It's classic Apple to spend over a decade insisting that that glossy screens were the best option, and then to eventually roll out a matte screen as a "premium" feature with a bunch of marketing around it.
Historically, traditional matte screen finishes exhibited poor optical qualities by scattering ambient light, which tended to wash out colors. This scattering process also affected the light from individual pixels, causing it to refract into neighboring pixels.
This reduced overall image quality and caused pixel-fine details, such as small text, to appear smeary on high-density LCDs. In contrast, well-designed glossy displays provide a superior visual experience by minimizing internal refraction and reflecting ambient light at high angles, which reduces display pollution. Consequently, glossy screens often appear much brighter, blacks appear blacker without being washed out, colors show a higher dynamic range, and small details remain crisper. High-quality glass glossy displays are often easy to use even in full daylight, and reflections are manageable because they are full optical reflections with correct depth, allowing the user to focus on the screen content.
Apple's "nano texture" matte screens were engineered to solve the specific optical problems of traditional matte finishes, the washed-out colors and smeary details. But they cost more to make. The glossy option is still available, and still good.
I used to have a 2006 macbook pro with the matte screen. It was glorious. None of these issues were present or really noticeable. Maybe you'd notice it in lab setting but not irl. Kind of like 120hz and 4k; just useless to most peoples eyes at the distances people actually use these devices. I've only owned matte external monitors as well and again, no issues there.
The glossy era macbooks otoh have been a disaster in comparison imo. Unless your room is pitch black it is so easy to get external reflections. Using it outside sucks, you often see yourself more clearly than the actual contents on the screen. Little piece of dust on the screen you flick off becomes a fingerprint smear. The actual opening of the lid on the new thin bezel models means the top edge is never free of fingerprints. I'm inside right now and this M3 pro is on max brightness setting just to make it you know, usable, inside. I'm not sure if my screen is actually defectively dim or this is just how it is. Outside it is just barely bright enough to make out the screen. Really not much better than my old 2012 non retina model in terms of outdoor viewing which is a bit of a disappointment because the marketing material lead me to believe these new macbooks are extremely bright. I guess for HDR content maybe that is true but not for 99% of use cases.
120Hz is absolutely a noticeable improvement over 60Hz. I have a 60Hz iPhone and a 120Hz iPhone and the 60Hz one is just annoying to use. Everything feels so choppy.
I can't tell at all when my mbp is in 120hz or 60hz. I tried to set up a good test too by scrolling really fast while plugging and unplugging the power adapter (which kicks it into high power 120hz or low power 60hz).
I think it’s more noticeable if you are touch interacting with your screen during a drag. If you are scrolling using the mouse, you might not realize it at all like if you were scrolling with your finger.
One of those things that some people notice, some people don't. I'm definitely in the camp where I feel differences between 120hz and 60hz, but I don't feel 60hz as choppy, and beyond 120hz I can't notice any difference, but others seemingly can. Maybe it's our biology?
Basically everyone who has played videogames on pc will notice the difference. I easily notice a drop from 360Hz to 240Hz.
I also use 60Hz screens just fine, saying that getting used to 120Hz ruins slower displays is being dramatic. You can readjust to 60Hz again within 5 minutes. But I can still instantly tell which is higher refresh rate, at least up to 360Hz.
We're talking about monitors here, which usually have a mouse cursor on it for input. Of course it would be hard to tell between 60 vs 120Hz screens if you used both to play a 30FPS video.
At the distance I look at my TV screen (about 7 feet from the couch) I can't make out the pixels of the 1080p screen. 4k is lost on me. 2020 vision but I guess that is not enough.
The 2006 would probably have had 1080ish resolution. I think the GP's point is that at higher resolutions, matte has tended to have the issues they cited.
I am with you in preferring matte. For me, mostly because of reflections on glossy screens.
Even at ~100 dpi, the grainy character of matte coatings from that era was noticeable; my 2006 iMac and a Dell Ultrasharp from a few years later were both unmistakably grainy in a way that glossy displays are not. At the time, the matte coatings were an acceptable tradeoff and the best overall choice for many users and usage scenarios. But I can imagine they would have been quite problematic when we jumped to 200+ dpi.
> Unless your room is pitch black it is so easy to get external reflections
This is nearly my preferred setup, only I have wall lights on the wall behind the monitors so it's not truly a dark room (which is horrible for your eyes). No over head lights allowed on while I'm at the keyboard.
To each their own but I have a matte M4 Pro and I don't like it, and the screen is noticeably worse than my glossy M2 Pro.
There's a graininess to the screen that makes it feel a little worse at all times, meanwhile I never had a problem in daylight just cranking brightness into the XDR range using Lunar.
It's especially noticeable on light UIs, where empty space gets an RGB "sparkle" to it. I noticed the same thing when picking out my XDR years ago, so it seems like they never figured out how to solve it.
All of what you say is kind of sort of true in the sense that, if you are in a room with lots of off-axis light hitting your screen and darkness behind you and you yourself are not brightly lit, then the glossy screen is better. And the glossy screen is certainly sharper.
But if there’s a window or something bright behind you, the specular reflection from the glossy and generally not anti reflective coated screen can be so bright and so full of high frequency details that it almost completely obscures the image.
And since I might be trying to work involving text in a cafe as opposed to doing detailed artistic work in a studio, I would much prefer the matte surface.
I tend to do outdoor things outdoors, so occasionally cranking up brightness is not an issue.
I'd much rather do that than to have a granier screen with worse viewing angles all the time I'm not in direct sunlight, so next time around I'll be back on glossy.
Do you prefer glossy paper work? glossy book pages? glossy construction documents? The preference for a non-reflective surface for the relaying of dense information has been established for decades.
You know what's glossy? Movie posters and postcards.
ooh, my feathers were a bit ruffled (for reasons unrelated) when I wrote the above.
I still say for comfortable all day viewing and productivity, there is no comparison. Glossy does have more pop on a phone or watching movies in the dark, but I'd go blind doing that all day every day..
non-reflective surfaces you cite have pigments on TOP. screens have depth causing parallax and light spreading. Your point would be valid if screens were paper-thin and image pixels came out the very surface
Kind of a cool thing about being nearsighted. Without glasses, I can get very close to things and still focus on them, i get to see very small details.
Somebody drank its portion of cool aid for sure. There is that little detail that glossy screens needed absolutely perfect conditions in front of them to not reflect literally whole world, making resulting visuals often subpar to matte. I have never, ever been in work conditions in past 20 years that didn't manifest this in annoying and distracting way.
I haven't seen a single display that ever overcame that properly for long term work. Sure, phones use it but they increased luminosity to absurd level to be readable, not a solution I prefer for daily long work.
I admit there are corner cases of pro graphics where it made sense (with corresponding changes to environment) but I am not discussing this here.
Sounds like Apple marketing wankery. I have a matte high density LCD from 2013 (Lenovo) that looks great. Does Apple even make the displays? What exactly are they "engineering" here?
The coatings, which do matter quite a bit when you are optimising for some durability/optical quality tradeoff.
Glass covers make screens more durable, but imply internal and external reflections. Laminated screens on glass panes solves the internal reflections and improve transmission, but do not help with glare and external reflections. Those can be improved by texturing the glass, but at the cost of diffraction and smearing, leading to a decrease in effective resolution. Unless the texture becomes small enough, but then you need it to be durable enough to avoid being wiped or damaged by things that might come into contact with the screen.
It turns out that there is a lot more than the bottom layers that matter in a display. You can see all these problems being solved in succession when looking at the evolution of Apple’s displays over the years (and others’, but it is much easier to find information about the good and bad sides of any Apple product). It’s fascinating, actually.
