“As of last week’s special launch event, Apple has finally answered the call for an updated MacBook Pro, giving its flagship mobile an overhaul on both the outside and the inside. And boy, are there a lot of changes. A single unibody enclosure. An expanded, button-free trackpad. Multiple GPU units,” Clint Ecker and Jacqui Cheng report for Ars Technica.
“In a controversial move, Apple now offers only glossy screens on its MacBook Pro line. Previously, customers had a choice… Consumers in general—and especially crotchety Mac users—love arguing about glossy vs. matte. Everyone has their personal preferences, and the matte group is particularly vocal about their intense hatred for Apple’s decision,” Ecker and Cheng report.
“Apple’s excuse for going glossy-only is that there is only a small group of users who still use matte, while the vast (‘with a capital V,’ says Steve Jobs) majority of consumers like the contrast and color pop that glossy screens offer. This we can’t argue with. Nearly everyone we spoke to who considers themselves an “average” computer user preferred glossy screens for that exact reason. Where the real argument comes in, at least among our readership and the tech world, is whether glossy is preferable to graphic and video professionals,” Ecker and Cheng report.
MacDailyNews Note: You can easily make a glossy screen matte, but you simply cannot make a matte screen glossy. Apple MacBook, iMac screens too glossy? Apply inexpensive non-glare film – November 05, 2007
Ecker and Cheng continue, “Apple has introduced one, two, three, and four-finger multitouch gestures with this machine—more than any previous Mac laptop. The usual ones are all there—two-finger scrolling, pinch and zoom, document rotation, and two-finger-right-click. But now, if you’re using a new MacBook Pro, you can also use three fingers to go back and forth in Safari, for example (three finger swipes do different things in different applications). Four finger swipes let you switch between apps like you would with Command+Tab, and four-finger swipes up and down activate Exposé and/or expose your desktop. This doesn’t seem like much to fawn over on paper, but once you get used to some of those four-finger swipes, you’ll fall in love.”
Full review (part one; part two coming tomorrow) – recommended – here.
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