I copied the same photo I took of a city landscape after the sky had gone dark. I chose it to see how much screen glare I’d see on both displays. I tried watching the photo during a cloudy winter day with plenty of light coming through the windows. The glossy iMac was positioned so it had the display facing outward of the window. The matte display was at a 90° angle at the window. Unsurprisingly, the matte display did not look like a mirror, but I was noticing lack of detail compared to the newer iMac’s S-IPS -panel. Is it due to the matte display having an inferior display or does the coating itself smear the image? I also thought that because the native resolution of the matte display’s native resolution is 1680 x 1050 and that the photo, which is at 3024 x 1998 has to be shown in a compressed manner, thus loss of detail happens. On the other hand, the newer iMac’s native res is 1920 x 1080.
Okay, to speak of the devil. Yes, the screen is glossy and yes, you can see yourself in it. However, I have the brightness set very low, because I hate white backgrounds straining my eyes. When I crank up the brightness higher to a level that’s still not uncomfortable, the display becomes much more acceptable to view dark pictures. Screen glare happens with other displays as well. I do remember having to darken the room, when using my eMac, because it has a coating preventing gathering of dust, which causes some mirror-like effects.
I’d like to hear an answer from you to the two details regarding display hardware. You don’t have to comment on my personal experiences on what I think of the two screens, because I know quite many of you hate glossy displays with a passion. Yes, it’s an annoyance, but in my humble opinion not as big an annoyance as some people make it sound like. Mostly I added it to “get the big picture” of the whole experiment. I really like the new iMac and its hardware. Buying an external matte display would mean buying a mac mini, a Mac Pro or a PC, and so far all three other options seem impossible/not enjoyable enough.
I still need to find an answer does the glossy coating screw up using a color calibrator like Spyder3 Pro 