[edit] add the issue of oils on the human skin and you have do deal with oleophobic coatings for touch screens, which is another very important factor to consider. In addition to how the touch sensors are integrated.
If anything, Apple was right back then.
Glossy has so many benefits for the places where you’d use a computer, it’s not even close. Having the option to pay premium for those few that work in environments where matte helps them makes sense. I’d pay money for my display to not be matte.
Apple was actually late to the glossy display party. HP and Dell moved to them a few years before Apple. I don't think Apple was "insisting" on them, but rather following an industry trend that they were late to.
I wonder if they will (re)introduce premium keyboards with sculpted keys that self-center your fingers someday. magsafe coming back was nice, maybe more extra ports?
MagSafe + SD card reader + headphone jack + USB-C/TB4 only ports is fine by me. In 2025, I'm well past needing USB-C to USB-A dongles. We've had since what 2015/16 to start the conversion to C only.
They are really good at selling a small quantitative improvement that causes them to start using something, as a new type of thing going from impossible to possible. As if the tech didn’t just didn’t exist before Apple started using it.
It is probably a pretty good screen, though.
I don’t really like Apple overall. But, to some extent, it’s like… well, maybe that’s a good way of selling incremental engineering improvements.
i recently worked with a macbook pro and it caused uncomfortable feelings of eyestrain. i had some app that was supposed to disable the temporal dithering but i'm not sure if it helped. i'm curious if there's anyone else on here like me who has experienced eyestrain with macbooks where the nano texture display has helped.
> It's classic Apple to spend over a decade insisting that that glossy screens were the best option
I don't recall Apple ever "insisting" anything about glossy vs. matte. They simply eliminated the matte option without comment, and finally brought it back many years later.
If you have a reference to a public statement from Apple defending the elimination of the matte option, I'd like to see it.
To be clear, I've been complaining about glossy Macs ever since matte was eliminated, and I too purchased an M4 MacBook Pro soon after it was available.
> They simply eliminated the matte option without comment, and finally brought it back many years later.
Wasn’t the matte option that disappeared just then removing the glass in front of the screen? I seem to remember that (my MBP from that time was glossy).
The nano textured coating they are using now is quite complex and I am not quite sure it was applicable at such scales cheaply enough back in 2015.
It’s classic Apple commenter not know about Apple. They offered matte display upgrades to the MacBook Pro almost 20 years ago. The current glossy black display only became a product line wide choice with the retina displays in 2012, likely because they didn’t prioritize getting an appropriate matte glass finish on the retina screens due to low demand.
I can make the same argument about you. Matte display was the standard prior to Unibody MacBook Pros in 2008.
Glossy was an available option, but not the product line wide choice.
The top of the line Late 2008 MacBook Pro (not Unibody) included:
> An antiglare CCFL-backlit 17" widescreen 1680x1050 active-matrix display (a glossy display was offered via build-to-order at no extra cost, and a higher resolution LED-backlit 1920x1200 display also was offered for an extra US$100).
It's certainly on brand for Apple to face widespread criticism in the past for having matte screens as the default (computer magazines of the day found that matte finishes made screens too dim) only to face renewed criticism for dropping the thing they were previously criticized for.
It's always interesting to see users have somewhat strong opinions over fan vs fanless. I could never go Macbook Air again because I've been to hotter climates and do things beyond just using a browser and invariably the keyboard gets too warm for my fingertips. I need the MBPs fans and Mac Fan Control, noise be dammed.
> I still don’t like macOS and would prefer to run Linux on this laptop. But Asahi Linux still needs some work before it’s usable for me (I need external display output, and M4 support). This doesn’t bother me too much, though, as I don’t use this computer for serious work.
“I don’t use this computer for serious work.” Dropped $3K on MBP to play around with. Definitely should have gotten MBA
What does the purchase price have to do with it? Seems like it would entirely depend on circumstances and constraints, rather than cost, how long someone would run something
I mean if you ranked all the hobbies in terms of cost, casually spending $3k on a laptop would be near the top of the list. But there are a small number of hobbies that are vastly more expensive.
The distribution is highly skewed. Like wealth. The 99th percentile are near the top in rank (by definition) but nowhere near the top in absolute terms.
Just off the top of my head in hobbies that I've been in/around that this $3k would be a nothing burger: photography, wood working, grease monkey, cycling, gun collecting, antiquing, recreational substances...
Computers are actually cheap as far as Swiss taxes go (I bought my first MacBook Pro when intel came out at EPFL). I’m sure they got their computer for about the same price as you could get it in Hong Kong. But ya, food, rent, and services are pricey in Switzerland, even if you are just grabbing a croissant at coop.
Jokes aside, electronics is way cheaper here (also thanks to a relatively low VAT) than in most countries - although Apple keeps their prices pretty much the same across the world.
> My ideal MacBook would probably be a MacBook Air, but with the nano-texture display! :)
I agree on the nano-texture display having used one in person for a little bit. It's sort of like an ultra fine matte texture that isn't noticable while using it, but is noticable compared to other devices in the same room. I hope it becomes a more standard option on future devices.
That said, I've used Thinkpads with matte displays and while not as fine, they mostly have the same benefit.
I think my ideal would be a MacBook Air with both the nano-texture and higher 120hz refresh rate the Pro has. With that, I'll trade an extra second of compile time for my rust projects for the smaller form factor.
My mom has an M1 air, and its resolution is not great. Everything looks a bit blurry compared with my 4K Dell XPS my wife’s MacBook Pro m4 display. I guess the air’s native resolution means it has to do fractional scaling.
One thing that wasn't mentioned is the max sustained screen brightness for SDR, which is higher on the M4 Pro (1000 nits) compared to the M4 Air or M1 Pro (500 nits).
There’s an awesome app called Vivid which just opens the HDR max brightness. I use it all the time with my M3 Pro when working outside and I believe it also works on earlier models.
There are so many base features that are inexplicably relegated to 3rd party apps. Like a better finder experience. Or keeping screen on. Or NTFS writing.
NTFS writing isn't that inexplicable. NTFS is a proprietary filesystem that isn't at all simple to implement and the ntfs-3g driver got there by reverse engineering. Apple doesn't want to enable something by default that could potentially corrupt the filesystem because Microsoft could be doing something unexpected and undocumented.
Meanwhile if you need widespread compatibility nearly everything supports exFAT and if you need a real filesystem then the Mac and Windows drivers for open source filesystems are less likely to corrupt your data.
> There are so many base features that are inexplicably relegated to 3rd party apps.
> Like a better finder experience.
> Or keeping screen on.
Do you mind linking or naming which tools you use for those 2 purposes?
Asking out of pure curiosity, as for keeping the screen on, I just use `caffeinate -imdsu` in the terminal. Previously used Amphetamine, but I ended up having some minor issues with it, and I didn't need any of its advanced features (which could definitely be useful to some people, I admit, just not me). I just wanted to have a simple toggle for "keep the device and/or display from sleeping" mode, so I just switched to `caffeinate -imdsu` (which is built-in).
As for Finder, I didn't really feel the need for anything different, but I would gladly try out and potentially switch to something better, if you are willing to recommend your alternative.
I use the Finder and Raycast heavily. Raycast is not, and does not sell itself as, a Finder equivalent.
OP: I've tried all the Finder replacements. Path Finder, for example. At the end of the day, I went back to Finder. I always have a single window on screen with the tabs that I use all day. This helps enormously. I show it on YouTube here (direct timestamp link): https://youtu.be/BzJ8j0Q_Ed4?si=VVMD54EJ-XsxkYzm&t=338
Finder is the number one reason it boggles my mind that people claim macOS as head and shoulders above other OSes "for professionals". Finder is a badly designed child's toy that does nothing at all intuitively and, in fact, actively does things in the most backwards ways possible. It's like taking the worst of Explorer (from Windows XP), and smashing it into the worst of Dolphin or Nautilus; and, to top it off, then hiding any and all remaining useful functionality behind obscure hot keys.
