31–40 of 99 posts
A more appropriate venue would have been a special media event in, say, Los Angeles, amid all the high-end post houses and VFX shops that can actually justify investing in both the Mac Pro’s pixel throughput and the Pro Display’s reference accuracy.
Apple isn’t going to sell a cheap display. If you want a cheap display go somewhere else. From their page about the display[1] a use case for this stand is to have “one on set and one in the studio” and move your display back and forth. Additionally Apple sells a VESA mount adapter for people who have “unique mounting setups for their displays” There is almost certainly no one who might actually buy this display who…
There’s no one who would buy this display who thinks that’s an appropriate stand:
1. People who are going to buy it professionally are going to buy the more functional stands at the same price point. No, I don’t mean more utilitarian — they’re either way more functional or nicer and more functional. Apple missed the price curve for high end stands. They’re also not going to move the $5k TV stand to stand — they’ll just buy two.
2. The people who buy $5k TVs for personal use generally are price sensitive enough that an extra $1k is worth considering — and will either get one of the nicer stands, eg cabinets, or will get a cheaper option.
I think they have the Tesla problem: they’re off the cost curve, in that they deliver subpar quality for the price — but unlike Tesla, they’re relying fully on brand to justify that. Tesla at least was selling a relatively new kind of car.
I don’t understand why they announced the stand during the keynote at all. It’s not something to be proud of and it isn’t cutting-edge technology. They could have just put it for sale quietly and the outrage would have been far less.
Apparently decent pivoting, weighted stands are $400. So this is still not outrageously expensive if you are in the market for this type of thing. Perhaps Apple figured it would be seen through the same eyes as those considering a $12k Mac Pro workstation, and appreciated in a similar way. Another note: contra-wise, Apple did flirt with “luxury” watches for a time. Though I think they gave up on that direction.
Granted, it's not nearly as nice as Apple's stand. But I suspect the reception would have been a lot better if the narrative was "the $5000 screen comes with an ok stand, the great one is $1000 extra" instead of "lol, the $5000 screen is useless unless you buy a $120 Vesa mount plus some off-brand stand, or the $1000 official stand"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does anybody have to "excuse" the sticker price on luxury cars? You can obviously get cheaper (and likely more comfortable) 4-wheeled transportation instruments elsewhere, but that's hardly the point.
there is nothing luxury avout the stand, it's essentially identical to any other stand, which is not the point of the cars in your analogy.
This is a silly criticism, it’s not a PR fail. The monitor stand is like a $99 hamburger on the menu. For the people rich enough to never care about the cost of a restaurant meal it’s a purchase, and for everyone else it’s a cue that this brand is absolutely top end prestigious and expensive. Im counting the days until I see one in a rap video or all over rich kid Instagram.
But the pricing needs to be internally consistent for the brand to be taken seriously, whether as a luxury brand or otherwise. In other words, a $1k piece of metal with a couple of moving parts undermines the rest of their portfolio. It's one thing to have a uniformly expensive lineup like a watchmaker, and entirely different thing to price your most complicated offering (phone) and the dumbest one (metal piece) the…
The message is that Apple shit is so top of the line that even our monitor stand is an uncompromising work of art.
It’s really not that complicated, it’s a textbook luxury branding and pricing strategy. Ever seen a Restoration Hardware catalog? They sell painted tree stumps for $1000.
I don’t understand why they announced the stand during the keynote at all. It’s not something to be proud of and it isn’t cutting-edge technology. They could have just put it for sale quietly and the outrage would have been far less.
This is a silly criticism, it’s not a PR fail. The monitor stand is like a $99 hamburger on the menu. For the people rich enough to never care about the cost of a restaurant meal it’s a purchase, and for everyone else it’s a cue that this brand is absolutely top end prestigious and expensive. Im counting the days until I see one in a rap video or all over rich kid Instagram.
Prestigious? Not really. There's one word which sums up a product like this: overpriced. Expensive doesn't describe if its worth it.
And given I seen some Louis Rossman videos recently: recent Apple hardware is overpriced as well. Its bug ridden which I wouldn't expect with regards to such price tags. And I say that as an owner of 2 MBPs (4 in total).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the pricing needs to be internally consistent for the brand to be taken seriously, whether as a luxury brand or otherwise. In other words, a $1k piece of metal with a couple of moving parts undermines the rest of their portfolio. It's one thing to have a uniformly expensive lineup like a watchmaker, and entirely different thing to price your most complicated offering (phone) and the dumbest one (metal piece) the…
> Like what's the message here? The message is that Apple shit is so top of the line that even our monitor stand is an uncompromising work of art. It’s really not that complicated, it’s a textbook luxury branding and pricing strategy. Ever seen a Restoration Hardware catalog? They sell painted tree stumps for $1000.
The problem is that this 10x overpricing strategy doesn't apply to their entire lineup, but that's not made explicit. As a result, people might mistakenly generalise it to their other products such as iPhones, leading people to think that their phones are also 10x overpriced and are actually only worth $100, thus diminishing its value.
This is a silly criticism, it’s not a PR fail. The monitor stand is like a $99 hamburger on the menu. For the people rich enough to never care about the cost of a restaurant meal it’s a purchase, and for everyone else it’s a cue that this brand is absolutely top end prestigious and expensive. Im counting the days until I see one in a rap video or all over rich kid Instagram.
Great except kids on instagram don't buy in the same bulk as video production companies.
If you burn your target market chasing rich kids on instagram thats a big marketing fail.
I don’t understand why they announced the stand during the keynote at all. It’s not something to be proud of and it isn’t cutting-edge technology. They could have just put it for sale quietly and the outrage would have been far less.
I was somewhat surprised with their entire Mac Pro strategy. With a base tower configuration starting at $6k (about twice what I was expecting), they seemed to signal a shift in what they consider a “pro” user to be. They’re pretty clearly chasing after the commercial, high-end computing market, but they’ve kinda left the high-end consumer market behind in some ways. Still no definitive fix to the fly switch keyboard…
It's because sites like this have been complaining for years that Apple has left the Pro market behind. This was their response to that. And now this site is switching to complaining that Apple's definition of "Pro" is too "Pro" for us.