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Photog Rob Galbraith Rates MacBook Pro Display "Not Acceptable"
An anonymous reader writes "Professional digital photographer and website publisher Rob Galbraith has performed both objective and subjective tests on laptop displays, finding that the late-2008 Macbook Pro glossy displays are 'deep into the not acceptable category' when used in ambient light environments. The Apple notebook came in dead last for color accuracy, and second to last in viewing angles (besting only the Dell Mini 9). He concludes: 'Macs are no longer at the top of the laptop display heap in our minds.'"
I wonder if they will test the macbook pro 17" which has a $50 matte option?
1.. 2.. 3...
FREAK OUT!
Is this one of those words that has surreptitiously entered our language like "blog" or was the title just cut-off?
Apple has now offered us a pay-to-play 'option' which fixes the display they broke in the first place (you can get matte as an option on the new 17" Macbook Pro for I think $50 but I'm not sure).
A hero is someone who knows when to run away. I am a hero. -Trent the Uncatchable
For f' sake, whoever modded this flamebait needs their head read. Read the summary. A PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER has done extensive testing and both SUBJECTIVE and OBJECTIVE (quantitative) tests. He use to like Mac notebooks, but the latest crop doesn't suit a pro photographer. What do the fanbois want before they'll consider an opinion they don't like? A goddamn scientific study?
For the last time Flamebait does not simply mean someone's said something that you disagree with or find inconvenient. Grow up people!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Then there's this gem:
From earlier:
Basically, if you hate glossy screens, and it would appear these individuals do, the glossy can be a deal-breaker. Which anyone with half a brain could have told you without the trollish tone
FWIW, the 17-inch MBP comes with a matte-screen option. Time will tell if such an option trickles back down to the 15".
I was under the impression that anyone who cared this much used a CRT
Apple is running away from the niche markets (like imaging) that sustained them through their dark days as fast as they can. The new unibody Macbooks (and the 24" ADC^H^H^HMini-DisplayPort external LCD) are slightly faster but in many ways less functional than the models they replaced. Glossy is a bug, not a feature.
Meanwhile, HP and Dell are shipping laptops with RGB LED-backlit displays with 105% NTSC color gamut. Apple is slipping, badly, from this user's perspective.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Oh, who could have predicted such a thing?
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=995409&cid=25373917
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=995409&cid=25375879
Glossy is annoying unless you've got perfect control over the lighting in your work environment. If you're using a laptop, chances are you don't some significant portion of the time.
And that's before you even consider the actual color reproduction issues.
Tweet, tweet.
...or did the glossy screen option used to cost more? How did they end up making matte cost more now? Are they just making up prices for their hardware instead of correlating it with the actual cost?
Why make it a feature when it can be a "special bonus" or an "extra"?
Plus... haven't you heard of "downgrading to XP" costs for Vista laptops and desktops?
"Downgrading" is the new "works out of the box".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"Photog" is as much of a real word describing "A person who takes photographs" as "sandw" is a word used to describe "Two or more slices of bread with a filling such as meat or cheese placed between them".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Have bad angles and limited colors. They all suck, some more or less.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TFT_LCD#TN
And they are used in virtually all laptops.
Just when wide gamut LCDs are approaching the range of colors once possible on CRTs, Apple has taken yet another step backwards with their new LED backlight displays.
My LED MacBook has a spectacularly bad display, so I went to visit the local Apple store to see if this was typical. Sadly it is, and what's more, it looks like all of Apple's LED displays are vastly inferior to that of my old iMac G5. (which has an S-IPS panel and conventional fluorescent backlight)
Color wise, the LED MacBook Pro and Cinema Display are better than the MacBook, but they are all shamefully bad, and definitely worthy of a "worst in the industry" rating. (at least color-wise)
The word "unacceptable" was used to describe an Apple product.
Sounds to me like they deliberately choose an option with hope of failure. The matte display has been an option since the previous macbook introduction.
Yes, because someone who concluded 18 months ago that "Apple was making one of the finest laptop screens we'd seen for use in a pro digital photography workflow." is bound to be setting Apple up for failure.
Thank you for reaffirming my belief in self-delusional fanboi nature.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I think you mean English 3.0, American is English 2.0.
Yes. They make high-end color-accurate tuned LCDs specifically for digital photo editing.
BTW--geeks on a budget should look for S-IPS panels like my Dell 2007WFP. These are the most color accurate TFTs on the market, currently.
You can pick them up refurbished for about $150-200
My blog
I'm posting from a MacBook Pro with a matte display, bought last November.
