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Apple Announces New MacBook, Pro, Air
Steve Jobs just got through announcing new MacBook lines in Cupertino. The MacBook, the Pro, and the Air all got revved. The old line of plastic-body MacBooks drops in price by $100, to $999. The new MacBooks have a metal body and multi-touch trackpad, just like the new Pros. The Pro features two NVidia graphics chips. Quoting Jobs: "With the 9400M, you get 5 hours of battery life, with the 9600M GT you get four hours of battery life. You choose." In summary: "We're building both [MacBook and Pro] in a whole new way. From a slab of aluminum to a notebook. New graphics. New trackpad, the best we've ever built. And LED-backlit displays that are far brighter, instant on, far more environmentally responsible." They are shipping today and should be in stores tomorrow. Oh, and one more thing: Steve's blood pressure is 110/70.
Is anyone's interest peaked by the new dual video cards? Especially with OpenCL possibly being the 'next big thing'. I'd be very interested in Photoshop CS4 benchmarks too.
Second, is this the next big competitive 'edge' (now that everything is dual core). Apple was one of the first companies to put dual processors in consumer products. I remember debating between a Dual 800 MHz or a Single 866 when I went to college and ended up spending the extra on the dual. I swore to myself then that I'd never go back to a single processor. Now everything is dual core, dual processor, quad core, etc.
Mr. Graphic Designer wants older matte screens because they supposedly reproduce colors better (the same reason they held onto CRTs well after LCDs debuted).
I'm Mr. Dabbles in Graphic Design Person. You need to remove the "supposedly" in your statement above, especially when it comes to CRTs vs LCDs. High end LCDs are almost as good as decent CRTs, mostly because LCDs significantly change color with viewing angle. When you're worried about graphic design or photography, getting the color right is really important, and even slight color shifts are unacceptable.
I'm also Mr. Professional Visual Neuroscientist Who Does Some Colorimetric Work. No serious colorimetric work is yet being done with LCDs for the very same reason: a green dot needs to be exactly the same green whether it's presented in the middle of the screen or at the edge. With CRTs that's the case. With LCDs, assuming the viewing position is the same, the viewing angle changes slightly between those two screen locations, and the color is altered.
I had cause to use a glossy screen laptop recently. Couldn't wait to get rid of it, as I was distracted by my own reflection, or a reflection of the things behind me, or the lights, or whatever else was at the right (or wrong?) angle. Until LCD screens get some really good antiglare coating, matte is the way to go.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Why?
I'm not trolling, honest question. Why are so many manufacturers going to glossy LCDs? Cheaper to build, what? 'Cause every end user I support hates the things. Except one, and he always likes to be different anyway.
What benefit, real or imagined, do hardware makers think/believe/want us to believe, is to be had from glossy screens?
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
I personally love my glossy screen and would never again consider a matte option.
For one, glossy screens are easier to clean. With laptops, it's somewhat inevitable that the screen will get fingerprints on it. With a matte screen, you need a specific wipe/spray to clean. My glossy display cleans easily with a damp paper towel. Glossy screens also showcase vibrant colors better than matte screens. This is probably why so many manufacturers are pushing glossy...under the right conditions, stuff just looks better on a glossy screen. But I would bet that Apple is moving to glossy in preparation for laptops where the screen is touch-sensitive (ala iPhone/iPod).
And having used one for the past year, the glare issue is really a red herring. I don't notice it. In fact I find the glossy screens more usable in sunlight conditions since they appear brighter than the matte. I actually find it really hard to believe your statement, "every end user I support hates the things" based on my experience. It's really hard to fathom that anyone who has actually used a glossy display for any serious amount of time wouldn't prefer it to a matte display.
I thought that glossy screens were an absolutely awful idea when I first heard of them. But after seeing and using them for a while, I now find them to be a far better choice.
Remember, the difference between matte and glossy is now how much glare the screen reflects, just how sharply focused that glare is. With a glossy screen, if you're sitting at the wrong angle, you get a big bright unusable glare. But if you adjust that angle even very slightly, the glare goes away _completely_.
A matte screen, on the other hand, is the hedging approach. There's no single point at which the glare is really awful... and there's no point at which the glare goes away entirely. You're just averaging the glare over all possible angles.
Given how painless it is to nudge a laptop one way or the other by a couple of degrees, I'm now much happier with the option to have no glare whatsoever, rather than just constant not-too-terrible glare. It's a little weird actually seeing true black on a laptop screen in a lit room, but I assure you that it's refreshing.