Bought new iMac 20" Faded Screen

pechspilz wrote:
Most people don't seem to have a clue what a calibration tool is all about. It's to make prints to look the same way as what's on your screen. Calibration leaves you with a less bright LCD, colors look less vibrant and overall: less good to your eye. Calibration is not here to make-my-screen-look-nice! Those guys in here that recommend calibration all the time are exactly the ones who deny the existing of the widespread bad panel problem.

Erm that was my point. My recommendation is: use the display with its factory settings. Don't turn the brightness down. If the display looks good to your eye, don't get tricked into believing you have a defective display because of rants on here.

Truthiness2008 wrote:
Sounds like Carl Rovian Math. Oh wait, his math was wrong, that's not good!

Did you just compare me to Carl Rove? That hurts! I'm still not sure what your point is about the maths. Surely the ratio of posts to viewings should be vastly different from the other threads....and isn't it odd that all those thousands of people who you think have defective displays haven't posted about it? I would have done if I had bought a defective display! Instead its the usual two or three suspects...over and over again.

PS can you explain again what a photo sees? And what a computer sees? That really was a priceless comic moment.

There are now 21,000 views. I said 20,000 thank you for correcting me. So over 6,000 new views in 2 weeks.

Of those 21,000 views, how many are the result of the same people checking this thread one or more times per day? How many people in total account for these views?

That's not the result of "months" of viewing. That's the result of holiday buying and people coming home with defective displays.

Exactly how did you determine what the motivations are for these views? I suspect it's more likely due to the fact that this thread is one of the more entertaining comedies running on the Internet right now.

He's right (i mean capaho)...
Anyway, the new alu iMacs have this LCD panels... no one is force any one to buy.
So it is useless to talk about how bad are they or how good are they.
I am ok with it right now (i also have a second display that i can use at any time), i will wait for next generation iMac to see if i can get better...

Message was edited by: lordlex

Exactly how did you determine what the motivations are for these views? I suspect it's more likely due to the fact that this thread is one of the more entertaining comedies running on the Internet right now.

Yeah, that'd be me.

Where to start? Can't say how disappointed I am with this LCD screen. I'm not so concerned about the colour fading or in my case the pale blue cast towards the bottom half of the screen, its the dreadful text rendering which just looks smudged and blearly. I'm no expert but I spend my working day in front of a 19" panel which renders pin sharp text. I have no issues with the display on my 13" MacBook or my 13" Sony Vaio laptop, but the 20" iMac is such an unpleasant experience to work with. I've tried several different calibrations, not of which I'm happy with and now I'm out of time to return the machine, so I'll just have to live with this. I've owned Macs going back to the LISA days and this is one real let down.

I'm sorry to hear yours has a faded screen as well, but the problems you mention with the font rendering +...its the dreadful text rendering which just looks smudged and blearly...+ I cannot confirm. My screen renders the fonts, despite the obvious gradient, pin-sharp and mostly deep-black, not the pale grey I got with OSX's anti-aliasing on CRT-screens.

TallyHo wrote:
Yet again you ignore the content of my post - how come the "gradient" in your photos
disappears on my powerbook display? *Because that display (TN I assume) cancels it out.*

Cancel this!

Yes the new iMac uses a TN panel, with associated *narrow vertical viewing angle* ...

More Rovian math. Gradient-denier fanboys repeatedly blow smoke by attempting to
conflate 'viewing angles' with the gross non-uniformities seen (by eyes and cameras)
from each and every static position in front of the screen.

Bottom line: The 20" ALU displays are UGLY from all possible viewing locations...

... and the 'angular dependence' of UGLY is of very little interest,

Looby

The Looby wrote:
Cancel this!

Erm OK, by moving my head up or down, or by tilting my powerbook display. The top of your 'photo' becomes as light or lighter than the bottom bit was. Move the other way and the bottom of your 'photo' becomes as dark as the top was. What point are you trying to make?

Gradient-denier fanboys

First you talk about pink unicorns, now ladies' tights? (I suppose that'd be 'pantyhose' in your version of English). What exactly are you trying to say about yourself by those comments Looby? You're among friends here - we won't judge you.

John Fleet wrote:
its the dreadful text rendering which just looks smudged and blearly.

I've seen that complaint once or twice on the forums, I think that you may have a genuinely defective screen. My screen is absolutely sharp, nothing even remotely smudged or bleary. If, as you say, the gradient doesn't bother you, you may want to consider returning it for another one.

TallyHo wrote:

Erm OK, by moving my head up or down, or by tilting my powerbook display. The top of your 'photo' becomes as light or lighter than the bottom bit was. Move the other way and the bottom of your 'photo' becomes as dark as the top was. What point are you trying to make?

My humble apologies; I thought the point was obvious...

...ALU iMacs are great boon to the bobble-headed,

Looby

Have you actually stopped to think of what "viewing angle" actually means? Inside of the viewing angle, there should be no visible sign of brightness or color shift. That's what viewing angles are used to denote. The 20" display's brightness shifts from ZERO degrees of dead-on-center and color shifts from a mere 5-10 degrees off center. You can argue that the color shift is a result of the TN+ film, but it should be better. You can't justify the brightness shift any way you slice it. As I mentioned before, your technical arguments were incorrect. And seriously, you're really going to argue that the camera lies? You're really stepping into my technical wheel-house here and you're just making yourself look stupid. Digital camera's may not always faithfully reproduce color and may have reduced dynamic ranges, but if part of a digital image is brighter than another part of that digital image, you can be pretty darn sure that the brightness difference was visible to the naked eye. Trying to argue otherwise is just trying to fit reality into your apparently myopic view of Apple technology. Or as they might say in the Queen's English, rubbish.
AND FOR PETE'S SAKE, PLEASE STOP TELLING US TO JUST TAKE THEM BACK. Anyone who bought from a reseller doesn't have that option.

AND FOR PETE'S SAKE, PLEASE STOP TELLING US TO JUST TAKE THEM BACK. Anyone who bought from a reseller doesn't have that option.

You can, however, call AppleCare and arrange to have them picked up. All new iMacs are covered for at least the first year.

There is an interesting article on cnet today that rips Apple for its "It Just Works" PR campaign, mostly in relation to reported installation and security problems with Leopard. It's interesting to note that the article mentions absolutely nothing about the aluminum iMac displays, yet another indication that it isn't a significant issue outside of this forum.

The article is available here:

http://www.news.com/8301-13579_3-9829091-37.html?tag=nefd.top

Pick it up and do what with it? Send me another that's exactly the same, just like everyone else who has played the trade-in game. They're junk displays. And give me a break about corporate reviews. They're meaningless drivel. Ars Technica's review is more meaningful to me. They didn't notice it on the initial review, but the reviewer mentions the gradient issue later in his blog when he notices it. You can go stick your head back in the sand while the rest of us wait for Apple to actually acknowledge the problem in a year, just like they did with the faulty (but we don't know anything about it) power supplies in the G5 iMacs.

nbirchler wrote:

Ars Technica's review is more meaningful to me. They didn't notice it
on the initial review, but the reviewer mentions the gradient issue later
in his blog when he notices it.

LOL! Might that possibly be the Ars Technica review discussed in the links below?

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=5826516#5826516

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=5826776#5826776

...any idea where on ArsTechnica I might find that blog?

Looby