Q: MBP retina display refresh problems

I am glad you returned it. My advice though is to only use Apple stores or if in NYC, Digital Society or Tekserve.

Apple offers the best customer care but this welding of RAM and1GB of VRAM on a mobile workstation serves no one but Apple. However, I sympathise with your loss of the Retina dream machine. I'd wait until next year and by then Apple will have sorted these problems out.

mexicanclaudio wrote:

 

I still had the same issues after re-installing, and I also found a flickering display problem when opening my retina macbook from sleep.

 

I ended up having to return my retina macbook  because I use my laptop for work every day and Best Buy only offers a 14 day exchange period. Since they're still having trouble keeping these in stock, I had to downgrade to the non-retina macbook pro. Not happy about it at all. I called on Saturday and they were still sold out all the nearby BB stores.

 

Hopefully Apple gets this resolved soon. I guess that's what happens when you're an early adopter.

This is happening to me too. Once the macbook goes to sleep with the lid closed for a few hours, upon waking, I get this everytime. I dont have to reboot though since it seems to be resolved (temperarily) by toggling the resolution in the "displays" system preference.

http://imgur.com/a/eTsHT

I sure hope this is a software issue because taking this thing back is such an inconvenience. Is there an Apple engineer on here that can comment if I should hold tight for a future fix or return the laptop?

Hey Phil,

Got an update to your Macbook troubles? How has it been 1 week passed?

Changing the screen resolution seems to be getting around the problem for me too...

I bought my MacBook Pro Retina Thursday and returned it Friday.  I had a display problem with SketchUp Layout where half the graphics would vanish when the cursor moved.  Trimble Sketchup suggested the screen resolution adjustment but it didn't work for me.  I use this computor with this application for work, so I had no choice but to return it.  SketchUp says they are getting a Retina to explore the problem next week. 

P.S. I had to pay a 10% restocking fee because the computer was "customomized" (I had ordered the 16G RAM and had my old contents migrated by an Apple technician- this at certified Apple store at a university.  Is this normal policy?

I think I figured out my problem. I haven't had the issue with the corrupted screen for about a week until I used TextWrangler and then after I woke the mac from sleep, the screen was corrupted again.

Same problem here.

It seems to happen when I have quite a few apps open and then wake from sleep.

Dosent seem to happen every time and I think its only after the unit has been asleep for a while.

Toggling the resolution seems to fix it without needing a reboot.

Unfortunately i dont use text wrangler.

Video driver issue?

I'm having the same issue.  Graphics issues were what made my last macbook pro unusable so this is concerning.  Any word on a fix Apple?

SOLUTION WORKAROUND that worked for me > Set Energy Saver > 'Display Sleep' to "NEVER"

I used the following WORKAROUND to solve this screen-flicker/frozen/window-repainting problem on my Retina MBP:

Workaround Highlight:

Essentially, I configured "Energy Saver" settings so that the display can NEVER go to sleep.  Yes this sounds drastic, but it is a workaround that works for me and really is EASY to use.

Specifically, I set the following:

1) Goto System Preferences > Energy Saver

2) Set "Display Sleep" to "Never" for BOTH "Battery" and "Power Adapter" 

Since doing this, I have not had ANY problems with flickering or windows not re-painting etc.  This has been over a week now of screen/display problem-free computing on my Retina MBP.

Problem Symptoms Highlight: The problem seems to happen when the Display comes OUT of sleep mode.  The display seems kind of frozen and when I drag windows around the fragments of the screen flickers.  I'm talking about the SYSTEM being ON the whole time and just the display going into and then out of sleep mode. (e.g. Time passes, screen goes blank, then when I do something like click the trackpad to 'wake up' the screen, the display problems occur with flickering, frozen fragments of screen and window-repainting problems/flickering when I drag windows around.) 

THUNDERBOLT specific Issues: Also, using a THUNDERBOLT Port for an external display OR Ethernet cable adapter OR external hard drive seems to exacerbate the problem and the display problems then happen MORE frequently for me...as in EVERY time I come out of display sleep.  So, now I just NEVER go into Display Sleep and that has fixed the problem for me in a 'workaround' fashion.

To be clear, since I started using the Display-Never-Sleeps workaround:

o I have NOT seen these screen frozen/flickering and window dragging/repainting issues at all

o I have never seen these issues/problems when coming out of SYSTEM Sleep, before or after using the workaround.  These problems have only happened to me when coming out of display sleep.

When I need to leave my laptop ON and walk away, and therefore I want the screen to be blank/black to save power and/or avoid burn-in while I'm away, I simply manually decrease the display brightness to a black screen.

I know that this sounds terribly un-sophisticated....but then I did say it is a "Workaround".  Once I got used to doing this (manually decreasing/increasing the display brightness because the display is configured to NEVER go to sleep) for a day or so, it became kinda second nature for me, not a big deal, and I have been able to use this 'workaround' to avoid the display problems described in this forum.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for pointing out the thing about the Thunderbolt-usage! Actually testing a sleepmode right away plugging the Thunderport/Ethernet-adapter into the plug closer to the power-connector didn't result in the refresh problem at all, whereas I ran into the refresh issue today the first time while letting the Ethernet run in the second one (closer to the USB & headphone).

I have the same issue. Download gfxCardStatus v2.2.1. It allows you to switch from Intel graphics to NVIDIA graphics and vice versa. That seems to do the trick, and it even has a menu bar item to easily do it.

I have the same refresh problem. I've contacted Apple Care 3 times and they have no idea why this is happening.  At one point they suggest I return the product because it could be a manufacturer defect in my unit. But since so many other people have the same problem, I guess it's with the product itself. I've noticed that the issue is most likely triggered by safari in my case.

I had the same issue constantly when waking from sleep.

Solved by doing a clean install of Mountain Lion, so it is most likely a software problem.

I was in contact with Apple Support and did data captures and hardware tests for them, both revealed no issues, but since a clean install resolved it then this leads me to believe it must be a software problem.

The machine is now being returned for a separate issue - screen ghosting.  If you have screen ghosting, this is not a software issue as it happened to me before and after clean install and is repeatable each time I use the machine.

SketchUp Layout was the refresh and display problem I had before returning my Retina.  SketchUp support says go to finder>googleschetchup layout>right click>get info>check the box for low resolution.  They say this worked around the problem.  Maybe it works for other applications?