Apple again offers matte screen option for 15-inch MacBook Pro - Page 2

Yeah, it's a rather unfair image. The person should have taken several photos at different angles to prove the glare is really that bad.

Besides that, the glossy screen looks a little darker. If you turn the screen's brightness way down, doesn't that affect glare as well? I see that on my phone all the time.

Yes, the only thing worse than someone bitching, is someone bitching about someone bitching.

But, as others have pointed out, they cost more because they are quite obviously buying and making these in smaller quantities, so the parts and assembly costs are higher, which is pretty much the case with any optional configuration for anything. $50 is a pretty reasonable additional cost given the nature of the option.

Both the pictures that showed major reflections were not taken from the mac users point of view. One was taken from the side and the other was taken from above. I would consider the pictures taken there to be far from objective.

Which brand?

Yes, but keep in mind that there is a difference between 'glare' and 'reflection.'

Reflection can be altered by adjusting the amount, position or angle of light shining on the object seen in the reflection.

Glare can be altered by adjusting the intensity of the light shining directly on the reflective surface or the refractive index of the reflective surface, i.e, in this case the screen.

In any case, it should be buyer beware. Gloss and Mattes have their unique features and for some, demanding advantages. Now we have a choice. To continue to dwell on it in an accusatory fashion is childish. As is somebody dissing anyone who attemp to help those make a choice.

LOL

Looks just like my iPhone, till I turn it on.

we MAY never see mac tripper again.

Are there any notebooks that have stronger Rayleigh coatings? That would be ideal in my opinion, both gloss and matte fall short of a good Rayleigh type antiglare surface. I have camcorders and still cameras with that kind of surface and they are more usable outdoors than glossy or matte devices. I had several 17, 19" and 21" CRT screens that had Rayleigh coatings. Even Apple's "studio" CRTs had them before they switched to LCD.

Grey is good for critical color work. Grey is neutral and does not corrupt your eye against colors.

see matte dude's are the loudest most annoying complainers ever. Over and over they bitched for months with stupid bogus eye claims and such .

the glossy glare reflection problem is a firmware issue to be fixed in 2 or 3 yrs . A simple german/swiss glass treatment used in dubai's bright sun. And we will be able to switch anti glare on and off .

What happened is APPLE went green and glass is greenest screen .
AND glass reflects light > law of nature . My MBP movie playback is incredible . Yes i can read the newspaper behind me . But after a few months you barely notice seeing front and back at the same time.

peace all you happy matte campers and a special hug to mactripper ./

9

Or someone pompously commenting about someone bitching about someone bitching. He was asking a valid question and the fanboy express jumped down his throat because you people have nothing but blind allegiance for Apple. The point is, matte should have been there all along. Period. To charge $50 for that option now is nickel and diming Apples loyal customers, professionals that prefer matte. Don't give me any shit about production costs, they have plenty of money and all the resources already in place.

I read an interesting article of people who would not purchase a iPhone due to cost, and when apple reduced the price to $99 for the older model, 84% of those in the study went out and purchased, but grabbed the 3GS version. Turns out price was not the driving factor, just the excuse.

Now that this and firewire are available, everyone who took issue with these items being removed run out and purchase. I will sit here and watch the stock.

Ready, set, go!

It sounds to me as though that $50 is practically all profit. Apple seems to be saying, 'Be careful what you wish for.'

Think about it. Apple is now selling more laptops than it's ever sold in it's history. Would that be true if most people were against a glossy only option. The matte people are a vocal minority.

Yes, that's exactly my point!

This one

Power Support.

Yep. they have this as an option only because they likely don't believe it to be a high enough demand to really go full out. based partially, i would guess, on the previous sales numbers. The loud complaints of folks on places like this are a small fraction of the user base. as would be the yelling of advanced industries like professional photographers, video editors etc (not all of whom are guaranteed to be griping).

because it is option only they would be buying the parts in smaller amounts which means they can't get the price deals they could get on their standard parts. plus the labor to build a machine from scratch for you etc. be glad it is just $50. it is very possible that that only covers the cost of the screen and bezel, forget the labor etc.


don't pat yourself on the back too much. you still have to order it. true merit would be if they could have it as a standard form, so you can go to a store and buy it whenever you want without the 10 day wait.


funny. you hate them. I know quite a number of folks that love the new keyboard. quieter, lighter tap needed. and surprise -- some of those folks are actually Wintel users that replaced the 'fat' keyboard that came with their PC with the Apple one.

The only complaint anyone had was that the wireless didn't have a 10 key pad. and that was one guy that was doing Final Cut (seems some of the shortcuts are on that pad). he would have liked to have gone wireless.


what is so horrific about that. I've seen talk of a touchscreen keyboard that would adjust to the software and settings being used that would be brilliant. When you have final cut on, the keys are the shortcuts. when you have on Word it is your keyboard and when the tap of a button your shortcuts appear, if you switch to another language such as russian, the labels change etc.

clearly with your anachronistic proclivities, you think such an idea to be retched, but many would probably jump at the possibility. or even take it a step further and eliminate physical keyboard altogether and use one that is laser based (and similarly flexible) from the bottom of the display


keep in mind that the cost and storage changed. $199 for 8gb was too expensive but many of them likely felt that $199 for 16gb was more reasonable.

and for many the 'cost' isn't the phone but the added bill

I think there's a fallacy in this line of reasoning, I'm just not sure which one. It might be a post hoc fallacy, or maybe some variant of affirming the consequent. I think I might need more coffee.

I have no idea.

I don't think there is an ideal that suits everyone. And even the ideal for one person is not always ideal.

Having worn glasses most of my life and then getting laser surgery, I really appreciate nothing between me and the object I am looking at.

