A few months ago, I bought a beautiful 23″ 16:9 LCD panel — Dell’s repackaging of Apple’s Cinema Display. The feature about it that I really loved is that it can be rotated 19″, meaning that this movie-screen-wide monitor becomes an absurdly, wonderfully tall monitor. It’s great for spreadsheets, tall webpages, etc. I was irritated to find that it takes a special video card to support the rotation function. That’s not the fault of the monitor manufacturer, nor ATI, the maker of my Rage 9000 Pro video card, but of Apple — there is no reason whatsoever for why the vector-based Mac OS X can’t rotate or reshape the screen however that Apple wants it to be rotated.
I installed Mac OS 10.4 — “Tiger” — this evening, and was tickled to find that screen rotation is now supported. As I type this, I face a screen that’s as tall as my forearm is long, but only one and a half hands wide. Very cool.
Is screen rotation supported on v10.4 that the rest of us mere mortals are using? ;)
Just curious, why did you buy the Dell version of the Cinema Display? Better price?
Is screen rotation supported on v10.4 that the rest of us mere mortals are using?
Yep. You, too, can have your screen sideways. :)
Just curious, why did you buy the Dell version of the Cinema Display? Better price?
Absolutely. The price difference is unbelievable. This screen was, IIRC, $400 and change — the exact same thing from Apple would have run me $1300, only without the physical ability to rotate the screen. Granted, it’d be a much sexier monitor, but that ain’t work $800. :)
I love this monitor, BTW. I can’t say enough good things about it.
Wow — this seems like it is too good to be true! I looked, and can’t find a Dell display on their website that seems to match your description. They have what appears to be superficially similar to a 20″ cinema display for $560 on their educational store, and one that appears to be similar to the 23″ cinema display for $1020. Are you sure you didn’t get the 20″ version from Dell?
$560 is still better than the $700 for the 20″ cinema display from Apple, but I don’t think anyone is selling 23″ displays for $400 yet, although I could be wrong!
Nope, it really is the 23″. The trick is that you’ve got to keep an eye on the Dell price (which fluctuates wildly), the various sale websites and combine a pair of coupons. I used two coupons to get the price so low. You can read more at Macintouch, which has prompted lots and lots of us Apple folk to get one of these screens.
For soem reason I can’t get Dead or Alive’s song out of my head now. “You spin me right round baby right round…”
It’s gonna be a long day…
I face a screen that’s as tall as my forearm is long, but only one and a half hands wide.
Hey, use some proper English units, like hogsheads and rods. ;)
Thanks for sharing. The new Mac OS does indeed rock.