2k to a local food bank. A lot of people are struggling and hungry.
  • BoorishBears 5y ago
    What if I buy a $5k monitor and donate more than that, are you satisfied then? Why turn this into a morality play?
    • TaylorAlexander 5y ago
      > What if I buy a $5k monitor and donate more than that, are you satisfied then? I don't believe you would actually do this or you wouldn't make that comment, but either way don't do it to satisfy me. > Why turn this into a morality play? As I said, a lot of people are struggling and hungry. The point of the comment is to inject a little reality in to the idea that a $4,000 monitor is "worth it" because someone is at the computer a lot. But the marginal happiness of an HN user buying a $4,000 monitor instead of a $2,000 is very low, and there are other ways to spend extra cash. If you have extra money right now, consider donating it. It's cold outside and people need help. Why get upset anyway? I think I made a fine suggestion. Someone could do what I suggested. Or not. You don't have to do it if you don't want to.
      • whatever1 5y ago
        In Europe we don’t kindly ask for your extra money. We just tax it. Takes the moral dilemmas out of the equation.
      • BoorishBears 5y ago
        You know, I wasn't upset... at least not when you wrote this: > Don't do it because I am satisfied or not. but for some reason you felt the need to edit it to: > I don't believe you would actually do this or you wouldn't make that comment, but either way don't do it to satisfy me. You should probably rollback the edit. I'm from Ghana, I probably donate what you've donated in a decade every month to people who need it more than any American ever will. And not just money, time. I don't go back home just to see my family after all, I've spent months of my time working with my father on his USAID project in the country. Is taking a 6 month unpaid sabbatical and giving up 200k in pay enough for our resident patron saint of the poor? I grow reallll tired of people like this. People in the "1st world" who based on their virtue signaling you'd assume live like monks but in reality live in relatively cozy excess completely unaware of half the reality the actual downtrodden face. - Semi-off topic but based on this comment I feel like you're exactly who needs to hear this. The degree to which virtue signaling has become an integral part of some people's sense of identity in this country is infuriating: It's not cold where I'm from, people still need help. Getting giddy off slogans and token shows of kindness in one of the most privileged countries on earth... Where I'm from "needing help" isn't a seasonal issue, and it's not even close to being as bad as it gets globally. - > But the marginal happiness of an HN user buying a $4,000 monitor instead of a $2,000 is very low, and there are other ways to spend extra cash. What a joke. Did it ever occur to you spending fractions of a percent more compared to what you get paid to sit in front of the damn thing is a marginal expense? > Why get upset anyway? I think I made a fine suggestion. Someone could do what I suggested. Or not. You don't have to do it if you don't want to. Because you have the audacity to talk so condescendingly based on someone's monitor choice. I couldn't resist replying in kind.
• yepthatsreality 5y ago
  Counter point, many older more experienced hairdressers get away with a $1000 scissors just fine. Your point stands though, pay for what you want. Just don’t tell me it’s the tools that make the operator.
• 908B64B197 5y ago
  Pro Display XDR really only makes sense if you buy it with pre-tax dollars.
• bredren 5y ago
  I bought the XDR pro display and the stand June 2020 after completing a challenging but decent paying contract. It’s a fantastic piece of equipment. Apple’s business discount and Apple Card cash back program chips away at the initial cost. I sell used Apple products regularly as I upgrade and they hold their value pretty well. XDR is not an exception, check eBay. Liquidating an XDR in favor of say Apple VR or an upgraded XDR will reduce the cost of ownership a great deal. Do the math for yourself. I use it with a 2018 Mac mini and standard Blackmagic egpu largely for full stack development. It’s amazing. I occasionally edit video in final cut, and watched Dune in 4K HDR on it. If you’re considering an XDR I would not let all the negative opinion here sway you too much. You can read about the experiences other developers and non tech folks have had w the XDR in this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/pro-display-xdr-owners-thread.2242790/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/pro-display-xdr-owners-...
• Dave_Rosenthal 5y ago
  Obviously no one should bankrupt themselves spending more than they can afford on a monitor, but I agree completely with the sentiment of the parent. In early high school I scrimped and saved and purchased a NEC 3FG flat CRT (13 inches I think) and I was so glad I spent the money—-much sharper, bigger, and better that what I had before. In late college it was the same story for a used 21” Sony CRT. The thing weighed an absolute ton but it was awesome. Crisp 1600x1200 at 85hz. I lugged it way too many places—-coding in friend’s basements and playing games. As a young engineer, Apple released their first 1920x1200 24” LCD at $3500. I remember telling a coworker it was a bit too much for me but at $2k it would be a no-brainer. A year (or something) later I remember him telling me that Apple had just dropped the price to $2k. I ordered one the same day. And, yes, today, I have a Cinema Display XDR. I have never regretted spending money on monitors. The total number of hours of use that I get out of them (say 6 hours a day for 6 years ~= 13,000 hours) makes them one of the easiest things to justify spending money on.