It has been more or less the same as long as I've used it (20 years or so). Familiarity is a plus. It is a pretty simple and straightforward tool. I'm not sure what you might find perplexing about Finder.
Welcome to the Mac ecosystem. Where basic functionality is gated behind apps that Apple fans will tell you "are lifesavers and totally needed in Windows/Linux/etc)" for $4.99-14.99/piece. And, when they get popular enough, Apple will implement that basic functionality in its OS and silently extinguish those apps.
And that's when they let you modify/use your OS the way you want.
I don't mind that. 3rd party Mac utilities are nice: well designed, explained and do what they're supposed to because someone makes a living of it. I'm happy to pay these prices.
I would personally be afraid of using that in case it causes damage long-term to the screen either due to temperature or power draw or something. Idk if there are significant hardware differences but in this case I would guess there’s a real hardware reason for it?
...I'd have to say that seems like a radical reading of the text.
No; you can adjust screen brightness just fine with the built-in settings, including with the F1 and F2 keys (plus the Fn key if you've got them set that way).
This Vivid app is specifically for extra HDR levels of brightness. I've never had a problem with my M1 or M4 MBPs, either inside or outside, with the built-in brightness levels. (But, to be fair, I don't use it outside a lot.)
I also went for the fantastic nano texture display on my M4, after having glossy my M1. Very happy with the decision as I use the laptop in brightly lit enviroments so appreciate fewer reflections. Going back to a glossy display is a shock.
Can't you run small LLMs on like... a Macbook air M1? Some models are under 1B weights, they will be almost useless but I imagine you could run them on anything from the last 10 years.
But yeah if you wanna run 600B+ weights models your gonna need an insane setup to run it locally.
> The nano texture display is great at reducing reflections. I could immediately see the difference when placing two laptops side by side: The bright Apple Store lights showed up very prominently on the normal display, and were almost not visible at all on the nano texture display.
This is a quiet boon for those who enjoy working outdoors but find the sun/brightness a problem.
An frequently overlooked point is the display brightness. The pro models offer 1600 nits peak brightness, which makes these good units for looking at HDR content, especially if you like to take photos or edit videos. Meanwhile the Air maxes out at 500 nits, so the effect and contrast is drastically reduced for those models.
20 years ago I bought a G3 iBook because the hardware was lovely and the system was supported perfectly by stock Debian woody. (Hands up if you remember having to bless your laptop with “holy penguin pee”, part of the output of the yaboot bootloader used in PowerPC systems!)
Times changed and the best hardware for me right now is a Dell XPS from the model lines a few years back that looked like an aluminum sandwich with a black plastic filling. These machines are fantastic but (1) no OLED, (2) now high speed refresh rate, and (3) the keyboard isn’t great.
Could this modern Apple hardware bring me back to Free OS on pretty hardware, or is there something else I should try?
Asahi (Linux) lags quite far behind the latest Apple hardware release. If you want the Linux experience on Apple hardware, I think the best move is full-screen VM. Performance of that is more than good enough, but it does mean you are running a full non-free software stack to get to your free software VM.
I bought one of those iBooks for Debian linux, but I found the resolution was a bit small for X. At the time, I had a thing for non-intel architectures. Prior to that, I had done a lot of work packaging up Debian for Sparc machines. I had access to a wide variety of Sun workstations at my job as a sysadmin at a university.
How much of a difference would I see in compute between an M2 and M4 for example? Assuming it’s the same RAM. Did they also make the gpu and neural engine that much better between the two?
I was on the fence for same reason - should I get the nano display? I opted for the 15" MBA, and the display has been great. Way better than my 2019 Macbook Pro. I've had zero issues with glare, but I'm also in an office environment during the day and use it at night when home.
funny i was recently picking between a glossy and nano texture screen and came to the opposite conclusion — the glossy screen’s image was so much more crisp, and i didn’t really see much difference in terms of reflection
lots of people can notice that. my last job involved meticulously timing our software's input-tp-display latency, testing viewers' responses to it, and fighting for each and every ms we should shave off of it.
I definitely notice the difference between 10 ms and 26 ms. 26 ms already feel sluggish when playing drums, guitars or keyboard instruments. But there is no way anyone can feel a difference of 1 ms.
"My ideal MacBook would probably be a MacBook Air, but with the nano-texture display! :)"
Mine as well. What is the likelihood this will happen?
I have a hunch it will not and they will either scrap the nano texture completely or keep it as differentiator for the Pro line, but I am curious what others think.
Mine too, and I bought an air in the last generation and I barely use it because I thought the 60hz display would be ok, but I've been living with 120's everywhere for long enough the 60hz is actually horrible to use now. First world problems for sure, but it's enough that I literally don't use the machine.
I’ve used MBP for many many years, but recently bought an MB Air. I slightly miss the extra ports. I love how much lighter it is. I never notice a speed difference. I’m always ssh’d into a Linux box if crunching any real data, and for UI stuff the CPU doesn’t need a fan at all. Definitely gonna stick with MB Air.
We used to sell conversion kits to shoehorn a pixel qi display into the thinkpad x230. Since apple has put in 1,000nit displays on the pros, we don't bother anymore. The nano texture sold me and it performs wonderfully outdoors. I hate giving apple money but here I am.
It's because Apple sucks the least. They still suck, though. They could build decent computers that are upgradeable, but they refuse because they want your $$$$ in large amounts.
I upgraded from M4 to M5 MBP because I broke my M4's screen and so my company ordered a replacement M5 while the M4 is being repaired. I can't really notice a difference at all. It's an absolute work horse, but so was the M4. I _did_ spring for the nano texture display this time around, and that is definitely nice (but nothing to do with the M5)
I have the nano-texture display on my M4. At this point, I don't think I can go back to standard glass. For text work, I find there are no downsides. If you work more with color and detailed art, I think that's the only case where you need to put extra thought into it. Otherwise get it
I got the nanotexture on my current work M4 MBP—it doesn't completely eliminate reflected light, but it diffuses it a lot. If I were in a dark room with a light source positioned perfectly to reflect off my screen in my face, I would probably still have trouble with it, but in general I don't need to reposition the screen to avoid glare nearly as much.
I would say it's worth the extra, what, $200 or so? on the price of the M4 MBP. If it were much more expensive, I would be less sure.
No, I love it. I had non-matte glass screens in my MacBooks since 2012 and I didn't realize how much better it is to no longer see lights reflected in there all the time.
I just upgraded from an M1 to an M5 a couple days ago.
It is rather shocking how much faster everything feels given I didn't think my old macbook pro was slow. While I expected xcode builds to be faster (and they are), I was a bit shocked when opening a new firefox tab was instantaneous since I hadn't noticed it wasn't before.
Another thing I didn't expect is that the new speakers have noticeably more bass and can get quite a bit louder.
I didn't get the nano-textured display, because having to adjust the display angle to get colors to render correctly is more annoying than having to do it for glare (I don't work in a high-glare environment).
I have done real work, using a computer 10+ hours a day on every ecosystem, Windows, Linux, Mac. I've used each for ~10 years a piece.
My most recent laptop died and it really showed me what I appreciate in a laptop, performance, build quality, good battery, low noise, good ergonomics.
I was sick of the recent overheating generation of laptops that don't last more than a couple years under my usage.
As a result I decided to try to switch back to a macbook after a decade hiatus.
Absolute garbage software. The hardware is good however after trialing it for a week the amount of bullshit that is MacOS was enough, instead I decided to get an AMD framework laptop.
Best decision ever.
