Jeff Rock

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I finally broke down and picked up a second LED Display with a mix-and-match NVIDIA video card.

And a Magic Mouse.

And a new Apple Remote.

Don’t judge me.

Regarding the Future of the iPod Touch

Steve Jobs:

“Originally, we weren’t exactly sure how to market the Touch. Was it an iPhone without the phone? Was it a pocket computer? What happened was, what customers told us was, they started to see it as a game machine, (we) started to market it that way, and it just took off. And now what we really see is it’s the lowest-cost way to the App Store, and that’s the big draw. So what we were focused on is just reducing the price to $199. We don’t need to add new stuff. We need to get the price down where everyone can afford it.”

Even Apple’s top-level executives weren’t sure what the iPod Touch was good for. The amazing thing is that by simply changing its’ marketing direction they gave a redundant device new life.

DisplayPort of Pain

Mobelux picked up a couple Mac Pros recently, as you might have seen. Beastly 8-Core Mac Pros. So when it came time to decide on displays for mine, it wasn’t a tough decision. Dual 24” Apple LED Displays for me, please.

Life was good.

I tend to run multiple graphically intensive applications at once. It isn’t uncommon for me to have Photoshop, Illustrator and Maya beating on the video card simultaneously so I tend to spend the cash on a higher-end video card. When I found out that Apple was offering the ATI Radeon HD 4870, it was again, an easy decision to make.

But there was a problem. The Mac Pro can’t support 2 24” Apple LED Displays with the 4870. There are only two ports on the the ATI (and the shitty NVIDIA as well, by the way): DVI and Mini DisplayPort. No big deal. Just pick up a DisplayPort to DVI adapter, Right? I would’ve, except that they don’t exist.

That’s right. You cannot adapt DisplayPort to DVI. There are a few manufacturers working on the issue but there solutions are essentially DC-powered breakout boxes and cost around $180 and won’t ship until the fall. Mark my words. That will never function properly.

The Apple business rep’s solution: just put in another video card! While I have a moral opposition to putting another $350 video card that’ll only be half utilized, I caved. Dual 4870’s for my dual 24” LED Displays it shall be.

This guy said he even called ATI and Apple to guarantee compatibility.

“They said it’ll work fine. And I’ll stand behind the solution. If it doesn’t work we’ll make it right”.

So I get my 4870, crack open the Mac Pro (which is a engineering work of art internally I might add), drop the card in the PCI slot, hook up the power cabl…wait, where the fuck are the other two powe…no. No fucking way. How could there only be two power leads on the motherboard for all these PCI slots!?! They’ve got to be here somewhere!

Nope. Just the two. And the original ATI card took up both.

So there I was, staring at $1300 worth of hardware that I couldn’t use, despite being told that I could. File this under ridiculous.

In the end, the Apple business rep gets to make good on his word. I’m packing up both the LED Display and the ATI and shipping them back to the mothership. If I feel like I really need a second display I’m going to pick up a nice DVI-based model that has more flexibility for less trouble. I was shocked to find that the Dell 24” UltraSharp supports just about every video connection that exists, supports vertical orientation and is height-adjustable for half the price of an Apple LED display. The color gamut and panel quality is probably not as good, but it’ll be for nothing but Xcode/TextMate, so none of that matters.

And let’s be honest here. Like the hot girl in high school, the 24” is beautiful but ultimately just a high-priced, manipulative bimbo. The USB, MagSafe Power Cable and Mini DisplayPort Cable are comically short. I had purchase an extension from Monoprice just to have the Mac Pro on the floor. It has no adjustment other than tilt and picks up fingerprints if you look at it too long. But yeah. It sure is pretty.

Bottom line: Apple should know better, and pushing this hard, this early on DisplayPort was a mistake. I’m all for shaking up hardware like Apple did with the iMac (by dropping the floppy), but only when it’s viable. There simply isn’t enough support for the DisplayPort standard, even from Apple.

Lesson learned. I’ll think harder about buying high-margin Apple auxiliary equipment from here on out, which is apparently what Apple has hoping for.