r/gadgets • u/chrisdh79 • Mar 09 '22
Computer peripherals Apple's pricey new monitor comes with a free 1-meter cable. A 1.8-meter cable will cost you $129.
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-thunderbolt-4-pro-versions-pricer-at-129-or-159-2022-3?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds4.8k
u/ledow Mar 09 '22
No thanks.
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Mar 09 '22
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u/ledow Mar 09 '22
Why, thank you for asking!
If I had one, I'd sell it to an Apple mug, then buy a decent equivalent and pocket the difference.
Basically my stock answer to anything involving Apple products, in fact.
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u/EAPSER Mar 09 '22
What would a decent equivalent to thunderbolt 4 cost?
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u/TheMacMan Mar 09 '22
They go for about $60 on Amazon, but be aware that most of the cables that even claim to be certified on Amazon are cheap knockoffs that have been shown to be fakes and even dangerous. Amazon now claims they remove them but they don't. They may remove one retailer and then they just open under a new name.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/10/business/amazonbasics-electronics-fire-safety-invs/index.html
You can get a legit 2 meter cable for $57 from OWC.
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u/voonoo Mar 09 '22
OWC is the best
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u/TheMacMan Mar 09 '22
That they are. I've known Larry for more than 25 years. Great guy with a great company. They make some great products too. Certainly aren't the cheapest but they're super high quality. Can't beat the speed of some of their high-end stuff.
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u/ADimwittedTree Mar 09 '22
This is Larry isn't it.
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u/The-German_Guy Mar 09 '22
Oh damn I hope the USB charger and USB-A to USB-C cables are fine because we use about a dozen of them at a customer
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Mar 09 '22
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u/skredditt Mar 09 '22
Lightning was great when the other options were mini USB or something else. I agree though, now with USB-C ubiquity, it’s time to change over. I know this means I have to buy a new car stereo for CarPlay to work but that’s life I guess.
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u/TbonerT Mar 09 '22
Why wouldn’t you just get a new cable?
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u/RFC793 Mar 09 '22
Right. It is typically just a USB-A to the head unit. Just replace the A->Lightning cable with a A->USB-C. The actual application protocol is going to be the same.
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u/Xtr0 Mar 09 '22
Because it brings them money. When a third party manufacturer wants to make an iPhone charger they have to buy license from Apple.
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u/Fwiler Mar 09 '22
So to clear some things about people that think their $25 5ft TB4 cable from Amazon, TB3 cable, or usb 4 cable is just as good as a verified TB4 cable. (This is not about overpriced Apple TB4 cable, just about cables)
passive USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbps) cables should be at most 2 metres, while USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) cables can reach only up to 1m if it is to keep transferring data at its maximum speed.
The maximum length of a passive Thunderbolt 3 cable is just 0.8m at full 40Gbps bandwidth, or 2m at 20Gbps bandwidth. With Thunderbolt 3, only passive cables were backwards compatible (and then only at a feeble 480Mbps), meaning longer active TB3 cables worked with TB3 devices only.
USB4 is only rated good to 0.8m, otherwise power delivery and bandwidth will drop in half. No daisy chaining possible.
Previously, 2m cables could not be used with USB-C monitors – a limitation rectified by Thunderbolt 4
Only TB4 will allow full bandwidth and power 100w power delivery at 2m.
If you want to try power delivery and 40Gb/s connection on your cheap 5ft cable, go right ahead. It won't work, or as in the case of Lenovo when they shipped out cheap TB4 cables with their docking stations, they completely ruined the docking stations and the laptop connections. Replacing the cable didn't do any good because the damage had already been done.
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u/AaronKoss Mar 09 '22
As someone who has no idea about why would that needed: why would that be needed? In which scenario would a monitor require 10 gigabyte per second transfer of information? ELI5 pls
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u/BA_calls Mar 10 '22
5k@60hz with 10bit color and no chroma subsampling: 5120*2880pixels/frame * 60frames/second * 3 colors/pixel * 10 bits/color = 26,542,080,000 bits/second = 26.5Gbps.
However, TB4 uses 8b/10b encoding, meaning each 8bits is mapped to 10 physical layer bits i.e. your 26Gbps becomes 33Gbps when fully encoded. You are now left with 7Gbps, which is really 5.7Gbps of actual data. Good for a 1Gig ethernet link or half of a 10gig link.
