Cathode-Ray Tube. People who think vacuum tubes are obsolete clearly haven't looked in their television set. CRT's work by using an electron gun at the back, which uses a heater to liberate electrons from the cathode. A high voltage electric field exists between the cathode and the anode, which is located further into the tube. This accelerates the electrons to a high speed. During transit, deflection coils located on the neck of the CRT bend the resultant beam so that it can hit different parts of a phosphor coated screen. There are also focusing coils, correction magnets and other devices on the tube to insure uniform focus and illumination.

By moving the beam around, you can draw pictures. You can either draw vector graphics by using the beam itself to draw the picture, or you can generate a raster by scanning the entire screen several times a second and modulating the brightness to produce an image.

There are also color CRT's, which use three electron guns, a shadow mask, and red, green, and blue phosphors to produce full color images.
According to an article at MacCentral, Apple Computer is apparently ceasing production of their last stand-alone CRT monitor, the 17" Apple Studio Display. This leaves only 15" and 22" LCD displays in Apple's monitor lineup.

The expected replacement is a 17" LCD unit, due to be announced by July, when a massive rollout of new models will occur, and Mac OS X will be preinstalled on new Macintoshes.

This is fairly significant, considering that Apple is usually a little ahead of the curve in industry trends. Of course, they can miss the ball almost entirely - look at their way-late across-the-board CD-R support.

LCD prices are supposed to drop dramatically by the end of 2001, and I for one wouldn't be surprised to see a 15" LCD display in the rumored iMac replacement this summer.

update 5/2004: a little optimistic wasn't I?

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