I'll admit, a monitor that costs more than my first car is beyond affordable for 99% of the population.
But saying that, many of the people reading this are pulling truly exotic salaries right now. After devoting untold hours to reaching the top of their profession.
Let's say you're a professional earning $300k plus in software.
You're often working 100% remote, using your monitor 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, just for work. Plus untold hours of HackerNews (strictly after 5pm of course).
I just find that's truly not an unlikely situation to be in.
Without reference to the technical merits of the Apple Display, I don't think dropping $5000 on a monitor is outlandish for any professional in the situation I've described.
My hairdresser for example has a $4000 pair of scissors. He uses the damn things every day, and he sharpens them twice a day.
Whilst it's not essential, taking pride and investing in the tools of your trade is not a thing to frown upon.
Some work tools get treated like capital or heirloom and some get treated like consumables.
Scissors or a hand plane are decent "heirloom" items. Potentially you can retire with the same one you started with, or pass them down.
Electric drills start to lean toward consumable. Battery tech changes over the years and they do wear out in non-fixable ways.
Screen and computer tech advances so fast that 5 years is a "good" lifespan, and 10 years is exceptional.
So a 4k investment in scissors is a lifetime investment, while a 5k screen may be more like "1k / year for good monitor as a service" (plus 2k off your next refresh).
I think it can still make sense, but very often when people buy the premium in computers or displays they are getting the same thing everyone else gets 30-50% cheaper 1 year later.
> I think it can still make sense, but very often when people buy the premium in computers or displays they are getting the same thing everyone else gets 30-50% cheaper 1 year later.
I'd normally agree, but the article's point is that this isn't happening with displays - we're stuck at 4K as the best available except for a handful of displays that are still expensive even years after introduction.
I bought my LG Ultrafine 5K in 2018, and it launched in 2016. There's still no real alternative - we seem to be in a monitor progress limbo.
Resolution is only a single spec. Other things like viewing angles, response time, refresh rate,brightness, HDR, etc. have been getting better and better for less. A premium 1080p monitor from 15 years ago will not be nearly as good as a modern reasoanbly priced one.
There's a market of at least 1 (me) waiting for an HD-DPI wide display. All of the 34 - 38 inch displays are LD-DPI :( My LG 38" is 3840x1600. I want it to be 7680x3200 in the same size monitor
8 years ago you had to pay $1k for a 1440p 27" sRGB IPS panel. 2 years ago I spent $800 on a 4k 27" 144 Hz monitor with >95% P3 coverage.
Or another example: 8 years ago I spent $320 on a 1080p 27" (massive pixels) monitor with horrible color reproduction and contrast. 4 years ago I upgraded to a new monitor and for $300 I was able to get 4k 27" with >100% sRGB.
And when you consider inflation, progress is even greater.
It's the same with GPUs, and to a lesser extent CPUs and memory and storage. Moores law is great in many ways, but as a buyer of high end technology it always stings to see the same thing be 30-50% cheaper a few years later.
Progress does seem to have slowed down within the past few years for monitors. I expect the pandemic is relevant there.
Five years ago, I got a 40-inch 4k@60Hz for under $400. I recently got a 43-inch 4k@60Hz for $450. The new one is lighter and somewhat more color accurate. I don't get the obsession with small pixels; my eyes prefer if I stand/sit a bit further from a bigger monitor, and it's great for pairing/teaching.
I spent a while with a 27" 4K monitor. It looked nice in HiDPI modes on my Mac, but I didn't get that much usable screen real estate (I was running it about 1440p). When the pandemic hit and I started working from home every day, I upgraded to a 43" 4k display. I now have the equivalent of 4x 21.5" 1080p displays, which is far more usable than 1x 1440p, even if it doesn't look quite as nice.
Progess is being made specially in lower and medium range of monitors.
Apple took a large leap into giant monitors with high DPI. Most people don't care a lot about it, when you are not that close to the monitor, the retina effect is not worth, for mass market, the cost difference.
In the end, you are both correct. It is slow for the top of the line but super fast for everyone else upgranding mid-range monitors.
A current-generation $500 MSRP GPU is actually selling for no less than $900, and it's not due to inflation or the pandemic—it's due to cryptocurrency.