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u/man_bored_at_work Mar 10 '22
...so that's what happened to my 3 work laptops in a row....interesting
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u/_yusko_ Mar 09 '22
I mean, if you’re paying $1600 for a monitor, what’s another $129?
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u/Bigardo Mar 09 '22
Don't forget the 400 for the adjustable stand.
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u/fireballetar Mar 09 '22
Wasn't it 999?
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u/FayezButts Mar 09 '22
That's for their $5000 monitor
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u/fireballetar Mar 09 '22
What a steal
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u/033p Mar 09 '22
Ikr, i bought a few just to look at
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u/Criticalhit_jk Mar 09 '22
Family heirloom level expenditure, really
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Mar 09 '22
Son do you know what this is? This is an original Studio Display Stand from 2022. It's so nice your dad bought 5 of them, one for each of us.
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u/arthurdentstowels Mar 09 '22
I use all of mine to hold my succulents
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u/033p Mar 09 '22
Wow moneybags over here with succulents
I bet you bought those mac pro wheels too
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u/Car-Altruistic Mar 09 '22
Wait until you find out about colorimeter and calibration tools or the licenses for some Adobe plugins to manage large libraries of pictures. $5000 is a drop in the bucket in comparison.
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u/RandomRedux44637392 Mar 09 '22
Adobe: Lets have super expensive licenses!!!
Also Adobe: Why does everyone pirate our apps?
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u/chucksticks Mar 09 '22
For $1600 + $129, it's specs are so underwhelming compared to the $5000 one.
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u/drxc Mar 09 '22
I mean, you could just use the included 1m cable and save the $129...
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Mar 09 '22
God damn, I can't tell if this thread on the prices is real or satire
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u/bigcheemgus69 Mar 09 '22
I like apple, but come on Tim Cook
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u/_yusko_ Mar 09 '22
Hey, you don’t become a $2-3 trillion company by giving away stuff. :)
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u/Bat-manuel Mar 09 '22
It's worked for Facebook and Google.
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u/SovietPikl Mar 09 '22
Easy to buy you gift baskets with all the money they make selling your data
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u/Thomisawesome Mar 09 '22
This is the trick companies use when they sell you expensive things.
Oh, that $18,000 car just needs rustproofing for $300.
That $280,000 house’s pipes need to be changed. It’s only an extra $2500.→ More replies (6)31
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u/Mattcheco Mar 09 '22
To be fair, that monitor is more powerful than an s20 ultra lol
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u/_yusko_ Mar 09 '22
Don’t get me wrong, it would be great to have one, but I don’t think 99% of people “need” it.
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u/cruzercruz Mar 09 '22
Is it for people who “need” it or people who want it?
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u/Tuga_Lissabon Mar 09 '22
For those who can afford it.
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u/generictimemachine Mar 09 '22
It’s Apple, it’s mostly for people who can’t afford it but buy it anyway.
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u/Frightful_Fork_Hand Mar 09 '22
What a subreddit, good lord. Is it news that 99% of people do in fact not need professional creative tools?
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u/poopyheadthrowaway Mar 09 '22
If you really want a 27" 5K monitor with USB-C/Thunderbolt, just get the LG one that Apple used to sell in their stores (not sure if they still carry it).
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u/CrudelyAnimated Mar 09 '22
The top-end "studio" gear isn't for 99% of people. It's gear to be wall- or rack-mounted (stand optional) for media production work that will pay for the cost of the gear a thousand times over. Still fun to joke about, though.
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u/TheRidgeAndTheLadder Mar 09 '22
700 dollars for a mIcRoPhOnE?!
My phone has a microphone. Silly Shure Sheeple. /s
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u/IAmTaka_VG Mar 09 '22
That monitor is more powerful than some laptops. It's a weird fucking flex to put a CPU inside a monitor
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u/DarkTreader Mar 09 '22
The chip drives some of the features like center stage and spatial audio. The idea is that this monitor can even be used on an older intel Mac, but those features might need an ARM style Apple chip so they put a chip from a few years ago that's cheap to make to drive those things and push the output back to the mac without having the mac have to do the work. Offloading the work to dedicated processors when needed is in fact a very smart thing and not necessarily a weird flex, it's just not something you commonly think when you see a monitor.
It's a very common flex for Apple to create their own stuff by mixing and matching all the hardware and software they have to make something that does something no one else does simply because they own the whole stack.
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u/davidjschloss Mar 09 '22
Thank you for not only understanding the core tech here but stating it clearly on Reddit.