I compared the glossy and the matte laptops side by side in an Apple store. (They were the same price I believe, but obviously if buying a MacBook Pro price isn't my biggest concern.) With the matte laptop, I saw a crisp screen with vibrant colors. With the glossy laptop, I saw my dad and the sales guy reflected in the glass.
As I said, I'm posting on a matte display version.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
This is what I've found. The casual user that buys a MacBook* for general computer use love the glossy screen. They think it looks sharper, brighter, and clearer. And they maybe right. But anyone that is using a MacBook* for professional use, programming or photo/video, hates glossy screens myself included. It's the secondary reason I keep holding onto this 12.1 PowerBook. (Primary reason being it's 12.1" and fits perfectly on an airplane tray table, even on Southwest's economy class).
Maybe MacMall has a left over 15" from the previous model that still has a matte screen.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Sounds to me like they tested a collection of currently available and slightly older hardware, with an emphasis on stuff they hadn't tested previously. Shockingly, these criteria excluded the older matte macbooks, and the so-new-they-probably-don't-have-one-yet matte option macbook pros.
If any of you are looking for laptops for serious color accurate work then you might be interested in this article:
http://www.markzware.com/blogs/top-5-laptops-for-displaying-color-gamut/2008/10/14/
As someone said before, it's a niche market. Color accurate work is usually done in a S-IPS / S-PVA panel based display which has been professionally calibrated using a hardware colormeter. If money is no concern, check it the top of the line products by Eizo or the HP Dreamcolor series. At the bottom end (but still quite decent) is the HP LP2475w. However, you'll have to add a hardware colormeter to your budget.
The 17" also has a different screen, with a wider gamut.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Supposedly mac users claim glossy monitors have a sharper image? Perhaps if you've only seen half-arse anti-glare. Most LCD monitors, particularly desktop monitors have very good anti-glare coatings these days, and don't really harm clarity at all. I really don't understand why laptop makers can't get this right, particularly Apple.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
How can you be sure it's really you? you can't see your own reflection.
There are these things called syllables.
They are the reason why we say "a photo" instead of "a photogr" or "a phot".
Also, note that (for all means and purposes) photo-G is actually a case of ADDING a letter to an existing short word (photo) - not shortening a complex one (Photo-grapher).
While you are pondering on that, take this one home with you as well.
Aeroplanes, from aeras and plane are called planes for short - not aerops or airops.
Humans generally don't like words crashing in the middle of the syllable, you know?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
that's a dinosaur
Rob Galbraith is the frequent butt of jokes about his ego and mouth- the man considers himself an expert on absolutely everything, loves to declare things horrible/worthless (he declared the Canon Mk3 autofocus to be "useless" as well, and that hasn't stopped news agencies the world-over from making the camera their standard equipment.)
His premise is that the laptop is worthless because of the glossy screen. Well, guess what? It's literally a $30 problem, and there will no doubt be at least a couple companies that produce lightweight fancy hoods that weigh next to nothing and shield the screen from glare for photographers who MUST do image adjustment in the field (which nobody does.)
He speaks as if he's an expert- but check out the qualifications of him and his team. He's a former photographer for a no-name Canadian paper....eight years ago. His partner shoots horsies for work. A third dude doesn't seem to have any qualifications except for being industrious in writing about photography and a former Nikon lackey. None of them have had showings of note. None of them are retained by any wire services that matter. None of them currently work in the field.
Ever heard about "splitting", where people tend to consider something all good or all bad? Galbraith is an almost pathological splitter, and he's completely ignorant of some solutions to the problem, if you otherwise like working with, or are required to work with macs/mac software by your company/agency/wire service. It's also a problem solved with about $10 of cardboard or plastic to make a viewing hood, which used to be extremely common back when (GASP!) everyone had "glossy" CRTs.
It also demonstrates how ignorant he is of how "real" professional photographers these days work. The big boys are told to send everything, touch nothing- they're in the business of shooting photos, not editing or adjusting them. Anyone who is anyone has a team of people sitting back at "HQ", with fast machines, professionally calibrated displays in controlled lighting, etc. Nobody (at least nobody doing it for money) does anything beyond rate/categorize images on laptops...which is what he claims the MBP "is only good for."
Please help metamoderate.
I hadn't noticed, and probably won't.
But, as an vaguely OCD person, I now know that I will.
Thanks a lot, Photogs!
Why is he surprised? The last one he'd probably accept(based on display) is a Thinkpad T60p, non-widescreen edition. Not a "noname ODM", and can run OSX.
I'd like to know if he were to stack that one up or if it would have skewed the charts.