I thought crypto’s impact on GPUs largely ended, as they moved into far greater cost/efficiency ratios provided by ASICs? Is it for the non-bitcoin cryptos?
Yes, bitcoin mining has long been unprofitable on GPUs and is low-profit with ASICs. But most newer cryptocurrencies are designed specifically to be hard to make affordable ASICs for, usually by requiring GPU-like memory bandwidth. If you participate in a mining pool like NiceHash, your GPU will likely end up being put to work mining something like Monero but the pool will pay out in bitcoin.
For casual miners, they can use mining pools to make money that still pay pretty well. Gamers especially, are buying these cards and then joining a mining pool when not playing games to recoup some of their money.
This unfortunately leads to a cycle of more mining, even if the card isn’t optimized for it, as no card is a net negative cash flow atm even factoring in energy costs.
I bought a 30" Apple Cinema Display in the mid-2000s, and gave it away last year to a colleague who wanted to resurrect a period-correct Power Mac after upgrading to 5K screens. Not holding out much hope for the build quality to be the same sadly, but monitors certainly can be decade-long investments! FWIW 5K screens were 1100 apiece from Microcenter - vastly less money than the Cinema Display was in the UK back then!
> the same thing everyone else gets 30-50% cheaper 1 year later.
This is very true. I just got a previous-generation top-of-the-line CPU and GPU. It's way more power than I will ever need and if I went for latest gen I could have afforded barely mid-level for the same price[1]. Even taking into account the fact that latest gen is faster, I still got better performance for dollar (20-30% better depending on benchmarks).
[1] With regards to the CPU I'm factoring in the saving of not having to buy a new motherboard.
High quality scissors, even with constant use, can easily last that long or even longer. Source: I used to work as a tailor. In fact many people in that industry prefer to use older German-made scissors as they are in many ways better than the stuff you can buy now.
He’s almost certainly referring to honing the blades. Actual sharpening would require equipment that would be just ridiculous to have around a hair salon.
Regarding ridiculously-expensive Apple heirloom tools: Go to eBay right now, and buy any Activation-Locked Apple device. It's OK, I'll wait.
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OK, now: try to use it to do something. Anything. Something as simple as write a NOTEPAD note, or play one song from iTunes.
=== ====
Nope! You are surely getting screenfulls of information telling you, this Apple device has been locked and only the original owner can unlock it.
I suppose this is to prevent people from stealing Apple devices and reselling them to pawn shops or on eBay and Craigslist, and it must be working. All thieves everywhere must know by now, don't even bother to try to steal an Apple device or a Tesla car, for as soon as you do it gets bricked from all the satellites in space.
=== ====
I'm writing this because I bought a nine year old iPad on eBay and have spent the last two weeks trying to get through to AL-SUPPORT Activation Lock support at Apple, asking them to unlock it. And of course they don't care, I am not the original owner of the device, and unless I am, it is as useless as a digital brick. Battery life, screen quality, beautiful craftsmanship of the item itself, nothing matters. It just sits there telling me I'm practically a criminal for even owning this device.
No matter that the original owner gave up on it long ago, when even the simplest apps like YouTube and Gmail stopped working on it, by design, intentional planned-obsolescence coming down from Apple themselves. With the iOS getting relentlessly updated every year, all the apps get forcibly recompiled and anything old just doesn't work any more at all.
They don't care about this device any more. It was just a real-world dongle they used to get information from and about the original owner, information they've got stored in their giant database in the Cloud. They don't really care about me at all.
I imagine the universe is now littered with these devices, an Oort Cloud of them completely surrounding the planet, mentally bricked by annual iOS updates and physically bricked by Activation Locks, I'm a criminal for owning one, and were I to bring it to an Apple store to complain, they would have no useful help for me at all, "Buy a new one!" they'll tell me, "that's our company policy!"
If it was stolen from the original owner then you don't really own the device legally and this is the anti-theft part of activation lock functioning as designed. If you're an innocent third party to the original theft, your remedy is to get a full refund.
If it was just because the original owner forgot to disable activation lock, you should be chasing them to unlock it for you. If they refuse, your remedy is to get a full refund.
edit: reputable recycling places require you to have disabled activation lock on functional devices, or they don't pay out.
