There’s nothing like the glossy/matte screen argument to rile everyone up.

The new MacBooks and MacBook pros have glossy screens only and this makes them useless for photo work, so the argument goes. The reflections are horrid and you can’t work with that. There are people huffing and puffing and threatening to stomp off to Windows land.

Garbage.

If you’re relying on laptops to do precision color work you’re already in a world of hurt. They don’t display colors well because they have six bits per color, not eight, and rely on temporal dithering to get the extra two bits. Plus they have narrow viewing angles and you can’t control the brightness enough. And that screen is tiny.

I can and do edit photos on my MacBook (early 2008, glossy). It’s mobile and I can angle the screen any way I like to get rid of reflections. It does fine for what I want it to do. But I’m not doing precision anything. And if I were I’d be looking at the curves, correcting with gray cards, watching RGB values and other numbers and not worrying a hoot about what I see on the screen except for the composition of the image and what is happening on people’s faces.

If you expect perfect color you can actually see, then you’re living in fairy land. If your environment is well-controlled and you have an expensive, calibrated monitor, you can get somewhere close. And you can do that with a MacBook or any other Mac. Just plug the monitor in. You’ve always been able to do this, and you can still do this with the new MacBooks. You can even convert a glossy screen to a matte one by adding a film. If your environment is suitable for working with color then there will be no reflections and it won’t matter anyway.

But anyone else who views your images will see something different anyway. They are not using calibrated monitors, all the software is set up for different gammas, and/or ignores the embedded profiles. Even the people who look at prints won’t view them under the right light unless you control that as well. Shockingly, since many images will be views on laptops, they’ll be seen on small, imperfect, glossy screens!

The real complaint goes like this: I have to impress people who don’t understand color with screen images or else they won’t buy from me. With a matte screen I was able to get away with not controlling my viewing environment, but now it looks like I’ll have to deal with that. Curse you Apple for ignoring my cheapness even though I’m a tiny fraction of your customer base.

I do all my serious editing on my 24” iMac (Intel, matte screen) because the screen is large, bright, and really nice, and the computer fast. But it wouldn’t matter if it were glossy. I do all of that editing after sun-down with the room lights off. It’s not calibrated except by eye, and it works for me. If I change what I do and want to meet a fixed set of standards then I expect to have to change things accordingly.

Tags: Screens, Glossy, Matte, Apple, MacBook Pro, MacBook, Whiners

The MacBook Air is a dramatic departure for Apple: it's a narrowly-targeted hardware product. The geeks on the forums hate it because their rumor-fuelled dreams have been dashed and they will have to keep lugging their 12" PowerBooks around for a few more years. But then the geeks are not the target market for this product and they don't seem to understand that large, profitable markets for highly cost-controlled products exist outside of their domain.

Apple has plenty of narrowly-targeted software products (Final Cut Pro for instance) and these don't attract the same howls of derision. But then those products target markets by adding specialized features and charging appropriately. Taking features away, as Apple did with iMovie in iLife08, is bound to cause geek grief because the expectation exists that the monotonic march toward "better" is always along the "more" axis. Not so. So who will be buying the world's thinnest laptop?

A simple answer: anyone who values it highly enough.

That will include executives and sales people who travel, present, and are seen with their laptop in important business situations. They value low weight and looks above everything else. They already have a Mac at home, including maybe a MacBook of some sort, but they will still buy a MacBook Air because it gives them the things they cannot get otherwise. This is the Miata of the laptop world: a second or third purchase after the most critical needs have been fulfilled, only for those who have the juice to make what they want real.

MacBook Air is clearly a companion computer. Apple has stripped everything from it that is not necessary in order to save weight and space. What is left is an interesting set: wireless Ethernet, audio out, video out, and USB 2.0. Those cover what must be the four most numerous connections on the planet right now. And once you pair it with a companion Mac, you have everything you need for anything.

The breathtaking omission for many is that the battery is built-in. But why are batteries removable in the first place? Removable batteries represent a huge additional cost in every aspect of Apple's business: more design, more material, more safety concerns, more stock, more line items, more connectors, more testing; the list goes on and on. The overall product design gains enormously by building the battery in, as Apple has shown with the iPod and, more recently, the iPhone.

To me, the inclusion of a back-lit full-size keyboard cements the target market as that of highly mobile, highly responsible, highly visible individuals whose time and presence carries a high price. We'll be seeing lots of these in the real world, many of them in dim lighting and accompanied by the whirr of a projector fan.

Tags: MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Apple, Macworld, Drama, Lust

While I am on the subject of new Mac experiences, Mark Morford, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, vividly and hilariously describes his new Macbook Pro:

I have right here in my hot little hands that actually aren't all that little and are only slightly warm at the moment a brand new lick-ready smooth-as-love Apple MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo Super Orgasm Deluxe Ultrahard Modern Computing Device Designed by God Herself Somewhere in the Deep Moist Vulva of Cupertino Yes Yes Don't Stop Oh My God Yes.

He exaggerates, of course, but not by much. Apple is going to drag the whole industry, kicking and screaming, weighed down by the rolled-over SUV that is Microsoft to a new place. Here is Microsoft's own marketing effort, describing Vista and why you should have it:

Windows Vista introduces a breakthrough user experience and is designed to help you feel confident in your ability to view, find, and organize information and to control your computing experience.

The visual sophistication of Windows Vista helps streamline your computing experience by refining common window elements so you can better focus on the content on the screen rather than on how to access it. The desktop experience is more informative, intuitive, and helpful. And new tools bring better clarity to the information on your computer, so you can see what your files contain without opening them, find applications and files instantly, navigate efficiently among open windows, and use wizards and dialog boxes more confidently.

See the disconnect here? Microsoft markets Vista like it is a cure for something socially unacceptable like smelly feet, not as something pleasurable and desirable like chocolate. They describe what you get, but they don't show anyone getting it. It's techno-twaddle, speeds and feeds, data points and powerpoint bullets. I've never sat down at my Mac either wanting or expecting a "computing experience" any more than I have gone into my bank seeking a "financial experience" or got into my car for an "internal combustion experience".

I come here to get things done and expect the computer and the operating system to get out of my way and let me do them. I don't care about files, information, processes, window elements, visual sophistication, or any of that. And suddenly boatloads of people are discovering that despite what they have been told, they don't care either. They just want to get things done. And that they actually can is an emotional and freeing experience. Mike Morford again:

She became excited. She became suddenly thrilled with the idea that she could, with a little effort and time and far less grudging techy BS than even she imagined, use these divinely inspired and thoughtfully made tools to make the movies she has always wanted, even stylize and edit and post them herself. Empowering? You said it.

And that describes the same one way trip that millions are making now.

Tags: MacBook Pro, Lust, Interesting Stuff