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Computerworld - A few years back, Apple Computer Inc. touted its hardware and software with the marketing slogan "Think Different." After using the company's latest, greatest and largest Apple Cinema Display (ACD) for the past few weeks, I've come to wonder if maybe that ad campaign has morphed into "Think Big."
That's really all you can think when you see the 30-in. monitor in person. It's big. Huge. Overwhelmingly so. Think sitting in the front row at the local cinema, and you have an idea what it feels like to plop down for the first time in front of this LCD display, which offers a whopping 2,560-by-1,600-pixel resolution.
And then, after you use it for a while, it doesn't seem quite so gargantuan.
First, a little background: Apple officially unveiled the TV-size display (I'll call it the ACD 30) last June, with delivery promised later in the summer at a price of $3,299. But as is often the case with new Apple products, shipping times stretched into the fall. That's in part due to the fact that this display requires a special 256MB video card to operate. Those $599 GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL cards offered by Nvidia Corp. were delayed into the fall as well -- and a quick check at the Apple Store online still shows a three- to five-week shipping time. A second, scaled-down version of the card, the Nvidia GeForce 6800 GT DDL, has been offered since last fall, and it's available now for $499.
So it has only been in the past month or two that the 30-in. display has become somewhat available. The one I've been using was provided by Apple for review purposes.

30-in. Apple Cinema Display

Since its debut at last year's Worldwide Developers Conference, two important things have happened regarding the ACD 30: Apple dropped the price by $300, making it $2,999 (with the 23- and 20-in. displays now going for $1,799 and $999, respectively). And ATI Technologies Inc. announced that later this year it will release the ATI X800 XT, a video card that drives the ACD 30 -- and costs the same as the lesser Nvidia card.
Like all of Apple's LCDs, the ACD 30 uses a standard Digital Video Interface (DVI) connector to hook up to a Power Mac G5 (which is required). It also uses up a FireWire port and a Universal Serial Bus port on the G5, although it offers two of each on the back of the display for peripherals. But first, you'll need to get one of those