I've got a bizarre situation in which an OS upgrade bricked my Mac. I can't remember the details now, but it was something about an interface change in which I had managed to activate 2FA, but the login interface didn't have an input box for it.
The device was old enough that I just heaved a sigh and gave it to Apple for recycling.
> What if I use two-factor authentication on a device running older software?
> If you use two-factor authentication with devices running older OS versions – such as an Apple TV (2nd or 3rd generation) – you may be asked to add your six-digit verification code to the end of your password when signing in. Get your verification code from a trusted device running iOS 9 and later or OS X El Capitan and later, or have it sent to your trusted phone number. Then type your password followed by the six-digit verification code directly into the password field.
This weirdly works in some other places. Iirc one of the Amazon's seller login pages accepts the 2FA code appended to the password to avoid having to go through another page.
> It just sits there telling me I'm practically a criminal
I mean, you bought stolen goods. The law says you are culpable to some degree. If this was a legit sale, the original owner would be willing to do what's needed to make it useable.
If you bought it from a less than reputable vendor, then this is the kind of thing that happens. If a reseller purchased this from the original owner in this condition, I would not call them a reputable dealer.
Apologies if this sounds like victim blaming, it's not what I'm going for. Just trying to enlighten on how to avoid this in the future.
The startup dude with the Embody and topped out M1 Max with four roommates mates is such a meme today, though.
That's because it's incomplete.
A $5k screen is not so much a tool of the trade as an accessory for someone signalling themself to be valuable or valued. More commonly, coming to own these things is the result of little professional envy.
Our software engineers spend all day developing. They sit in $2-300 chairs and work on their preferred displays (last gen dual Apple TB displays for the Mac guys, dual anythings for the Windows, 1440p ultrawides for the java team).
You know who the only person in our org with an XDR is? The CIO with a MacBook Air, for writing emails and teleconferencing. They got theirs because another C-level made a big deal about how they couldn't work without their dual 5K UltraFines, also for sending emails and teleconferencing.
None of our enployees who could make use of an XDR display owns one because they either own a more industry-capable professional display (Flanders Scientific, Dolby, Sony pro series) or got an iMac Pro when they existed for under $5k.
I don't fault anyone who admires the XDR any more than I fault myself for liking any of the niche luxury items I do, but I wouldn't delude myself for even a moment into believing that an $8k watch is an essential investment because time management is an important skill to have.
I hope you understand you’re very alone In a crowd of sane people if you want to say that your engineers are happy in a $300 chair. A steel case or Herman miller is tablestakes for a decent software shop and if you’re too ignorant or miserly to see it then it’s probably not a great place to work at. A good chair makes a huge difference for ones quality of life. Please don’t skimp on it.
I tend to find that the essentials in a chair are the mesh back, the rest is just extra features.
And yeah good mesh back chairs come in at about $300 wholesale.
I find often that the ones available retail are not as good as the ones my big-ass corporation buys though, because furniture has a huge retail markup.
I have an Aeron, Embody, and Gesture. Yet, some of the $300-$400 mesh chairs at Staples feel better. Downside is I’ve never had one of those chairs last longer than 2-3 years before the mesh loosened up more than I’d like, but while they are good they are the best I’ve tried.
I do the same because I wanted the best productivity experience out there and have tried just about any monitor anyone could name before landing on this...
Thanks, Apple pays me a commission every time someone uses that arrangement.
I never get a check, though, because they bet me back that they could slap a logo on a towelette and sell it for $20. Uncanny how evenly it cancels out.
the problem with the apple xdr display isn't just the price though. it's not a good monitor for a lot of users. it's limited to 60hz, it's response time is really poor, it suffers from really obvious blooming and bleed at high brightness and it has bad off axis color accuracy and brightness. sure, if you care deeply about color accuracy and 6k resolution it's pretty good. these aren't the only metrics on which monitors are judged though
apple does a really poor job of supporting external displays. there's virtually no good options if you want something with high refresh, good latency and reasonable pixel density and color reproduction
I go into more detail below but I completely disagree with your take.
If anything for most users this thing is amazing (but expensive), and for the few users who were "tricked" into thinking this is a $5000 reference monitor it's not good...
