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Apple’s $1000 monitor stand is a massive and unnecessary PR fail

9to5mac.com

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Re: Apple’s $1000 monitor stand is a massive and unnecessary PR fail

#51

Post by onebyteman »

wongarsu wrote: post #45
mcphage wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What’s the point in mass-marketing it? It felt like watching a marketing video to buy an airplane or something. 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.

> switching to complaining that Apple's definition of "Pro" is too "Pro" for us. If by too Pro you mean someone using an 8 core CPU with 32 GB of RAM ... The higher end models might be great, with some genuine innovation in the GPU interface that to some will justify high prices. But I don't know who the target demographic for a $6k PC with those specs is supposed to be.

It’s the rich people who can afford not thinking more than twice to make the purchase. If that excludes almost everyone, thats fine. Apple is making a statement that they are still the premium of the premium

Re: Apple’s $1000 monitor stand is a massive and unnecessary PR fail

#52

Post by zzzcpan »

bubblethink wrote: post #29
CPLX wrote: post #9

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…

> Like what's the message here ?

I guess the stand is for different audience with audiophile-level fanaticism towards Apple products or for organizations that don't care about the price, but definitely not for mass market.

Re: Apple’s $1000 monitor stand is a massive and unnecessary PR fail

#53

Post by berbec »

inflatableDodo wrote: post #22

Might as well buy some Tellurium Q Silver Diamond Digital Streaming Ethernet Cables to go along with it. A snip at only £1200.00 per metre. https://telluriumq.com/silver-diamond-digital-streaming-cabl...

How can I NOT buy a ethernet cable that give me "an audibly better performance". I alway have been complain that my 10GbE is fast, but the audio fidelity is garbage. I am so thankful this exists.

Re: Apple’s $1000 monitor stand is a massive and unnecessary PR fail

#54

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

CPLX wrote: post #9

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.

> 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.

That might make sense of the Mac Pro was a toy for the wealthy. But IIUC it's target audience is commercial production.

I would expect that market to eschew spending money for prestigious tools that their customers will rarely see.

Re: Apple’s $1000 monitor stand is a massive and unnecessary PR fail

#55

Post by save_ferris »

mcphage wrote: post #40
save_ferris wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> What’s the point in mass-marketing it? It felt like watching a marketing video to buy an airplane or something. 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.

I don’t agree with this.

Most tech professionals I know had lots of misgivings about Apple’s design decisions around the MBP. Mainly, shipping only with usb-c and the Touch Bar, which has been a total dud. Neither of those things were demanded by the market, but apple pushed them anyway. In the process of redesigning the MBP chassis, they introduced numerous design issues which plague them today. Apple baker in a bunch of incorrect assumptions that haven’t planned out for them. The incredibly high sales of refurbished pre-usb-c MBPs really drive this home.

The new Mac Pro, on the other hand, is very clearly designed for users that require massive parallelism and power in their work, which just aren’t most people. How many people need 20 cores? Most users weren’t complaining about the core count in 2016, they were complaining that Apple took a rock-solid product and introduced a bunch of regressions to it.

Re: Apple’s $1000 monitor stand is a massive and unnecessary PR fail

#56

Post by nabla9 »

seibelj wrote: post #6

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.

Its' $1000 monitor stand with magnetic connector (no screws) that replaces Vesa. It makes it easier to move expensive monitors around regularly.

It's sold for professionals who use it with $5000 Apple Pro Display XDR. It's 6K monitor with 1,000 nits brightness (1,600 nits peak). Typically reference monitor of that caliber sells for $30,000 - $40,000. (check the price for Sony BVM-HX310 31" 4K HDR)

They could have added $1000 for the monitor price and given the stand with the monitor. Then those who can afford $5000 but not $6000 would have suffered in silence.

Internet is reactionary outrage machine.

Re: Apple’s $1000 monitor stand is a massive and unnecessary PR fail

#57

Post by jablan »

wongarsu wrote: post #41
bubblethink wrote: post #29

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…

While the screen seems decently priced (though hard to tell before reviews), the base configuration of the new Mac Pro is at $6k at least twice as expensive as it has any right to be, and much more expensive than previous base models. And given how low-specced that base model is and how expensive Apple upgrade always are compared to normal market prices we can expect the Mac Pro to be at least twice as expensive as c…

> The price for the phone likely has to be this low

That sounds as if you are saying the iPhone is cheap.

Re: Apple’s $1000 monitor stand is a massive and unnecessary PR fail

#58

Post by exxybebbi »

seibelj wrote: post #6

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.

The stand is a very calculated way to dampen the price tag on the computer. It's psychological warfare.

Re: Apple’s $1000 monitor stand is a massive and unnecessary PR fail

#59

Post by anthony_romeo »

bredren wrote: post #15
seibelj wrote: post #6

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.

I'm not in the market for this kind of thing, but if I were (and iff the stand is actually superior to competitors') I could see some justification for buying it.

Though I don't own a Macbook, there's one aspect that I truly love about them: you can open the laptop easily with one hand. The vast majority of laptops I've come across require two hands. It's a rather minor detail, but as a result it smooths out an equally minor nitpick that I have with other laptops. For many, little details like that are worth the extra money.

For example: There's a Dell laptop to the side of my desk. Opening it one-handed causes the lid to open slightly, but then the base starts to rise. I need to either stick my hand inside a bit and wedge it open (which is a little more strenuous than I'd like) or use my other hand to pry it open (which feels fiddly and requires rotating my chair or adjusting my seating position).

I don't know enough about fancy monitor stands to judge Apple's stand, but generally: if I needed to perform work that required adjusting my monitor a few times a day, there would be a quite a bit of value in buying a monitor stand that makes the process somewhat easier.

Re: Apple’s $1000 monitor stand is a massive and unnecessary PR fail

#60

Post by freetime2 »

CPLX wrote: post #9

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.

> Im counting the days until I see one in a rap video or all over rich kid Instagram.

Also on the desk of every big YouTube content producer, who can also benefit from the power of the Mac Pro for editing video. And with "YouTuber" being the most desirable career for a lot of kids out there, there's a good chance that kind of product placement could bolster sales for lower-priced Apple products for years to come.

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