Apple's October 14, 2008 release of its new MacBook and MacBook Pro laptop computers confirms the fear that many Apple users must have first felt when Apple released the glossy-only MacBooks two years ago. The creeping fear, that Apple was mindlessly embracing the glossy screen fad, and was going to force its users to have glossy screens, was confirmed when Apple refreshed its iMac line with the glass-covered, black rimmed, glossy-only design. Now, the glossy-only infirmity has infected the MacBook Pro line. The MacBook Air was born already infected.
The great contribution of Steve Jobs and Apple to the computer ecosystem is that it provides a genuine and mostly superior alternative to the dominant platforms in the industry. So, to see Apple following the glossy screen fad, and then deleting its alternative — the glare-free matte screen — from its catalog, makes me wonder if Apple has forgotten the foundation of its strength. I've been a Mac OS X guy since 1990 (when it was "under wraps" in the skunkworks known as NeXT Computer). I am very grateful for the beautiful, elegant, and intelligent computer environment I have been able to work in now for 19 years (though I confess at being infuriated at the many ideocies in Finder, Mail, and AddressBook).
Fortunately, there have been relatively few times when I have had to suffer from poor ergonomic choices by Steve Jobs. The worst time was when the NeXT Cube had a monitor with a 68Hz screen refresh, which zapped my eyes. I don't know if it is only a coincidence that I started to become near sighted when I started working on a NeXT Cube. There was no alternative monitor one could use without soldering some home made cables.
When NeXT came with the first "hockey puck" mouse, which would quickly stress my right hand into cramps, one could fortunately replace them with many choices of Mac compatible ADB mice.
I am truly horrified at the prospect of being forced by Apple to work on a glossy display. I rely on Apple laptops for my professional work. It is very difficult to read scientific documents when I have to peer through reflections of my own face, and of the room I am working in, to read the equations I am trying to understand. Fortunately, I can work now on a 17" MacBook Pro with a high resolution, glare-free matte screen, which is glorious.
But this configure-to-order option is now the last configuration left in the entire iMac and MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro lines, after Apple refreshed its catalog on October 14, 2008. And if Apple brings its 17" offering in line with all the other models, this last option for glare-free computing in Apple's built-in screen line will be gone. I have bought seven Apple computers in the last seven years with built-in matte screens. I will not be buying glossy screens, period. I can only hope that my current equipment will hold out its usability until Apple shakes off this glossy fever and returns to the principles which have made Steve Jobs's companies great — that the products make sense, just work, and supply elegant alternatives to the lesser designs that had dominated the industry.
It's obvious to infer how this glossy screen mania came about. Jobs wants everything to stylistically match the iPhone. It's like an iPhone style wedding registry. The iPhone looks the way it does, though, out of functional imperatives: it has to have a glass cover to be strong enough to resist scratches. The black bezel is good design aesthetics. So, this design was taken first to the iMac. Now it is being taken to the MacBook and MacBook Pro. But people to not slide iMacs and MacBooks into their pockets. There is no function for the glass top when stripped from its iPhone context. It's pure style. Style interfering with function. There's a more technical term for that: vanity.
The depths to which this depravity have fallen can be seen in Apple's own advertising graphics. In order to show that their screen now have the glossy glass surface, they actually use glare as their trademark feature. You can see the glare on the right sides of these graphics. In the bottom clips from their new video, they seem to delight in the reflections of the keyboard on the screen:
Update, January 2014: As of the last product update cycle, Apple now offers no screens whatsoever without glare. Apple introduced on June 11, 2012 a new “anti-glare” coating on the Retina displays, which they claim reduces reflections by 75%, but even if true, that amounts to only two f-stops on a camera, which hardly eliminates the reflected images of oneself and the room from the experience of using their displays. One can only hope that anti-glare technology can rescue us from the imposition of Apple's glass fetish.
