Scissors or a hand plane are decent "heirloom" items. Potentially you can retire with the same one you started with, or pass them down.

Electric drills start to lean toward consumable. Battery tech changes over the years and they do wear out in non-fixable ways.

Screen and computer tech advances so fast that 5 years is a "good" lifespan, and 10 years is exceptional.

So a 4k investment in scissors is a lifetime investment, while a 5k screen may be more like "1k / year for good monitor as a service" (plus 2k off your next refresh).

I think it can still make sense, but very often when people buy the premium in computers or displays they are getting the same thing everyone else gets 30-50% cheaper 1 year later.

> I think it can still make sense, but very often when people buy the premium in computers or displays they are getting the same thing everyone else gets 30-50% cheaper 1 year later.

I'd normally agree, but the article's point is that this isn't happening with displays - we're stuck at 4K as the best available except for a handful of displays that are still expensive even years after introduction.

I bought my LG Ultrafine 5K in 2018, and it launched in 2016. There's still no real alternative - we seem to be in a monitor progress limbo.

I assume the desktop monitor business is so low margin that it’s barely worth investing in these days.

Or another example: 8 years ago I spent $320 on a 1080p 27" (massive pixels) monitor with horrible color reproduction and contrast. 4 years ago I upgraded to a new monitor and for $300 I was able to get 4k 27" with >100% sRGB.

And when you consider inflation, progress is even greater.

It's the same with GPUs, and to a lesser extent CPUs and memory and storage. Moores law is great in many ways, but as a buyer of high end technology it always stings to see the same thing be 30-50% cheaper a few years later.

Progress does seem to have slowed down within the past few years for monitors. I expect the pandemic is relevant there.

Apple took a large leap into giant monitors with high DPI. Most people don't care a lot about it, when you are not that close to the monitor, the retina effect is not worth, for mass market, the cost difference.

In the end, you are both correct. It is slow for the top of the line but super fast for everyone else upgranding mid-range monitors.

But a current $500 (MSRP) GPU thoroughly spanks a 5 year old $500 GPU. Even my 2 year old Radeon 5700xt is feeling out of date.

This unfortunately leads to a cycle of more mining, even if the card isn’t optimized for it, as no card is a net negative cash flow atm even factoring in energy costs.

This is very true. I just got a previous-generation top-of-the-line CPU and GPU. It's way more power than I will ever need and if I went for latest gen I could have afforded barely mid-level for the same price[1]. Even taking into account the fact that latest gen is faster, I still got better performance for dollar (20-30% better depending on benchmarks).

[1] With regards to the CPU I'm factoring in the saving of not having to buy a new motherboard.

A honing steel doesn't remove material, a sharpening steel does.

=== ====

OK, now: try to use it to do something. Anything. Something as simple as write a NOTEPAD note, or play one song from iTunes.

=== ====

Nope! You are surely getting screenfulls of information telling you, this Apple device has been locked and only the original owner can unlock it.

I suppose this is to prevent people from stealing Apple devices and reselling them to pawn shops or on eBay and Craigslist, and it must be working. All thieves everywhere must know by now, don't even bother to try to steal an Apple device or a Tesla car, for as soon as you do it gets bricked from all the satellites in space.

=== ====

I'm writing this because I bought a nine year old iPad on eBay and have spent the last two weeks trying to get through to AL-SUPPORT Activation Lock support at Apple, asking them to unlock it. And of course they don't care, I am not the original owner of the device, and unless I am, it is as useless as a digital brick. Battery life, screen quality, beautiful craftsmanship of the item itself, nothing matters. It just sits there telling me I'm practically a criminal for even owning this device.

No matter that the original owner gave up on it long ago, when even the simplest apps like YouTube and Gmail stopped working on it, by design, intentional planned-obsolescence coming down from Apple themselves. With the iOS getting relentlessly updated every year, all the apps get forcibly recompiled and anything old just doesn't work any more at all.