I have a laptop that's got great quality, can be upgraded without paying a $5k tax, can replace the keyboard for $100 instead of $700, it works with me rather than against me and my wallet.
The part about noticing web pages loading (at most) 8ms faster due to the display is total nonsense. Many can notice the difference between 60 and 120Hz when scrolling, but definitely not for a page load. That’s less than 1/10th of the blink of an eye.
If page load seems noticeably faster, it’s far more likely that it’s simply a faster machine. Or imaginary.
Same experience. I cannot consider any screen that does not have the nano texture coating. It is exceptional and a huge improvement. To the point that I actually prefer a tester Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra over Apple’s own iPhone display.
I couldn't really trust the author of the review after he established his preference for "quiet computers" having no cooling slots or whatever he called them. Okay, fine, you're placing aesthetics above actual performance, then. The Pro laptops are the only ones viable for any really hardcore work because if you push the Air too hard it is going to just slow down in order to stay cool and that's not what you want if you are doing graphics work or in my case, I was running a bunch of containers in K8s. I never bought an Air because it was too similar to an iPad.
The thing that mostly irks me about Apple these days is soldered in RAM and non-upgradeable storage. Apple is still the best thing going for doing most pro development work, but it's just so irritating that they shit on us like this. I did buy an M4 Mini and expanded it some. My 2019 MB Pro is siting here on the desk, mostly unused these days. The Intel Macs are basically dead now--still great computers, but no longer desirable. My daughter is doing Graphic Arts in college and is using another 2019 Pro for that. I've used Macs continuously since at least 2014.
>The thing that mostly irks me about Apple these days is soldered in RAM and non-upgradeable storage.
Isn't the 'soldered-in' RAM and storage fundamental to the M-series architecture? It's not like there's a board with individual chips sitting in it for the RAM and storage, that could potentially have been 'popped out' if they weren't soldered in. It's all one giant 'chip' now.
I still have a 2019 MacBook Pro with the non-butterfly keyboard and escape key (unfortunately still the Touch Bar).
It’s still a great laptop except the battery lasts maybe 75 mins. I just keep it plugged in but despite the fact it’s 6 years old I don’t notice any problems with it.
I’m tempted to buy an M4 laptop just because it’s “new” and “faster” but then I ask myself Why? It’s the same thing with my iPhone. Until my laptop dies or there is something functional that I can’t do with my old laptop I’m going to keep using it.
After 18 years of Mac-abstinence, I just bought a MacBook Air and realized there is apparently no way to change the App Store language without changing region and payment method. WTF? That seems like the most basic thing one could imagine. What has happened to Apple?
I was able to switch the App Store language from English to Spanish by changing my primary language in System Settings > Language & Region > Preferred Languages.
It didn't require me to switch my region or payment method.
Why did you think Apple was user friendly or flexible...it's the Apple way or the highway. Most only stick around because of the currently superior hardware
i'll never understand picky preferences about monitors... i still use an LG flatron wide that's old enough to vote... and when i slack at the apple store, it's not like i notice some life-or-death difference. a monitor is a monitor.
ok, i guess for graphic designers it might matter more?
If you'd like to change that, you can go to System Settings → Battery → Options → Wake for Network Access
Or just search for "Power Nap" (what it used to be called). They usually wake up intermittently for Time Machine backups, wake-on-lane and other stuff.
macOS does not have auto update. In fact it doesn't bother you with any updates which lead to me behind patches behind because I was accustomed to Windows nagging me for updates every week.
It's classic Apple to spend over a decade insisting that that glossy screens were the best option, and then to eventually roll out a matte screen as a "premium" feature with a bunch of marketing around it.
Historically, traditional matte screen finishes exhibited poor optical qualities by scattering ambient light, which tended to wash out colors. This scattering process also affected the light from individual pixels, causing it to refract into neighboring pixels.
This reduced overall image quality and caused pixel-fine details, such as small text, to appear smeary on high-density LCDs. In contrast, well-designed glossy displays provide a superior visual experience by minimizing internal refraction and reflecting ambient light at high angles, which reduces display pollution. Consequently, glossy screens often appear much brighter, blacks appear blacker without being washed out, colors show a higher dynamic range, and small details remain crisper. High-quality glass glossy displays are often easy to use even in full daylight, and reflections are manageable because they are full optical reflections with correct depth, allowing the user to focus on the screen content.
Apple's "nano texture" matte screens were engineered to solve the specific optical problems of traditional matte finishes, the washed-out colors and smeary details. But they cost more to make. The glossy option is still available, and still good.
I used to have a 2006 macbook pro with the matte screen. It was glorious. None of these issues were present or really noticeable. Maybe you'd notice it in lab setting but not irl. Kind of like 120hz and 4k; just useless to most peoples eyes at the distances people actually use these devices. I've only owned matte external monitors as well and again, no issues there.
The glossy era macbooks otoh have been a disaster in comparison imo. Unless your room is pitch black it is so easy to get external reflections. Using it outside sucks, you often see yourself more clearly than the actual contents on the screen. Little piece of dust on the screen you flick off becomes a fingerprint smear. The actual opening of the lid on the new thin bezel models means the top edge is never free of fingerprints. I'm inside right now and this M3 pro is on max brightness setting just to make it you know, usable, inside. I'm not sure if my screen is actually defectively dim or this is just how it is. Outside it is just barely bright enough to make out the screen. Really not much better than my old 2012 non retina model in terms of outdoor viewing which is a bit of a disappointment because the marketing material lead me to believe these new macbooks are extremely bright. I guess for HDR content maybe that is true but not for 99% of use cases.
>I used to have a 2006 macbook pro with the matte screen. It was glorious. None of these issues were present or really noticeable.
They were absolutely noticable. Contrast was crap. I immediately went with glossy with my next MBP around that same period.
[delayed]
That's what Lunar is for. Just bump up the brightness to HDR levels. Helps a lot with the glare, but will take a bite out of the battery life.
120Hz is absolutely a noticeable improvement over 60Hz. I have a 60Hz iPhone and a 120Hz iPhone and the 60Hz one is just annoying to use. Everything feels so choppy.
I can't tell at all when my mbp is in 120hz or 60hz. I tried to set up a good test too by scrolling really fast while plugging and unplugging the power adapter (which kicks it into high power 120hz or low power 60hz).
I think it’s more noticeable if you are touch interacting with your screen during a drag. If you are scrolling using the mouse, you might not realize it at all like if you were scrolling with your finger.
One of those things that some people notice, some people don't. I'm definitely in the camp where I feel differences between 120hz and 60hz, but I don't feel 60hz as choppy, and beyond 120hz I can't notice any difference, but others seemingly can. Maybe it's our biology?
I would bet most people would fail a blind test.
Basically everyone who has played videogames on pc will notice the difference. I easily notice a drop from 360Hz to 240Hz.
I also use 60Hz screens just fine, saying that getting used to 120Hz ruins slower displays is being dramatic. You can readjust to 60Hz again within 5 minutes. But I can still instantly tell which is higher refresh rate, at least up to 360Hz.
Videogames also do the input every loop so there's a big difference there. It must be evaluated with a video only.
We're talking about monitors here, which usually have a mouse cursor on it for input. Of course it would be hard to tell between 60 vs 120Hz screens if you used both to play a 30FPS video.
4K too, at anything over 15” or so.
I’m always baffled people insist otherwise.
At the distance I look at my TV screen (about 7 feet from the couch) I can't make out the pixels of the 1080p screen. 4k is lost on me. 2020 vision but I guess that is not enough.
Resolution is much less important for video than it is for text and user interfaces.
Unless the screen is right in front of your face, video codecs and their parameters matter more than FHD vs UHD, IMO.