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Bleed is non-existent, right off the bat. In fact it doesn't make sense it'd have bloom and backlight bleeding, aggressive HDR produces bloom... so the same aggressive HDR would hide BLB.
Bloom is also a complete non-issue for most users. I use this monitor primarily to consume text and casual media... I got weeks at a time before remembering this monitor had HDR enabled full-time when some super thin loading spinner or something appears on a completely black background while the brightness is cranked to max but the room is kind of dark... it essentially takes a torture test to get the FALD to be problematic
Off-axis color accuracy, again, complete non-issue for most users. If I was producing Avatar 2 it might be an issue, but compared to any "normal" monitor it's a complete non-issue, especially when the trade off is exactly 0 backlight bleed, which is 100 times more annoying.
For "most users" there's no better productivity monitor. Even a $20,000 reference monitor would be useless for us since we're not going to be able to drive or configure it...
Yes, the issue is not that it's expensive, it's that it doesn't justify that cost (serious question, what's that stand made out of to cost $1000?) If you can get an equivalent (or better) monitor for the same price (or less), then it's not really about spending an extremely generous salary to have better tools, it's about spending it to have a substandard tool that happens to have an Apple name attached to it.
If it's actually the best in enough areas to make it worthwhile, then that's great, and maybe it is worth the cost to some people. Maybe something like the Dell 8k monitor is a better fit for more people in the market for one of these, at a cheaper cost ($4k with a stand), more pixels, and similar feature set (if lacking some named features). Maybe not. I probably don't know enough to accurately judge, but it sure looks like Apple's trying to fleece some people that want the brand name to me.
It's not an issue that the screen is expensive, but we should take issue that the way Apple positioned the screen is beyond misleading. It's a hard lie.
During the launch, Apple generously rewarded it with the title "best Pro display on the market" and directly compared it to a 35k Sony reference monitor.
The problem is, Apple's screen is unusable as a reference monitor. The screen is not uniform, has a strong "vignette". The backlight zones create blooming artifacts. Color accuracy is fairly good, but not better than something found in a low-end BenQ.
Not only is it not the best pro monitor, it's not a pro monitor at all. It literally cannot be used as a reference monitor. It's basically a 6K LCD screen with all the problems that come with LCD.
If you can get an equivalent (or better) monitor for the same price (or less)
You can't; that's the point. There are no 6K monitors besides the ridiculous Apple one and the Dell 8K probably needs to be run at 2.5x which I don't know if macOS even supports.
I didnt realize it's only 60hz, that's pretty bad. You can get 4K gaming monitors that do 120hz for under $1000, even if the monitor itself looks dorky it's a very comfortable viewing experience scaled to 2560x1440 high density.
I got a 32" 4k 144hz monitor for $1000 and given how few of these there are odds are it's a similar panel
It's nothing compared to the XDR. I have no idea why this person thinks the XDR is bad for everyday users.
- I got one as a programmer who mostly looks at text. If you didn't tell me it has HDR always enabled I wouldn't have known, they've done an excellent job with managing bloom on non-HDR content.
- The resolution makes text milky smooth in a way that I always though 4k was this whole time
- 60hz has never bothered me despite regularly switching between this, the 144hz monitor, and a 360hz monitor....
- Accelerometer is neat enough, I have mine on a gas spring monitor arm and can be occasionally helpful to rotate
- Build quality is unmatched by all the gamer aesthetic stuff out there. Remove "backlight bleed" from your vocabulary.
I was originally making a snide joke (sorry) since it’s a popular form factor, and I can’t think of a better common option for 2x scaling than 4k 32”… but on review, I actually take your point on space efficiency, if we’re talking about it as a primary display.
I call bullshit on the $4000 scissors. The very very highest end goes to $1000 and most hairdressers use scissors around the $100 mark, which are still extremely good professional tools. Furthermore, if you have a very expensive pair of scissors, you are not going to be sharpening them twice a day... More like twice a year (and you take them to a professional, you don't do it yourself) .
Playing devils advocate, they probably strop the edge twice a day with a leather strop or a super fine grit whetstone.
This isn't really sharpening as such, very little material will be removed from the blade (as you probably know), but to an observer would appear to be 'sharpening' and would theoretically assist in maintaining the very minor burrs that would occur from daily use on hair, if the scissors have some bypass this may also be desirable as a burred edge can interfere with the bypass action.
