After weeks, if not months of procrastination about the new Apple displays — particularly a concern that it would cause neck ache from looking left and right all the time — I finally gave in and bought myself a 23” Cinema display (1920×1200 pixels). As always I had to justify this purchase to myself and chose the following reasons:

1. The first Apple LCD display I bought (their original 15” model) cost me £1800 back in 1998. Given that computer equipment doesn’t really get cheaper if you’re considering the high-end gear, the 23” display was a fair snip at £1549.
2. For the last 11 months or so the majority of my work has involved spending long periods editing PHP code with Jedit. I usually split the editing area into four squares and I’ve got fed up dragging the ‘splits’ to see more code space for a particular area – it wastes so much time.

I did however have a few concerns:

1. The 23” model appears to have a few problems. Most notably uneven backlighting; magenta or yellowing in certain areas; ghosting or burn-in which can last for a few minutes. However, like all products, one tends only to read about bad experiences. Additionally, I deduced from reading the Apple Discussion forums over some time that the problems were most likely to be software related, perhaps drivers or calibration settings. It would be unlikely for the problems to be a general manufacturing fault (albeit maybe a bad batch) given that the displays are SWOP certified.
2. It is difficult to ascertain the height of the viewing area. I wanted to make sure that the height was similar to my other displays as I would be keeping one of these attached to my Macintosh. Having set it up, I am pleased to report that the bottom of the LCD matches almost exactly with the 17” display. I guess this is due to two things: Apple’s attention to detail and their recognition of all things ergonomic.
3. I have Soundsticks which were positioned to the left and right of my main 17” display. Moving to the 23” would require them to be moved further apart which might have upset the sound stage.

Nevertheless, I took the plunge and ordered a display through the Apple Store on Monday morning. It was shipped that day (although I did subsequently receive an e-mail saying it would ship on Tuesday!) and arrived in Larkhall, Scotland on Tuesday morning. I was contacted by the shipping agent that afternoon and we agreed a delivery today (Thursday). It was delivered around 11am today. That’s great service, although shipping from Ireland is always quicker than from Amsterdam, which is Apple’s other main European despatch point.

Having got it out of the box I let it sit in my office for a couple of hours. This was to prevent any problems at switch on due to the cold and wet weather, and to avoid bad pixels. I’ve found that sometimes bad pixels appear after a couple of hours of use, so I thought leaving it to warm up might prevent these problems. Sure enough all went well when I installed it. No bad pixels so far – but I do have 2,304,000 to check.

I’ll no doubt have more to report over the next couple of days, but in the meantime here’s a summary of my experience.

1. It’s beautiful. Gosh, is it beautiful. Although it has less ‘Post-It’ space than my other displays.
2. The base swivel mechanism is great, as is the tilt mechanism. I also have somewhere to put my keyboard when I need desk space.
3. Moving the Soundstick speakers wider apart, oriented in such a way that their perpendiculars meet slightly in front of me (a classic positioning for speakers of any kind) has actually improved the sound significantly.
4. Now that I’ve moved from two older Apple 17” LCD displays to one of these plus the 23”, Mac OS X’s Exposé feature is slower and can be jerky. My poor little 64 MB ATI Radeon 9000 Pro graphics card is obviously struggling, bless.
5. Zoom editing — crucial for pixel perfect web design — in Fireworks is extraordinary. Nothing prepared me for this experience.
6. With this kind of work area and resolution, I now understand the term ‘desktop’. It’s the first time I’ve worked in an environment that feels like a desktop. Perhaps it’s because of the aspect ratio (1:1.6) is more ‘desk-like’?
7. Grey images, such as Metal themes, can appear to be ever so slightly magenta – an effect that appears to diminish after it’s been on for some time. I have deliberately not calibrated the display yet and will give it a few days of run-in before I do so, although the ‘out of the box’ calibration is excellent and I might leave it be. What is clear from the start is that the display is an order of magnitude better than the 17” displays I had (have), and I remember that those were far better than the original 15” I had.
8. There is marginal ghosting on high contrast images. However, this is only apparent in low light level situations, and lasts a few minutes before it goes away. People writing on the Apple forums don’t like this, but, it’s virtually impossible to find a 23”+ display that doesn’t exhibit ghosting. Besides, the effect is known and documented on Apple’s knowledgebase.