In July, when Apple introduced its dual-processor G4s and funky G4 Cubes, the company also rolled out three new monitors that have won critical raves, as well as some criticism for their eccentricities.

The upside

Apple's current line of displays with crystal-clear enclosures includes the $499, 17-inch Apple Studio Display CRT; the $999, 15-inch Apple Studio Display flat panel; and the $3,999, 22-inch Apple Cinema Display. The new monitors are designed to complement the new Power Mac G4 Cube and Power Mac G4 professional desktops.

The 17-inch Studio Display features a Natural Flat Diamondtron CRT, sharp text, and ColorSync internal calibration designed to keep colors accurate over time. The 17-inch monitor, which has an ultrafine 0.25mm aperture grille pitch, features an electrical design that supports multiple resolutions at over 100Hz vertical refresh rate. A Theater Mode provides increased screen brightness for enhanced viewing of full screen iMovie, DVD, or QuickTime content.

The Studio Display is the best choice of the three for those who need precise color accuracy. Flat panel, or LCDs, have subtle color shifts when viewed at an angle, so they may not be the best choice for designers.

On the other hand, flat panels may be perfect for non-designers. Although double the cost of the Studio Display, the 15-inch Apple Cinema Display active matrix TFT flat-panel offers a pure digital interface delivering 1,024-by-768 pixels. It offers 16.7 million saturated colors at twice the brightness, twice the sharpness, and twice the contrast ratio of typical CRT monitors. And it sports the same design as the award-winning Apple Cinema Display.

Speaking of which, the Cinema Display, the largest all-digital LCD flat-panel display ever brought to market, lets you view two full pages of text and graphics. It offers a pure digital interface, an extra wide viewing angle, and support for true 16.7 million saturated colors. It delivers 1,600-by-1,024 distortion-free pixels.

The flat-panel displays both feature touch-sensitive buttons that offer visual feedback (such as contrast and brightness) as your hand nears the controls. And because they don't have to change digital data to analog as their CRT cousins do, the possibility of conversion-led screen distortion and artifacts, such as banding and hopping pixels, are gone. Plus, LCDs hold their color longer and flicker less than CT monitors, which make them easier on the eyes.

Each display is powered from the computer, eliminating the need for a separate power cord and reducing cable clutter. All have a two-port powered USB hub, which makes them easy to connect to desktop USB devices such as keyboards, USB speakers, and digital cameras. And all three utilize the Apple Display Connector (ADC), a slim new cable that, amazingly, carries analog and digital video signals, USB data, and power.

All the new monitors also sport a new quick-latch connector. There are no more small thumbscrews to fumble with. You attach the new connectors, which pivot at the end, by squeezing their ends, inserting them into the computer port, and releasing. Finally, the new monitors also let you power up your entire system by pressing an "on" button.

The downside

Now for the bad news. The ADC, snazzy as it is, only works with Macs introduced since July. It doesn't work with older Macs or Wintel machines. What's more, the Cube and new G4s include ADC and VGA (Video Graphics Array) ports, but no Digital Video Interface (DVI), which means that you can't plug in the first generation 15-inch or 22-inch Cinema Displays without a third-party workaround. In other words, Apple's latest desktops will easily work with VGA monitors from companies such as Sony, Mitsubishi and ViewSonic, but aren't friendly toward the company's own, relatively new, DVI monitors.

Thankfully, there are the aforementioned workarounds. Belkin's Apple ADC-to-DVI Monitor Adapter lets owners of Apple's new Power Mac G4 and the Power Mac G4 Cube use the previous line of Apple Cinema Display and Studio Display flat panels--or any other third-party monitor featuring a DVI connector. The Belkin Apple Monitor Adapter retails for $40, and is available at Apple's online store. If you're planning on getting one of these new monitors for an older G3 or G4, add the adapter's cost into your purchase.

The adapter is actually made by a Brookfield, Ill.-based company called Molex. The cable is basically a pass-through cable, which offers a variation on DVI. The signal characteristics are identical.

