If there’s one thing that Apple $AAPL products are known for—other than being extremely popular—it’s that they’re extremely expensive. Most of its laptops start at around $1,000, as do its iPhone Xs smartphones.
Prices on Apple products have generally crept as the company tries to eke more money out of a relatively stagnant user base. But something it announced on June 3 might be the most ridiculous thing it’s ever charged so much money for.
At its WWDC developer conference in San Jose, California today, Apple unveiled a new Mac Pro desktop computer, and a new external display to go along with it. The computer, aimed at the most high-end of high-end professionals—those who are using their work computers to develop the next big-budget movie or album, for example—was always likely going to be expensive. It’s an extremely powerful machine that will start at just shy of $6,000 when it’s available in the fall. It’s an understandable price tag given the target customer and the functionality.
Similarly, the new monitor is a marvel, a 32-inch 6K HD screen that can display 1 billion colors on more than 20 million pixels, so perhaps it’s not surprising that it too is extremely costly. The display will start at $5,000, which Apple justified by saying it can replace professional monitors that can cost up to $43,000.
What is surprising, though, is that the stand to hold this monitor, which Apple said will allow it to spin into a portrait mode and be repositioned with minimal effort, is not included with the monitor. And it costs $999.
While it does appear to be quite a nice stand, it has the same price as many of the computers Apple sells, and is equal to the starting price for its flagship smartphone. Which is quite a lot, just to be able to do this:
