With a native resolution of 2560 x 1600—or 4 million pixels—this top-of-the-line display from Apple is currently the world’s largest screen for a desktop computer. Couple that with a thin bezel made of anodised aluminium that feels divine to the touch, and you have a product that can truly be called awe-inspiring. The display’s design reflects the classic Apple style. There are just three soft-touch buttons along the right side of the bezel—a power/sleep button, and two brightness controls. Since the LCD uses an all-digital interface through a dual-link DVI connector (not to be confused with the two single-link DVI ports present on certain cards), image correction controls such as horizontal/vertical position and size are not required at all. Also, with a nice little contrast ratio of 400:1, the contrast settings have been eliminated. The result is an elegant- looking screen that’s extremely simple to use. One of its USPs is the 170-degree viewing angle. No matter where you view it from, seeing its crystal-clear image reproduction and massive size will leave you dumbstruck! There are a couple of niggles, though. For one, it only
supports resolutions with a 1.6:1 aspect ratio (2560 x 1600, 2048 x 1280, 1920 x 1200, 1280 x 800, and 1024 x 640). Set the display to anything else, and all you’ll get is a blank screen. This severely limits the applications that it supports. Most games, for example, do not have idescreen resolutions. This seems a particularly pointless design decision considering the fact that widescreen displays by vendors like LG support all commonly used resolutions. This problem is further compounded by the huge bandwidth requirements of the screen. Resolutions of 1920 x 1200 and above require a dual-link DVI port, whereas almost all current cards have only
single-link DVI connectors. Thus, to actually get to use the screen at a decent resolution, you’ll
require a card like the GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL, which will set you back by Rs 45,000 or so. Again, this limitation is not present in the displays made by other manufacturers. Thanks to this, the 30-inch display is certainly not recommended for home desktop owners, even if they have
the Rs 1,90,000 to pay for this baby! Of course, if you’re a hotshot multimedia designer with an unlimited budget in a multinational design studio, your search for the perfect display has ended. The rest of you can start saving now.
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