Blog

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

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.

Vehicular longevity

Sometimes on my walks around the neighborhood, I would notice some vintage cars with plates starting in a low digit (in California, the higher the starting number, the newer the car tends to be). And these cars tend to be in relatively immaculate condition. There’s definitely some patina there, but I can tell for the most part these are well-loved machines, and cared for consistently. How else would a ding-free Mercedes sedan from the 80s survive into the modern age?

A slight amount of shame comes to me whenever I see these old cars, because my track record in that respect is horrendous. I’ve yet to own any of the new cars I bought for more than three years. Even the one used car - the beloved Porsche 911 GT3 - I’ve only managed to keep for two. I go through cars way more often that someone of my meager income really should. I’m sure the State of California is happy about the tax revenue it has received from me over the years.

To that end, I really hope I can muster the self-control to keep my current car, a 2021 BMW M2 Competition, for a very long time. It’s a little over one year since I bought the thing, so there’s two more to go before I am even with my previous best record of car ownership length. BMW’s free maintenance program for the first three years does make it easier to keep the M2, because my only outlay is gas, insurance, and payments (neither of which are cheap already).

Will I be able to go past three years? I certainly hope so. The only car I can conceivably see trading it for is a 997.1 generation Porsche 911 GT3. Having played the Porsche game and paid the Porsche tax once, I’m not sure I have the wallet stomach for it again. The most ideal scenario would be to keep the BMW as the last petrol-powered car I will ever buy. I’ll buy an EV to supplement it if the need ever arises. As of right now, I am quite okay.

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.

Third time is the charm

Well, that was a bit unexpected.

I got my COVID-19 booster vaccine shot this past Sunday, and yesterday - Monday - I felt rather terrible. It’s unexpected because the first two times I got the Pfizer shot, all I had to show for it in terms of symptoms were a sore arm. Physically otherwise I felt great, quite unlike some people I know who got absolutely clobbered with COVID-like symptoms. Those federally-mandated COVID sick days sure come in handy!

Well who is eating crow now, because I got symptoms on the third shot. It wasn’t too bad, all things considered: just slight chills at the extremities, and a woozy feeling to the head. As of this writing - Tuesday - I feel completely fine again, and consider myself lucky to be amongst the group currently eligible for a booster. Working in education is finally paying off, because the paycheck sure isn’t compared to the private sector!

Hopefully this is the last COVID vaccine shot I will ever have to take. It’s November already, and 2022 is almost done. With kids five and older now eligible for the (Pfizer) vaccine, I think soon we should reopen everything back up completely. No more mask requirements. COVID-19 will truly become like the seasonal flu, something to be managed, rather than aiming for some delusion of zero cases. It is time.

Back to the old school

Getting a basic flip phone with no Internet capabilities these days is surprisingly difficult.

A few weeks back, my brother calls me saying he needs a basic “dumb” phone as soon as possible. For reasons I will not go into, he’s banned from using a smartphone with cellular Internet for the foreseeable future. Luckily, there’s a Verizon store within walking distance from campus, so I went there after work.

The Verizon store did have a flip phone in stock to sell, a TCL FLIP Pro. Holding that in my hands brings me right back to the Motorola days of 150 pixel by 100 pixel display and thousands of colors. Typing out a text message with only the number pad? These kids have no idea what that was like. I wonder if the TCL Flip Pro even has the Snake game on it…

But there was a problem: Verizon doesn’t sell any plans with only voice and text messaging. Data is a prerequisite, and turns out even the dumbest phone on the market has Internet capabilities (the Flip Pro certainly does). AT&T and T-Mobile are no different. This arrangement does not work for my brother: his phone simply must not have Internet access.

So we needed a cellphone plan that only has voice and text. There seems to be a few Internet-only cellular providers (meaning: no brick-and-mortar stores) that still offer basic phone plans. These companies piggyback off the cell towers of the big three. One such entity is US Mobile. For a tiny sum of $8 dollars a month, you get unlimited talk and text. Pay about $14 dollars to start and you will get a SIM card in the mail in two business days. Setup is completely online, and once the SIM is activated, simply stick it into any phone you wish to use.

