Bob,

The retina display is very nice. There are no jagged pixelated edges... anywhere.

It's bright, and even though it's a gloss screen I don't find the reflections to be anywhere near as bad as gloss screens on other laptops I have used. But you can easily see clearly in bright daylight, there's more than enough backlighting for that.

Colour and sharpness are both amazing. Honestly my photos look so much better on the mac screen than on my dell screen as the detail and contrast are spot on.

I have really enjoyed mine since getting it, upgraded to Mountain Lion and saw no change really. It's without a doubt the only laptop I'd own at this point. Just be sure to spec up from the word go as I believe hardware upgrades are difficult at this point. I got the i7 2.6ghz and 16gb RAM and it's great.