Caveat, am an Amateur bladesmith, not hairdresser so I don't actually know much about scissors specifically and dont have a frame of reference for how much damage hair does to an edge.
I can't comment on the real world value of a $4k pair of professional scissors, but the price is not infathomable if it is hand made, made to order Japanese scissors made out of the Japanese Damascus steel. They are likely to take a month or a few to get made and will outlast the humanity. Yes, they probably require to be sharpened ahem serviced by the same master who has made them.
NHK World ran a program a few years back dedicated to the art of the Japanese scissors making, and it was an enlightening experience to watch. The meticulous attention to every single aspect of the scissors, ranging from the carbon content of the steel to ways of sharpening them by hand (no machinery used) has nearly implored my mind. Or, perhaps, I was just that impressed.
I got in to sewing recently and none of my cheapo scissors actually worked for cutting fabric properly. I spent $20 for a two pack of fabric scissors at the fabric store and they work great. I can definitely see how $100 scissors would be just fine!
Also sharpening twice a day sounds more like a ritual than a real need. But what do I know I’m not in that industry.
Sounds like they cut the hair of people with hair like mine. My old hair dresser used to joke about needing to get her shears sharpened every time she cut my hair.
Obviously no one should bankrupt themselves spending more than they can afford on a monitor, but I agree completely with the sentiment of the parent.
In early high school I scrimped and saved and purchased a NEC 3FG flat CRT (13 inches I think) and I was so glad I spent the money—-much sharper, bigger, and better that what I had before.
In late college it was the same story for a used 21” Sony CRT. The thing weighed an absolute ton but it was awesome. Crisp 1600x1200 at 85hz. I lugged it way too many places—-coding in friend’s basements and playing games.
As a young engineer, Apple released their first 1920x1200 24” LCD at $3500. I remember telling a coworker it was a bit too much for me but at $2k it would be a no-brainer. A year (or something) later I remember him telling me that Apple had just dropped the price to $2k. I ordered one the same day.
And, yes, today, I have a Cinema Display XDR.
I have never regretted spending money on monitors. The total number of hours of use that I get out of them (say 6 hours a day for 6 years ~= 13,000 hours) makes them one of the easiest things to justify spending money on.
>> untold hours to reach the top of your profession... I just find that's truly not an unlikely situation to be in.
> Uhm, I would say that fully remote $300k+ jobs are still unlikely.
Well, yes, reaching the top of one's profession is unlikely. But those who fit the preconditions established by GP probably have no issues finding 300k remote.
(That said, I would never spend more than $300 on a monitor regardless of income... for me, there is literally no return because cheap monitors have gotten so darn good. The one possible exception would be an e-ink display that mimicked the coding/authoring experience of a standard display, but AFAIK that doesn't exist yet. That said, I'm not exactly paid for my aesthetic intuition ;-) )
My experience working as a senior engineer in FAANG is you get a 2 year old Intel MacBook and maybe a grand to spend on some accessories. Like 80% of my peers thought their 60hz Dell 1440p monitor was state of the art and couldn’t tell the difference between a Celeron and an i9 10900x if their life depended on it.
I find it's just too much to justify. A bit more than $1k on the Ultrafine 5K was justifiable for me, and I've seriously considered buying another.
If it was $2k or so for the Apple Pro Display XDR, or if they did a middle-man option that provided the 6K resolution but wasn't as bright etc, I'd snap one up in an instant - but I want it mostly for text & software development. I don't need perfect colour accuracy (although, I do like it).
The 8k Dell would be that... if it wasn't so horrible to drive.
It's ironic, it's probably heavily discounted because no one can drive it... but if it had come out later with newer connectivity options, it'd be selling like hot cakes and just as expensive as an XDR
I make around half that and the biggest problem with the XDR is the aspect ratio and the reason why that is an issue is how Apple designed the XDR. It is primary for people on the low end and medium end who edit / color grade video.
If you are a developer try considering a 12.9 iPad Pro possibly? At least the aspect ratio is much better and the refresh rate is there but it also is too small for the rest of the examples. I don't see Apple releasing a monitor that will be middle of the road but I could see an LG refresh.
