Another take on design

Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I unpacked a Hewlett-Packard accessory: a 24 inch LCD monitor, to hook up to my MacBook Air. I am not one for unboxing porn, especially given how little there would be to wet your appetite, but I felt compelled to share a few thoughts.

First of all, a MacBook Air drives this screen magnificently at full resolution, in millions of colors, whether with its lid closed or opened. A very, very faint flicker is noticeable when viewing mid-range grays, but I will put that down to converting mini-DVI to VGA and running it along a cable long enough to encircle Moscone West, keynote queue included. Also, if you are a photographer looking for a new work screen, I doubt you would go for the mid-range HP model from last year, so I will consider ourselves in the clear. Finally, HP's message with this screen is that HDMI is what cool kids use, so bickering about VGA seems a bit inappropriate.

What struck me here was HP's emphasis on design, from the packing to the last detail of the product. The screen is by no means as spartan or "elegant," according to modern standards, as my Apple 30" Cinema display, which sits right next to it. There is, however, a very big difference: HP's design works while Apple's is great to look at.

Before you punch your screen in a fury, I hasten to add that I would never, ever trade a Macintosh for an HP-designed computer. For computers, whether laptops or desktops, Apple wins hands down, all the way, and with time to spare. Where Apple, in my opinion, loses ground, is in the accessories department, from mice to, yes, displays. They are clearly an afterthought: good afterthoughts, mind you, but afterthoughts still.

HP's screen features five buttons, which, admittedly, is a bit too much. It offers some image configuration options that are of dubious value for a LCD panel, such as image centering, through one of these "on-screen" menus, but it does have the advantage of making many of those settings platform-independent, since the screen is to be trusted instead of the OS.

That little flaw excepted, we have buttons that actually do something, and do so rather easily. The screen features a few built-in profiles for various typical expectations, from Apple-mode — officially called Photo, which imparts to everything a nice pale yellow glow — to Windows 95 mode — officially called Movie, which makes everything cool, blue and depressing. The Power button features a built-in LED, which the user can turn off for good through the aforementioned menu (ideal for night-time DVD watching), the foot is extremely robust and flexible and the screen rotates from portrait to landscape with a flick of the wrist. Add an accelerometer to auto-detect the orientation change and I'll be in heaven.

What struck me most in this screen is how coherent every design decision seems to be, and yet how far away it is from an Apple product. Everywhere a decision had to be made, HP did the opposite of Apple: they use plastic where Apple uses metal, springs where Apple does not, they put lights where Apple removes them and remove them where Apple would put one white LED with 8 flashing patterns.

The result, however, is a very well designed screen, that is a joy to use and works with a Mac just as well as any Apple Display, down to the ColorSync profiling. I'm not an HP convert yet, but I have to salute their efforts in putting out a coherent, consistent design that makes sense on its own, without attempting to emulate what it is not and will never be: an Apple Display.