What the crowd made of Apple's $1000 monitor stand

“Visa” mount adapter?

I always thought it was vay-zuh.

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It’s expensive, starting at $5000

I think the new mac pro starts at $5,999…

Even the 6k monitor to go with it is hard to fault at $4000

Monitor starts at $4,999, $5,999 for “nano texture” version

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You’re all thinking like people who differentiate between amounts less than 4 digits.

My good friend was doing some work in a place where they replaced all the light switches in the living room with iPads. When he mentioned that the six iPads could be replaced with one, to control all the lights the reply was “you are missing the point.” They will probably be using these stands to hold pictures of their yachts.

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I’m sure some portion of the buyers will be for mindless luxury display, but most buyers will be professional studios for whom these will be work stations… They will definitely scrutinize that extra 1k (especially if they’re buying several) and buy a $300 monitor arm instead. Take that $1k and upgrade the mac pro to with a fancy graphics card. When we’re talking about production, anything that doesn’t contribute to a better ROI is typically ignored. Maybe they’ll buy one stand for the client review booth.

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You and @beauwillamson both covered the core markets for the entire package:

  • Entertainment and tech industry professionals (purchased by companies, not individuals). With the exception of the coke-snorting executives, most of them will forego the stands.

  • Celebrities. They won’t pay a dime for the stands, assuming they aren’t just “gifted” the whole thing.

  • Trustafarians and other wealthy idiots.

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Are you suggesting that they are using the same trick of some restaurant to put in the wine list a couple of extra expensive bottles of wine to look other bottles more affordable?

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A little off-topic, but some high-end restaurants are now being more brazen in separating affluent status-conscious dopes from their money. Whether it’s over-priced monitor stands or over-priced seafood, it’s all part of late-stage capitalism.

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Yeah, the market for these are the Pixars of the world, game developers, large design and marketing studios etc. Companies whose annual budgets include millions for harware upgrades and must be at the bleeding edge. It sounds crazy, but these people are working with +$10k workstations for mundane tasks.

Plus, dipshit c-suite douchebags.

BTW, this is a direct lineage from the original Pixar computer, which sold for $135k and required an additional $35k workstation. I mean, $100 for a stand is a steal.

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A $10,000 computer! That’s 25x more than my humble 2 year old HP laptop. Not to mention it’s kind of a pain to get Linux installed on a Apple.

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A computer geek buddy of mine was offered a free Cray, which was a $1,000,000 animation computer in it’s day (and this one had worked on parts of the Original Heavy Metal movie). He was sorely tempted and only resisted when he realized it was too heavy for his second floor apartment to safely handle.

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I’m guessing none of you live in San Fransisco or “the valley.” I’m also reminded of all the people who complain about rents in the big cities and claim “No one can afford that.”
News Alert: There is a giant income gap and some people live on the top side of that gap. They live in big cities make ungodly sums and think nothing of spending tons of their extra income to impress their friends and competitors (often the same person.) with their “stuff.”
This isn’t me, by the way, but I am not in denial about it.
Call em “fan-bois” if it helps you feel better.

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Never underestimate the importance of wealth signaling to a certain type of person.

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Oooh, how artisinal.

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Here’s a pretty thing: Mithril. As light as a feather, and as hard as dragon-scales.

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Why are Macs always generating so much hate?
A MacPro is a workstation for video, graphics and animation pros.
(They used to be common in “scientific number crunching”, medical applications and 3D visualisation,
but that’s not my field of expertise).
Editors will edit material shot on 100K+ camera setups on this.
If you invest in a MacPro setup it is a business expanse for someone who will charge from 150€ to whatever crazy amount per hour for their work.
Do you really think it makes a difference if you end up paying 20K or 21k for your setup, because you like the heavy duty Apple stand?
Many dual monitor set ups use VESA based mounts anyway - would it have been better to let everyone pay for this stand, even if they end up ditching it?
Don’t like it, don’t buy it.
Now focus again on getting rid of The Orange Sexist.

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Did anybody mention the “proprietary bolts.”

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This is mostly true now only due to legacy. The processors in the Mac are literally the same ones in the PC. No more crunching advantage. The PC setup to be as powerful as the Mac is half the price and offers more flexibility for upgrades and repairs, as well as having easier to access support when something goes wrong.

I’ve used Macs at work for years and they are fine computers, but so are the PC equivalents. I’ve been seeing more and more Pros using PC, especially for video editing.

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Because it’s overpriced prestige branding with no hardware advantage outside of a graphic badge on the case.

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I’m willing to acknowledge that it’s important to a lot of people, not all of them actually wealthy. The trick is to do it in a way that also makes you look moderately smart or tasteful or unique. A $1000 monitor stand goes against that goal in the same way Louis Vuitton luggage does (no doubt a $2k* LV designer version of this Apple stand is already in the works).

[* I may be underestimating. I see that LV sells $1300 iPhone cases.]

For real professionals who squeeze the most out of every bit and pixel and CPU cycle, that $1k really does make a difference. As @tgarretteaton said, they’d rather put the $700 difference between an industrial-grade arm and this stand into performance improvements.

And it’s not Macs that generate hate, it’s fanbois (especially the ones who aren’t industrial users or wealthy) who make pretentious excuses for every price-gouging move that Apple makes.

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Exactly! People will ooh and aah and ask you where you got it. Boom! You’ve got an Etsy store selling them for $800! Pretty soon you’ll have billions in offshore accounts!

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