They don't care about this device any more. It was just a real-world dongle they used to get information from and about the original owner, information they've got stored in their giant database in the Cloud. They don't really care about me at all.

I imagine the universe is now littered with these devices, an Oort Cloud of them completely surrounding the planet, mentally bricked by annual iOS updates and physically bricked by Activation Locks, I'm a criminal for owning one, and were I to bring it to an Apple store to complain, they would have no useful help for me at all, "Buy a new one!" they'll tell me, "that's our company policy!"

=== ====

Who is causing the problem here --- me, or Apple?

If it was stolen from the original owner then you don't really own the device legally and this is the anti-theft part of activation lock functioning as designed. If you're an innocent third party to the original theft, your remedy is to get a full refund.

If it was just because the original owner forgot to disable activation lock, you should be chasing them to unlock it for you. If they refuse, your remedy is to get a full refund.

edit: reputable recycling places require you to have disabled activation lock on functional devices, or they don't pay out.

The device was old enough that I just heaved a sigh and gave it to Apple for recycling.

> What if I use two-factor authentication on a device running older software?

> If you use two-factor authentication with devices running older OS versions – such as an Apple TV (2nd or 3rd generation) – you may be asked to add your six-digit verification code to the end of your password when signing in. Get your verification code from a trusted device running iOS 9 and later or OS X El Capitan and later, or have it sent to your trusted phone number. Then type your password followed by the six-digit verification code directly into the password field.

I mean, you bought stolen goods. The law says you are culpable to some degree. If this was a legit sale, the original owner would be willing to do what's needed to make it useable.

Apologies if this sounds like victim blaming, it's not what I'm going for. Just trying to enlighten on how to avoid this in the future.

That's because it's incomplete.

A $5k screen is not so much a tool of the trade as an accessory for someone signalling themself to be valuable or valued. More commonly, coming to own these things is the result of little professional envy.

Our software engineers spend all day developing. They sit in $2-300 chairs and work on their preferred displays (last gen dual Apple TB displays for the Mac guys, dual anythings for the Windows, 1440p ultrawides for the java team).

You know who the only person in our org with an XDR is? The CIO with a MacBook Air, for writing emails and teleconferencing. They got theirs because another C-level made a big deal about how they couldn't work without their dual 5K UltraFines, also for sending emails and teleconferencing.

None of our enployees who could make use of an XDR display owns one because they either own a more industry-capable professional display (Flanders Scientific, Dolby, Sony pro series) or got an iMac Pro when they existed for under $5k.

I don't fault anyone who admires the XDR any more than I fault myself for liking any of the niche luxury items I do, but I wouldn't delude myself for even a moment into believing that an $8k watch is an essential investment because time management is an important skill to have.

And I get it, I buy for quality, too. But no one is passing up offers over the faux pas of being presented with an inferior chair.

And yeah good mesh back chairs come in at about $300 wholesale.

I find often that the ones available retail are not as good as the ones my big-ass corporation buys though, because furniture has a huge retail markup.

but I might start claiming this too.

I never get a check, though, because they bet me back that they could slap a logo on a towelette and sell it for $20. Uncanny how evenly it cancels out.

apple does a really poor job of supporting external displays. there's virtually no good options if you want something with high refresh, good latency and reasonable pixel density and color reproduction

If anything for most users this thing is amazing (but expensive), and for the few users who were "tricked" into thinking this is a $5000 reference monitor it's not good...

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Bleed is non-existent, right off the bat. In fact it doesn't make sense it'd have bloom and backlight bleeding, aggressive HDR produces bloom... so the same aggressive HDR would hide BLB.

Bloom is also a complete non-issue for most users. I use this monitor primarily to consume text and casual media... I got weeks at a time before remembering this monitor had HDR enabled full-time when some super thin loading spinner or something appears on a completely black background while the brightness is cranked to max but the room is kind of dark... it essentially takes a torture test to get the FALD to be problematic

Off-axis color accuracy, again, complete non-issue for most users. If I was producing Avatar 2 it might be an issue, but compared to any "normal" monitor it's a complete non-issue, especially when the trade off is exactly 0 backlight bleed, which is 100 times more annoying.