It’s too bad Verizon can’t offer such a plan, but at least we got the Flip Pro for free. It’s considered an “upgrade” for my brother’s phone line, though I’m not sure if going backwards to a dumb phone can be called an upgrade. Nevertheless, he’s all set now, getting an opportunity to use the archaic cellphone technology that I grew up with.

The chip shortage

The global semiconductor chip shortage is no joke. I ordered a new 16-inch MacBook Pro with the “M1 Max” processor during the preorder period back in the last week of October. The laptop isn’t scheduled to arrive for another month. The delivery timeframe given by Apple is the first week of December. The struggle is real, the direst of first world problems.

I am very anxious to get my hands on these properly “pro” laptops with the vaunted Apple silicon. For work, I’ve handled the regular “M1” Macs, and their speed is always amazing. The M1 Pro and the M1 Max chips should be yet another significant leap forward. More exciting for me is the mini-LED display of the new MacBook Pros: full local dimming with variable refresh rate up to 120Hz. It’s basically the $5,000 Pro Display XDR, but in a laptop-sized package. Delicious.

Too bad it’s four week out. I’m hoping Apple will surprise me and get it to me much sooner than early December. I’m taking the entire Thanksgiving week off from work and it would be lovely if I have the brand new MacBook Pro to play with.

Or perhaps a PlayStation 5. Sadly, after one whole year since launch, I still cannot simply walk into a Best Buy or click on Amazon to buy one of these next-generation consoles. I’m far too old and don’t care about gaming enough to play the lottery game or wait in lines (virtual or physical). Good thing there isn’t really a new game that’s impelling me to buy a PS5 now. We’re closing in on nine years since the release of Grand Theft Auto 5, Rockstar Games; how about a new one, eh?

The waiting game continues.

It is done

It took almost seven weeks, but our family’s 2018 Hyundai Tucson - which was a lease - is finally sold off. Made a decent bit of profit too, which is nice. The car market is indeed super crazy right now: the absolute worst time to buy a car, but the best time to have a car to sell. The local CarMax gave us $25,000 for the three-year old Tucson that had an MSRP in the $28,000s. The lease buyout was only $16,500, including tax. Do the math!

It had to be said though our Tucson has relatively low mileage (~18,200) and is practically pristine. Your mileage (pun intended) will vary. Don’t look to get around the same money if your Tucson had significantly more miles.

The $8,500 in profit isn’t without some excruciating waiting and patience. Due to the aforementioned crazy car market, leasing companies have stopped the practice of lease buyouts by a third party. No longer can you take your lease vehicle to CarMax (and the like) and have them cut you a check for the difference in present value and the payoff price. The contract buyout price the leasing companies has is with you; they are not legally obligated to sell to third party for that same price.

And at present time, the lease companies aren’t willing to sell at all. They want to impel the customer to return the car to the brand’s dealership. Because there is an absolute dearth of new car inventory due to the chip shortage.

In order to sell the Tucson and get some money back, we had to do it the roundabout way: buy the car outright from Hyundai, then sell the car to CarMax ourselves. Paying for the car was easy - electronic bank transfer - but then we had to wait over two weeks for Hyundai Finance to mail us the title. With the pink slip in hand, there was another problem: CarMax (and the like) only accepts a clean title: the paper cannot include the leasing company as a registered owner, even though they’ve signed it off to you, and there’s a bill of sale.

Getting a clean title required a trip to the local DMV. After paying $25 to transfer the title to my father’s name only, it was then another prolonged wait for the unencumbered title to arrive in the mail.

That took another three weeks, but thankfully the new pink slip came last Friday. We immediately schedule an appointment at CarMax the very next day. Two hours on the premises later, and finally we unburdened ourselves of Tucson. A whole month after my father have already leased another car! Thank god I had the parking space at work to store the Tucson during this time.

So yeah, if you have a car to sell, now is the best time! I just hope you’re not also looking to buy one as well…