Unveiling it at WWDC 2004, Steve Jobs called the 30-inch Cinema Display “the largest desktop canvas ever created”. With a resolution of 2560x 1600, the 16:10 TFT LCD not only boasted an unheard-of four million pixels but also a dramatically imposing physical size. Compared to the regular 23-inch Cinema Display, the 30-inch screen had 70% greater area. From a normal working distance, it could feel overwhelming.
Just two inches thick, with a flat slab design mounted on a tilting stand, the aluminium-clad panel seemed impressively slim compared to the cathode-ray tube monitors still lingering in professional use, even if its wide bezels (similar to a modern iMac, but part of the metal case rather than glazed over) look clunky with hindsight. The price of £2,549 didn’t include upwards of £449 for the new Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra graphics cards that had to be installed in the Power Mac G5, the only compatible model, to provide the dual-link DVI connection required.