i have seen both. both are very nice monitor. i can give you some ideas.

i "guess" both are using the same LCD panal (from LG-Philips) so they seems quite similier.

for image quality, i think apple has slight edge over sony. but not much. the color "seems" more accurate on apple. ( maybe because i seen it on MacOS, donno)

build quality. both are excellent. one of the best available today.

"look" well, the apple is silver, and sony is black. it depends on what other compontant you have, if you have silver case, the apple will looks better. if you have black case, the sony will looks better. in my opinion, if you are spend that much money on a monitor.. your computer should look like a whole set.. not many parts put together.

special feture: the apple has a usb and firewire hub build in the monitor. so there will be only ONE cable running between the tower to monitor.. which is GREAT!! you can connect firewire or usb on monitor.. don't need to route them to case. (for example, mouse, or webcam or digital camara, usb flash)

the sony one has auto backlit function. the monitor will adjust the brightness of display DEPENDS on the environvement. which is GREAT! so the image will looks the same during daytime or night time. i am not sure if apple has this function, but someone told me apple ALSO has this function, you may want to check it out.

in my opinion, if you are thinking to switch to Mac computer, then get apple one. or if your tower is alimium color case, get apple. if you have many things connect to your computer on desktop, then again, apple is your choice.

on the other hand, if you have black case, black keyboard, black mouse, black speakers, then get sony. if you need to connect VGA d-sub to monitor, get sony (for example, if you want to connect a notebook to big screan, usually notebook come with d-sub, you CANNOT connect that to apple. apple is DVI only. and sony does a GREAT job to convert analog to digital.

i am also considering these 2. it's a tough choice. i like the usb/firewire on apple, but most of my other things are black. trouble trouble