Over the last couple of days I have been collecting all the past Apple PR product photography I could download from the Internet Archive. I have since gathered a collection that includes all of Apple’s major products released from mid 1999 until today. The images I have downloaded are not only examples of great design, but outstanding product photography as well. I am not a commercial photographer, but I believe the way Apple showcases its own creations might have changed the way products are represented all over the world.

Looking through my collection has brought forth some highlights I find especially unique. We all know Apple creates remarkable hardware, but some of the examples it has shipped in the last 12 years are also uniquely Apple.

Starting this series off I wanted to discuss a product that is not particularly well known. In fact in many ways it was a failure. Shipping for less than a year this product was built around outdated technology that weighed five times as much as its peers and used over twice as much power.

The Apple Studio Display (17-inch ADC) is not your typical Apple display. Instead of being built around an impossibly thin LCD, the Studio Display (17-inch ADC) was the last standalone Apple display to feature a CRT. It was deeper than it is wide, weighed 45.8 lbs., used 113 watts of power while operating, and almost a third of that while sitting dormant.

Introduced in July of 2000 the Studio Display (17-inch ADC) replaced the Graphite and Blueberry 17-inch Studio Displays that came before it. Built for the Power Mac G4 (Gigabit Ethernet) and Power Mac G4 Cube its proprietary ADC connector prevented it from being used with other Macs without an adapter while ensuring analog video, USB data, and power were all supplied over a single cable.

Removing the power supply from a CRT monitor would seem like a fruitless effort to other computer manufacturers. They would simply conceal the additional electronics inside the monitor's already bulky frame. But Apple made the Studio Display (17-inch ADC) different from any other display that has ever shipped. Instead of concealing the display's interior inside opaque plastics and metal shields the 17-inch ADC has a crystal clear case that allows anyone to see the internal workings of the 17" Naturally Flat DiamondTron CRT suspended inside. By revealing all, the Studio Display (17-inch ADC) has nothing to hide, and no extraneous components to conceal. Its transparency and minimalism portray a purely Apple presentation of display design.

Despite all of the extraneous components the Studio Display (17-inch ADC) leaves behind it still included some features unmatched by the modern Apple displays that ship today. The Studio Display (17-inch ADC) was the last Apple display to be supported on a stand that not only changed pitch, but rotation as well. It featured ColorSync internal color calibration that was rated for the life of the monitor, and a Theater Mode which automatically "increased screen brightness for enhanced viewing of full screen iMovie, DVD or QuickTime content" in Mac OS 9. Its brightness, viewing angle, and contrast, are unmatched by conventional LCDs, and it supports more resolutions than most flat panels with none of the pixel interpolation inherent to digital monitors.

With unparalleled black levels and lightening quick response time there are still benefits to CRT displays today, but the Studio Display (17-inch ADC) was a tough sell compared to more attractive flat panel offerings by Apple, and was discontinued on May 21st 2001, less than eleven months from when it was released.

Looking over Apple's entire product catalog it is hard to find a design that more uniquely Apple. The Apple Studio Display (17-inch ADC) was a compromise between the technology of the past and the design of the future a more successful Apple at the time would not have considered more than ten years ago.