"Apple is an oddly conservative company considering that some of the things they make look like they are on the edge. remember there was no "color iPod" for a long time after other companies had shipped color displays for their MP3 players. it took Apple forever to adopt cheaper and much larger ATA interfaced hard drives leaving SCSI behind. for the iMac product line you'd think that a sub-$1K mac with a display would be on the table using way cheap 19-20" displays but it doesn't exist. and rather than lower certain products price as parts become cost reduced the price point is maintained with the specs of the product increased. for example iPods get more storage rather than become cheaper. even in Apple's keyboard/mouse department there is only just one of each. compared to Microsoft, Logitech, Kensington, Keytronic, etc who all have 3-8 products in each line ranging from the not-so-good, gooder, better all the way to amazing.
there's a precedent set for not staring far from the center of the path. "oh wait", you say "Apple is full of innovation…" yes they are. but compare a Zune player with a iPod Touch. both are the same same from the battery, circuit board and similar components. the Mac itself isn't far from the Intel reference designs. there isn't innovation happening here. the innovation is just in a different place.
let's look at OLED to understand why Apple hasn't stepped up to use it yet. the biggest issue is the relatively limited life of the display. most are rated for about 5,000-14,000 hours. over a five year life you could use it between 3-8 hours a day. but long before that time you'd start to notice that colors are not as bright or the correct colors as the organics break down over time. dead pixels stand out and are super annoying. it's rare that LCD panels grow bad pixels. but with OLED it's possible to have them right out of the box. remember spending 5 grand on a new PowerBook 540c only to have a dead pixel right in the middle and having the dealer (or Apple) not able to fix it because it was only 1 pixel? now imagine 14 million of those screens getting DEAD pixels at the rate of 2% on-going. it's a PR nightmare growing (literally because that's how you make these screens).
there are some other reasons against OLED to consider. while OLED can look great in most light, it looks like crap in daylight. at least with LCD you can see something on the screen even in the brightest middle of the day sun. and then there is the power requirement. an OLED would use lots more power compared to a similar sized LCD using LED as backlighting when displaying a mostly White screen. when in a mostly black mode power use can be 10-20% less compared to the LCD.
if we see OLED in products surface it will be because a new manufacturing process exists allowing Apple to exploit it. but given the way these displays are made right now it won't be anytime soon. " -johnfoster (
forum.maccast)
