This is the controversy that has continued to fester ever since Apple ditched matte screens and embraced 100% glossy on the updated MacBook Pro lineup several weeks ago. At one time, you had a choice, at least on some models, of matte or glossy. But things have changed, and not necessarily for the better.

Except for the 17-inch MacBook Pro, largely a carryover from the previous model with minor changes, there is no option to get one of these products with Apple’s “Anti-Glare Display.” It’s either glossy or nothing.

Now as a practical matter, glossy can be a really good thing for most of you. Pictures appear sharper, brighter, and colors more saturated. Suddenly your Mac’s LCD display takes on some of the positive characteristics of a plasma TV.

And, no, this isn’t just a summary of the reviews I’ve read. It represents my personal experience, as owner of MacBook Pros with and without glossy displays. Indeed, I’m writing this column on the one with the glossy display (the other was sold months ago), and I’ve never felt any reason to regret my purchase decision.

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One of the accepted factors about the PC is that it is infinitely customizable. While this may be a boon for business, it’s a major pain for MIcrosoft, since they have to make sure that Windows works properly despite the hardware configuration. Indeed, that they succeed even partly might be a miracle, but it is one key reason why it takes so long to upgrade their operating system.

This doesn’t even take into account the compromises that have to be made. According to published reports of emails exchanged among Microsoft executives before the release of Windows Vista, it appears they caved to Intel and loosened system requirements for XP’s successor. Otherwise, millions of PC notebooks equipped with Intel’s i915 integrated graphics chip wouldn’t be considered “Vista Capable.”

Without going into the reasons, it’s clear that such forced decisions may have caused lots of troubles for people who bought PCs equipped with Vista that performed poorly. This doesn’t happen in the Mac universe because Apple makes the entire widget and they are quite capable of deciding which systems support a new operating system release and which are questionable, and thus abandoned.

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In light of my peculiar line of work, I am one of the first on the block — at least my block — to adopt a new computer-related gadget, and certainly I’m pretty quick to install an upgraded operating system or application. Of course, this sort of behavior entails certain compromises.

One, of course, is that I am more apt than most to suffer from serious early release bugs, assuming there are any true show stoppers. So when I bought an original 17-inch MacBook Pro in May of 2006, I had to replace the battery just a few months later, because it would no longer sustain a charge. That particular issue was fairly common with that model. In addition, it wasn’t so cool running that you could call it a laptop computer. But if you live in a cold climate, maybe it didn’t matter.

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One thing is perfectly clear and that’s the fact that most Mac users who have upgraded to Leopard are quite satisfied with that decision. Surveys show over 80%, which is extremely good, particularly when you compare the levels recorded with Windows.

What do I mean?

Well, Windows XP gets a pretty decent rate too, but Vista is down in the dumps, with only a little more than a quarter of the upgraders reporting decent levels of satisfaction.

Now consider that Leopard has been out just short of five months, whereas it’s been nearly 14 months since Vista shipped to consumers. During that time, Microsoft has had plenty of time to fix the worst ills. True, there have been lots of obtuse updates, and, of course, the infamous Service Pack One that’s now becoming available for download. But the early reviews of SP1 don’t seem promising. Sure, there are loads of under-the-hood changes, and perhaps application and driver compatibility is improved, but the core problems with the bloated Vista operating system are still there. It’s still slow and it still requires an extremely powerful PC to provide the full user experience, complete with Aero eye-candy.

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