For "most users" there's no better productivity monitor. Even a $20,000 reference monitor would be useless for us since we're not going to be able to drive or configure it...

But it wasn't even close. ( And I am still somewhat pissed off about it)

If it's actually the best in enough areas to make it worthwhile, then that's great, and maybe it is worth the cost to some people. Maybe something like the Dell 8k monitor is a better fit for more people in the market for one of these, at a cheaper cost ($4k with a stand), more pixels, and similar feature set (if lacking some named features). Maybe not. I probably don't know enough to accurately judge, but it sure looks like Apple's trying to fleece some people that want the brand name to me.

During the launch, Apple generously rewarded it with the title "best Pro display on the market" and directly compared it to a 35k Sony reference monitor.

The problem is, Apple's screen is unusable as a reference monitor. The screen is not uniform, has a strong "vignette". The backlight zones create blooming artifacts. Color accuracy is fairly good, but not better than something found in a low-end BenQ.

Not only is it not the best pro monitor, it's not a pro monitor at all. It literally cannot be used as a reference monitor. It's basically a 6K LCD screen with all the problems that come with LCD.

You can't; that's the point. There are no 6K monitors besides the ridiculous Apple one and the Dell 8K probably needs to be run at 2.5x which I don't know if macOS even supports.

It's nothing compared to the XDR. I have no idea why this person thinks the XDR is bad for everyday users.

- I got one as a programmer who mostly looks at text. If you didn't tell me it has HDR always enabled I wouldn't have known, they've done an excellent job with managing bloom on non-HDR content.

- The resolution makes text milky smooth in a way that I always though 4k was this whole time

- 60hz has never bothered me despite regularly switching between this, the 144hz monitor, and a 360hz monitor....

- Accelerometer is neat enough, I have mine on a gas spring monitor arm and can be occasionally helpful to rotate

- Build quality is unmatched by all the gamer aesthetic stuff out there. Remove "backlight bleed" from your vocabulary.

I got Dell's "5k" ultrawide before the XDR, and at the time M1 Macbooks couldn't do fractional scaling at that high of a resolution.

The result was essentially a wider 32" 1080p screen. And while the text was crisp, the space efficiency was absolutely awful.

I can't even imagine the 16:9 version of that...

NHK World ran a program a few years back dedicated to the art of the Japanese scissors making, and it was an enlightening experience to watch. The meticulous attention to every single aspect of the scissors, ranging from the carbon content of the steel to ways of sharpening them by hand (no machinery used) has nearly implored my mind. Or, perhaps, I was just that impressed.

If they say their hairdresser uses $4000 scissors because that's what the real professionals pay, hey, let them dream.

Also sharpening twice a day sounds more like a ritual than a real need. But what do I know I’m not in that industry.

In early high school I scrimped and saved and purchased a NEC 3FG flat CRT (13 inches I think) and I was so glad I spent the money—-much sharper, bigger, and better that what I had before.

In late college it was the same story for a used 21” Sony CRT. The thing weighed an absolute ton but it was awesome. Crisp 1600x1200 at 85hz. I lugged it way too many places—-coding in friend’s basements and playing games.

As a young engineer, Apple released their first 1920x1200 24” LCD at $3500. I remember telling a coworker it was a bit too much for me but at $2k it would be a no-brainer. A year (or something) later I remember him telling me that Apple had just dropped the price to $2k. I ordered one the same day.

And, yes, today, I have a Cinema Display XDR.

I have never regretted spending money on monitors. The total number of hours of use that I get out of them (say 6 hours a day for 6 years ~= 13,000 hours) makes them one of the easiest things to justify spending money on.

Uhm, I would say that fully remote $300k+ jobs are still unlikely.