That's why I have no issue with keeping a predecessor, the T42p alive along with the T60p. The displays are just that good.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Yup, they do. That's why your 24" LCD from Best Buy costs $350 and mine costs $1100, plus $300 for a calibrator.
What the blue fuck are you on about? 35mm DSLR displays? Most people I know, don't use the SUB THREE DISPLAY quarter million pixel display on a camera that could cost up to $7000 for the body alone, to preview or edit a 10+ million pixel image.
Talk about comparing apples to oranges.
Personally, I think it's not.
It's industry jargon.
Photographers use the term and understand it.
That would make it a real word, wouldn't it?
-- My Weblog.
Whenever anyone complains about the state of the art for either audio or photography applications, my eyes glaze over. I would ask Rob if he would like to return to his Beseler, dialing in filters, or even, sandwiching filters. But then, I doubt he is old enough to remember the bad old days of sheet filters, and the good old days of Beseler heads. On the other hand I honestly believe I miss Kodachrome. Put in the proper perspective, matte display, glossy display, 16 bit audio, 24 bit audio, get real. It's a tempest in a teapot.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I have seen retailers claiming that glossy displays are more expensive than non glossy ones.
To clarify that, making something glossy is easy. You just do nothing as the thin sheets of glass the LCD is made out of are glossy by default. To make them non glossy you have to apply a special coating.
I guess the best way of dealing with glossy displays is to take a baseball bat into the computer store and say to the vendor loud and clear that you are going to hit him hard with it if he offers you a glossy display.
Human languages, living ones at any rate, are constantly changing and acquiring new vocabulary. It's a fact.
Bitching about it is about as effective as you waving your fist at those kids who won't get the hell off your lawn.
Matte displays were on ALL laptops until a few years ago when someone stupidly decided "Hey! Let's make this look cooler by making the screen look like it had a fresh coat of wax applied to it!"
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Yep, the new MBPs are a bit disappointing. I like my 2007 17" matte screen but it's only OK - not great. Suitable for everyday use. Nobody in their color corrected mind is going to use ANY laptop screen for critical work. If you've ditched your MacPro for a laptop on a full time basis, you just attach the nice, expensive LCD panel which costs pretty darn near what the laptop costs.
Good grief people, get a clue. You can't do critical color work in anything OTHER than a controlled space and a good monitor. Don't whine about how you can't wander over to Starbucks and set up your printing run. Of course, if you're just doing web stuff you can probably use a Palm Pilot for a screen as you haven't a chance of knowing what your target monitor is trying to do to your image.
The really odd part about Apple's descent into being a purely 'consumer' electronics company is that if they really screw up the Mac line to the point where lots of professionals find the tradeoffs aren't worth it, said users can just find a "better" PC and stick OS X on it. A bigger hassle than I'm willing to put up with right now, but if it were that or try to argue with Adobe about doing another cross platform switch, I'd poke out my eyes with a spoon and make a braille hackintosh.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
posted anon for moderation.
The new Macbook display is objectively not the best display ever, and if you had half a brain and/or had read TFA you would know that things like color reproduction can and must be measured, and corrected for.
Flat panel TVs don't need to have accurate color. Most people don't want it. In fact, few applications call for accurate color. Photography happens to be one of them, dipshit.
Most consumers don't deal with this, however, the graphics design and photographic and printing industries are dominated by Macs. Granted, most of those people are not using laptops, but suffice to say that the primary real-world use of Macs is by those people to whom Accurate Color Matters.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
CRTs do not have a very wide gamut, save for a very few extremely expensive ones. They generally have a gamut approaching sRGB. That is, in fact, the reason why the sRGB gamut was set where it was. The original NTSC gamut wasn't set on what CRTs could do, it was the goal they wanted for NTSC. CRTs couldn't hack it, there just weren't good enough phosphors. Hence computers were standardized to sRGB which is around what they actually do.
A wide gamut LCD will beat out the gamut of any normal CRT out there. In fact it can be problematic for non-color managed apps because they are expecting a more limited color space.
Even if one wanted to use a CRT, it is very hard. You basically have to already own one. NEC, Sony, etc all have discontinued their high end CRT lines. To the extent you can buy a CRT anymore, it is a budget display. So the people using CRTs are those that haven't upgraded, not users buying new high end gear.
Also LCDs have progressed to the point they can offer better color than even high end CRTs. The sRGB color gamut, often called "72% NTSC) is specified as it is because it matches the best most CRTs could do. That's why it became the "normal" gamut. It was what most CRTs were capable of. There were a few exceptions, NEC did have a 94% NTSC screen in the early 2000s, but it was over $4000. Not so popular.