• zitterbewegung 5y ago
  I make around half that and the biggest problem with the XDR is the aspect ratio and the reason why that is an issue is how Apple designed the XDR. It is primary for people on the low end and medium end who edit / color grade video. If you are a developer try considering a 12.9 iPad Pro possibly? At least the aspect ratio is much better and the refresh rate is there but it also is too small for the rest of the examples. I don't see Apple releasing a monitor that will be middle of the road but I could see an LG refresh. As a developer when I am doing my side projects I mainly make my terminal consume the middle third of the screen and have other relevant information or have it fill the screen. The only issue filling the screen is that you are possibly looking at the edges too much and that can cause eye strain. But, would I buy an XDR again? Absolutely. Doing anything with this monitor makes every other monitor I own second rate. Also, content consumption is excellent to the point that its brighter than the theaters around me. Also, having a Mac which is fully compatible with an XDR allows me to manage it without touching one button on a monitor. It's integration with the rest of the system is by far the most appealing option. I do own the non Nano option.
• hintymad 5y ago
  I'm quite curious how much your hairdresser charges you given that he uses a $4000 pair of scissors.
• Cyril_HN 5y ago
  I'm sorry, tell me more about the $4000 pair of scissors.
• coldtea 5y ago
  >I'll admit, a monitor that costs more than my first car is beyond affordable for 99% of the population. But saying that, many of the people reading this are pulling truly exotic salaries right now. After devoting untold hours to reaching the top of their profession. It's not even about "getting something expensive but good as a professional expense to invest in the tools of your trade" - as a developer might see it. It's quite a bargain for what it is, period. This monitor has specific capabilities, competitive monitors to which, used in the video and post-production industry, cost anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000, from vendors like Sony and such.
• _ph_ 5y ago
  Well yeah, but while I am a professional, I am not earning $300k plus. So some budget constraints apply. Ironically, I might have considered an Apple Pro Display when it came out, if Apple had sold a computer to go with it :p. Now with the M1Max laptops, things are starting to look differently. But there are several issues with the Apple Pro Display if you are not a video artist: - it uses a lot of power and even requires a fan. - it does have only one input port. Of all companies, Apple might consider the use case that you need to connect your (work) laptop and your (private) Mac to your screen. So the price isn't only pretty much outside of the budget of most mortals, even if you treat it as a once in a lifetime luxury expense, it is quite limited. I so hope either Dell makes a screen with the same panel, but with ports ans somewhat less expensive, or Apple makes a consumer screen again, I hope so much it is larger than 27", I find this size too limited. And if they do, please give it more than one port.
• Liron 5y ago
  People aren’t thinking clearly about this because of how cheap all monitors are. Here’s how I think about it: For a software engineer, all monitors are worth $100k+. This particular monitor is worth $110k+. So yes, spend an extra few $k to get the best.
  • bbbobbb 5y ago
    How exactly did you arrive at that conclusion? Why would a consumer product that I can get for $800 would be worth $100k for me, thus justifying overpaying for it? Am I supposed to buy $50k wallet because I take it everywhere now? Or $250k glasses because I wear them all day?
    • Liron 5y ago
      Good question, but I have a good answer: you need to understand the amount of consumer surplus of each product. If a wallet cost $50k, you wouldn’t buy it, you’d shove your credit cards in your pants pocket or find a workaround. But if a monitor cost $100k, you or your company would simply buy it and get on with your life - assuming you’re a professional programmer. Monitors have a ridiculous amount of consumer surplus. Once you accept that a monitor is worth $100k of consumer surplus, it’s more intuitive that a 10% noticeably better monitor can have 10% more consumer surplus, regardless of the low market price. And yes, strong vision correction is also potentially worth $250k if you make a programmer’s salary and that’s the only way you can work. It’s just important to operationalize “10% better” as a measure of how much it helps your output. If your productivity increases 10%, it’s worth an additional $25k cost. One more example: Imagine McDonald’s Big Mac Value Meals cost $1 each and every other meal cost $50. Assuming you make a $100k+ salary, I think you should opt for the $50 meals quite often, even though most of the country is eating Big Macs and thinking you must be crazy.
      • bbbobbb 5y ago
        The hypotheticals make sense, but they're not reality. As for your last example, it again make sense on its own. In case of these monitors though, I see it more like every burger costs $10 but there is also $40 one that has a nice logo stamped on the bun. Also you have to pay extra for a plate. I don't think I am buying that one very often.