> Uhm, I would say that fully remote $300k+ jobs are still unlikely.

Well, yes, reaching the top of one's profession is unlikely. But those who fit the preconditions established by GP probably have no issues finding 300k remote.

(That said, I would never spend more than $300 on a monitor regardless of income... for me, there is literally no return because cheap monitors have gotten so darn good. The one possible exception would be an e-ink display that mimicked the coding/authoring experience of a standard display, but AFAIK that doesn't exist yet. That said, I'm not exactly paid for my aesthetic intuition ;-) )

FWIW, I’ve had a remote job in this pay range pre-pandemic, but even I wouldn’t say that it’s easy or common.

Entry level dev, yeah going to be hard. Senior level dev with a decent resume? Shouldn't be an issue at all.

You can get nicer stuff, but you should order it specifically, and explain why you need it.

I know many dozens of engineers that work fully remote and make >> $300k.

If it was $2k or so for the Apple Pro Display XDR, or if they did a middle-man option that provided the 6K resolution but wasn't as bright etc, I'd snap one up in an instant - but I want it mostly for text & software development. I don't need perfect colour accuracy (although, I do like it).

It's ironic, it's probably heavily discounted because no one can drive it... but if it had come out later with newer connectivity options, it'd be selling like hot cakes and just as expensive as an XDR

If you are a developer try considering a 12.9 iPad Pro possibly? At least the aspect ratio is much better and the refresh rate is there but it also is too small for the rest of the examples. I don't see Apple releasing a monitor that will be middle of the road but I could see an LG refresh.

As a developer when I am doing my side projects I mainly make my terminal consume the middle third of the screen and have other relevant information or have it fill the screen. The only issue filling the screen is that you are possibly looking at the edges too much and that can cause eye strain.

But, would I buy an XDR again? Absolutely. Doing anything with this monitor makes every other monitor I own second rate. Also, content consumption is excellent to the point that its brighter than the theaters around me. Also, having a Mac which is fully compatible with an XDR allows me to manage it without touching one button on a monitor. It's integration with the rest of the system is by far the most appealing option. I do own the non Nano option.

It’s a fantastic piece of equipment. Apple’s business discount and Apple Card cash back program chips away at the initial cost.

I sell used Apple products regularly as I upgrade and they hold their value pretty well. XDR is not an exception, check eBay.

Liquidating an XDR in favor of say Apple VR or an upgraded XDR will reduce the cost of ownership a great deal. Do the math for yourself.

I use it with a 2018 Mac mini and standard Blackmagic egpu largely for full stack development. It’s amazing.

I occasionally edit video in final cut, and watched Dune in 4K HDR on it.

If you’re considering an XDR I would not let all the negative opinion here sway you too much.

You can read about the experiences other developers and non tech folks have had w the XDR in this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/pro-display-xdr-owners-...

I can afford $5000. But I would not pay this money. I do away just fine with 4K 32" BenQ at $700. I use it for programming and for this task that $5000 brick offers no advantages for me. And it is not ever real pro display. Those go for much more than 5K. Try 20K and up.

But there are several issues with the Apple Pro Display if you are not a video artist:

- it uses a lot of power and even requires a fan.

- it does have only one input port. Of all companies, Apple might consider the use case that you need to connect your (work) laptop and your (private) Mac to your screen.

So the price isn't only pretty much outside of the budget of most mortals, even if you treat it as a once in a lifetime luxury expense, it is quite limited. I so hope either Dell makes a screen with the same panel, but with ports ans somewhat less expensive, or Apple makes a consumer screen again, I hope so much it is larger than 27", I find this size too limited. And if they do, please give it more than one port.

It's not even about "getting something expensive but good as a professional expense to invest in the tools of your trade" - as a developer might see it.

It's quite a bargain for what it is, period. This monitor has specific capabilities, competitive monitors to which, used in the video and post-production industry, cost anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000, from vendors like Sony and such.