Well LCDs are easily exceeding that gamut these days. 92% NTSC LCDs are fairly common, and you can find higher than that.
Now of course in addition to gamut, there's accuracy to worry about. True, typical TN panels are pretty bad. Goes double since all (or at least very nearly all) only have 6-bits per color channel. That means they've got to use some kind of dithering to do some of the finer color transitions. However those are just the cheap panels. There are better technologies out there. IPS, or rather it's later variants like H-IPS, would be what you want. It gives extremely accurate color, and a good viewing angle so color doesn't shift based on angle.
So an LCD can easily do as good or better than even a high end CRT in terms of color. In terms of pretty much everything else, they blow it away. One big problem with CRTs was geometry. It took a lot of fiddling to get the display squared, and it would drift over time. So you ran in to problems of "Is this line that looks curved really straight?" Kind of a bitch for design work. No problems on LCDs. Even cheap ones have perfect geometry that needs no adjustment when you use DVI.
Thus even the design world is LCDs now. They just use better ones. If you are interested, check out NEC's MultiSync 90 series. They are high quality IPS displays used by professionals. I've got one for my computer, though I'm not a graphics pro, because I like the quality of image. Only downside is you have to pay more for them. Quality isn't cheap. However it was the same in the CRT says. $150 might buy you a cheap monitor for office work, but you'd easily spend over $600 for a good pro screen.
Same deal here. Acer will be pleased to sell you a 26" widescreen LCD for about $400. However, it'll be a cheap TN panel that doesn't have particularly good color. NEC wants more like $1100 for their 26" monitor, but it is a top notch image. Planar will actually sell you a monitor with a similar image (uses the same LCD panel, just different supporting hardware) for $800. Not quite as good as the NEC since it doesn't have as advanced hardware backing it up, but much better than the Acer.
As with most things, you get what you pay for. If you've never got a high quality LCD, you've probalby not been willing to pay enough.
Please go RTFA before you just assume the apple panel is bad. Each panel in his review has pros and cons: the main compromise being viewing angle versus color shift.
To the Editors: did you not RTFA?
You want someone to quote you a time? A real photog knows that the time you use depends on how you shot the film (pushed or pulled, idk anyone who actually shoots Tri-X at 400), what results you want (contrast, grain), your agitation methods, water temperature, how old your developer is, yada yada yada
The entire argument in the OP is silly.
Using my MBP for retouching (it's even the old matte style) would be almost as silly as using my iPhone display.
Laptops are small, have inconsistent brightness, inconsistent ambient lighting, poor angle, and (commonly) 6-bit displays.
The matte and glossy both are fine for basic editing and everything else I do on a laptop. Retouching only happens in my studio, where I have full control over ambient light color and intensity, and a hardware-calibrated, 8-bit, 24" display running at 1920x1200 (and on my Mac Pro, not my MBP laptop--MBP has great speed for a laptop, but it doesn't touch the desktop when it comes to 200-MB Photoshop files).
Use tools the way they were intended to be used.
Unfortunately those work only on Windows and Mac. Apparently people managed to jump through lots of loops to get them to work with Linux, but anyone knows if there are color calibrators that work with Linux off the box ? I haven't seen any driver for them in the kernel.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
from summary:
the late-2008 Macbook Pro glossy displays are 'deep into the not acceptable category' when used in ambient light environments
From the article:
It's important to remember that, even though the late-2008 MacBook Pro 15 inch doesn't keep up in either colour accuracy or viewing angle with laptops from IBM/Lenovo, its display is still quite good and still falls on the right side of the line of acceptable display quality for field use by a working photographer, at least in ambient light that discourages reflections.
Of course, you shouldn't use a laptop for serious color work. But it's fine for previewing.
assignment != equality != identity
That explains BOTH sights (on matte and glossy screen)
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Who is Rob Galbraith and why is this slashdot worthy?
I compared the glossy and the matte laptops side by side in an Apple store. (They were the same price I believe, but obviously if buying a MacBook Pro price isn't my biggest concern.) With the matte laptop, I saw a crisp screen with vibrant colors. With the glossy laptop, I saw my dad and the sales guy reflected in the glass.
There's a probably-apocryphal story of Steve Jobs doing an interview where the interviewer complained about the glossy screens on the laptops, and pointed to his laptop where his reflection obscured part of the screen. Steve's answer was to turn the laptop 5 degrees.
Even if the story is false, the point stands, though - with the wide viewing angles of today's LCDs, shifting them slightly to redirect glare away is a better answer than washing the screen with a diffuser.
