Because of the gorgeous retina display and Apple’s good quality reputation, I wanted to switch from Lenovo Thinkpad T series to Retina MBP.
Two days ago, I went to the two Apple Stores in my city and also to two different BestBuy stores determined to buy the 15” rMBP only if I can know in advance that I am buying one with a Samsung display.
In each Apple store there were 6 rMBPs on display. I typed in the terminal of each of them the command:
ioreg -lw0 | grep \"EDID\" | sed "/[^<]*</s///" | xxd -p -r | strings -6
And can you believe it not even one of them was Samsung, ALL were with LG screens!!! ALL 12 rMBPs in two different Apple stores were with LG displays!!! On 9 of them I was able to replicate the IR issue just by letting an open web page for 3-4 min (moving the cursor every minute, so that the screen saver will not start). In one of the display models the retention was so bad, that I was able to read the text of the closed web page without even straining my eyes, the IR was crystal clear!
Of the two Best Buy stores, only the second one had a Samsung rMBP on display, i.e. I saw in total 14 rMBPs that day and 13 of them with LG screens!!! I.e. we have 1 in 14 chance of getting a Samsung screen on our rMBP. But wait it gets even worse than that.
In the two Apple Stores the employees were not helpful at all to make an effort to check for me if I will get a Samsung or LG screen in my laptop. They simply said: "There is no way we can know."
The BestBuy employees were a different story. In both stores they bend over backwards to help me. In the second store the Geek Squat opened all 5 rMBP they had in stock to check for me if they had one with Samsung display, and ALL of them were with LG screens. So to sum it up, I saw that day 19 rMBPs, 14 on display and 5 that the Geek Squat at BB opened; of the 19 rMBPs only 1 was with a Samsung screen, i.e. one has 5% chance of getting a Samsung on his rMBP. I have the suspicion that Samsung might have decided to stop supplying apple with their display panels and apple has gone completely LG.
To add insult to injury, people on the web were complaining about another issue that plagues some rMBPs - screaking when one pushes the laptop in particular areas. I didn’t replicate that in any of the laptops on display except on one – the Samsung screen on display in the second Best Buy store.
To say the least, I have very mixed feelings about switching to mac. PC manufacturers have gone down the drain with their build quality of their laptops long ago, yet it seems that Apple is about to fallow them. I have never heard of something like that happening during Steve Job’s life time. Sad!!!