For a software engineer, all monitors are worth $100k+. This particular monitor is worth $110k+. So yes, spend an extra few $k to get the best.

Why would a consumer product that I can get for $800 would be worth $100k for me, thus justifying overpaying for it? Am I supposed to buy $50k wallet because I take it everywhere now? Or $250k glasses because I wear them all day?

And yes, strong vision correction is also potentially worth $250k if you make a programmer’s salary and that’s the only way you can work. It’s just important to operationalize “10% better” as a measure of how much it helps your output. If your productivity increases 10%, it’s worth an additional $25k cost.

One more example: Imagine McDonald’s Big Mac Value Meals cost $1 each and every other meal cost $50. Assuming you make a $100k+ salary, I think you should opt for the $50 meals quite often, even though most of the country is eating Big Macs and thinking you must be crazy.

As for your last example, it again make sense on its own.

In case of these monitors though, I see it more like every burger costs $10 but there is also $40 one that has a nice logo stamped on the bun. Also you have to pay extra for a plate. I don't think I am buying that one very often.

Why turn this into a morality play?

I don't believe you would actually do this or you wouldn't make that comment, but either way don't do it to satisfy me.

> Why turn this into a morality play?

As I said, a lot of people are struggling and hungry. The point of the comment is to inject a little reality in to the idea that a $4,000 monitor is "worth it" because someone is at the computer a lot. But the marginal happiness of an HN user buying a $4,000 monitor instead of a $2,000 is very low, and there are other ways to spend extra cash. If you have extra money right now, consider donating it. It's cold outside and people need help.

Why get upset anyway? I think I made a fine suggestion. Someone could do what I suggested. Or not. You don't have to do it if you don't want to.

at least not when you wrote this:

> Don't do it because I am satisfied or not.

but for some reason you felt the need to edit it to:

> I don't believe you would actually do this or you wouldn't make that comment, but either way don't do it to satisfy me.

You should probably rollback the edit.

I'm from Ghana, I probably donate what you've donated in a decade every month to people who need it more than any American ever will.

And not just money, time. I don't go back home just to see my family after all, I've spent months of my time working with my father on his USAID project in the country. Is taking a 6 month unpaid sabbatical and giving up 200k in pay enough for our resident patron saint of the poor?

I grow reallll tired of people like this. People in the "1st world" who based on their virtue signaling you'd assume live like monks but in reality live in relatively cozy excess completely unaware of half the reality the actual downtrodden face.

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Semi-off topic but based on this comment I feel like you're exactly who needs to hear this. The degree to which virtue signaling has become an integral part of some people's sense of identity in this country is infuriating: It's not cold where I'm from, people still need help.

Getting giddy off slogans and token shows of kindness in one of the most privileged countries on earth...

Where I'm from "needing help" isn't a seasonal issue, and it's not even close to being as bad as it gets globally.

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> But the marginal happiness of an HN user buying a $4,000 monitor instead of a $2,000 is very low, and there are other ways to spend extra cash.

What a joke. Did it ever occur to you spending fractions of a percent more compared to what you get paid to sit in front of the damn thing is a marginal expense?

> Why get upset anyway? I think I made a fine suggestion. Someone could do what I suggested. Or not. You don't have to do it if you don't want to.

Because you have the audacity to talk so condescendingly based on someone's monitor choice. I couldn't resist replying in kind.

But other than that you’ve read too much in to me. My entire philosophy is that we must change the way our economy operates to eliminate poverty. I’m setting my own life up so that all of my engineering work goes to support this goal. Everything I do is open source so people all over the world can benefit, and I am learning how to operate an engineering project sustainably that can stay open source without needing to cave to commercial interests. The project I am learning this on is an open source farming robot of my own design, and I have sunk a fair bit of my time for free in to the project and earn less than half of what I did working at google. It was my idea to operate the project as open source, and to intentionally collaborate with people all over the world to make a design that can be fabricated cheaply anywhere.