At least to me, with corrected vision, a high quality 1080p video looks better than streaming quality 4k at the same distance.
Compare apples to apples, e.g. gaming, and the difference is glaring.
I’m 3m from my TV and I can absolutely tell 4K from 1080p, but it is indeed subtle.
But a fraction of that distance to my monitor makes even 4K barely good enough. I’d need a much smaller 4K monitor to not notice pixels.
I agree with this, but I use a 43" 4K TV as my monitor... which probably isn't what you meant.
I notice it on my 27” monitor. I’ve seen 15” 4K displays and that’s about the limit where I can see the difference.
My eyesight isn’t perfect, either.
We have different eyes and different purposes, I think.
The 2006 would probably have had 1080ish resolution. I think the GP's point is that at higher resolutions, matte has tended to have the issues they cited.
I am with you in preferring matte. For me, mostly because of reflections on glossy screens.
Even at ~100 dpi, the grainy character of matte coatings from that era was noticeable; my 2006 iMac and a Dell Ultrasharp from a few years later were both unmistakably grainy in a way that glossy displays are not. At the time, the matte coatings were an acceptable tradeoff and the best overall choice for many users and usage scenarios. But I can imagine they would have been quite problematic when we jumped to 200+ dpi.
> Unless your room is pitch black it is so easy to get external reflections
This is nearly my preferred setup, only I have wall lights on the wall behind the monitors so it's not truly a dark room (which is horrible for your eyes). No over head lights allowed on while I'm at the keyboard.
To each their own but I have a matte M4 Pro and I don't like it, and the screen is noticeably worse than my glossy M2 Pro.
There's a graininess to the screen that makes it feel a little worse at all times, meanwhile I never had a problem in daylight just cranking brightness into the XDR range using Lunar.
It's especially noticeable on light UIs, where empty space gets an RGB "sparkle" to it. I noticed the same thing when picking out my XDR years ago, so it seems like they never figured out how to solve it.
Both 4k and 120hz were very noticeable improvements imo.
> High-quality glass glossy displays are often easy to use even in full daylight…
Not my experience in lit environments. Looking at a mirror-like surface trying to distinguish content from reflections is exhausting.
Unless I blast my eyes at full brightness which is more exhausting.
To each their own. Matte screens always have a massive smudge in bright light and look terrible and grainy in the dark. I can’t stand them.
All of what you say is kind of sort of true in the sense that, if you are in a room with lots of off-axis light hitting your screen and darkness behind you and you yourself are not brightly lit, then the glossy screen is better. And the glossy screen is certainly sharper.
But if there’s a window or something bright behind you, the specular reflection from the glossy and generally not anti reflective coated screen can be so bright and so full of high frequency details that it almost completely obscures the image.
And since I might be trying to work involving text in a cafe as opposed to doing detailed artistic work in a studio, I would much prefer the matte surface.
> High-quality glass glossy displays are often easy to use even in full daylight,
I guess Apple cheaped out on their glossy displays, because I definitely didn't care for mine in full daylight
Glossy vs matte has started to matter less as the peak brightness goes up.
When your screen can do 1,600 nits, daylight isn't as much of a problem
I'd rather not blow my battery budget on fighting the sun for visibility.
I tend to do outdoor things outdoors, so occasionally cranking up brightness is not an issue.
I'd much rather do that than to have a granier screen with worse viewing angles all the time I'm not in direct sunlight, so next time around I'll be back on glossy.
Yeah this m3 pro isn't really doing 1600 nits. Marginally brighter than my 2012.
To get to actual 1600 nits you need to use scripts.
https://github.com/SerjoschDuering/macbook_1600nits
Not sure the impacts to display health or battery running the screen full bore like this.
I use Lunar and have used it on my Pro Display XDR and every MBP with XDR I've owned with 0 issues.
Do you prefer glossy paper work? glossy book pages? glossy construction documents? The preference for a non-reflective surface for the relaying of dense information has been established for decades.
You know what's glossy? Movie posters and postcards.
Paper, books, and construction documents all use reflected and not refracted light.
ooh, my feathers were a bit ruffled (for reasons unrelated) when I wrote the above.
I still say for comfortable all day viewing and productivity, there is no comparison. Glossy does have more pop on a phone or watching movies in the dark, but I'd go blind doing that all day every day..
non-reflective surfaces you cite have pigments on TOP. screens have depth causing parallax and light spreading. Your point would be valid if screens were paper-thin and image pixels came out the very surface
You'd need a jewelers loupe to appreciate parallax and spreading. Not a real problem in general use.
i use a matte screen protector on my iphone. without it, i can see pixels. with it, i cannot. no loupe, just my nearsighted eyes
You can see actual pixels on a retina iphone? That is remarkable eyesight. I could do it on old non retina iphones but not on retina models.
Kind of a cool thing about being nearsighted. Without glasses, I can get very close to things and still focus on them, i get to see very small details.
You make it sound like what they, according to you, tried to do was a success. One look at nano texture screen is enough for a resounding no.
I have a feeling that you've never actually seen a matte screen.
Somebody drank its portion of cool aid for sure. There is that little detail that glossy screens needed absolutely perfect conditions in front of them to not reflect literally whole world, making resulting visuals often subpar to matte. I have never, ever been in work conditions in past 20 years that didn't manifest this in annoying and distracting way.
I haven't seen a single display that ever overcame that properly for long term work. Sure, phones use it but they increased luminosity to absurd level to be readable, not a solution I prefer for daily long work.
I admit there are corner cases of pro graphics where it made sense (with corresponding changes to environment) but I am not discussing this here.
These AI comments suck. I mean sure. It’s probably true. But the pollution of our social interactions with slop is so icky.
I receive these highly polished emails from people and am just annoyed. Do you expect me to answer your robot?!
Maybe there needs to be a bad style minimum for a forum in the future. Only human imperfections allowed.
Ok. Of topic maybe.
I love the Nano texture displays. And the glossy glass ones were also great and the best ones out there.
Sounds like Apple marketing wankery. I have a matte high density LCD from 2013 (Lenovo) that looks great. Does Apple even make the displays? What exactly are they "engineering" here?
> What exactly are they "engineering" here?
The coatings, which do matter quite a bit when you are optimising for some durability/optical quality tradeoff.
Glass covers make screens more durable, but imply internal and external reflections. Laminated screens on glass panes solves the internal reflections and improve transmission, but do not help with glare and external reflections. Those can be improved by texturing the glass, but at the cost of diffraction and smearing, leading to a decrease in effective resolution. Unless the texture becomes small enough, but then you need it to be durable enough to avoid being wiped or damaged by things that might come into contact with the screen.
It turns out that there is a lot more than the bottom layers that matter in a display. You can see all these problems being solved in succession when looking at the evolution of Apple’s displays over the years (and others’, but it is much easier to find information about the good and bad sides of any Apple product). It’s fascinating, actually.
[edit] add the issue of oils on the human skin and you have do deal with oleophobic coatings for touch screens, which is another very important factor to consider. In addition to how the touch sensors are integrated.
If anything, Apple was right back then. Glossy has so many benefits for the places where you’d use a computer, it’s not even close. Having the option to pay premium for those few that work in environments where matte helps them makes sense. I’d pay money for my display to not be matte.
Apple was actually late to the glossy display party. HP and Dell moved to them a few years before Apple. I don't think Apple was "insisting" on them, but rather following an industry trend that they were late to.
I wonder if they will (re)introduce premium keyboards with sculpted keys that self-center your fingers someday. magsafe coming back was nice, maybe more extra ports?
MagSafe + SD card reader + headphone jack + USB-C/TB4 only ports is fine by me. In 2025, I'm well past needing USB-C to USB-A dongles. We've had since what 2015/16 to start the conversion to C only.