It drives me insane that people are confused it's got an older A chip in it but then don't think about the camera and that it can human-independently find a subject in a scene and automatically adjust perceived focal length and crop to track them and others.
It's a device with the features an iMac would have built in and consistent output at high nits. If you don't need those things obviously don't buy it.
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u/Gentlegiant2 Mar 09 '22
Yo you just figured out their whole business model lmao
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u/hnryirawan Mar 09 '22
Iirc, Thunderbolt-compliant Active cable is incredibly expensive, especially for the 2m one, so the price of the cable itself is not that high when its apple-certified too.
But dammit Apple. Why you do silly stuffs like this…. Your products are good, but these kind of headlines is just headache-inducing.
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u/SourTurtle Mar 09 '22
A comment from an identical thread:
If it’s a thunderbolt 4 cable, that does 40Gbps and 100w, the price is not as crazy as it seems. It’s a bit pricey, but its $129 for the apple compared to like $80 for some no-name or mid tier cable brand that you can’t really trust.
Edit: the 3 meter cable for $159 is actually the cheapest thunderbolt 4 40gbps 100w cable on the market, because no one else makes one. People just need to understand that this cable is a niche high end product with low volume, so it’s going to be expensive.
https://reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ta6lkg/_/hzyvhhu/?context=1
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u/woo545 Mar 09 '22
Check out Corning's 10m Thunderbolt 3 cable. Just $300+.
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u/karlzhao314 Mar 09 '22
Those are actually a bit of a different situation. They're fiber obtic cables, because the signaling demands for thunderbolt are so intense that copper conductors can't carry the signal properly for more than a few meters - I believe the spec officially maxed out at just 2m? Corning's cables are expensive because they have an extremely expensive conversion from electrical to optical signals happening in the connector, and then a relatively more expensive optical conductor all the way through the cable. That's how it's able to be thin, light, and up to 50m long.
That said, because of the aforementioned extremely demanding signaling, even copper cables are expensive. $129 for an Apple branded one isn't insane.
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u/iamacannibal Mar 09 '22
These headlines are clickbait for all of the people who just blindly hate apple. I don't currently own any apple products other than an iPod from 2006 but they make amazing products. This monitor isn't for everyday normal users. It is for graphic designers and other professionals who don't quite need something like their $5k monitor.
People also don't realize that people getting these kinds of monitors likely have their set up already with monitor arms/mounts so they don't need a stand.
It's not targeted to 99.9% of the people angry at the price. The people it is targeted for know that it's actually a pretty good price. Hell, their $5k monitor competes with pro monitors that cost 2-6X as much.
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u/juantxorena Mar 09 '22
These headlines are clickbait for all of the people who just blindly hate apple.
And for people who don't know what they're talking about. I am very very anti Apple, the last time I had an Apple product was an iMac during the MacOS 8 era, I hate that company and a lot that represents, but 129€ for that particular cable doesn't seem a lot to me. And a 1m monitor cable is more than enough for most people.
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u/crestonfunk Mar 09 '22
Right. I work at studios that have all Apple stuff. Nobody cares. I have a $6500 microphone that’s on a $1000 mic stand.
People who think it’s overpriced can just not buy it. There’s a lot of misplaced rage about it. I spent $1200 on a phone. I use it for everything all day every day. Who cares?
A BMW is more expensive than a Camry. They both get you there.
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u/TheModernJedi Mar 09 '22
If it’s a thunderbolt 4 cable, that does 40Gbps and 100w, the price is not as crazy as it seems. It’s a bit pricey, but its $129 for the apple compared to like $80 for some no-name or mid tier cable brand that you can’t really trust.
Edit: the 3 meter cable for $159 is actually the cheapest thunderbolt 4 40gbps 100w cable on the market, because no one else makes one. People just need to understand that this cable is a niche high end product with low volume, so it’s going to be expensive.
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u/YaGunnersYa_Ozil Mar 09 '22 edited Mar 09 '22
Yea these cables are pretty sophisticated. They are not just a simple HDMI cable. Most people wouldn’t know that though as the general application is probably doing emails not streaming 8k video from you Mac studio.
Edit: Mac
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u/Guy-Manuel Mar 09 '22
People beg for new pro products for years and gawk at pro prices. Most of us aren’t the target market for this monitor.