As a developer when I am doing my side projects I mainly make my terminal consume the middle third of the screen and have other relevant information or have it fill the screen. The only issue filling the screen is that you are possibly looking at the edges too much and that can cause eye strain.
But, would I buy an XDR again? Absolutely. Doing anything with this monitor makes every other monitor I own second rate. Also, content consumption is excellent to the point that its brighter than the theaters around me. Also, having a Mac which is fully compatible with an XDR allows me to manage it without touching one button on a monitor. It's integration with the rest of the system is by far the most appealing option. I do own the non Nano option.
Home computer displays for radiologists can cost well over $10K. Of course they dont have to pay for it themselves though. And they can make over $600K working from home reading images all day.
>"Without reference to the technical merits of the Apple Display, I don't think dropping $5000 on a monitor is outlandish for any professional in the situation I've described."
I can afford $5000. But I would not pay this money. I do away just fine with 4K 32" BenQ at $700. I use it for programming and for this task that $5000 brick offers no advantages for me. And it is not ever real pro display. Those go for much more than 5K. Try 20K and up.
Well yeah, but while I am a professional, I am not earning $300k plus. So some budget constraints apply. Ironically, I might have considered an Apple Pro Display when it came out, if Apple had sold a computer to go with it :p. Now with the M1Max laptops, things are starting to look differently.
But there are several issues with the Apple Pro Display if you are not a video artist:
- it uses a lot of power and even requires a fan.
- it does have only one input port. Of all companies, Apple might consider the use case that you need to connect your (work) laptop and your (private) Mac to your screen.
So the price isn't only pretty much outside of the budget of most mortals, even if you treat it as a once in a lifetime luxury expense, it is quite limited. I so hope either Dell makes a screen with the same panel, but with ports ans somewhat less expensive, or Apple makes a consumer screen again, I hope so much it is larger than 27", I find this size too limited. And if they do, please give it more than one port.
>I'll admit, a monitor that costs more than my first car is beyond affordable for 99% of the population. But saying that, many of the people reading this are pulling truly exotic salaries right now. After devoting untold hours to reaching the top of their profession.
It's not even about "getting something expensive but good as a professional expense to invest in the tools of your trade" - as a developer might see it.
It's quite a bargain for what it is, period. This monitor has specific capabilities, competitive monitors to which, used in the video and post-production industry, cost anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000, from vendors like Sony and such.
I think the issue is most employers are unlikely to buy a monitor like this for anyone except video editing professionals. That leaves it on the employee to purchase it out of their own salary, even though it is almost certainly a work only expense.
Counter point, many older more experienced hairdressers get away with a $1000 scissors just fine. Your point stands though, pay for what you want. Just don’t tell me it’s the tools that make the operator.
Why would a consumer product that I can get for $800 would be worth $100k for me, thus justifying overpaying for it? Am I supposed to buy $50k wallet because I take it everywhere now? Or $250k glasses because I wear them all day?
Good question, but I have a good answer: you need to understand the amount of consumer surplus of each product. If a wallet cost $50k, you wouldn’t buy it, you’d shove your credit cards in your pants pocket or find a workaround. But if a monitor cost $100k, you or your company would simply buy it and get on with your life - assuming you’re a professional programmer. Monitors have a ridiculous amount of consumer surplus. Once you accept that a monitor is worth $100k of consumer surplus, it’s more intuitive that a 10% noticeably better monitor can have 10% more consumer surplus, regardless of the low market price.
And yes, strong vision correction is also potentially worth $250k if you make a programmer’s salary and that’s the only way you can work. It’s just important to operationalize “10% better” as a measure of how much it helps your output. If your productivity increases 10%, it’s worth an additional $25k cost.
One more example: Imagine McDonald’s Big Mac Value Meals cost $1 each and every other meal cost $50. Assuming you make a $100k+ salary, I think you should opt for the $50 meals quite often, even though most of the country is eating Big Macs and thinking you must be crazy.
The hypotheticals make sense, but they're not reality.
As for your last example, it again make sense on its own.
In case of these monitors though, I see it more like every burger costs $10 but there is also $40 one that has a nice logo stamped on the bun. Also you have to pay extra for a plate. I don't think I am buying that one very often.
