Apple's Cinema HD Display Has Star Power

You'll be the envy of your colleagues with a dazzling 30-inch screen, and the Web and DVDs have never looked better

by Arik Hesseldahl

Editor's Rating:

The Good: Huge; gorgeous; bright, productive screen space

The Bad: Pricey; lacks embedded iSight camera

The Bottom Line: You'll pay for all that space, but you'll use it too

Reader Reviews

It isn't often that a piece of computer hardware actually stops people in their tracks around my desk. There's usually a collection of devices adorning the workspace, though many are indistinguishable from each other, at least to the untrained eye.

Not so the 30-inch Apple (AAPL) Cinema HD Display. During the two or three days I spent working with it and the MacBook Pro connected to it, I spent a considerable sum of time fielding questions from admiring co-workers.

Almost universally, among people who have tried a monitor this large, the initial response is something to the tune of, "I never knew I'd like having so much more desktop space." Now, the same can be said of me. Wider than a typical newspaper page is high, the monitor banishes any concern about crowding multiple Web pages into the available space of a conventional screen.

Longing Stares

I'm as big a fan as the next guy of tabbed Web browsing found in Safari and Mozilla Firefox. But with a monitor this big, there's simply less need for it. As I write, I have two browser windows open—wide open—one to BusinessWeek.com and the other to NYTimes.com.

Each page is about 15 inches high and 11 inches wide. Somehow this feels like what the Web is supposed to look like, and that I've been missing most of it all these years. No longer will I scratch my head at what before seemed like pointless opulence. There is no question in my mind that I'll use the extra desktop space, and use it productively. My eyes are happy and so is my brain.

Watching a DVD movie on this screen stops even more office traffic and causes all work in my corner of the floor to come to a screeching halt, however brief. There are more questions, envious glares, longing stares.

Ports are Discreetly Located

Framed in minimalist brushed aluminum, nothing about the display's physical properties gets in the way of enjoying it. In fact, the physical properties enhance the pleasure. A convenient hole punched in the stand helps control what would otherwise be a thicket of unsightly cords. And with the Cinema HD Display, even said thicket has been carefully combined into a single unit melding the various cables—a Firewire cord, a USB 2.0 cord, and the digital video interface—used to transfer information and images between the monitor and any of the Macintosh computers with which it's compatible.

The display comes with two USB ports and two Firewire ports, discreetly located on the bottom and back of the frame. That provides plenty of connection points for the various other devices, such as external hard drives, that you'll want to hook up to this monitor.

Brightness is the only outer control on the frame itself and, in fact, it triggers the same brightness control that you can reach from within the Mac's system preferences. The screen powers up and down instantly at a touch, no muss or fuss.

You May Want to Wait

Colors are nothing less than brilliant, bright, and clear. Everything looks just right. If anything is missing, it's an integrated iSight camera, such as those found on the MacBook Pro, MacBook, and the iMac. It's a feature long rumored to be included on an expected revision to the Apple line of displays any day now.

So for all its size and beauty, is it really worth $2,000? If you're the kind of person who knows exactly what you're going to do with all that screen real estate, the answer is yes. But if you're on the fence, it might also be worth waiting just a bit. You never know when Apple will release a new version—one packing added features at a lower price.

Hesseldahl is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com.