| Friday, May 19, 2006 |
22:27 - Glossy conversion
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Okay—my roommate just bought himself a MacBook, and I have to say the glossy screen is nothing like what I expected. Granted, it's got off-axis color saturation/hue issues, to the extent that my Cinema Display from 1999 completely kicks its ass; but as far as reflections go, they're not the deal-breaker I'd assumed them to be.
The difference is mostly that this screen has sort of a "liquid" texture to it, where everything feels like it's floating below the surface; whereas the matte-finish screens seemed like sheets of paper.
I still think I'd prefer a matte finish, but I wouldn't consider it the end of the world if I had to live with a glossy screen. At least, an Apple one.
That said, though, John Siracusa is still not pleased with the prospects of the laptop market and what this concession on Apple's part means. The photos in his post—I don't know what to make of them, because my roommate's MacBook screen is nowhere near as distractingly reflective as the pictures indicate. But then again, the photos seem to show a sunny window next to the laptop, and the environment I've seen so far amounts to incandescent light indoors. So maybe the jury's still out. But the fact does still remain that I don't think there's any compelling usability reason for Apple to have gone glossy—the matte screens were still better, in my opinion, and I tend to think Siracusa has it right in guessing where we can lay the blame for this particular bit of "innovation".
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Brian Tiemann