They are really good at selling a small quantitative improvement that causes them to start using something, as a new type of thing going from impossible to possible. As if the tech didn’t just didn’t exist before Apple started using it.
It is probably a pretty good screen, though.
I don’t really like Apple overall. But, to some extent, it’s like… well, maybe that’s a good way of selling incremental engineering improvements.
As someone who buys and likes Apple stuff, I agree, it's a signature move from them.
i recently worked with a macbook pro and it caused uncomfortable feelings of eyestrain. i had some app that was supposed to disable the temporal dithering but i'm not sure if it helped. i'm curious if there's anyone else on here like me who has experienced eyestrain with macbooks where the nano texture display has helped.
> It's classic Apple to spend over a decade insisting that that glossy screens were the best option
I don't recall Apple ever "insisting" anything about glossy vs. matte. They simply eliminated the matte option without comment, and finally brought it back many years later.
If you have a reference to a public statement from Apple defending the elimination of the matte option, I'd like to see it.
To be clear, I've been complaining about glossy Macs ever since matte was eliminated, and I too purchased an M4 MacBook Pro soon after it was available.
The "matte" options also are totally different approaches, different quality levels. They're not the same product.
> They simply eliminated the matte option without comment, and finally brought it back many years later.
Wasn’t the matte option that disappeared just then removing the glass in front of the screen? I seem to remember that (my MBP from that time was glossy).
The nano textured coating they are using now is quite complex and I am not quite sure it was applicable at such scales cheaply enough back in 2015.
The PowerBook and the first MacBook Pro were only matte.
A glossy option was introduced in 2006, but the MacBook Pro was still matte by default.
In 2008, the MacBook Pro case was redesigned, and then the display situation changed significantly.
It’s classic Apple commenter not know about Apple. They offered matte display upgrades to the MacBook Pro almost 20 years ago. The current glossy black display only became a product line wide choice with the retina displays in 2012, likely because they didn’t prioritize getting an appropriate matte glass finish on the retina screens due to low demand.
I can make the same argument about you. Matte display was the standard prior to Unibody MacBook Pros in 2008.
Glossy was an available option, but not the product line wide choice.
The top of the line Late 2008 MacBook Pro (not Unibody) included: > An antiglare CCFL-backlit 17" widescreen 1680x1050 active-matrix display (a glossy display was offered via build-to-order at no extra cost, and a higher resolution LED-backlit 1920x1200 display also was offered for an extra US$100).
https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/specs/macbook...
Are you an Apple commenter?
Downvoted for the unhelpful first sentence.
It's certainly on brand for Apple to face widespread criticism in the past for having matte screens as the default (computer magazines of the day found that matte finishes made screens too dim) only to face renewed criticism for dropping the thing they were previously criticized for.
It's always interesting to see users have somewhat strong opinions over fan vs fanless. I could never go Macbook Air again because I've been to hotter climates and do things beyond just using a browser and invariably the keyboard gets too warm for my fingertips. I need the MBPs fans and Mac Fan Control, noise be dammed.
> I still don’t like macOS and would prefer to run Linux on this laptop. But Asahi Linux still needs some work before it’s usable for me (I need external display output, and M4 support). This doesn’t bother me too much, though, as I don’t use this computer for serious work.
“I don’t use this computer for serious work.” Dropped $3K on MBP to play around with. Definitely should have gotten MBA
If you are going to start making a list of expensive hobbies, $3K for a computer isn't going to be anywhere near the top of the list.
The type of person shelling out 3k for a computer is not running it until the wheels come off.
What does the purchase price have to do with it? Seems like it would entirely depend on circumstances and constraints, rather than cost, how long someone would run something
Tells me they are price insensitive and probably get a new computer every couple of years.
I think it actually would be quite near the top, in terms of ranking. Most hobbies are a lot cheaper.
Of course, not near the top in terms of money because there are a few hobbies that cost vastly more.
What do you mean "in terms of ranking" vs "in terms of money"?
Median vs mean, essentially, is how I read it.
I mean if you ranked all the hobbies in terms of cost, casually spending $3k on a laptop would be near the top of the list. But there are a small number of hobbies that are vastly more expensive.
The distribution is highly skewed. Like wealth. The 99th percentile are near the top in rank (by definition) but nowhere near the top in absolute terms.
There’s some nuance to it.
Judging by the authors preference for Linux, I’m guessing this hobby has some professional applications as well.
$3k is the price of a very nice guitar, but I am not about to casually shell out that money every few years.
However, I earn my wage using a computer, so it’s a lot easier to justify staying relatively current on specs.
Just off the top of my head in hobbies that I've been in/around that this $3k would be a nothing burger: photography, wood working, grease monkey, cycling, gun collecting, antiquing, recreational substances...
He lives in Switzerland. $3K barely pays for a lunch and an espresso.
Computers are actually cheap as far as Swiss taxes go (I bought my first MacBook Pro when intel came out at EPFL). I’m sure they got their computer for about the same price as you could get it in Hong Kong. But ya, food, rent, and services are pricey in Switzerland, even if you are just grabbing a croissant at coop.
There's a reason the Zurich airport has a vending machine that sells slips of gold, platinum, and palladium
I'm not sure what the actual reason is, but my first instinct is "tax evasion".
Jokes aside, electronics is way cheaper here (also thanks to a relatively low VAT) than in most countries - although Apple keeps their prices pretty much the same across the world.
This is funny because MBA could mean two things.
Lmao plus MBA works great for relatively serious work. I was hesitant to switch from MBP but the M1 air almost never lets me down.
> My ideal MacBook would probably be a MacBook Air, but with the nano-texture display! :)
I agree on the nano-texture display having used one in person for a little bit. It's sort of like an ultra fine matte texture that isn't noticable while using it, but is noticable compared to other devices in the same room. I hope it becomes a more standard option on future devices.
That said, I've used Thinkpads with matte displays and while not as fine, they mostly have the same benefit.
It's the first matte screen on a MacBook since 2011.
I ran that thing for like 6 years til the replacement for the failed GPU failed again.
More matte screens please!
I think my ideal would be a MacBook Air with both the nano-texture and higher 120hz refresh rate the Pro has. With that, I'll trade an extra second of compile time for my rust projects for the smaller form factor.
are rust devs the new vegans?
I’d love an air with a high density display.
My mom has an M1 air, and its resolution is not great. Everything looks a bit blurry compared with my 4K Dell XPS my wife’s MacBook Pro m4 display. I guess the air’s native resolution means it has to do fractional scaling.
The Air has about 218dppi screen, but your wife might have a non-integer resolution selected.
Dang I was gonna get one with nano texture but the opinion was 50/50 everywhere so I went with the Devil I know
One thing that wasn't mentioned is the max sustained screen brightness for SDR, which is higher on the M4 Pro (1000 nits) compared to the M4 Air or M1 Pro (500 nits).
There’s an awesome app called Vivid which just opens the HDR max brightness. I use it all the time with my M3 Pro when working outside and I believe it also works on earlier models.
There are so many base features that are inexplicably relegated to 3rd party apps. Like a better finder experience. Or keeping screen on. Or NTFS writing.
NTFS writing isn't that inexplicable. NTFS is a proprietary filesystem that isn't at all simple to implement and the ntfs-3g driver got there by reverse engineering. Apple doesn't want to enable something by default that could potentially corrupt the filesystem because Microsoft could be doing something unexpected and undocumented.
Meanwhile if you need widespread compatibility nearly everything supports exFAT and if you need a real filesystem then the Mac and Windows drivers for open source filesystems are less likely to corrupt your data.
> There are so many base features that are inexplicably relegated to 3rd party apps.
> Like a better finder experience.
> Or keeping screen on.
