Datacolor Spyder5 PRO Display Calibration System $109 shipped at B&H

[steve...]

From B&H's DealZone -- ends Jan 30 at midnight.

The next best price I found was $186 at Amazon with 4 stars from 259 reviewers.

System requirements list Mac OS X 10.7, 10.8, 10.9, 10.10

Any users here?

[ka jowct]

Using Xrite products instead, but that sounds like a good deal.

I wonder how many complaints about Apple's recent UI choices have been caused by using uncalibrated displays. When I was in the market for a MacBook Pro several years ago, I looked at them pretty carefully at Tekserve and the Apple Store. The non-retina hi-res 15" MBP screens always looked washed out, with a bluish cast. This would certainly contribute to legibility issues in the brave new world of skinny grey type on grey backgrounds. Both of the 15" models I have acquired in the past 5 years looked this way out of the box. ColorMunki calibration resulted in a huge improvement in color accuracy and overall display quality. I still cannot not understand why the default display state of a new, supposedly top quality laptop should have been of such poor quality.

I keep the laptops and my NEC desktop monitor calibrated. I highly recommend it.

[freeradical]

Is there any way to calibrate a monitor without one of these devices?

[steve...]

Is there any way to calibrate a monitor without one of these devices?


In the Mac OS, there's Display Calibrator Assistant:

System Preferences > Displays > Color > Calibrate


I see also that B&H's deal ends tonight, or while supply lasts.

[freeradical]

steve... wrote:
Is there any way to calibrate a monitor without one of these devices?


In the Mac OS, there's Display Calibrator Assistant:

System Preferences > Displays > Color > Calibrate


I see also that B&H's deal ends tonight, or while supply lasts.

I see that I have that, but how do you calibrate something without a reference?

I thought that maybe if you had a certain light source with a known spectral content, and perhaps some swatches of paper with reference colors printed on them with a high end printer that maybe this could be done.

[mattkime]

>>I wonder how many complaints about Apple's recent UI choices have been caused by using uncalibrated displays.

to be fair, UI designers shouldn't be relying on well calibrated displays. thats just a world that doesn't exist for most people.

[ka jowct]

mattkime wrote:
>>I wonder how many complaints about Apple's recent UI choices have been caused by using uncalibrated displays.

to be fair, UI designers shouldn't be relying on well calibrated displays. thats just a world that doesn't exist for most people.

Agreed. It just seems odd to me that some recent Mac OS UI choices look bad on their own fairly recent hardware, compounding shortcomings of the oddly bad display profile with which some of the previous higher res laptops (such as the 2012 MBPs) shipped. I think many of the UI changes that have caused so many complaints about reduced legibility must have been designed by people working on Retina displays, and not looked at much or at all on other hardware. There are still lots and lots of Mac users who do not have Retina models.

Of course some of the bad interfaces are fashion-driven, like the craze for black interfaces with tiny text. That cannot gonaway fast enough to suit me.

BTW calibrating by eye using what's in sytem preferences is almost certain to yield an inaccurate result.