If you were holding off on getting a new Apple display in hopes that you'd see new models and price drops on existing inventory at Macworld Tokyo, well, one out of two ain't all bad. Prices on the existing 15-inch, 17-inch, and 22-inch LCDs haven't budged a penny, but as faithful viewer DeadEnd points out, at least you now have one additional option: the obscenely indulgent Apple Cinema HD Display. Yes, if shelling out $2499 for twenty-two diagonal inches of LCD-y goodness delivering 1600x1024 pixels of bright, flicker-free screen real estate just didn't feel decadent enough, now you can toss in an extra thou and net yourself one more diagonal inch and an extra 665,600 pixels-- just to inspire the sort of envy that leads to actual murders, instead of mere maimings.

Apple claims that the "HD" stands for "High Definition," but we find it easier just to think of it as "Highly Desirable." With a 23-inch screen and a mammoth 1920x1200 resolution, this widescreen puppy is just the $3499 accessory for the Macophile who has everything... well, everything else, anyway. You're going to hear a lot of talk from Apple (as well as from professionals trying to justify a $3499 purchase requisition) about how much more productive you can be with that much screen space at your disposal, and while we certainly wouldn't claim that those arguments are bogus, at this point, the Cinema HD Display functions primarily as the ultimate Mac status symbol. It's excess at its finest. Seriously, at first glance, who's going to impress you more: the guy with the dual-1 GHz Power Mac and a 17-inch Studio Display, or the one with the entry-level G4/800 jacked into twenty-three diagonal inches of sheer visual extravagance? Exactly.

Meanwhile, those of you who don't have a couple of convenient truckloads of cash sitting around in your mansions might be a tad disappointed that prices on the other displays didn't drop at all; well, so are we, but maybe we should just consider ourselves lucky. Given that the price of the iMac just increased $100 due in part to a reported 25% boost in flat-panel component prices over the past two months, we're actually almost surprised that Apple didn't goose its whole line of displays by a hundred bucks or more. It's a little sad that this falls into the "counting one's blessings" category, but hey, no one ever said that technolust would be easy.