Well obviously if you have that kind of cash you might as well, but it's a bit like drugs. You think "I need this to be productive" when you're really just stroking your vice - where does it stop?
> What if I buy a $5k monitor and donate more than that, are you satisfied then?
I don't believe you would actually do this or you wouldn't make that comment, but either way don't do it to satisfy me.
> Why turn this into a morality play?
As I said, a lot of people are struggling and hungry. The point of the comment is to inject a little reality in to the idea that a $4,000 monitor is "worth it" because someone is at the computer a lot. But the marginal happiness of an HN user buying a $4,000 monitor instead of a $2,000 is very low, and there are other ways to spend extra cash. If you have extra money right now, consider donating it. It's cold outside and people need help.
Why get upset anyway? I think I made a fine suggestion. Someone could do what I suggested. Or not. You don't have to do it if you don't want to.
but for some reason you felt the need to edit it to:
> I don't believe you would actually do this or you wouldn't make that comment, but either way don't do it to satisfy me.
You should probably rollback the edit.
I'm from Ghana, I probably donate what you've donated in a decade every month to people who need it more than any American ever will.
And not just money, time. I don't go back home just to see my family after all, I've spent months of my time working with my father on his USAID project in the country. Is taking a 6 month unpaid sabbatical and giving up 200k in pay enough for our resident patron saint of the poor?
I grow reallll tired of people like this. People in the "1st world" who based on their virtue signaling you'd assume live like monks but in reality live in relatively cozy excess completely unaware of half the reality the actual downtrodden face.
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Semi-off topic but based on this comment I feel like you're exactly who needs to hear this. The degree to which virtue signaling has become an integral part of some people's sense of identity in this country is infuriating: It's not cold where I'm from, people still need help.
Getting giddy off slogans and token shows of kindness in one of the most privileged countries on earth...
Where I'm from "needing help" isn't a seasonal issue, and it's not even close to being as bad as it gets globally.
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> But the marginal happiness of an HN user buying a $4,000 monitor instead of a $2,000 is very low, and there are other ways to spend extra cash.
What a joke. Did it ever occur to you spending fractions of a percent more compared to what you get paid to sit in front of the damn thing is a marginal expense?
> Why get upset anyway? I think I made a fine suggestion. Someone could do what I suggested. Or not. You don't have to do it if you don't want to.
Because you have the audacity to talk so condescendingly based on someone's monitor choice. I couldn't resist replying in kind.
I’m not trying to tell anyone from Ghana how to spend their money. But the person I was responding to seems to know a lot of people making $300k and they seemed to be really good at convincing themselves to spend a lot of money on things. I made the rather meek suggestion to buy cheaper and donate. Right now people are freezing to death on park benches where I live so people really do need more help.
But other than that you’ve read too much in to me. My entire philosophy is that we must change the way our economy operates to eliminate poverty. I’m setting my own life up so that all of my engineering work goes to support this goal. Everything I do is open source so people all over the world can benefit, and I am learning how to operate an engineering project sustainably that can stay open source without needing to cave to commercial interests. The project I am learning this on is an open source farming robot of my own design, and I have sunk a fair bit of my time for free in to the project and earn less than half of what I did working at google. It was my idea to operate the project as open source, and to intentionally collaborate with people all over the world to make a design that can be fabricated cheaply anywhere.
Once I learn how to manage this community oriented engineering project, the next project will be large scale free hot meal producing machines. I want to make free meals the way the Sikhs do in India, where an army of volunteers cooks 50,000 free meals a day at a single location, and collectively across India their non profit NGO produces over 1.7 million free meals a day. I want to use my skills in automation and engineering management to make open source machines to do the work of those volunteers, and if I succeed we will open a demonstration facility in Oakland that can serve hundreds of meals a day, scaling hopefully to thousands.
You mention virtue signaling. But I am not here for signaling. I really do find it weird when people on here talk about how they’re going to spend all their money on themselves. And I make this mild suggestion that they consider donating their money because I want to see how people respond. I wasn’t condescending, I just said someone could buy cheaper and use their excess money to help the needy. We have a real problem with consumerism in the USA and it is destroying the planet. I think it’s worth making a gentle suggestion to donate. And invariably someone gets upset and makes a big deal out of it. So today that person was you.