Apple's hardware is not and has rarely ever been their strong point. It's something to put up with because OS X isn't available for the Thinkpad.
I am a photographer (serious amateur, not paid professional) and I use Gimp. It's mostly good for photography work, but it does have some inherent limitations. For example, my archival 16 bit greyscale scans of medium format B&W film have to be downsampled to 8 bit before Gimp can open them. For simple touchups, and a little bit in the way of zany effects, Gimp is actually pretty good if you can live within its limitations (and I do).
With that said, most "photographers" today are more like "graphic artists" that use a photograph as the foundation for creating electronic art that is based on a photograph. I strive to get it right in-camera and mostly use Gimp now for scaling, adjusting the curves for on-screen display, and possibly a light unsharp mask at the desired display resolution.
(recent example... Mamiya C330, 80mm Mamiya-Sekor, Kodak TXP320 film expired in 2000, developed in Rodinal 1:50. Metered with Sekonic L358. Scanned with Vuescan on an Epson V500.)
I actually like the way glossy screens look. The image is brighter. I've never been able to use a matte display in sunlight, anyway. I don't do professional print work so I don't care about 'color accuracy' As long as stuff looks nice on the screen that's fine by me. I don't have a glossy screen, but those that I've used seem fine in all the settings (lighting) that a matte screen would be fine in. So the article is basically saying that print professionals will need to pay a $50 premium if they want to use Apple computers.
How do their displays compare?
This guy is way out there
If you're really working on important photography stuff, why not just buy an external monitor that has much better color reproduction and viewing angles. If you're working on this for a job, you should invest in the proper equipment for that job. I'm not even totally clear on why you need a laptop for final photographic production work.
I'm a linguist, and I can tell you that I wouldn't write an article on how bad the built-in speakers are for transcription of complex language data. I buy high quality headphones instead.
Don't bother with English 3.11: English 4.0 is already out.
-- I speak only for myself
Well, it is good to understand that "professional" does not mean that you are actually great or even GOOD in the job what you do. It just means that you get your paycheck from that job.
But back to the point.
I do not call anyone qualified to edit photos, videos or anykind grahic if they are doing it on their laptops on normal room, and dont ask what it is when doing it _outside_!
If you demand best results for computer hardware, you should own color profiled middle-gray room. The lighting is so dim that you can fall to sleep.
Then you need to make sure that there is not anykind disturbing colors (wallapers, cellphones etc) what effect your eyes how you see colors on the screen.
And you need to profile whole workflow from camera, to computer to printer/screen/press etc. Just the color profiling is hard enough.
Too many pro photographer use laptop, what is just 8bit/channel, they work on normal office with normal lighting. They might turn off few lights to get darker but then they have typicall mistakes done already on that point that you can not get 100% accurate color view.
And even that you would have 100% correct color profiled workflow (room colors, lighting, devices etc) then your client opens the image on typical computer or laptop and see the colors are wrong. Or student on press sets wrong colors adjustments because he thinks that he need to "fix" the results.
So you just end up fighting with all other things than just the monitor and how well it can present colors etc...
How can you be sure it's really you? you can't see your own reflection.
I'm a vampire so it's not really much of a concern.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Despite the fact that a glossy screen on a Mac makes me gag, I think Apple should acquire an OLED company like Universal Display. They have enough cash to do it and they could set up a plant to produce the displays on a reasonable scale.
I keep iChat running in webcam setup mode in the screen corner, just to be sure.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
I am not a photography expert by any stretch of the imagination. I'm not even a mac freak, but this review strikes me as unfair.
Can't you calibrate any display to make it accurate?
Just wonderin'...
-Viz
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
Everyone's entitled to their own personal opinion, and I understand people have different needs and wants.
But every time I read a post like yours, I just find myself at a loss.
I owned one of the first aluminum MB Pros (the 2.0Ghz Core Duo model, before they moved to Core 2). It had the matte screen and the "pre chicklet style" backlit keyboard, etc. etc.
I recently sold it and bought a new 2.8Ghz MBP to replace it, and I couldn't be happier with the decision.
The hard drive is finally swappable without tearing the whole machine apart to get to it. The battery life is FAR better than what I had before (and the LED power level indicator on the side is a nice touch too). The video performance is better, and I can put 4GB of RAM in it now, instead of the 2GB limit I had previously. I don't have any real issues with its glossy screen either. Sure, you get some reflections with it, but it's GLASS. That's normal. Especially being a PORTABLE computer, I have no problem picking it up and MOVING it a little bit, if there's some particularly bright and annoying light-source shining directly onto the screen from behind me.