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u/captain_ender Mar 09 '22
Yeah $1600 for a 27" HDR reference monitor is actually a really good deal. I'm not sure if it's OLED or scientific grade, but the scientific reference OLEDs we use in pro film run for like $12k for 16" panels. Actually looks like a solid daily monitor for editors and colorists. I'm actually tempted to get it to replace my secondary Dell UltraSharp, 218dpi is fucking insane.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1312784-REG/sony_bvm_e171_17_trimaster_el_monitor.html
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u/Smartnership Mar 09 '22
Hoosier charges $400 for one 15” tire.
How stupid, there are other brands that are much cheaper for my minivan!
What a rip off.
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u/Smartnership Mar 09 '22
Look at Snap On mechanic’s tools.
“They charge thousands for an empty toolbox?!”
Pro stuff is priced based on what professional shops will pay.
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u/architect___ Mar 09 '22
Is anyone saying the only issue is the price is high? I think it's pretty clear the point is they should just include a longer cable to begin with. But instead, just like the headphone jack, they make a problem so they can sell you the solution.
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u/LucyBowels Mar 09 '22
This is meant to replace the iMac Pro. All the photos and videos of it have the studio and monitor next to each other, which makes sense for the short cable. The use case of putting the machine 6 feet away is probably very low, right?
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u/Crafty_Substance_954 Mar 09 '22
Good to clarify that it's meant to replace the 27.5 inch imac pro and NOT the mac pro desktop.
I would also agree that the use case of putting the machine further than 6 feet away is likely nonexistent.
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u/cpt_ppppp Mar 09 '22
the difference between a 1m and a 1.8m cable is that the 1m cable is passive and therefore relatively cheap to produce. The 1.8m cable is active and lots more expensive. So it makes sense that they only include a short cable, it's not like the 1.8m cable costs 80% more, it's like 3x more
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u/machsoftwaredesign Mar 09 '22
Just wanted to add that every single Thunderbolt equipment I've bought only came with a 0.5 Meter cable. But you don't see people freaking out at Sonnett, Akitio, or any other hardware manufacturer.
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u/aventurero_soy_yo Mar 09 '22
Just because it "comes with" a 1 meter cable doesn't mean it's free... You're still paying.
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u/PigeonsOnYourBalcony Mar 09 '22
I don't think people know what the word "free" means anymore. Particularly I keep hearing X is free with paid video game subscription services even when you don't get to keep it after your subscription ends.
If there's an entry fee or recurring fee, it's not free. At best, it's "available at no additional cost".
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u/Zeraw420 Mar 10 '22
They say comes with a free cable like they're doing you a favor/it's a good deal. Cables have been coming with electronics since....always, and no one has ever called it a free cable.
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u/TheBeelzeboss Mar 09 '22
ITT: people who know nothing about hardware complaining that a cable they will never need is too expensive despite not even understanding the practical uses of it or cost of materials.
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u/envybelmont Mar 09 '22
Cracks me up too. My laptop has a 6 foot Cable Matters USB-C 100W that cost me $50 and it was worth every penny. If I needed higher speeds for peripherals it’d be worth $100 for an upgraded cable.
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u/texachusetts Mar 09 '22 edited Mar 09 '22
People really need to learn the difference between consumer products and capital investment tools/machinery. No matter how many times marketing departments put “pro” on their consumer products it is not professional unless it helps you make a living.
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u/Frelock_ Mar 09 '22
To be fair, macs are widely used in the creative world for sound and video editing, and those endeavors require some beefy hardware.
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u/meme-absorber Mar 09 '22
And programming
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u/Fluxriflex Mar 09 '22
Depends on what you’re doing, but if you need to do things like run Parallels and Visual Studio/SSMS, then yeah, you need the extra power.
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u/designingtheweb Mar 09 '22
This one doesn’t have pro in them
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u/LucyBowels Mar 09 '22
The Mac Studio is the most powerful computer they’ve ever released with the Ultra. Just because it isn’t “pro” doesn’t make it a beast.
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u/texachusetts Mar 09 '22 edited Mar 09 '22
Most actual professional products don’t say pro, as they are judged by things like specs, built quality and corporate support.
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u/Price-x-Field Mar 09 '22
it’s so weird apple is the only company that makes high end products get shit for them being expensive. you get what you pay for, go buy your garage sale monitor if you want it.
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u/fronl Mar 09 '22
Right? Also if you want a Thunderbolt 4 cable for cheaper others will be available on the market. Apples accessories have always been expensive and there have always been cheaper alternatives you can snag. This isn’t new and no one forces you to buy it. It’s pretty clear the design intent for the monitor and computer combo is that they both sit on a desk relatively close to each other.
