Q: 24" LED Display with 2011 15" MPB

@road2ca

On your second question. I could only suggest to bring the defective 24" ACD straight to the Apple Store. They'll test it and will be forced to do something about it. At least, that's how they took (and are still) taking care of mine.

FM

Well, in my case, the manager said that there were two major reasons he helped me out: my display was still under warranty, and I first reported the problem over three months ago. He figured that was long enough waiting for a fix.

My guess is that they'll be somewhat less inclined to make policy exceptions for people who are just now reporting the problem, since they seem to believe that a software fix is very close.

I have an open case with Apple as well (since May) and was updated yesterday by my Sr. advisor that they are still working on a software fix to the problem.  Both my new MBP and my 24" ACD are under warranty. I have not been presented with the option of upgrading to a 27" (but I haven't pushed for one either). I'd prefer to have this fixed anyway rather than spending money for the larger display, but soon would be nice...

Both of my displays are covered under the machines that were purchased along side the display with apple care. I reported it in may so we will just have to see what happens. It's kinda crappy to have this beautiful display that won't work for a **** with my brand new laptop. Go figure.

Same issue here of random black screen and intermitent horizontal flickering...this issue expands beyond the cinema display for me...i do not have a cinema display but I have had it plugged into two different monitors...a 17inch LCD monitor and a brand new 23inch Acer LED monitor and experienced the same issues you all are presenting. I would suggest this being a GPU or firmware issue not just a display issue. Possibly a Thunderbolt issue using a mini display port to VGA adapter. Needless to say I am very upset about this...The guy I talked to at Apple Support just told me to take it to an Apple support store...this thread is making me reconsider wasting my time driving 30 miles to the nearest store.

2011 13.3inch Macbook Pro 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5 - 8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 - Snow Leopard 10.6.7

Wish I had seen this post before I bought a 2011 new 15" MacBook Pro and refurbished 24" Apple LED Cinema Display.

Add another to the list who experiences unpredictable, brief blackouts of the ACD.  Called support and was elevated.  Specialist said he had never heard of such a problem, however after we hung up, he called back and left a voice message saying that Apple Engineering is aware of the issue between 2011 MBPs and 24" ACDs, suggesting I try a software update.  When no software update was available, I wrote him asking for a download link, but he replied there is no direct download link.

My question to the community is should I just return this display for a refund while it's only a couple days old?

That would be my advice. The 27" display is more expensive, but they've been promising a software fix "real soon now" for months with no results. The 10.6.8 update to Snow Leopard (which should be released soon) doesn't fix the problem, nor do the current developer releases of Lion. If they truly do understand the problem at all, fixing it does not seem to be a very high priority.

If I were you I would probably return it and buy something else (either a newer ACD 27" or another brand). I already had the ACD 24 and it was working fine with an older Mac, but have been living with this apparent Thunderbolt compatibility issue since I bought the new MBP three months ago... It is not clear to me when they will provide a fix, so personally if I had the choice, I'd opt for something else.

I would definitely return the 24" cinema display. Its not worth keeping and from the looks of it, Apple will probably never have a fix for it. I bought a  refurbished one back in April  with Apple Care and last month i called after purchasing a new 13" Macbook pro and Apple gladly upgraded my display to a 27" for free. I couldn't be happier seeing i got a new $999 display for a $600 refurbished display i purchased from an authorized apple retailer.  At the time it seemed apple was offering upgrades (free or paying $100 difference) to anyone who had purchased it within the past year or still had apple care on it, but reading this thread for the last 3-4 weeks it looks like they stopped giving that option.

So if anyone just purchased a new/ refurbished 24" cinema display online (yes, there are sites still selling them), i would suggest returning it asap or contacting apple to see if they will upgrade it. And do not take "please wait for a firmware fix" as an answer. I called apple once, 2 days later engineer called back and had mine overnighted to Cali and next day i had a new 27" one shipped overnight from Pennsylvania to New York. Had a new 27" cinema display within 5 days. They also did ask for my Macbook pro ( for exact configuration testing), the new Macbook pro shipped from China which took 6 days to get delivered. Which was the only downside to this whole mess. They also refunded me for the apple care i had on the old 24" display.

Seeing i needed a computer to use at my business asap, i changed my mind about the keeping the display. I used my macbook pro  with the display to monitor security camera's and monitor POS transactions, so waiting for my Macbook pro was not an option.

After i got the display, and $99 gift card (directly sent to store) for the apple care they refunded me, i went over to my apple store and exchanged the display and used the gift card for a new 21.5" iMac, paid small difference of $30 bucks or so after education discount and left.

