A Standing Joke?
I love the new Mac Pro. It’s incredibly
powerful and packed with great
features. It’s gorgeous too, unlike the
previous Mac Pro, which looked like
a waste paper basket. I also love the
new Pro Display XDR with its 6k Retina
screen, and its 1,000,000:1 contrast
ratio. OK, they cost a pretty penny,
but that sort of power and quality was
never going to be cheap. But the Pro
Stand? $999 for a monitor stand? Come
on! You can get a Mac for less than
that. I know its height adjustment and
portrait or landscape options are cool,
but a grand? No thank you. That’s just
taking the [snip – Ed].
Nigel Williamson, Belfast,
Northern Ireland
Editor Says: Yes, the Internet has gone
berserk over that one. To be fair, it
looks like an impressive piece of kit, but
how can any display stand be worth
a thousand dollars? We suspect there
may be a price drop soon after release,
because, in reality, at that price Apple
is just handing its detractors a stick
with which to beat it. We also suspect
third-party manufacturers will step in
and release their own stand for the Pro
Display XDR, for a lot less money.
Reality Check
Are we ever going to see Apple’s virtual reality, or
even augmented reality, glasses or headsets? We’ve
had some great demos at keynotes of what Macs and
iOS devices can do, but all we’ve got in the way of
headgear news is endless rumour. Just what is Apple
up to, and are we ever going to get Apple-branded
virtual reality gear?
Andrea Chaplin, Dundee, Scotland
Editor Says: We don’t know. Really, we don’t
know. Apple is ultra-secretive when it comes to
forthcoming products, so we’re in thrall to the
rumour mill too. With headsets available for
smartphones, the PlayStation 4, and stand-alone
models like the Oculus Rift, it seems likely that
Apple will want to get into this market, but like
all things to come out of Cupertino, they will only
release it when it’s absolutely right. As the latest
rumours, about Apple VR headsets, indicate the
team developing them was disbanded in May and
assigned to other projects, it seems unlikely to
happen any time soon.
Why Did it Die?
Apple has killed the MacBook, after only four years.
Why? It’s a lovely little machine, and I found the
screen size just right. OK, it was underpowered and
overpriced, but so was the MacBook Air when it was
first released, and that turned out OK as it matured.
We’ve already lost the 11-inch Air. Why now kill the
12-inch MacBook?
Julie Morton, Walsall, West Midlands
Editor Says: Yes, that move surprised
us too. We can obviously see the sense in
rationalising the range, so the MacBook
and MacBook Air don’t cannibalise each
other’s sales, but we’re surprised the
revision left us without a smaller-than-
13-inch screen. Maybe this won’t be true
for long, though. We’re due some new
hardware around October, so maybe
a smaller MacBook Air will return to
Apple’s notebook range.
*LTTR//
Every issue, the writer of our
Star Letter wins a bookazine of
their choice from BDM
Publications. Point your browser
at http://www.bdmpublications.com
and see the full range. There are
titles for Macs, iPhones, iPads,
photography, coding, Windows,
Android and more. To win one,
just write us a decent letter.
Whether we’ll get Apple’s rumoured VR glasses is anyone’s
guess. And if we do, they probably won’t look like this.
Gone, but not forgotten? The MacBook is
dead, but we hope its legacy lives on in
future smaller-than-usual notebooks.
AppleUserMAGAZINE
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