Another potential problem for those who like to turbo-charge their Mac is that you have limited options in replacing its shipping accelerator card because those cards contain the ADC port. However, you can order your G4 minitower or Cube with an ATI Radeon card rather than the standard Rage 128 Pro card when you order a new machine. Again, be prepared to boost your budget to accommodate the upgrade.

Other features

The Radeon features 32MB of onboard (non-expandable) Double Data Rate memory, twice the 128 Pro's VRAM. The Radeon can accommodate larger and more detailed textures at higher resolutions with better frame rates in 3D games. It supports RAVE and OpenGL 3D acceleration, 2D and QuickTime acceleration, as well as DVD-decoding. Maximum resolution in 2D is 1,920-by-1,440 at 75Hz in 32-bit color, and for 3D the Radeon tops out at 1,600-by-1,200 pixels in 32-bit (presuming your monitor can support those numbers).

With the Radeon, ATI also introduced the Charisma Engine transform and lighting processor, and the Pixel Tapestry architecture. Both are new technologies with feature sets designed to bring 3D environments to life faster and with higher degrees of realism. Thanks to the proprietary Hyper-Z feature on the video card, the Radeon Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) can access this memory faster than ever before, solving at least one of the hurdles that stand in the way of speedy 3D performance. By the way, there's also a retail version of the Radeon card, but it doesn't contain the ADC port.

Meanwhile, the Voodoo accelerator cards (from graphics-chip and -card maker 3dfx Interactive) are very popular among PC and Mac gamers. And although neither the Voodoo5 5500 nor the Voodoo4 4500 PCI cards for the Mac now sports Apple's new ADC connector, 3dfx says it will support the new connector in future Mac offerings.

If you use your Mac for everyday tasks such as word processing, e-mail, cruising the Internet, and doing spreadsheets, you don't need a Radeon or 3dfx accelerator card. But if you're a hard-core gamer or do graphics-intensive tasks such as working with Photoshop, you should consider these options.

Meanwhile, ProMAX ships a high performance, dual-head display card for the latest Macs. With a suggested retail price of $299, the card lets you connect two VGA monitors or one analog VGA monitor, plus one NTSC or PAL studio monitor. The benefit is that you can extend one application across two monitors and have two more applications open at once.

Using DH-Max's software control panel, you can select which monitor to boot. You can also set the relative position of each monitor, each display's resolution, and the number of colors for each one.

The ProMAX DH-Max supports resolutions of up to 2,048-by-1,536 pixels and millions of colors at 85Hz. It has 32MB of fixed high-bandwidth SGRAM and 300MHz RAMDAC. The DH-Max's 256-bit DualBus, combined with a 128-bit memory bus, means fast graphics and acceleration of QuickTime, QuickDraw 3D, and Open GL, according to ProMAX. The card adds productivity to such programs as Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, Media 100, Avid, Photoshop, and ProTools.

Though there's no OpenGL or RAVE support in the card's drivers at present, Maxon is working to get them ready for prime time, Maxon engineer Brad Pillow says. The DH-MAX requires a Power Mac G4 with an AGP slot, at least 64 MB of system memory, Mac OS 8.5.1 or later, and QuickTime 4.1.1 or later. This means it will work with G4/400, G4/450, G4/500, and dual processor G4s. And it will also work, though it's not particularly recommended, with the G4 Cube.

The card is hardware-compatible with the Power Mac G4 Cube, but the Cube's AGP slot is smaller than average and has a weirder shape than most, Pillow says. Also, DH-Max doesn't support flat-panel displays. On the other hand, the card does have a non-fan heat sink, which is a nice, Cube-ish touch.

One last note: Apple's current monitor strategy is confusing to many Mac users. Many think the company needs a 17- or 18-inch flat-panel display or a new, improved 21-inch CRT display to flesh out its monitor line. Currently, the company has no monitor solution between its 17-inch CRT monitor and its top-of-the-line 22-inch Cinema Display; Apple has discontinued its 21-inch CRT display.

Of course, there's a good chance that Apple does have other monitors in the works. If so, its new displays might be unveiled at the January Macworld Expo in San Francisco.

Contributing Editor Dennis Sellers writes Mac Advisor monthly for ComputerUser.