Now granted, I'm not a "pro photographer" or anything ... but I think I'm like most notebook computer users. I do a lot of web surfing on mine, some web design, a little gaming and entertainment stuff (especially if I take it on a trip with me), and keep a collection of photos on it that I have incorporated or may incorporate onto said web sites I work with. I might want to watch an occasional movie on it too. It's been great for all of that.
To hear the people focused on ONE specific need scream that it's no longer a "compelling upgrade", and the whole design team must be "crazy" .... it really does a disservice to everyone else.
Of course, I agree with you completely, but my reply was to a post that questions the technical literacy of the author.
Other than that, the derogatory comment towards artsy types was just a reflex, you shouldn't read much into it. I have many photographer friends that fit into that category and admire them a lot, although I don't go asking them for advice on technical issues (that they probably don't even care about).
My english is sow-sow. Sowhat?
Amen. I hate how everyone who complains about the glossy screen neither owns one or uses one frequently (could be correlation or causation, but still lack of experience either way). The screen is fully functional and the machine works great, there's nothing to complain about. I am a semi-pro photographer and the color and performance of the screen have been more than acceptable. The reflections are a non-issue, and I can't believe people are still up in arms over this. Get over it.
"!"
I hate the glossy screens. I agree that they are horrible for any kind of work let alone color critical work.
But on the other hand, who does color critical work on a laptop anyway? I mean if you really care about color accuracy, you will have one of those wide gamut screens, with hardware calibration built in and above all, you will have controlled environment for your work.
Even the greatest screen will make you produce inconsistent results if you will have different color temperature in your work environment at different times of day (night, sunny, artificial lights etc).
You must take complete control of your light sources and adjust the temperature of the light to a pre-set standard, then start worrying about the screen.
Managing light in your work environment is probably more costly than the really good screens.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
some screens are just so bad that you can't profile and adjust them to be precise.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
who complains about the glossy screen neither owns one or uses one frequently
I have a laptop with a shiny screen. I hate it. The reflections of what is behind me bugs the crap out of me. I didn't have any choice in the matter - stupid manufacturer doesn't offer a matte version. I also can't stand the current pop culture fad to make everything shiny and blingy.
I don't get it. People keep clamoring for desktop computer from Apple for a price between Mini and Pro. But there is iMac.
iMac is not upgradable perhaps, but then keep asking Apple to make it upgradable, rather than for a brand new product.
Most Mac users would not bother with upgrades themselves anyway, and that is the primary market for Apple. People who want the thing to just work. And for the most part they are getting exactly that.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
There is a setting in the keyboard options to turn predictive typing off (called Auto correction).
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
I read this article with great interest in reading a potentially damning review of the MBP. The article doesn't come across nearly as harsh as I think the slashdot editor tries to make it, because other than a minor complaint about the glossy screen, it was a pretty glowing review of the computer. As another article put it, the matte-vs-glossy debate is mostly an emotional one, and although I do understand the emotion as a photographer, I have no idea why other users really care one way or the other.
You are comparing a computer from a couple of years ago with a new model.
I have one of those Core Duo MBPs. I also have one of the last-before-redesign MBPs.
My upgrade gave me everything you put in your list except the glass screen.
Now, I do like the new trackpad on the new machines, and a few other features. When Apple announced the new screen was going to be glass I wondered if they would be able to make a matte version, but apparently they can. Now they just have to offer it on the 15". I hope it's just a matter of getting the new process in place, and it wasn't ready for the introduction of the 15", but will be added on the next revision.
Otherwise, I have to lean toward the above poster's opinion - the 15" MBP is a favorite of a lot of photographers (including me), and it seems very short sighted not to make a matte option available to an enthusiastic bunch of customers.
Perhaps because he wants to work, as opposed to fuck around with computers in crassly unsupported configurations that might not work?
Are you adequate?
Amen. I hate how everyone who complains about the glossy screen neither owns one or uses one frequently
Counterexample: I have a laptop with a glossy screen, and I the damn thing. It brings NO benefits over a matt screen (unless you consider looking chic a benefit), but comes with the negatives that it shows fingerprints more, and the MAJOR annoyance of the reflections. Last time I was trying to use mine in a hotel room I couldn't even stand the damned thing and couldn't get anything done until I went around and turned off virtually every light in the room to avoid glare.
