We've heard it over and over again through the years: the prediction that "someday soon" CRTs will be a thing of the big, clunky, energy-inefficient, radiation-emitting past, and all computer displays will be LCDs instead. The reality, of course, has so far been quite a bit different; with a 15-inch LCD display costing on the order of a cool grand, and a cheap 17-inch CRT costing about as much as a deluxe pizza (okay, a really deluxe pizza), it's not too hard to figure out why CRTs are still so popular. Money talks.

But when we thought about it for a bit, it seems like Apple is indeed moving quickly into the all-LCD future. Look at the company's current product line. The portables all have LCDs, of course. Of the three desktop classes, only one comes with a CRT: the iMac. The other two require a separate display. Now look at Apple's displays. There are three models-- and only one is CRT-based. Meaning, if you stick to all-Apple technology, in terms of product configurations, the LCD is indeed winning. And you just know that Apple would love to dump its remaining CRT-based products, if only cost factors would let them. As soon as LCDs get significantly cheaper, you can bet that Apple will be telling its CRTs not to let the door whack them in the electron gun on the way out.

So when will LCDs come way down in price? Beats us-- but Macworld has a report that can only be good news. Remember a year ago, when Apple sunk $100 million into Samsung to help ensure that it'd have a good supply of LCD screens from the manufacturer? Well, that little investment may be about to pay off big-time; Samsung has announced that it's just opened a brand new production line at its factory in Korea, which is capable of churning out 270,000 14.1-inch LCD screens each month. And that capacity is likely to double next year, so Apple should have a much easier time grabbing all the screens it needs to keep up with consumer demand.

Add to that the fact that The Register is saying that the years-long global LCD shortage is finally winding to a close (with prices on various sizes of the screens having dropped anywhere between 15 and 40% since January), and Apple might be bringing the all-LCD revolution to its customers sooner than you'd expect. It's probably going to be at least a year before the first flat-panel iMac makes an appearance, but once it does, you can pretty much kiss the CRT goodbye-- and good riddance.