I recently acquired a vintage Apple 30″ Cinema Display, which is a wonder! Requires dual link DVI or DisplayPort, but it’s glorious.
I purchased it at a Surplus event on Campus, which usually means I’m not early enough to pick much of anything because I didn’t roll in from Tornado Alley at 6am to wait in line for three hours, so I was delighted to see two of them up on a shelf at the register waiting for me. Works! Tested! With Power Adapter!
But here’s the thing. I got it all cabled up, and after realizing my 24″ iMac’s VESA mounting kit wasn’t going to work, I decided it was pretty enough to leave on the pedestal anyway.
And then the problem came to light. A couple of small red spots were smudged into the glass in the top right corner. For the life of me I can’t figure out where they came from, they’re not deep enough to be pixels, they’re looking a little too deep to be simply on the glass, yet there they are. The tiny spots that I cannot un-see now that I know they’re there. #firstworldproblems much?
A very vexing spot. Out, damn spot! I have tried to get aggressive about cleaning it somehow but need to consult with Surplus first to see if the other one is still there and in better shape. At first I thought I must have a fever, and that I was seeing red spots everywhere, like on the cashmere sweater George got Elaine in Season 2.
Maybe that explains the discount! But upon a closer look I can’t help but wonder how it happened.
Don’t sweat the weird moire and artifacts in the photo, it’s a side effect of iPhone camera shot in the dark room. Color looks weird because I’m using f.lux of course.
But the red spots on the display are all-too-real.
So while looking at these pictures now and studying The Crime Scene, I can’t help but notice the streak appears to follow a trajectory that is mirrored in the red marker slash across the price on the monitor when it was in the surplus sale behind the registers. Am I crazy or does it look like the Surplus staff drew on the paper while it was taped to the monitor and the red splotches are a result of their ā¦ enthusiasm and lack of situational awareness? In all seriousness, there was no indication that this was a known issue but there is also no evidence they were trying to conceal it, I think it was a legitimate accident on the part of the student workers no doubt sent out in the world with nothing but a redbull and a magic marker.
I am going to have to see if I can get the monitor swapped out with another one, I think. Or I’m going to have to find a way to get red magic marker off glass, which I don’t suppose is super easy. (And yes, this monitor looks Retina glorious in 1280x800ish and c’est magnifique in 2560×1600. Higher than 1080P resolution makes for glorious games of Diablo 3, I tell-you-what. It’s a beautiful display soured only by the fact that my eyes are magnetically drawn to the top left corner where my imperfections stand proudly and defiantly. Given I do a lot of photo editing, I suspect this will get very old very fast.
But also, can I just say? Do you have any idea how many concurrent shell windows I can have open at one time on this thing? It’s a LOT.