After all was said and done --- i paid $730 for a new 21.5" iMac  (retail $1199 . haha

EAT THAT APPLE FOR THE MESS YOU CAUSED

Just to note i had two of these, bought one a little more than a year ago and replacement for that one got nowhere. I got my payback.

It's Thunderbolt.  I have issues all day long, beyond what's been described on this thread.  The machine won't sleep (hangs), it won't shut down (hangs) and other problems when just the MDP cable for my 24" ACD is plugged in (I don't plug in the USB cable as that just seems to makes things even worse).  I was travelling all last week, with no 24" ACD, and didn't have a single problem.  I was plugged into a DVI monitor (MDP->DVI adapter), no flashing, no scrambling, no hanging.  I was plugged into a projector, no flashing, no scrambling, no hanging.  As soon as I got back, plugged in my 24" ACD, and boom, all the same crap as before.

Clearly the 24" ACD was not tested AT ALL with the new Thunderbolt notebooks.  Boo Apple.

Apple has really dropped the ball on this and now that they are stonewalling and telling everyone to "wait for a firmware fix", with no timeline, only further frustrates me.  This issue is becoming more infuriating every day.  My view of Apple and their support, with their total lack of response to patient customers in this case, has really gone downhill with this incident.

The sporadic sleep/wake instability on the 2011 MacBook Pros when external displays are connected are not confined to the Cinema 24. I've had them happen with the Cinema 27 and with non-Apple monitors (I've tried Dell 2405, 2408 and 2410 panels). This isn't really a new problem, though, as I had similar issues with the 2010 and 2009 MacBook Pros as well. The 2011 has them with more frequency, though -- my assumption would be it's due to immature graphics drivers for the new AMD graphics chipset, as they seem to happen most frequently during the display reinitialization/switchover and the machine is still responsive to SSH logins even with the display blank and the appearance of a "hung" system.

The blank-out and "quartered-scramble" issues appear to be the only things specific to the Cinema 24 from my experience.

Thanks for the replies and suggestions to return it.

I've called Apple support to setup an RMA.  I'm actually setting up an RMA on the MacBook Pro, too.  While it appears that the problem is with the 24" ACD and Apple support strongly implies that to be the case, reading more of this thread and others, there is a recurring subthread that many of these same 24" ACD's worked just fine on older MacBooks (pre-2011 / pre-thuderbolt), which at least continues the possibility that it's a Thunderbolt problem.  Since there's been no real chance to test Thunderbolt due to lack of available peripherals to date, I'm calling to setup an RMA on both the MBP and the 24" ACD.

Will advise.

Coincidence or not, the last couple of weeks I see a lot more 24" ACD's appearing onwebsites were second hand computer stuff is being sold. The price is now plunced about 100 - 150.

Hello All,

I am in the same boat as everyone here.  I had a first generation Macbook aluminum unibody design w/ my 24" ACD and it worked GREAT!  Never any flickering.  Not once.  Then...just got my new 2011 MBP w/ TB and connected my ACD to it and now it flickers of and on throughout the day.  I was so bummed.

Now after trying to figure this out, one thing I noticed today but have not confirmed is connected to the problem is this...I noticed at one point that the power connection from my ACD to my MBP was no reading and the green light was off on the indicator on the magsafe power connector.  My computer was only reading 92% battery and I noticed that the little green/orange light was off. There was no light.  I noticed this late in the day after it had flickered off some.  I moved the power connection some and noticed it seemed a bit loose.  When I did, the light came back on.  ALSO...my ACD never flickered the rest of the day but then again, I went home from work soon after. 

Is this the reason, is there a connection between these issues? I am not sure, but I would advise anyone on here to check out the power connection from your ACD to your MBP to see if you can find a relation between the 2.  I know what I will be watching closely tomorrow.  HOpe this might be the problem.

I will keep you posted.

Alright guys, I just spent an hour on the phone with a senior apple engineer last night running through the issue. Submitted all the diagnostic info they need from my system, including a video of the issue happening. Most likely it is looking like a Thunderbolt firmware issue. Your hardware should be ok however he made no promises. My issue as I stated was independent of the brand of monitor I used and pertained to the Thunderbolt display port. It is on the list of known issues by now and is at a high priority due to the call volumes they have faced regarding it, including this 27 page forum. (Keep the posts and calls flooding in to Apple, anything to keep the fire under their a55.) I'll let everyone know how the followup call I was promised for next tuesday goes. I also threw in a tidbit about the way their product was marketed everywhere to support video output through Thunderbolt and how its ability not to do so in a functional manner is a direct violation of sales marketing practices. I voiced my opinions on their failure to market their product accurately based on shoty testing and if nothing is done I demanded compensation. If its broke, don't sell it.