Anything in between reminds me of those, 'transition' lenses. Great for some. But for most, it just isn't worth the compromise.

Now of course, we are all waiting for the massive increase in MacBook sales generated by all those who so adamantly declared they were just waiting for Apple to give them the choice.

Further Reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-reflective_coating

This makes me glad I got an early 2008 matte mbp, just before apple refreshed the notebook line. With it I've outlived this whole glossy/antiglare + $50 saga. Hopefully in 2-3 years time the options will be better

Great, Apple! Now give us back the ExpressCard that you stole from us from the 15" MacBook Pro, and we'll be back on good terms with you again!

More details here:
Apple: Bring the ExpressCard slot back to the 15″ MacBook Pro!

Expected

Fanboy expesss my ass! I guess I could call you a troll then! I just love who the fanboy term always gets thrown around here.

In case you forget, Apple is a company. The purpose of a company is to make money. If something costs extra money to engineer, inventory stock, etc, any company is going to charge money for something like that. It doesn't matter how many billions of dollars a company has, they aren't going to sell things that aren't going to make them money. Apple can do the things its doing today because of the cash pile it has. If it were scrapping money from the bottom of the barrel like some tech companies are starting to do, it wouldn't be able to do the things it does, keep the people it has, etc.

Its just the people who think Apple should provide them with whatever they want at a very, very low price is what bothers me. If thats called fanboy'ism...then I guess I'm guilty!

What would be the fallacy? People buy what they want...Apple isn't forcing people to buy laptops.

Agree 100%. The "new" keyboard is awesome. The only mistake was lopping off the numeric keypad, that was a DUMB move. Mine is now a year and a half old and has a lot of mileage on it, and still performs great. They just need a Bluetooth version with numeric keypad, and should either switch to or offer black keys.

The fact that you would label me as a troll is something you should think about. Look man, I'm not looking for an argument here but I don't need a lecture on business and economics. I'm well aware of Apple's business model, that's the point. I'm not self entitled type nor do I expect Apple to be giving anything away, I simply don't agree with the Apple tax sometimes.

http://www.logicalfallacies.info/presumption/post-hoc/

Humorless

There is nothing wrong with his logic. Apple is offering an option for an additional cost. Its not the default configuration, any cost difference would be negligible if the matte and glossy sold in equal numbers but they dont, and the most popular, highest volume selling notebook from notebook doesnt even come with a matte option. All of that screams that its not a popular as glossy. I certainly prefer glossy but Im glad the option is available for those that need/want it and for those that truly do prefer it I dont think the extra cost should be a deal breaker with all things considered.

Not to brag. but myself and some others have predicted that this would happen. Apple has realzed that more $$ can be gained by including matte than not.
The 17" was not just an experiment as a few deluded fanboyz had stated- Apple headed the word of professionals and knew it had to return not just there but everywhere.
I can't wait until it finally returns to the iMac where it is needed the most. The 24" high- glossy screen is just an abomination- especially when it is turned off.
Thank you, thank you.

I completely agree with you, but isn't there a tiny niggling part of you that wonders, very occasionally, whether Apple makes decisions like this because the company likes its users to experience things in a particular way? In a way that they think is the right way, not necessarily the way people actually do things.

Now often this works well, it's part of the Mac experience we all love, and a growing part of the iPhone experience. But every now and again, it's a bad call. Matte screens, Firewire on MacBooks etc are examples of this. I just wonder sometimes.

A fanboy is a fanboy. If you back up Apple for not including matte screens because Apple told you they should be dropped and you fell for it, then you need to carry that title. It's all very simple.

Now how would you know whether Apple would be selling even more if matte were offered currently? Apparently Apple has done the math and realizes that there is more to be made by those who don't want the high gloss mess, myself included.

Maybe it will come out he deleted them because his illness or meds were affecting his decision making? Now he sees the light after his leave of absence. Don't forget blu-ray (the bag of hurt) is also on the horizon. All that is left is for him to replace the racoon fugly iMac design with the mismatched mouse.

Speak for yourself. Print, web, multimedia, video, 3D, architects, etc. rarely work in an all white word document type scenario. Notice the color of this web page.

A matte monitor is not the same as museum glass. I didn't catch it from the article, but I don't believe Apple is going to put anti-glare museum glass in front of a matte LCD, but I could be wrong.

Good news for me, because I work a lot on dark backgrounds, and no amount of backlighting can cut through reflections on black. Deep glassy blacks are neither deep nor black unless your surroundings are dim.

Bad news for me, because I was convinced the matte display was gone for a couple years, so I just bought a new battery and upgraded the OS on my Oct 2006 MBP.

Good news for me, because by the time I need a new computer, Apple might switch back to glossy from glassy, which would be the best of both worlds.

Bad news for me, because this laptop is slowly falling apart

I know , which is totally ludicrous when you consider how a 4" screen would dictate how a 24" iMac screen should look.

Not so - many of the major online stores offer this choice too. As an example I just bought a 3.06 imac with the Radeon 4850 and the numeric keyboard from Powermax. It was configured just as I wanted and I had the choice of several stores to buy from, not just Apple.

FYI. Cheers

It could be that the sales numbers do reflect at least a non-aversion to glossy screens. On the other hand, It could be that most people are against glossy screens, but that factor doesn't outweigh the other advantages they see in an Apple laptop. I was, rather obliquely, pointing out that Apple's sales numbers for laptops could be dependent on factors that have little or nothing to do with glossy vs. matte screens, so, without knowing exactly what is driving sales, it's not valid to make points about glossy vs. matte screens based on the sales numbers.

Personally, I'm somewhat ambivalent on the glossy vs. matte issue, and I wouldn't make a buy/don't buy decision based solely, nor even primarily, on that factor.