Apple Studio Display
I love it.
I had one once. I loved it, and then I sold it.
I wanted a single monitor that could be great for both work (MacBook) and games (Windows desktop). I talked myself into replacing the Studio Display with a curved gaming monstrosity that I hoped would be good enough for work. Until that time, when I wanted to play games, I would cart an old monitor from my closet over to my desk, set it in front of my Studio Display, plug it along with a different keyboard and mouse into my Windows desktop, and fire it all up.1 I’d do this at most once per week, and sometimes not for weeks at a time, so it wasn’t a constant headache. But it was just frequent enough to get under my skin. And I had yet to become enlightened to friction as a feature. 😉
In any event, the new monitor was good enough for work, more or less. Text was much fuzzier, and the scaling was wonkier with my MacBook. But these are problems of privilege, and I was in the honeymoon period with my new toy. I sold the Studio Display, and time marched on.
A year and a half later, I was in an Apple Store to kill a few minutes of spare time. I walked up to a Studio Display, hit a button to get past the demo, and I couldn’t help but smile. The view through that pane of glass is, in my opinion, stunning. Text is so crisp. The colors and brightness are glorious. The scaling is just right. I’d forgotten how satisfying it all feels. I started daydreaming about reacquainting with my lost love.
I couldn’t stomach buying another one brand new after the bath I took selling the first one. And I sure as hell didn’t want to sell my fancy gaming monitor, both because it kicks ass for games and I didn’t want to take yet another bath selling yet another monitor I’d arguably overpaid for. I was stymied.
But as a well-conditioned American consumer, the thought soon occurred: Could I have both? What if I put them side by side — my Apple rig on one side of my desk, and my gaming rig on the other? Is my desk actually wide enough for that? Why, yes it is! Just barely!
I began the Craigslist hunt, and before long I found a fair deal on a height-adjustable model in excellent condition with active AppleCare coverage. I sprinted across town to grab it, and I gotta say…
I love it.
I do know about the realm of KVM/USB switches, and I tried a couple of them over the years. There was always some peripheral that didn’t tolerate the switching. Most recently, it was my webcam. And I didn’t find a price-effective model that could handle today’s massive video throughput. They ultimately felt like added complexity and cabling noise without really solving my problem.↩