Can anyone show me the professional setting where $1k for a monitor stand is a thing? I’ve worked as an assistant editor on actual television shows, working on an Avid work station that cost more than some houses. I’ve worked in production departments for large corporate communications companies doing large scale, live studio video. I have friends working in post at major network news rooms.
And across the board those sorts of corporate buyers and pros. Are using the same pack in monitor stands as anyone else. Where things get fancy you’re talking VESA mount monitor arms that run a few hundred dollars. And about as expensive as it gets is a wall mount arm capable of holding multiple monitors. Still coming in at less than half what Apple’s stand costs. And Apple’s stand is less capable. Its signature feature is that it rotates to landscape. Something even cheap pack in stands have had for over a decade. I use a $300 Dell monitor at home, the included stand? It rotates! And it tilts. And has hieght adjustment. And at $200 for a VESA Apple has effectively doubled the cost of the actual professional solution.
There’s a lot of “but its for pros” on Apple’s new announcements. But noone seems to be checking what the actual pros use and what they pay for it. And it vastly misunderstands how this sort of buying works, having a large budget does not mean spend whatever you want, costs don’t matter. You are still given $X to outfit the department for the year A person pricing out multiple monitors to outfit a department will not say “even with the thousand dollar stand its still cheaper than these other monitors so fuck it”. They’re gonna go with the stands they already have or use as standard, because a $600-$800 savings per monitor means you can buy more monitors. Or mics, or another camera. Its money you can use for something more important with an actual impact on how well you can do the job.
The monitors themselves are a good value if they do what they say on the box. Even if they fall short of full reference monitors for certain industries like Cinema and continue Apple’s habit of using non standard resolutions.
The boxes are bit more complicated. They’re on par or a bit more expensive than retail costs for similarly specked work stations. There are cheaper options, and a lot of their competitors have stronger guts at that price. But a lot of “pros” have been pointing out that volume and contract pricing from nearly every other company are thousands less, and Apple does not offer that kind of discounting for corporate customers. So by the standards of what the sort of corporate buyers we’re being told these are for, the new workstations are over priced. Apple seems to be focusing heavily on the modularity and the case. But I’m not sure what utilitarian needs stainless steel serves here, modular tower cases are a dime a dozen these days. And corporate customers seeking that level of customization tend to rack mount such work stations. So I’m not sure if that’s really for the pros. It seems more an attempt to push life span and upgradability after their bad moves on that front. And that was mostly a concern of freelancers and smaller scale pros that have been pretty much priced out
