Apple Cinema display picture
Not all LCD screens are made alike. Apple have consistantly produced state of the art monitors using the latest technology available, to provide industry leading figures for both horizontal and vertical viewing angles, brightness and colour purity. Apple Cinema displays also feature standard DVI inputs so you can use them with PCs, plus the feature an integrated USB and Firewire hub, to keep your desk a bit more cable free. 20" Cinema Display, 1680x1050 pixels £339+VAT, 23" Cinema HD, 1920x1200 pixels £509+VAT, 30" Cinema HD, 2560x1600 pixels £1020+VAT
The new Airport Extreme adds greater coverage area by using multiple antannae with 'pre-N' wireless cards and file-sharing via the USB port for attached hard drives. Airport Express drops in price and has an integrated USB print server for wireless printing and crucially the ability to stream audio from your computer wirelessly to your hi-fi by just plugging an audio cable into the Airport Express. Apple Airport Extreme basestation £101.28+VAT Apple Airport Express £55.32+VAT, Apple Airport Express card £25.53+VAT

Apple Cinema Displays

Why should you pay the premium that Apple charge for their LCD screens? Simply put, if you are at the budget end, you shouldn't! However, if you are working in design, photography, video or film, Apple screens provide superior ergonomics, more accurate colour and industry leading performance. A large part of what I do for my customers is providing ICC calibration and Colour Managed Workflow consultancy services, so I make a lot of custom calibrations. Out of the box the vast majority of screens show significant colour biases in the greys. As a rule, Apple screens are pretty "neutral" as soon as you turn them on. You still need to get them calibrated to the right brightness for print and TV accuracy, but at least grey is still grey, even if it is too bright!

Apple Airport Extreme

You can get cheaper wireless kit than Apple's Airport units, but they don't provide the unique features that Apple always seem to add. The new Airport Extreme basestations use the new (nearly ratified) N standard to provide much greater range by using multiple antannae to increase signal coverage. The N standard also provides much greater throughput to achieve 200Mb/min data transfer. If you've ever tried pushing big video files over a wireless network you know why this is good news!

However that's not the killer feature! You can plug in a USB hard disk and configure the basestation up as a file server using both Windows SMB and Mac Appleshare protocols. Get your 500Gb external drive, plug it into the basestation, and you have wired and wireless network with built-in file server. Great news for small businesses.

Apple Airport Express

They are incredibly convenient and cute, but killer feature in my opinion, is the ability to stream music via iTunes, or ANY program using additional software like Airfoil. You simply plug a standard RCA audio cable into the Airport Express, plug the other end into your hi-fi, TV or digi-box and then listen to music through a decent set of speakers. You can even link multiple Airport Express units together to simultaneously stream music to every room in the house. A really cheap way to setup a home audio system when compared to something like Sonos. Add to that the USB print server, the WDS range extention, and really geeky stuff like RADIUS authentication, it all adds up to great value.

Peripherals make the difference

Computers are all very well, but its the peripherals that actually make them a useful working tool. Sweet Apple can supply printers, scaners, PDAs, monitors, networking equipment, etc. at competitive prices, with unbiased advice on what will best suit your needs. Everything from choosing an £2000 A2 desktop proofer with Postscript RIP to a £50 scanner. Below you'll find a selection of links through to various sections of the Apple store. We'll try to keep them up to date, but they do shift areound a bit, so you might have to do a search if you don't go direct to the correct section.

Stuff for laptops: bags, chargers, battery and other cool stuff

Wireless: Airport, Airport Express, antannae, etc.

AppleCare: Extend the warranty to 3 years

Audio & Speakers: External speakers, headphones, surround-sound, etc.

Cases: Avoid smashing up your nice new laptop

Printers: inkjets, photo-realistic, RIPs, lasers

Scanners: flatbeds, transparency, film

Cameras: digital cameras and accessories

Video and TV: analog and digital USB TV tuners, digital video capture devices, SCART, etc.

Audio & Sound: USB and Firewire audio interfaces, MIDI devices, Edirol, Digidesign, M-Audio.

Storage: hard drives, firewire, TAPES, RAIDs,

We can supply anything from companies like Apple, Epson, Canon, HP, Wacom, Iomega, Smartdisk, VST, Netgear, Buffalo, Microtek, Formac, LaCie, Sony, NEC, Agfa, Nikon, Umax and more. In short, we should be able to get it if you want it.

So please get in touch if you want advice on what to buy and how much it will cost!