Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Not out of the woods yet

You may think the supply chain crunch from the pandemic is over, but it’s not really in reality. Two evenings ago I was at the local Target to buy milk, and there were zero whole milks on the shelf. Organic or inorganic, grass-fed or corn-fed, didn’t matter. The only milks on the shelf were the 2% and 1% variety. I guess most people, like myself, do not consider low-fat milk to be milk at all. Honestly, you might as well just drink water.

In my job, computer components break, and we have to call Dell or Apple for replacements. Recently a brand new Dell laptop had a faulty AC adapter. No big deal, right? It’s under warranty, Dell will replace the adapter no problem. Well, the problem is the supply chain. As of writing, we’ve been waiting for the replacement adapter for three weeks now - supply of which is severely backordered. Obviously, being a proper IT department, we had spares on hand for the user. Imagine if you’re a regular customer, though: your newly purchased Dell laptop cannot function going on three weeks. Hugely unacceptable.

And that’s why I recommend Apple. At least you can go to a local Apple Store to complain!

I’ve read that if you bought a new Land Rover sports-utility vehicle, and were unlucky enough to need a windshield replacement, you might be shit out of luck. There’s a supply shortage of windshields, and Land Rover rather concentrate on what little stock they have towards making whole vehicles (more profit in that enterprise). So what does the owner of a six-figure Range Rover to do? Apparently, Land Rover dealerships are buying back the cars, presumably enough compensated for owners to get another new Range Rover.

Pro Display XDR

Bottom line: the Apple Pro Display XDR is absolutely amazing, and worth the super hefty $5,000 entry cost.

In my search for an external monitor that led to the disappointing Dell UP3221Q monitor - one of the company’s very highest end displays - I was stuck with the realization that the best displays for Macs are the ones that are “sanctioned” by Apple. ‘It just works’ only applies to those monitors; everything else third-party have compromises few and many.

Unfortunately, as of current writing, there are only three monitors that Apple officially sells at their store: two LG UltraFine displays at 24 and 27 inch sizes, and the aforementioned Pro Display XDR. That is it, those are the only options. You either pay through the nose for the XDR, or pay reasonable amounts for the two LG monitors that’s been out since the mid 2010s.

Nothing against the LG Ultrafine: as a former 27-inch iMac owner, the LG 5K display has the same exact panel as the iMac. You absolutely cannot find this high quality and pixel density anywhere else. The problem is one of vanity: I find the LG to be incredibly ugly, with an industrial design that’s nowhere near the aluminum and glass enclosures of Apple-made products. We had a unit in at work, and the whole thing looks and feel of cheap plastic.

If Apple had taken that 27-inch display and encased it in an enclosure similar to that of the Pro Display XDR, I probably would have bought that instead, and pocketed the significant extra change. But Apple doesn’t, so here am I staring at the glorious 6K resolution of the XDR as I type these words.

I did not pay the extra thousand dollars for the Pro Stand. Instead I paid the (still expensive) $200 dollars for the VESA mount adapter, and about $190 for an Ergotron LX monitor arm.

The Pro Display XDR is the epitome of ‘you get what you pay for’. I would say to anyone that’s also looking for a display for their Mac laptops to look no further: this is the one you want. Delay the purchase and save up a bit more if you have to. A monitor is something we stare at for hours every single day; wouldn’t you want to invest and get the ultimate? The XDR’s quality and clarity is simply unmatched. Its aluminum casing is a work of art. It’s as good to look at from the back as it is from the front, a centerpiece in any home office.

It is a delight every morning when I press a button on the keyboard and the Pro Display XDR wakes from sleep immediately. A stark contrast to my experience with the Dell UP3221Q.

As with most things in life, save a bit more and get the thing you really want. The Pro Display XDR’s prohibitive price tag steered me towards a lesser option that constantly reminded me of its shortcomings. That’s not something I want to live with for the next 10 years. I’m happy I was able to return the Dell and get the display I wanted all along.

Doesn't play nice with Dell

As an owner of an Apple MacBook Pro, I’ve been on the lookout for an external display. Sadly, the only monitor that Apple itself makes is the extremely expensive Pro Display XDR, infamous for a starting price of $4,999 dollars for just the display. A bit too rich for my blood, though I can understand the high cost. Competitive 32-inch HDR 10-bit displays with hundreds (and thousands) of LED dimming zones are all above $4,000 dollars. Unlike Apple though, other manufactures throw in a display stand for free, rather than make you pay extra.

On a chance scroll through the Amazon app one morning, I found a refurbished Dell UP3221Q 32-inch 4K HDR monitor on sale for about half its then $3,999 street price. There was only one available, so I acted super quickly with the buy now button. A week later, the 50 pound behemoth of a package arrived at my door. After nearly two years of only using a laptop display (I previously had a 27-inch iMac), it was strange to suddenly have four times as much screen real-estate again.

A month after purchase, I returned the Dell monitor. The quirks of the UP3221Q vis a vis using it with my MacBook Pro can’t overcome the admittedly spectacular images when viewing video. And buying it for half off MSRP.