Do you mind linking or naming which tools you use for those 2 purposes?
Asking out of pure curiosity, as for keeping the screen on, I just use `caffeinate -imdsu` in the terminal. Previously used Amphetamine, but I ended up having some minor issues with it, and I didn't need any of its advanced features (which could definitely be useful to some people, I admit, just not me). I just wanted to have a simple toggle for "keep the device and/or display from sleeping" mode, so I just switched to `caffeinate -imdsu` (which is built-in).
As for Finder, I didn't really feel the need for anything different, but I would gladly try out and potentially switch to something better, if you are willing to recommend your alternative.
Not op but raycast is for sure an improvement on the stock finder.
https://www.raycast.com/
I use the Finder and Raycast heavily. Raycast is not, and does not sell itself as, a Finder equivalent.
OP: I've tried all the Finder replacements. Path Finder, for example. At the end of the day, I went back to Finder. I always have a single window on screen with the tabs that I use all day. This helps enormously. I show it on YouTube here (direct timestamp link): https://youtu.be/BzJ8j0Q_Ed4?si=VVMD54EJ-XsxkYzm&t=338
You can use Raycast to directly open files. I show that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKbtoR2q_Ds&t=482s - still doesn't make it a Finder replacement.
Finder is the number one reason it boggles my mind that people claim macOS as head and shoulders above other OSes "for professionals". Finder is a badly designed child's toy that does nothing at all intuitively and, in fact, actively does things in the most backwards ways possible. It's like taking the worst of Explorer (from Windows XP), and smashing it into the worst of Dolphin or Nautilus; and, to top it off, then hiding any and all remaining useful functionality behind obscure hot keys.
It has been more or less the same as long as I've used it (20 years or so). Familiarity is a plus. It is a pretty simple and straightforward tool. I'm not sure what you might find perplexing about Finder.
Finder has become fine, but when I first switched to Mac, it was hard to believe Finder was so bad compared to XP-era Windows Explorer.
What's crazy is that Vivid app...costs money!
Looks like there's an OSS app that does basically the same thing: https://github.com/starkdmi/BrightXDR
Welcome to the Mac ecosystem. Where basic functionality is gated behind apps that Apple fans will tell you "are lifesavers and totally needed in Windows/Linux/etc)" for $4.99-14.99/piece. And, when they get popular enough, Apple will implement that basic functionality in its OS and silently extinguish those apps.
And that's when they let you modify/use your OS the way you want.
There’s multiple free versions and forcing HDR on isn’t a basic feature by any means.
I don't mind that. 3rd party Mac utilities are nice: well designed, explained and do what they're supposed to because someone makes a living of it. I'm happy to pay these prices.
I would personally be afraid of using that in case it causes damage long-term to the screen either due to temperature or power draw or something. Idk if there are significant hardware differences but in this case I would guess there’s a real hardware reason for it?
People have to pay money to change screen brightness on a Mac?!
...I'd have to say that seems like a radical reading of the text.
No; you can adjust screen brightness just fine with the built-in settings, including with the F1 and F2 keys (plus the Fn key if you've got them set that way).
This Vivid app is specifically for extra HDR levels of brightness. I've never had a problem with my M1 or M4 MBPs, either inside or outside, with the built-in brightness levels. (But, to be fair, I don't use it outside a lot.)
> I don’t use this computer for serious work.
Next.
I also went for the fantastic nano texture display on my M4, after having glossy my M1. Very happy with the decision as I use the laptop in brightly lit enviroments so appreciate fewer reflections. Going back to a glossy display is a shock.
Incredible hardware. Love that I can also run local llms on mine. https://github.com/Aider-AI/aider/issues/4526
But are these llms worth their salt?
With 128GB of memory they can have real world use cases. But they won’t be as good as SoTA hosted models.
They're not unless you curve the grading because they're running locally.
Which some people do, but I don't think the average person asking this question does (and I don't)
If you bought a fully-featured computer that supports compute shaders and didn't run local LLMs, you should be protesting in the street.
Can't you run small LLMs on like... a Macbook air M1? Some models are under 1B weights, they will be almost useless but I imagine you could run them on anything from the last 10 years.
But yeah if you wanna run 600B+ weights models your gonna need an insane setup to run it locally.
They "run" in the most technical sense, yes. But they're unusably slow.
> The nano texture display is great at reducing reflections. I could immediately see the difference when placing two laptops side by side: The bright Apple Store lights showed up very prominently on the normal display, and were almost not visible at all on the nano texture display.
This is a quiet boon for those who enjoy working outdoors but find the sun/brightness a problem.
An frequently overlooked point is the display brightness. The pro models offer 1600 nits peak brightness, which makes these good units for looking at HDR content, especially if you like to take photos or edit videos. Meanwhile the Air maxes out at 500 nits, so the effect and contrast is drastically reduced for those models.
Not just that but you can use Brightentosh to force it on.
I live in a sunny place with big windows and basically use it all day every day. When it turns off my screen feels broken I so prefer the brightness.
Normal content is still limited to 500 nits, and these being mini-LED displays, contrast is already infinite.
Unless you’re making Instagram content, very few photographers use HDR. Everything else will look the same on both screens.
20 years ago I bought a G3 iBook because the hardware was lovely and the system was supported perfectly by stock Debian woody. (Hands up if you remember having to bless your laptop with “holy penguin pee”, part of the output of the yaboot bootloader used in PowerPC systems!)
Times changed and the best hardware for me right now is a Dell XPS from the model lines a few years back that looked like an aluminum sandwich with a black plastic filling. These machines are fantastic but (1) no OLED, (2) now high speed refresh rate, and (3) the keyboard isn’t great.
Could this modern Apple hardware bring me back to Free OS on pretty hardware, or is there something else I should try?
Asahi (Linux) lags quite far behind the latest Apple hardware release. If you want the Linux experience on Apple hardware, I think the best move is full-screen VM. Performance of that is more than good enough, but it does mean you are running a full non-free software stack to get to your free software VM.
I bought one of those iBooks for Debian linux, but I found the resolution was a bit small for X. At the time, I had a thing for non-intel architectures. Prior to that, I had done a lot of work packaging up Debian for Sparc machines. I had access to a wide variety of Sun workstations at my job as a sysadmin at a university.
How much of a difference would I see in compute between an M2 and M4 for example? Assuming it’s the same RAM. Did they also make the gpu and neural engine that much better between the two?
I was on the fence for same reason - should I get the nano display? I opted for the 15" MBA, and the display has been great. Way better than my 2019 Macbook Pro. I've had zero issues with glare, but I'm also in an office environment during the day and use it at night when home.
funny i was recently picking between a glossy and nano texture screen and came to the opposite conclusion — the glossy screen’s image was so much more crisp, and i didn’t really see much difference in terms of reflection
I may have to check out the new nano display. The old matte display was really a superior choice to the glossy screens of the past several years.
You won't notice 8ms difference in input lag
lots of people can notice that. my last job involved meticulously timing our software's input-tp-display latency, testing viewers' responses to it, and fighting for each and every ms we should shave off of it.
Anyone can notice an entire frame of input lag.
The question is more whether it’ll bother you.
I have 165Hz monitors. Software feels noticeably more snappy.
Musicians can feel latencies as low as 1ms.
Apple is designing pro gear for its target audience.
Do you have a source for that? I saw a study a short while ago showing the “just noticeable difference” for audio latency was best case around 26ms.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3678299.3678331
I definitely notice the difference between 10 ms and 26 ms. 26 ms already feel sluggish when playing drums, guitars or keyboard instruments. But there is no way anyone can feel a difference of 1 ms.
The study wasn’t conducted with musicians making music.
