Having been a great fan of algorithmic drawing every since my exposure to DisplayPostscript on the NeXT Cube, I found all of this sufficiently unsatisfactory that I decided to work on a solution, the first step of which is a lightweight drawing context that provides a reasonable Objective-C drawing API on top of CoreGraphics and works the same on OSX and iOS.
Mac OS X Hints reports that you can hold down the Shift and Option keys when changing the volume level or brightness to make finer adjustments.
Update (2012-09-29): Charles Parnot notes that you can hold down Shift to prevent a sound from being produced when changing the volume.
By removing the cover glass Apple reduces the number of reflections and thus glare, however it’s important to point out that this still isn’t a matte display. I’ve never been particularly bothered by glossy screens so I’m really the wrong person to ask whether or not the reduction in reflections makes it usable. Compared to my matte MacBook Pro, the Retina Display is obviously more glossy but at the same time remarkably close.
Update (2012-06-13): iFixit has a teardown.
…we ran CPUTest for 12 minutes to see just how loud and hot we could get the machine. There’s good news and bad news: while the fan was surprisingly quiet — even in an apartment with closed windows and some light traffic and rain outside, I could barely hear it — the heat was in the ballpark of what we’d expect from our personal 2011 MacBook Pro. Which is to say, hot — particularly the metal rim around the ‘U’ key, which is about where the processor rests internally. It's hard to touch for more than a few seconds.
