I've owned a lot of Macs over a long period of time. A lot of random displays too.
I remember when all my displays were matte screens. The I remember when those screens starting becoming glossy, and were suddenly ALL glossy, and I thought, WOW, this looks a hell of a lot better than the old screens! I hope this never goes away!
It's not going away. The glossy screens are awesome, and perfect for everything practical. The only thing they are not excellent for is sitting outside in direct sunlight and trying to be productive.......
....then again I can't remember the last time I needed to/wanted to sit out and in the sun and do work on my Mac. What a waste of a nice day.
Enjoy your slowly-dying backlight and your eight-year-old panel.
From Ken Rockwell, a photographer:
"I bought a second new 30" monitor as they were beiing discontinued in favor of a slightly smaller glossy screen 27" monitor.
New 30" display, last of the line, measures: 6,840K, 0.640 delta uv, 126.7 fL (434 Cd/m^2).
Old 30" display, now 4 years and 8 months old, measures 5,510K, 0.476 delta uv, 90.4 fL (310 Cd/m^2). This is 10% dimmer than new, but still better than specified when new (270 Cd/m^2), and even a little better than the updared specification for the newer version of this monitor (300 Cd/M^2)."
It's funny how people say "I won't buy a glossy screen, it sucks ! As a professionals, I want "matte" !"
Well, I used to be one like you, always comparing my matte macbook pro to other glossy laptops. Then unibody came along... and I tried the glossy screen... a lot of hesitation but I took it.
It's been almost 4 years now and I won't change for anything. Ok, maybe you can see some reflection sometimes (especially with dark images) but the overall rendering is by far sharper than a matte screen.
It may be a glossy screen but it's far from what you can find out there with other manufacturers. The image is perfect, no waves at all thanks to the glass, no blur at all, with a great contrast. To preview a UI or an image, pixel per pixel, it's just a perfect match.
And of course working with a window on your back is a bad behavior, with glossy screen AND with matte screens, so stay 90° and it will be fine, my 2 cents on this ;-)
Now, I can't wait to replace my MBP (when this one will die) to take a high-res display... and glossy of course.
So, say what you want about that you don't like glossy or not, I just ask you two things :
- try it first, you could be surprised (I mean, not 2 minutes, on daily basis)
- don't say it's not for professionals, I'm one and I assure you I'm very happy with it.
Finally, watch a film in your bed by night and you will really see the difference ;-)
So does anyone know the answer to my question a few pages ago, can the HD3000 or even the 6490 with a measly 256MB framebuffer run two large displays and its own display like that?
So does anyone know the answer to my question a few pages ago, can the HD3000 or even the 6490 with a measly 256MB framebuffer run two large displays and its own display like that?
That's probably for Apple to decide, hopefully we'll see very soon. My guess is maybe not, it's probably not about the size of the memory allocated for graphics but about acceptable performance. 256MB can hold 7x the amount needed to control 2x 27" screens and the internal screen, so that part should leave plenty of room for spare buffering, depending on what the OS and your software needs.
It's been almost 4 years now and I won't change for anything. Ok, maybe you can see some reflection sometimes (especially with dark images) but the overall rendering is by far sharper than a matte screen.
I find that's true if you compare new glossy with old matte but if you compare the latest anti-glare next to the latest glossy, the differences aren't quite so large:
The camera taking that photo has caused some distortion at the edges of the image but you can see the common text to both screens (matte on the left) is fairly sharp and black levels are comparable.
It's natural that the light diffusion caused by matte does soften the image but I prefer that because that's what happens with paper. When ink is printed, it is absorbed into the material. If you try to represent the pixels directly, that's like how an old dot-matrix printer displayed content. Given a high enough density of points, that won't be a problem of course but I feel that overly sharp images to the point where you can determine very faint aliasing look false because this artifact doesn't exist in the real-world. Real-world objects are made of atomic scale points so small as to be far beyond visual acuity so they appear continuous.
As I say, a very high resolution with a glossy screen will give the best definition but matte still has a more natural appearance. Not least because of the glare. When you look at a beautiful countryside, there isn't a giant reflection of yourself superimposed on it:
As I say, a very high resolution with a glossy screen will give the best definition but matte still has a more natural appearance. Not least because of the glare. When you look at a beautiful countryside, there isn't a giant reflection of yourself superimposed on it:
So, it really depends on your work then :-)
I usually don't watch countryside on my laptop but work on software design and UI. Thus, for me, it's a perfect match as marketing teams take a big importance to little details. So, the more precise and sharp is the screen, the more you see this kind of small details.
My target is the web, not printers, same thing here, it's good for me.
But I understand your point, if you're a countryside photographer, matte could be your option.
Note that you can still do it with macs as all laptops offer the matte option. The only thing is about the Cinema Display (which is called "Cinema", maybe for a reason ;-). You can still buy your display to any other vendor and continue to use your mac
Comments
I remember when all my displays were matte screens. The I remember when those screens starting becoming glossy, and were suddenly ALL glossy, and I thought, WOW, this looks a hell of a lot better than the old screens! I hope this never goes away!
