The Apple Cinema Display and Windows--Half Ass Support?

When Apple redesigned their line of Cinema Displays, they moved the display connectors off the proprietary ADC to a more universal DVI. Speculation was that one reason Apple was doing that was to make the displays more attractive to Windows users. That speculation was correct. Apple’s own ads market the displays to Mac and PC users. But if you scour the web, you’ll find that Apple didn’t live up to the total end of their bargain. Apple does not include .inf files for Windows machines and unwary users have found out from AppleCare that they don’t support the display on Windows.

It’s great that Apple is working to attract Windows users to both the Mac platform and to their equipment (Cinema Displays, iPods) that are compatible with Windows’ machine. But just like Apple has released iTunes for Windows, it needs to release .inf files that would allow Windows users to fully use their displays.

It may be that the displays work just fine under Windows XP without the files. Certainly, my older 20 inch Apple Cinema Display does running with an ADC to DVI connector. But I know I lucked out. If I needed to even adjust brightness or contrast, I’d be out of luck. And I’m sensitive to their pain for another reason. My display works great under XP but not so great under Windows 98SE. Under XP, my ATI Radeon 9550 hits the display’s native resolution exactly. Under 98SE, I can get close but the display actually looks best at a lower 1024 x 768. Would an .inf file help that? Perhaps, though I suspect that differences in the 98SE and XP video drivers have more to do with it than the .inf file, a correct one couldn’t hurt. Hmmmm…, maybe I need to go play with monitor types and see if something other than “Plug and Play Monitor” under 98SE works better.