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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.'"
Is this one of those words that has surreptitiously entered our language like "blog" or was the title just cut-off?
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".
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.
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)
Even if they did prefer CRTs, it's mighty hard to find a laptop that offers a CRT option these days.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
I think you mean English 3.0, American is English 2.0.
Hi. I am an Apple apologist and I despise the glossy screens.
They're fine on low-end laptops and 20" iMacs. If you're a pro photographer or a serious graphic artist you should probably stay away from such consumer-level hardware. These glossy abominations have no business being on MacBook Pros or LED Cinema Displays. Some of us have invested lots of money into color calibration devices and don't want this trendy bullshit ruining the color correction workflow that has worked for so long.
Right now I'm in a market for a 15" MBP to replace a PPC Powerbook but the glossy screen is preventing me from purchasing it. For starters, glossy screens are unusable in a properly illuminated room with unequal multiple light sources. Its even worse outside on a sunny day.
I wonder if Apple had realized they fucked up and offered the 17" model with an optional matte display? If glossy displays are so great, how come this traditionally stubborn company made this concession?
Did anyone RTFA? Per the author, "...but as with the previous generation of this Apple laptop, display quality is absolutely acceptable and usable for image assessment and simple Photoshop edits in the field, as long as you're aware of the display's particular blend of strengths and weaknesses." So clearly, the OP made the egregious decision to create this post just for the sake of flame bait.
How can you be sure it's really you? you can't see your own reflection.
Except matte was the DEFAULT for laptop LCDs until someone had the stupid idea of making the fucking thing shiny and glossy.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Indoors, on a desktop panel, for graphics purposes, sure. You'd ideally like the panel to be consistently washed out even if it is slightly washed out. In terms of general usability of a laptop, and particularly for use outdoors, though, I couldn't disagree more. I've used Macs for many years, and recently got a MacBook. I tried both screens and concluded that the glossy screen worked much, much better for me than the matte display when used outdoors, so long as the sun is not directly behind me (at which point it is blinding, of course).
With matte displays, any significant source of light behind me resulted in poor contrast across the entire panel because of the diffuse reflection off the mate screen, to such a degree that I found the matte displays to be very difficult to use outdoors (without a sun hood) except on the darkest, cloudiest days. With the glossy display, by contrast, light and dark areas behind me remain in sharp focus, so I can more easily ignore them; I can always move around to see the portions of the screen I need to see if some part is obscured by a light source. WIth a matte screen, no amount f moving will make the glare go away. I still sometimes use a sun hood, but at least now it is about making me more comfortable rather than being a necessity to be able to make out anything at all. :-)
I'm not going to disagree with complaints about the color reproduction, though. I've never seen an LCD panel in my life from any manufacturer where certain gradients didn't look like absolute excrement, and that's almost bordering on cruelty to the excrement. I'm sure there are some panels that are good, but I certainly haven't seen them. At this point, I'm convinced that the panel manufacturers aren't even trying anymore. Color accuracy hasn't improved significantly in five or six years, and in most cases, has actually gotten worse over that time period.
I blame the panel manufacturers for focusing so heavily on the mass market by constantly trying to make screens brighter. Every time the screens get brighter and increase in contrast ratio, they seem to consistently do so at a cost to the accuracy of their color reproduction. Most consumers, however, seem to care more about brightness than accuracy, and outside of the graphics world, I can see how that would be more useful in many cases. That said, IMHO we've reached a point where the brightness of most modern panels is basically sufficient for most purposes, so I think it's time for the panel manufacturers to take a step back and start working to fix the color accuracy of modern panels.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I'm an industry insider as a former laptop repair instructor.
The actual price WE, the repair depot, paid for matte panels was about 5 cents more expensive than the glossy panels.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
It figures that the rare time that I actually have mod points intersects with the need to say something. I am a graphics professional who just purchased the late-model MacBook Pro when it first came out, so I fit the theoretical profile pretty well. Although I do retouch as part of daily workflow and occasional freelance, I'm not a high-end retoucher; my meat-and-potatoes comes from InDesign/Illustrator/Office (shudder).
No graphic artist in their right mind who uses a screen all day long would get a glossy one voluntarily, and that plus the previously discussed Firewire rationing gave me some headaches in decision-making. I remember struggling with glossy CRTs very well (custom films and covers, anyone?) and knew exactly what I was getting. In some ways, the result has been exactly what you'd think it would be: tilting the damn thing forward and back, turning off lights, looking for seats in cafes at 90 degrees to windows, wiping off the more-obvious keyboard artifacts of my (apparently very oily) fingers with the provided rag, etc.
On the other hand, I love it. Once the concessions are made and it's set up in the right environment, it's the sharpest, brightest laptop screen I've ever used. (This is my third Mac laptop). I pulled two 12+ hour days over the weekend making the fussiest kind of pixel and point tweaking, with _no_ significant eye strain. Everything is razor-sharp compared to my previous Powerbook, which is a real boon to older eyes.
I understand Mr. Galbraith's concerns as a photographer, but as a "regular" graphics person, even though I find the screen somewhat annoying I am usually am working in environments where the glare can be minimized and its other qualities (brightness, sharpness) outweigh the problem. The model's other features (rigidity, magnetic clasp, trackpad scroll options and gestures) make it my favorite laptop ever (knock on... glass).