Once I learn how to manage this community oriented engineering project, the next project will be large scale free hot meal producing machines. I want to make free meals the way the Sikhs do in India, where an army of volunteers cooks 50,000 free meals a day at a single location, and collectively across India their non profit NGO produces over 1.7 million free meals a day. I want to use my skills in automation and engineering management to make open source machines to do the work of those volunteers, and if I succeed we will open a demonstration facility in Oakland that can serve hundreds of meals a day, scaling hopefully to thousands.

You mention virtue signaling. But I am not here for signaling. I really do find it weird when people on here talk about how they’re going to spend all their money on themselves. And I make this mild suggestion that they consider donating their money because I want to see how people respond. I wasn’t condescending, I just said someone could buy cheaper and use their excess money to help the needy. We have a real problem with consumerism in the USA and it is destroying the planet. I think it’s worth making a gentle suggestion to donate. And invariably someone gets upset and makes a big deal out of it. So today that person was you.

But I’m working very hard to do my part. Sharing my work with all and trying to make it sustainable. I taught a robotics class in Mauritius to some students from Ghana, and Kenya and South Africa and Ethiopia and Morocco. When I design my farming robot I have them in mind. Once our design is operational I want to find people in Nairobi who can build them, and I will help them every way I can. Hopefully some day one of my students will be able to use it. A few of them really wanted to bring farming robots back home.

EDIT: This linked comment below really nicely sums up what I am getting at. I’m not saying a developer shouldn’t have a nice monitor but there is a point at which it becomes extravagant, and I really don’t understand why you’ve fixated on me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29708573

> I don't believe you would actually do this or you wouldn't make that comment

That's what you said to me, not someone else. And all you had to go on was me saying: Spending an extra $2000 on a tool you use 8 hours a day is not something to pass a moral judgement on.

Most people would not object to what I said: a $5000 tool is a pittance in comparison to what some not nearly as well compensated people end up spending on better tools.

So if despite that you try to turn it into an issue of donating more to your fellow man... what's the term for that?

What is a term for forcing virtue and morality into a conversation in a way that does more to signal your own position than actually add to the conversation in a cohesive way?

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To put it more plainly: browbeating people over not spending $2000 less on a monitor is the height of virtue signaling in a forum where people are stating they make a living off of them.

I mean even in your reply you're doing it! People are talking about an expensive monitor and somehow you twist it into:

> "I really do find it weird when people on here talk about how they’re going to spend all their money on themselves."

You really don't see how nauseatingly disingenuous you're being? Talking about spending $5,000 on a monitor is tantamount to saying you spend all your money on yourself?

Didn't that exact wrong assumption already lead you astray with me?

My first comment said it all: Why make this a morality play.

It's the definition of virtue signaling.

> Someone could also buy a really nice monitor for $2k and donate the other 2k to a local food bank. A lot of people are struggling and hungry.

And I think it is reasonable for me not to believe that a random internet commenter is going to make a $5000 donation while they accuse me of making a morality play. I'm not saying you will never donate $5000, but I do believe you will not make any additional donations due to our exchange. It just sounded like hot air.

But I can see that you want to tear me down, and I don't really care. We have strayed far beyond good faith conversation so I'm going to exit this now.

You're free to martyr yourself though. Act like I'm just tearing you down. Not addressing anything you've said in these comments.

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Maybe in a moment of introspection you might realize that no one would tear you down for suggesting food banks exist, and maybe, juuuuuust maybe you did something wrong when you:

- Tried to make it about choosing between spending money on tools and donating to food banks, as if the two are mutually exclusive.

- Made assumptions about a complete stranger's donation habits based on a monitor purchase and telling you not to make a tooling choice a morality play...

- Claimed that people talking about a monitor are actually saying they spend all their money on themselves.

Of course, it'll be easier to not do any of that and go on thinking that there's this weird Ghanian guy who hates food banks and spends all his money on himself because he likes the Apple Pro Display XDR.