It's not going away. The glossy screens are awesome, and perfect for everything practical. The only thing they are not excellent for is sitting outside in direct sunlight and trying to be productive.......
....then again I can't remember the last time I needed to/wanted to sit out and in the sun and do work on my Mac. What a waste of a nice day.
Enjoy your slowly-dying backlight and your eight-year-old panel.
From Ken Rockwell, a photographer:
"I bought a second new 30" monitor as they were beiing discontinued in favor of a slightly smaller glossy screen 27" monitor.
New 30" display, last of the line, measures: 6,840K, 0.640 delta uv, 126.7 fL (434 Cd/m^2).
Old 30" display, now 4 years and 8 months old, measures 5,510K, 0.476 delta uv, 90.4 fL (310 Cd/m^2). This is 10% dimmer than new, but still better than specified when new (270 Cd/m^2), and even a little better than the updared specification for the newer version of this monitor (300 Cd/M^2)."
http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/30-...ma-display.htm
Well, I used to be one like you, always comparing my matte macbook pro to other glossy laptops. Then unibody came along... and I tried the glossy screen... a lot of hesitation but I took it.
It's been almost 4 years now and I won't change for anything. Ok, maybe you can see some reflection sometimes (especially with dark images) but the overall rendering is by far sharper than a matte screen.
It may be a glossy screen but it's far from what you can find out there with other manufacturers. The image is perfect, no waves at all thanks to the glass, no blur at all, with a great contrast. To preview a UI or an image, pixel per pixel, it's just a perfect match.
And of course working with a window on your back is a bad behavior, with glossy screen AND with matte screens, so stay 90° and it will be fine, my 2 cents on this ;-)
Now, I can't wait to replace my MBP (when this one will die) to take a high-res display... and glossy of course.
So, say what you want about that you don't like glossy or not, I just ask you two things :
- try it first, you could be surprised (I mean, not 2 minutes, on daily basis)
- don't say it's not for professionals, I'm one and I assure you I'm very happy with it.
Finally, watch a film in your bed by night and you will really see the difference ;-)
(my wife still has the matte MBP, I can compare)
You'll give up your crusade once you actually own something glossy.
I certainly did. It's called 'don't shine a 500-watt lamp directly at your computer screen and you'll be fine'.
No he won't. I have a glossy screen on my gaming PC sitting next to my old school iMac. And I much prefer my matte screen.
Someone please tell me the new display is a matte screen. Anyone? Steve?
Why would it be? Come on.
So does anyone know the answer to my question a few pages ago, can the HD3000 or even the 6490 with a measly 256MB framebuffer run two large displays and its own display like that?
That's probably for Apple to decide, hopefully we'll see very soon. My guess is maybe not, it's probably not about the size of the memory allocated for graphics but about acceptable performance. 256MB can hold 7x the amount needed to control 2x 27" screens and the internal screen, so that part should leave plenty of room for spare buffering, depending on what the OS and your software needs.
It's been almost 4 years now and I won't change for anything. Ok, maybe you can see some reflection sometimes (especially with dark images) but the overall rendering is by far sharper than a matte screen.
I find that's true if you compare new glossy with old matte but if you compare the latest anti-glare next to the latest glossy, the differences aren't quite so large:
http://images.anandtech.com/galleries/650/_DSC9588.jpg
The camera taking that photo has caused some distortion at the edges of the image but you can see the common text to both screens (matte on the left) is fairly sharp and black levels are comparable.
It's natural that the light diffusion caused by matte does soften the image but I prefer that because that's what happens with paper. When ink is printed, it is absorbed into the material. If you try to represent the pixels directly, that's like how an old dot-matrix printer displayed content. Given a high enough density of points, that won't be a problem of course but I feel that overly sharp images to the point where you can determine very faint aliasing look false because this artifact doesn't exist in the real-world. Real-world objects are made of atomic scale points so small as to be far beyond visual acuity so they appear continuous.
As I say, a very high resolution with a glossy screen will give the best definition but matte still has a more natural appearance. Not least because of the glare. When you look at a beautiful countryside, there isn't a giant reflection of yourself superimposed on it:
As I say, a very high resolution with a glossy screen will give the best definition but matte still has a more natural appearance. Not least because of the glare. When you look at a beautiful countryside, there isn't a giant reflection of yourself superimposed on it:
So, it really depends on your work then :-)
I usually don't watch countryside on my laptop but work on software design and UI. Thus, for me, it's a perfect match as marketing teams take a big importance to little details. So, the more precise and sharp is the screen, the more you see this kind of small details.
My target is the web, not printers, same thing here, it's good for me.
But I understand your point, if you're a countryside photographer, matte could be your option.
Note that you can still do it with macs as all laptops offer the matte option. The only thing is about the Cinema Display (which is called "Cinema", maybe for a reason ;-). You can still buy your display to any other vendor and continue to use your mac