I highly doubt anyone notices 1ms latency. I might believe rare people can notice 10ms.
agree
"My ideal MacBook would probably be a MacBook Air, but with the nano-texture display! :)"
Mine as well. What is the likelihood this will happen?
I have a hunch it will not and they will either scrap the nano texture completely or keep it as differentiator for the Pro line, but I am curious what others think.
Mine too, and I bought an air in the last generation and I barely use it because I thought the 60hz display would be ok, but I've been living with 120's everywhere for long enough the 60hz is actually horrible to use now. First world problems for sure, but it's enough that I literally don't use the machine.
I’ve used MBP for many many years, but recently bought an MB Air. I slightly miss the extra ports. I love how much lighter it is. I never notice a speed difference. I’m always ssh’d into a Linux box if crunching any real data, and for UI stuff the CPU doesn’t need a fan at all. Definitely gonna stick with MB Air.
We used to sell conversion kits to shoehorn a pixel qi display into the thinkpad x230. Since apple has put in 1,000nit displays on the pros, we don't bother anymore. The nano texture sold me and it performs wonderfully outdoors. I hate giving apple money but here I am.
Honestly I hate giving money to Lenovo, they're one of the worst companies I've had to deal with at least when it comes to support.
It's because Apple sucks the least. They still suck, though. They could build decent computers that are upgradeable, but they refuse because they want your $$$$ in large amounts.
> (When I chose the new laptop, Apple’s M4 chips were current. By now, they have released the first devices with M5 chips.)
Does anyone have any feedback on the new M5 models?
I upgraded from M4 to M5 MBP because I broke my M4's screen and so my company ordered a replacement M5 while the M4 is being repaired. I can't really notice a difference at all. It's an absolute work horse, but so was the M4. I _did_ spring for the nano texture display this time around, and that is definitely nice (but nothing to do with the M5)
Do you think you’ll have any regrets about the nano texture display?
I was torn between nano and regular glass, but opted for the regular glass.
I have the nano-texture display on my M4. At this point, I don't think I can go back to standard glass. For text work, I find there are no downsides. If you work more with color and detailed art, I think that's the only case where you need to put extra thought into it. Otherwise get it
I got the nanotexture on my current work M4 MBP—it doesn't completely eliminate reflected light, but it diffuses it a lot. If I were in a dark room with a light source positioned perfectly to reflect off my screen in my face, I would probably still have trouble with it, but in general I don't need to reposition the screen to avoid glare nearly as much.
I would say it's worth the extra, what, $200 or so? on the price of the M4 MBP. If it were much more expensive, I would be less sure.
No, I love it. I had non-matte glass screens in my MacBooks since 2012 and I didn't realize how much better it is to no longer see lights reflected in there all the time.
I hate to say it but it's totally worth it. Direct sunlight incredible.
I just upgraded from an M1 to an M5 a couple days ago.
It is rather shocking how much faster everything feels given I didn't think my old macbook pro was slow. While I expected xcode builds to be faster (and they are), I was a bit shocked when opening a new firefox tab was instantaneous since I hadn't noticed it wasn't before.
Another thing I didn't expect is that the new speakers have noticeably more bass and can get quite a bit louder.
I didn't get the nano-textured display, because having to adjust the display angle to get colors to render correctly is more annoying than having to do it for glare (I don't work in a high-glare environment).
I have done real work, using a computer 10+ hours a day on every ecosystem, Windows, Linux, Mac. I've used each for ~10 years a piece.
My most recent laptop died and it really showed me what I appreciate in a laptop, performance, build quality, good battery, low noise, good ergonomics.
I was sick of the recent overheating generation of laptops that don't last more than a couple years under my usage.
As a result I decided to try to switch back to a macbook after a decade hiatus.
Absolute garbage software. The hardware is good however after trialing it for a week the amount of bullshit that is MacOS was enough, instead I decided to get an AMD framework laptop.
Best decision ever.
I have a laptop that's got great quality, can be upgraded without paying a $5k tax, can replace the keyboard for $100 instead of $700, it works with me rather than against me and my wallet.
The part about noticing web pages loading (at most) 8ms faster due to the display is total nonsense. Many can notice the difference between 60 and 120Hz when scrolling, but definitely not for a page load. That’s less than 1/10th of the blink of an eye.
If page load seems noticeably faster, it’s far more likely that it’s simply a faster machine. Or imaginary.
How is Apple's nano-textured display different from ThinkPad's famed matte display?
Same experience. I cannot consider any screen that does not have the nano texture coating. It is exceptional and a huge improvement. To the point that I actually prefer a tester Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra over Apple’s own iPhone display.
I couldn't really trust the author of the review after he established his preference for "quiet computers" having no cooling slots or whatever he called them. Okay, fine, you're placing aesthetics above actual performance, then. The Pro laptops are the only ones viable for any really hardcore work because if you push the Air too hard it is going to just slow down in order to stay cool and that's not what you want if you are doing graphics work or in my case, I was running a bunch of containers in K8s. I never bought an Air because it was too similar to an iPad.
The thing that mostly irks me about Apple these days is soldered in RAM and non-upgradeable storage. Apple is still the best thing going for doing most pro development work, but it's just so irritating that they shit on us like this. I did buy an M4 Mini and expanded it some. My 2019 MB Pro is siting here on the desk, mostly unused these days. The Intel Macs are basically dead now--still great computers, but no longer desirable. My daughter is doing Graphic Arts in college and is using another 2019 Pro for that. I've used Macs continuously since at least 2014.
>The thing that mostly irks me about Apple these days is soldered in RAM and non-upgradeable storage.
Isn't the 'soldered-in' RAM and storage fundamental to the M-series architecture? It's not like there's a board with individual chips sitting in it for the RAM and storage, that could potentially have been 'popped out' if they weren't soldered in. It's all one giant 'chip' now.
There are separate chips.
But just like Strix Halo, they have to be soldered. There’s no way to reach the signal integrity required with connectors.
I've heard many people saying CAMM2 solves this.
I still have a 2019 MacBook Pro with the non-butterfly keyboard and escape key (unfortunately still the Touch Bar).
It’s still a great laptop except the battery lasts maybe 75 mins. I just keep it plugged in but despite the fact it’s 6 years old I don’t notice any problems with it.
I’m tempted to buy an M4 laptop just because it’s “new” and “faster” but then I ask myself Why? It’s the same thing with my iPhone. Until my laptop dies or there is something functional that I can’t do with my old laptop I’m going to keep using it.
After 18 years of Mac-abstinence, I just bought a MacBook Air and realized there is apparently no way to change the App Store language without changing region and payment method. WTF? That seems like the most basic thing one could imagine. What has happened to Apple?
I was able to switch the App Store language from English to Spanish by changing my primary language in System Settings > Language & Region > Preferred Languages.
It didn't require me to switch my region or payment method.
That seems like classic Apple, really.
Why did you think Apple was user friendly or flexible...it's the Apple way or the highway. Most only stick around because of the currently superior hardware
i'll never understand picky preferences about monitors... i still use an LG flatron wide that's old enough to vote... and when i slack at the apple store, it's not like i notice some life-or-death difference. a monitor is a monitor.
ok, i guess for graphic designers it might matter more?
Or people who read text.
why is it getting hot?
i noticed my ola macbook pro was connected to my router even when it was sleeping.. probably sending some private info periodically to apple and cia
If you'd like to change that, you can go to System Settings → Battery → Options → Wake for Network Access
Or just search for "Power Nap" (what it used to be called). They usually wake up intermittently for Time Machine backups, wake-on-lane and other stuff.
One day you wake up and it has auto-updated into iOS. No thanks.
macOS does not have auto update. In fact it doesn't bother you with any updates which lead to me behind patches behind because I was accustomed to Windows nagging me for updates every week.