Why should I "get over it" when the previous screens worked better? Going to the matte screen of an LCD was a MAJOR driving factor in pushing me to move from a CRT to an LCD - and now they want to spray on a coating to make the damned thing shiny again? No thanks.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I build Web sites for a living (some design and some coding) and I am a serious amateur photographer, and I bought one of the new Macbook Pros in early December. I was concerned about the glossy display, especially after playing with one in the local Apple store. But I loved everything else about it so I figured I would give it a chance for a week or two. I'm coming from an iBook G4 (personal machine) and I have a Dell Latitude laptop from my employer, both with matte screens.
I have been very pleasantly surprised at how little I notice the Macbook's glossiness. When I open the machine from sleep I see a perfect reflection of myself, but it disappears completely once the screen comes on. For one thing, the depth of focus seems different enough; if I turn the screen brightness way down I can pick out my reflection, but unless I'm trying to, it drops out of focus. The other aspect is that the backlight is so much brighter than either of my other laptops. Even in a bright sunlight room, turning up the backlight all the way overpowers most reflections.
If I'm sitting directly in sunlight with a light shirt on, there's a noticeable reflection, especially if I've got something dark on the screen. But I actually tested the other laptops under the same conditions, and although the reflection was more diffuse, it was just as distracting. I could not do any serious work with any of the 3 machines in that situation. A laptop is just not going to work in all situations. I'm confident that if I end up outside or in a coffee shop or something, this laptop will work just as well as any other.
Aside from the screen it is the best laptop I've ever used...great combination of very solid feel and cool features. The multitouch trackpad seemed sort of gimmicky at first but it is actually very handy. It makes a lot of sense to just push down wherever your finger ends up...it's a much more "tactile" approach...more of a mental connection between the pointer and the fingertip. And the gesture for Expose is even handier than F9-F11.
I like working on this machine so much I've started leaving my Dell at the office and using LogMeIn.com to work from home on the Macbook.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Matte displays are a terrible hack to solve the problem of reflections. All they do is smear out the reflection to where it's less noticeable, killing sharpness and contrast in the process. They only reason they are used on laptops is that they are cheap.
The ideal solution is a plain glass screen with an antiglare coating. This does not smear out the reflection but actually suppresses it. Contrast is better maintained and sharpness is not affected. This is what every professional-grade CRT monitor has had for years. It is analogous to the multi-coating used on camera lenses to suppress internal reflections. (ever hear of a "matte" camera lens?)
Apple does not even need to switch out the bezels. I would happily have paid $100 more to simply have an antiglare coating on the glass screen cover on my 15" Macbook Pro. I like the machine ok without it (see http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1107919&cid=26656749) but it would be better with it.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
This implies that Macs used to be at the top and that they fell the entire distance from top to bottom in one fell swoop. More likely Macs have either been overrated because users like them otherwise, or coasting on previous impressions for far too long. Don't forget the dithered 6-bit color that has been with Macs for a good long time now and poorly that incident was handled.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I thought I was very clever for planning to take the glass out of my new Macbook Pro and take it to a glass company nearby, who could bake on an antiglare coating. I was quite disappointed when the ifixit.com disassembly guide ended with the note that the glass is not a removable part...
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I think it's really because so many people loathe it, and they can charge $50 extra for matte now.
It's not that the Apple display isn't acceptable, it's that the needs of photographers have changed and Apple is the first to identify and satisfy those needs. Even before the photographers themselves realize it!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I bought a Macbook Pro with some apprehension about the screen but it has worked out fine. After my experience I have to think that some of the hating is people not giving it a chance over time.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1107919&cid=26656749
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Anti-glare covers only about $35 and might do the job, but Techrestore is offering a $199 matte screen swap for the 15" MBP. Here's the arstechnica article.
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
Exactly how I feel! And honestly, if you are a professional photographer you likely have a desktop computer or iMac as your primary working computer anyways. Also, if you again call yourself a professional, you should at least have appropriate lighting for your working computer, ie lighting that won't cause a glare or affect color responsiveness of the screen. And on top of these things, most professionals calibrate their displays with hardware devices anyways, so really you don't have much to complain about.
Oh, and FWIW if you are using and aluminum iMac and getting sick of glare from the glass panel, all you need to remove it is a big suction cup. The whole pane is held in with nothing but magnets. Granted you'll still have a glossy LCD panel there and the bezel will look ugly.
For lack of a better signature...
Hay, no problem. Yes, I honestly have some issues working my iPod and am looking for help, but I do not disagree my orignal post may have had a slightly disagreeable tone ;)
I will give the audio cue a try. I think one of the first things I did with the iPod was turn down the volume of the clicks and navigational sounds effects.
