Amen to this. I've never understood the appeal of glossy displays. To me they're almost unusuable except under the most ideal lighting conditions.
Most consumers even prefer glossy vs matte (especially when they see them side to side at the shop) because the matte coating (obviously) reduces brightness and colors are perceived as less vibrant. Of course, as soon as you have to work with them (apart from viewing a movie in a dark room) you'll regret it.
Cheaper + clueless consumer = market trend.
The previous generation of MBP had both options. I bought the matte, and the price (IIRC) was the same.
I believe that Apple didn't offer this option for these models from the beginning because the screen of unibody machines has glass in front of it and so the process to add the coating wasn't ready yet or it was much more costly.
So the matte doesn't have the glass?
One thing I like of the glass screen is that it is probably easier to clean and in general more durable (except if you drop it on the floor, of course).
Business is packed full of contradictions from rules they've created for themselves, like using uniforms and team building exercises to help the workers feel part of a group, but positively crap themselves at the idea of their workers unionising due to feeling like part of a group.
Consumers on the other hand are relatively simple, give them something bright and shiny and they love it. Essentially we shop like Magpies, people frequently buy the wrong product for themselves because it's the better advertised and branded product.
Possible disturbing glare and reflections on the screen or other equipment shall be prevented by co-ordinating workplace and workstation layout with the positioning and technical characteristics of the artificial light sources.
Having said that, the glass on the unibody does look easy to keep clean.
Easy test: take one of each, and go outside.
Sunlight washes out a matte screen to the point of being impossible to use.
Glossy screens reflect much of that light away, leaving the screen still legible.
As someone that used to do a lot of work outdoors on a laptop, there's no comparison. Glossy screens are usable in FAR, FAR more varied lighting conditions. Too much direct light and a matte screen becomes completely useless.
I think saying, "Glossy screens reflect much of that light away, leaving the screen still legible" is magical thinking. The reflected light goes into your eye, just like the light that's coming from the screen.
A sufficiently bright glossy screen and placing the lappy out of direct sunlight could overcome this problem, but I'm pretty darned sure matte screens work better than shiny ones outdoors.
Don't go by sketchy memory. Take one of each laptop - borrow a co-worker's, if necessary - go outside, and expose each screen to direct sunlight.
Observe how the matte screen diffuses the light across the entire screen surface.
Also observe how glossy screens (which, it turns out, don't come in parabola shapes, and as such aren't reflecting all incoming light to one point) aren't washed out like the matte. There's glare, of course, but you'll quickly see the difference.
Given sufficiently bright direct light, matte glare is MURDER compared to reflective glare. Matte is ideal for office settings, but far inferior in sunlight.
No. Not choice. Evidence says you're wrong. Evidence trumps theory. Them's the rules of science.
Don't go by sketchy memory. Take one of each laptop - borrow a co-worker's, if necessary - go outside, and expose each screen to direct sunlight.
This isn't sketchy memory I'm talking about here. I still own the glossy screen laptop, and I also have a new Mini 9 with a glossy screen, and both can be cranked up nice and bright. I know they're unusable outdoors. And I know that my new laptop is quite usable outdoors even in low-power (dim screen) mode. I just took them all outside for a side-by-side. I mostly see my face and shirt in the glossy lappies, while the matte screen is quite usable.
Neither type of screen is great in direct sunlight, of course, but the matte screen can actually be used even in direct sunlight. The glossy screens cannot. At least not by me...maybe my eyes are worse than most (actually that's not a maybe, I'm damned near legally blind without glasses or contacts).
Anyway, as I mentioned, sufficient brightness can somewhat overcome the problems of glossy screens outdoors. Newer laptops are brighter than older ones, so if you upgraded from a matte screen from a few years back to a newer Apple laptop with a much brighter glossy screen, you might feel like the newer screen is more usable even in sunlight.
But, I'm absolutely certain a good matte screen is better for working outdoors than a good glossy screen.
The good news for you and your glossy screen preference is that since glossy screens are cheaper to manufacture, they are far more common. You will be able to buy glossy screens to your hearts content. I, on the other hand, have to be a bit more selective, and usually spend a bit more (generally only the high end Dell models have the matte option).
On the other hand a glossy screen is a mirror and distracting compared to a matte screen in all other cases.
I've never been in a situation where I couldn't prevent direct sunlight from hitting my screen. I am in conditions all the time where reflections would distract me and I cannot orient the screen to fix it. This doesn't seem like a difficult decision.
I've used my macbook pro in the full midday sun on my back with no problem. The matte screen on my 15" powerbook was pretty much unusable outside unless it was dark.
What the problem is with glossy displays is that they act like a half-silvered piece of glass. If the brightness on the outside gets too high, they turn into a mirror and it's near impossible to see through. However if the brightness remains high on the inside, you can see through with perfect clarity.
So long as the back lighting can get brighter than the fore lighting, the glossy screen can be amazing. It has a few problems, like glares (where reflections and such cause light levels to peak higher than the back light), however these are really only a problem if you have to max out your back light.
Apple should be designing their laptop screens like they do their iPod screens. My brightness on my iPod is set to ~0% and inside it is perfect, even for most tv shows (no dark moody movies though), and outside I rarely need to put it up to 100% on the sunniest of days. This would be the ideal, but until laptops actually become ultra-portable I don't think this is a huge concern.
I think it's a trend of the new-geek to want to be outside in nature when working, so hopefully some ultra-powerful back lights are going to be available on high-end laptops for use outside.
They look nicer when the computer is turned off? Is that really worth the extra glare for people?
Matte never look black, more a sort of dark grey. Contrast+brightness on glossy seems better.