The first problem is the 4K resolution. Due to how macOS handles high DPI with essentially a doubling of pixel density, the ideal pixels-per-inch is around 220. This is why the similarly sized Pro Display XDR is 6K in resolution, instead of 4: to achieve that all important retina pixel density. The UP3221Q has a PPI of only 140, and text looks relatively horrible compared to the MacBook Pro’s internal retina display. The sharpest possible would be to run the Dell at native resolution, but the UI is unusually tiny at that scale.

The second problem is the display has trouble with waking from sleep after a prolonged off period, such as overnight. Nearly every morning I had to unplug and reinsert the thunderbolt cable from the MacBook Pro to get the UP3221Q to show the login screen. A real pain in the neck when all I want to do is start my day with a scroll of twitter. This isn’t really Dell’s fault: from what I’ve gathered on the issue, modern Apple laptops simply don’t play as nicely with third-party displays as one would expect.

The third problem is something I didn’t realize until I got to handle a Pro Display XDR for work. With the Apple monitor, you’re able to show both HDR and SDR content at the same time. Meaning, you can have a windowed video running in HDR whilst the rest of the UI is still in SDR. This is not possible with the Dell: it’s either or. I have to switch to the HDR color space every time I want to watch a Youtube HDR video. Because the macOS UI isn’t HDR, it looks like crap in that mode. I have to switch the UP3221Q back to SDR during normal use.

Which presents a fourth problem: the Dell monitor doesn’t do local dimming in SDR mode - only in HDR! Those sweet 2,000 dimming zones isn’t worth anything unless I am watching HDR content, which as of right now is very seldom. No such issue with the Pro Display XDR: it performs local dimming no matter what content is being shown on screen. It just works.

These compromises combined is far too jarring for a monitor that, even at half off, represents a hefty investment. I hope to get at least 10 years out of the monitor, and I don’t want to be constantly reminded of the tradeoffs with the UP3221Q. The choice is simple: save up some more and buy the Pro Display XDR (I’ll skip the $1,000 dollar stand).

Good thing Amazon’s refurb program - called Amazon Renewed - has a generous 90-day satisfaction return policy. The seller even paid shipping back, which is lovely.

Dead batteries

As the university prepares for the return of in-person classes for the fall semester, some of the staff and faculty have started to trickle back on campus. But there’s a problem: their computers have been turned off since pre-pandemic, some 16 months earlier. No issues with the iMacs as they work fine once plugged back into power. The Dell PC towers, however, aren’t so convenient.

PC motherboards have a CMOS battery that provide just enough power for the board to remember its settings. If the battery were to run out of juice, say, during a pandemic when the PC is without power for more than a year, the motherboard is effectively reset. This becomes a problem when users boot it up for the first time in a long time, as the internal BIOS clock will be incorrect (and won’t boot further with an incorrect time), and also the hard-drive won’t be recognized.

Our department will then get the call and we would have to physical go to these users’ offices to replace the CMOS battery, and toggle everything back as it were. Tedious. Why can’t everybody use Mac computers to make all our lives easier?

Once we get the PC (and Macs too, honestly) back up and running, there’s another problem: the software is horrendously out of date. Performing updates to the apps and the operating system is at least another few hours. God forbid your PC is old enough to have a spinning hard-drive instead of solid-state; it’ll take the entire work-day for everything to sync back together and working correctly.

Solution? Well, let’s first agree to not have another pandemic. Then, opt for a laptop next time you’re given the option of a new work computer.

You're getting a Dell!

At work, we are imaging a whole bunch of Dell laptops in preparation for the looming Fall semester (still remote, mind you), and I have to say there’s nothing quite like the intoxicating smell of brand new computer hardware. Don’t worry, it’s not just Dell machines - the sweet scent of Apple computers will come hopefully in a few weeks’ time. For now, it’s Windows laptops made by Dell, and in handling over a few dozen of them over the past week, I’ve come to one concluding revelation: it’s so nice to have various type of ports built into the a laptop.

I am the biggest Apple fanboy as there is, but even I have to admit the decision to feature only USB-C ports - and nothing else - on the Macbook line is a massive inconvenience, especially in the education environment. Back last year when my main machine was a Macbook Pro, each and every time I needed to import photos from my camera via SD card, I would forget that I first have to get the USB-C to SD card adapter out of the drawer. Were it a Dell machine - or any typical PC laptop, really - I’d be able to stick the card right in, no fussing with adapters. The hashtag “dongle life” is a real thing, and can get massively annoying.

Most annoying is in classrooms when users need to connect to a projector or television; we never get calls from PC people needing an HDMI adapter, because most of them have it built right in - it’s always Apple users who need a dongle for practically everything. A laptop with many type of ports is a convenience I didn’t realize I wanted until I had to image a load of Dell laptops recently, juggling between many USB (type A, obviously) sticks and ethernet cables. Add to that the ability to upgrade hard drive and memory by the user, and it’s a small wonder why I stuck with Apple laptops even after their transition to USB-C ports only.

Oh right: build quality. The precision assembly of a Macbook Pro is second to none (ignore the episode regarding the butterfly keyboard), and the equivalent Dell feels chunky and flimsy in comparison. “Why does the display lid need to be this thick?”, you’d ask, and “Why is the keyboard deck not absolutely rigid?” Of course, depending on the person, this may or may not be high on the list of things that matter to you in a laptop; for me, how tactilely wonderful a Macbook Pro is to hold and use is worth the hassle of dealing with dongles all the time.