"Photog is just someone being too lazy to type Photographer..."
So sayeth the non-photographer.
As a photographer and writer, I see no problem with the term. Your suggested "smarter" PhotR and SnpR are ludicrous and would seem to indicate that you were born on another planet.
And that "someone", whoever they were, started using the term many, many, many years ago. The fact that you have only discovered the word now proves how out of touch you are with the field and profession of photography.
Thanks for coming out. Your opinion has been filed apropriately. *cue shredder*
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
"The hard drive is finally swappable without tearing the whole machine apart to get to it."
Whereas my laptop comes with dual hard drive bays, with the second HDD bay being hot-swappable. Access always on the bottom.
"LED power level indicator on the side"
As opposed to it being directly on the battery, which many before Apple thought of.
"The video performance is better, and I can put 4GB of RAM in it now, instead of the 2GB limit I had previously."
I can upgrade the video card in my laptop, and my limit on memory is 16GB.
Mine also comes with Firewire, has a 6-in-1 memory card reader, three ways to output to televisions of any sort, an expansion port, gigabit ethernet, wireless-g, Bluetooth, Lightscribe drive, AND a remote control, webcam, and stereo microphones.
And it cost 1200 with a three-year accidental damage warranty included, which I've used twice (Faulty nVidia 8-series GPU, then I smashed the LCD)
You're not getting that out of Apple for that price, EVER.
The truth is Apple just isn't innovating. They're taking old features, and wrapping it up in shiny white plastic.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I have the 2.4GHz MacBook Pro 17" glossy HD. What a beautiful machine. 4GB-ram and 150G-hd. I use it hours a day. Mail, web browsing, iTunes, DVD playing. It does everything I want. The 17" 1920x1024 display gives me all the real estate I want and I have not been bothered by the glossy screen even once. There may be people that use them in environments with higher light levels than I do that have problems. I use mine in a home environment and couldn't be happier. If there are actual color calibration issues, I wouldn't know because I am not a pro photo guy laying out important real color stuff. I just wanted the best Apple notebook available for development, and I feel I did the right thing. I am not sure why I went "glossy", but it has been fine.
thank god. I'm so sick of apple... Growing up on a mac (good 'ol design school), I thought it was superior to windows... Until I noticed how blurry the aliasing is on a mac by default. The second was compatibility wars in the early millennium. I like the concept. I like the look. but how are you going talk smack about the same business model that you follow. not to mention proprietary issues... yuck! but why take it from me? I use windows! lol anyways...Guess i'm just being a grump, enjoying some bad news concerning the status symbol PC.
Ok, but you're comparing completely different products, so your comparison has little meaning.
Whatever your "superior" laptop is that you're talking about -- it doesn't come with Mac OS X (nor can it legally run a copy of it). That's one of the biggest reasons I shop for Apple branded products. I happen to think their OS is FAR superior to Windows, and they (so far, at least) choose to only offer their OS as kind of a "bundle" with their hardware.
As for the 6 in 1 card reader? I added one to my MB Pro for about $20 using one that fit in the ExpressCard slot. Not a big deal....
The 16GB memory limit doesn't really impress or interest me either, in a portable. Maybe down the road that will become important. But currently, I was more concerned about a 2GB memory limit being doubled to 4GB than I was about going a lot further than that. (It's possible a new MB Pro could use 8GB total, as well, if you used costly high-density 4GB chips. Not certain on that?)
Also, though there's nothing wrong about being able to put 2 HDDs in your machine, that tells me it's a heavier, thicker/bulkier notebook than my MB Pro is too. I'm ok with having a thinner, lighter notebook and plugging an external USB or FW800 drive into it as needed, if I need more storage space.
I have a ThinkPad with a mat screen and an Acer with a glossy screen. The fact that I have both is the reason I felt qualified to comment in the first place. Being in IT, I regularly see and use both types of screen. I HATE the glossy screen and so does my wife for that matter.
The glare is terrible in many lighting conditions and when I used it at work I found it gave me eyestrain and headaches. The ThinkPad screen however is a joy to use in nearly every lighting condition. However, no LCD's look great outdoors under bright sunlight. Glossy's glare horribly and mat screens get washed out.
While we're on the subject, I've found the same problem with TV's. Some are putting the glossy screens on them to a) help bring up a cheap LCD panel with a poor contrast ratio b) because outh breathing idiots like the look of them in the store.
Next time you are in an electronics store that has a home theatre section, notice that 9 times out of 10, it's dimly lighted, and usually only by indirect lighting. They know that these shiny, glossy screens are crap in normal lighting conditions.