But I’m working very hard to do my part. Sharing my work with all and trying to make it sustainable. I taught a robotics class in Mauritius to some students from Ghana, and Kenya and South Africa and Ethiopia and Morocco. When I design my farming robot I have them in mind. Once our design is operational I want to find people in Nairobi who can build them, and I will help them every way I can. Hopefully some day one of my students will be able to use it. A few of them really wanted to bring farming robots back home.
EDIT: This linked comment below really nicely sums up what I am getting at. I’m not saying a developer shouldn’t have a nice monitor but there is a point at which it becomes extravagant, and I really don’t understand why you’ve fixated on me:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29708573
This entire comment is walking back what you said because I'm not the exact person you presumed I was... based on the monitor I use. You understand how ridiculous that is right?
> I don't believe you would actually do this or you wouldn't make that comment
That's what you said to me, not someone else. And all you had to go on was me saying: Spending an extra $2000 on a tool you use 8 hours a day is not something to pass a moral judgement on.
Most people would not object to what I said: a $5000 tool is a pittance in comparison to what some not nearly as well compensated people end up spending on better tools.
So if despite that you try to turn it into an issue of donating more to your fellow man... what's the term for that?
What is a term for forcing virtue and morality into a conversation in a way that does more to signal your own position than actually add to the conversation in a cohesive way?
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To put it more plainly: browbeating people over not spending $2000 less on a monitor is the height of virtue signaling in a forum where people are stating they make a living off of them.
I mean even in your reply you're doing it! People are talking about an expensive monitor and somehow you twist it into:
> "I really do find it weird when people on here talk about how they’re going to spend all their money on themselves."
You really don't see how nauseatingly disingenuous you're being? Talking about spending $5,000 on a monitor is tantamount to saying you spend all your money on yourself?
Didn't that exact wrong assumption already lead you astray with me?
My first comment said it all: Why make this a morality play.
Respectfully, I do not see how I am browbeating anyone when I say:
> Someone could also buy a really nice monitor for $2k and donate the other 2k to a local food bank. A lot of people are struggling and hungry.
And I think it is reasonable for me not to believe that a random internet commenter is going to make a $5000 donation while they accuse me of making a morality play. I'm not saying you will never donate $5000, but I do believe you will not make any additional donations due to our exchange. It just sounded like hot air.
But I can see that you want to tear me down, and I don't really care. We have strayed far beyond good faith conversation so I'm going to exit this now.
If you don't see the arrogance in telling someone talking about the tools of their trade to consider instead downgrading and donating to food banks, as if the two are mutually exclusive, or one topic begat the other: then there was never much of a conversation to be had.
You're free to martyr yourself though. Act like I'm just tearing you down. Not addressing anything you've said in these comments.
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Maybe in a moment of introspection you might realize that no one would tear you down for suggesting food banks exist, and maybe, juuuuuust maybe you did something wrong when you:
- Tried to make it about choosing between spending money on tools and donating to food banks, as if the two are mutually exclusive.
- Made assumptions about a complete stranger's donation habits based on a monitor purchase and telling you not to make a tooling choice a morality play...
- Claimed that people talking about a monitor are actually saying they spend all their money on themselves.
Of course, it'll be easier to not do any of that and go on thinking that there's this weird Ghanian guy who hates food banks and spends all his money on himself because he likes the Apple Pro Display XDR.
I'll admit, a monitor that costs more than my first car is beyond affordable for 99% of the population.
But saying that, many of the people reading this are pulling truly exotic salaries right now. After devoting untold hours to reaching the top of their profession.
Let's say you're a professional earning $300k plus in software.
You're often working 100% remote, using your monitor 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, just for work. Plus untold hours of HackerNews (strictly after 5pm of course).
I just find that's truly not an unlikely situation to be in.
Without reference to the technical merits of the Apple Display, I don't think dropping $5000 on a monitor is outlandish for any professional in the situation I've described.
My hairdresser for example has a $4000 pair of scissors. He uses the damn things every day, and he sharpens them twice a day.
Whilst it's not essential, taking pride and investing in the tools of your trade is not a thing to frown upon.