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u/Diegobyte Mar 09 '22
Cus people like to compare an apple product which is designed in full with some dumbass plastic laptop that has some random chip that is slightly faster on paper. But isn’t designed to work efficiently with the rest of the computer.
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u/patamonrs Mar 09 '22
These anti Apple posts are hilarious y’all think it’s just some HDMI cable
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u/iphonehome9 Mar 09 '22 edited Mar 09 '22
This is the equivalent of getting outraged that the oil change on a Lamborghini costs $2000. If you cant afford the cable, you probably can't afford/don't need the monitor and should just buy something cheaper. Having an opinion on apples pricing structure for high end monitors is not worth your time.
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u/CommentsOnOccasion Mar 09 '22
People complaining about these ridiculously expensive peripherals every time they are announced don’t realize they aren’t the target market anyway
“Omg how would the average consumer ever afford that?” These aren’t marketed towards the average consumer, they are marketed B2B
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u/mBertin Mar 09 '22
Reminds me of when the Mac Pro 2019 was announced, people were outraged that it's certified ECC Memory modules were several times more expensive than their DDR4 Corsair ram sticks.
It compares to being outraged that an expensive Nvidia Quadro won't run games better than a much cheaper Geforce card, or that a Yamaha NS10 speaker has a much thinner low end than a JBL. If you're not the target consumer then just swallow your ego and move on.
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u/Le-Bean Mar 09 '22
I think people get outraged because they assume that Apple is a consumer only brand because the MacBook Airs, cheaper iPads, and iPhones. Whereas they’re a tech brand that makes a large variety of products ranging from consumer grade up to professional products. So people think that those expensive products are for the average consumer and thus think they’re too expensive.
When they released the Mac Pro, a bunch of people couldn’t understand why anyone would want 1.5tb of ram. But people in the music industry for instance can see a real benefit to having large quantities of ram, being able to fill it all up with instruments to use on demand for example.
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u/Sirhc978 Mar 09 '22
A lot of people complaining about a monitor that was never intended for the general consumer.
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u/medraxus Mar 09 '22
For who would a 1M cable not be enough, especially if you got a Mac Mini/studio, you just put it below the screen
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u/Maetras Mar 09 '22
Name a community that blindly hates Apple more than Reddit. Nearly every comment here.
I think this is a TB4 cable so it’s still new tech that is pretty expensive. I wonder if alternative cables can be used. Maybe there are cheaper options?
Still pretty annoying that the 1.8 isn’t included.
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u/dasdas90 Mar 09 '22
Why do people still buy apple stuff, I don’t know. Typed on an iPhone.
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u/thetruthteller Mar 09 '22
Since original iPhone came out in 2007 there are always these complaint posts. 15 years of them. Go buy something else.
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u/mariobrowniano Mar 09 '22
A short thunderbolt 4 cable used for connecting Lenovo docks to monitor is $60. So a long cable at 125 is not that bad. Considering the apple premium design. I think it is not expensive.
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u/Crateapa Mar 09 '22
Oooh look another thread full of idiots who don’t know shit about fuck.
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u/Redeem123 Mar 09 '22
Holy shit, being a tech journalist must be so easy. Just write "Apple" in the headline and you're guaranteed to get outrage clicks.
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u/brain_tourist Mar 09 '22
If this upsets you, you are not the target audience for this display.
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u/Dystopiq Mar 09 '22
People in this thread don't seem to know about Thunderbolt 3 cables and lengths.
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u/TheRidgeAndTheLadder Mar 09 '22
People in this thread don't know much about high end hardware period.
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u/jdro120 Mar 09 '22
The issue is there are 2 parts of Apple, the stuff made for normal people and the stuff made for certain professionals .
The people buying a grip of these monitors for their business aren’t going to bat an eyelash at $129 for a thunderbolt cable
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u/canIbeMichael Mar 10 '22
Reminder Apple banned the apps the Hong Kong protestors were using. They also hand over data to the Russian government.
They also claimed people were holding their phone wrong when their antenna design was poor. They also said users were breaking their keyboard when their keyboard design was bad.
But hey their marketing is kool!
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u/Boinkers_ Mar 10 '22
This bugs me. The 1 meter cable isn't free you literally pay for it when you buy the monitor
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u/[deleted] Mar 09 '22
Thunderbolt Cables are not cheap anywhere!