Just a few weeks ago my Dad asked me why his buddy’s PC laptop had this shiny screen while his PowerBook’s screen was not. I explained that this was for in store sales. I believe that glossy sells better on the show floor, even though in actual use the reflection is worse.
Glossy displays have effectively taken over the entire laptop market. Why are they so popular? Here are three possible reasons.
1. They are better than matte-finish displays.
2. They are cheaper than matte-finish displays.
3. People are idiots. […]
Walking into the laptop aisle, your eye was immediately drawn to the glossy displays. Aside from the shine, there’s also a perceptible difference in sharpness and color saturation on glossy screens. These things stand out.
In “shopping mode,” this is all people see. Shiny, saturated, sharp. Customers aren’t trying to read the screens or move the laptops to different locations in different kinds of lighting. Shopping is almost always an emotional experience, not a rational one.
I’m not sure whether you should blame Steve Jobs’s personal tastes (which is always a possibility) or plain, sad market realities. Apple switching to glossy screens because they’d lose sales to PC laptops due to (erroneous) user perception of display quality. Stores having to display Pro laptops with the glossy screen option, too, to avoid customer complaints that the cheap one looks so much better. Matte screen eventually disappearing from the Apple lineup because nobody buys it. Sad. Sad. Sad. What happened to Apple stubbornly sticking to less popular choices just because they were convinced it was better? It was all true, switching to Intel was one of the first signs of apocalypse.
And I don’t even have theories to account for the keyboard. The more I look at it and read about it, the more it looks and feels like a toy’s keyboard. As cool as the black GlossBook looks, the Apple laptop’s designs is really going the wrong way. (And is the black version really a $150 paint job that tears off at the slightest provocation? I can’t believe that could be true.)
Damn, if only there were an Apple Store in Paris so I didn’t have to judge by photographs. Hey, M., when are you getting yours?
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