Bought new iMac 20" Faded Screen

Looks perfect, you really lucked out with yours.

I really wonder how many of the bad screens went out, some postings on the internet are not an accurate count. Seems to me only Apple could answer that and they don't seem to be acknowledging the problem. Where I saw the bad screens was at the Brea Mall in Orange County and all 4 20" displays had the same flaw. This is not some store out in the boondocks or a low traffic area but has to be one of their major retail stores.

If that "picture" isn't a grab.app digital screen capture, it was taken
through the most optically perfect photographic lens ever created.

Borders absolutely straight to within 0 pixels, 0.0% edge-to-edge
variation in brightness or color balance. ...one very lucky chap!

...if he could afford a lens like that, would he be lurkin' in a place like this?

Looby

That was actually a screen capture, not a photo, which I did to demonstrate a point. It looks identical on my iMac and on my Dell PC with a TN panel. The appearance of gradient can be varied by changing the viewing angle on both. On my generic PC with a CRT, it looks bit-perfect from any angle.

I agree with what you've posted in a number of your comments, that it looks like too many new iMacs shipped with defective panels but not all of the 20" panels have the same problem. I also respect your judgement that they are not suitable for professional graphics work. Even on mine, which I think looks better than my 17" G5 iMac, I can see that the viewing angle is a bit narrow. I think it is the narrow viewing angle, more than anything else, that confuses a lot of long-term Mac users who aren't accustomed to TN panels.

As to the various photos of displays, the quality of the camera, the angle at which the photo was taken, the software that was used to save or scale the photo, any editing that may have been done and the quality of the display on which it is viewed can all affect the appearance of the image. Ultimately, the only criterion that matters is the satisfaction level of the user, and that, as we have seen, has the biggest gradient of all.

capaho wrote:
As to the various photos of displays, the quality of the camera, the angle at which the photo was taken, the software that was used to save or scale the photo, any editing that may have been done and the quality of the display on which it is viewed can all affect the appearance of the image.

<edited by host>

Ultimately, the only criterion that matters is the satisfaction level of the user ...

Hmm, maybe the iMac plant forgot to install a QA test station for the only criterion that matters...

...BTW, what are the standard metric/English units of user satisfaction?

Looby

This topic is "answered".

What were the two "helpful" answers and the one "solved" answer?

Visited a Best Buy in Bangor Maine and saw 2 20"ers but the 24" was shutdown. Actually both screens looked fairly crisp and colorful even at the bottom of the screen.

I changed the desktop image to several of the solid colors and did notice a gradation but it was hard to judge how severe it was. Images appeared sharp and the icons in Dock at the bottom were sharp and colorful. I wish the 24" had been running.

As an aside I overheard the tech with the Apple shirt say he is an Apple employee and paid buy Apple not Best Buy, he even pointed out that the table the machines were on was the property of Apple, unfortunately he wandered off before I could ask any questions.

You can calibrate that thing till the cows come home. The answer to the problem is most likely a hardware replacement — Perhaps the entire unit. Apple needs to address this screen issue pronto. My eyes are killing me!

Good screen examples Looby. They show exactly how my iMac's screen looked like.

And I used SpyderPRO to calibrate my screen to 2.2 65K...it does not make ANY difference in making the illumination more evenly distributed across the screen.

We've just decided to 'retire' our pair of glorious G4s ( sob) and replaced them with a pair of the new 20" 2.4ghz Core2Duos with 4gb of RAM. Everything should be wonderful, yet everything is not.

My initial reaction to the change from matte to gloss screens was extremely unfavourable, but the gradient effect is shocking. As a full time graphic designer who has to work with this monitor every hour of the day it's a definite problem. CMYK based blacks in particular look truly appalling.

We also have a 2.0ghz PowerPC G5 in the workplace and I'm extremely reluctant to make the transition over to the new machine due to this screen issue.

Well, I just took back my 24" 2.8ghz after only buying it on Friday because of the Left to Right Brightness issues which show up mainly in light backgrounds, namely Web Browsing. Even the one they were going to swap out for had exactly the same problem.

Being into computers for more than 20 years, and having a very keen eye for the screen I am viewing, this problem wasn't evident at first when I first got it, because I was excited to have my first Mac and what a machine it is.
Anyway, after noticing some Condensation appearing on the underside of the glass, this then brought me to see the inconsistent brightness levels across the screen which then brought me to the Web.

Well, I got a refund and I'm holding off buying the new iMac until this problem with these cheap screens is resolved, because there really is a problem it seems with the new Alu range.

I would stick with your old G5's if they are still good to go, much like I am having to make do with my age old PC with winblows, until these Macs get fixed.

It's a shame, because my Dad's 20" White iMac is a dream to use and just shows how much fun and ease these machines are to handle, especially with all the issues I've had recently with XP and it either hanging, crashing, slowdown etc even after a rebuild.

Don't rush in just yet, but I can see it being at least another 3-6months maybe before Apple fix this problem, if they even acknowledge it as a problem.

Congratulation for being able to take a screen shot. The problem is in the physical screen, not the data sent from the card to the display. It's a hardware problem.

Hi Ya



A screen grab will show what you see..........

Washac wrote:

A screen grab will show what you see..........

Only if " you" happen to be an electron living in VRAM.

...sheesh!

Looby

As I mentioned in my reply to Kevin Horn, the screen shot was to demonstrate a point. Of course, it is a bit-perfect representation of the graphics data, but when I looked at it on my Dell, my G5 iMac and my aluminum iMac, it looks slightly different on each because of the specific characteristics of each of those LCD panels.

On all three of the above mentioned computers, it can be made to appear to have a gradient simply by changing the viewing angle. It only looks perfect on my generic PC with a CRT monitor. My point is that a photo of a perfect display will look less than perfect on a monitor that is less than perfect.

Hey short bus rider, a screen grab shows you what is rendered to the buffer, not a picture of what you see. Just like what's recorded to your TiVo is the digital signal, not your view of the television. You can't seriously be that thick between the ears.