Egg Freckles has a post that reminded me of an old favorite product of mine from Apple.

The 17” Apple Studio Display fits an interesting niche in history, having been launched during the period of time when the term “Apple Tax” was coined.  Apple was selling a 15” LCD for $999 and a 20” LCD for $3999 when monitors from other manufacturers were going for less than half that.  Even the 17” ASD itself was arguably overpriced at $499 - despite its advanced color calibration features.  At the time though, it served two purposes - Apple needed a monitor in that price range, and CRTs were still outperforming LCDs in areas like color calibration, bit depth, contrast, and refresh rate.  Or at least some die-hard CRT fans insisted they did.

But aside from the specs, it’s simply a beautiful piece of engineering.  Its design falls between the Fruit style of early iMacs, and the eventual evolution into the White theme, when graphite grey plastic rather than aluminum distinguished the “Pro” products.  This design style didn’t last long - encompassing just this monitor, the iMac DV line, and a couple of G4 desktops - including the legendary G4 Cube.  But it did inspire some great Apple accessories like the Harmon Kardon SoundSticks, which have been in production for over a decade now.

It’s rare for a product like this to see the light of day, even from Apple, which increasingly likes to hide the workings of its devices behind layers of aluminum and glass.  But if you look at teardowns of their recent products, you can see the same attention to internal details, even if they’re no longer visible.