Q: Strange vertical stripes

Hi All!

I got the stripes 2 weeks after i bought my MBpro. had it now for 3 Months,..

with the photo booth trick it was possible to show the problem to the guys at the apple store here in austria.

today they changed my display, and.... the stripes are away!

Also with Photo Booth--> no chance to bring them back!

everything is fine.

The repair/replacement of the display took only 20 minutes!



you will hear from me If the stripes are coming back.

I think its an hardware problem, so GO AND CHANGE YOUR DISPLAYS!


cheers,... cosmicrider,..austria

I am so livid with Apple I could scream.
10 day old $2000.00 computer with black stripes on the display and they will not take back or swap out the unit due to the fact I purchased it from their "authorized reseller"
Apple is obviously to big to care about their "authorized resellers" and is hanging them out to dry. My only recourse is to call American Express and cancel the transaction. 300 posts on this discussion and Apple shrugs their shoulders and plays dumb. Now my only choice is back up 100 gigs of data and apps after a wasted afternoon at the Cleveland Apple store and wait for Apple to send me a box so I can send the defective unit to the so they can tell me its a bad video card. (BS)
Beware from purchasing anything from any authorized reseller big or small! From Mac Mall to your local IT consultant.
Mark Kampman

Tonight the stripes again, running on 83% charged battery. I woke up the notebooks with full intensity - 6 bars. Anyway I still cannot duplicate the stripes using the photo booth method.

This time I took a picture of the screen which includes the serial number: now I can ask for repair with a minimum proof that the problem does exist on this MBP.

Now I need an advice: shall I go and ask for screen substitution? Do you think it might be a "clever" act? Because I am afraid that, if they accept and exchange the screen, the second one might be even worst than this one. What would you do?

We have the most advance OS in the world, but I still cannot scroll or watch videos without corruption. I have the dark stripes. I have the yellowish screen. Something does not sound right.

And still no word from apple. Ridiculous.

* For those who say that yellowish AUO screens can be EASILY calibrated *
Please explain to me how it is possible to calibrate a screen which is HALF normal and HALF yellowish. If the monitor were ALL yellowish I'd agree that I might calibrate it. But since it is yellowish just in the bottom, please tell me how you are able to correct the bottom part without affecting the TOP one. Please.

I am happy for you. But I do have the stripes without being able to reproduce them with photo booth. I saw them weeks ago and then again tonight. Let us know how it works.

mac.cardi

now we have may 2008 but i had the same problem with a brand new mbp after restarting .until now only once but who knows...
by the way: while watching a DVD the mbp always gets stuck, sometimes at the beginning sometimes at the end of the film.

Let's start from the following: are you sure it's an AUO screen? I've checked your grayscale test, my display is set to cold color temperature and doesn't have any yellow or yellowish hues anywhere.

In order to avoid going off-topic, I replied here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1548557&tstart=0

Thanks.

mac.cardi

I sent the notebook to the repair centre. In the apple shop where I bought it and where I took it few minutes ago, they OBVIOUSLY had never seen the issue (but were aware of it since I went there few weeks ago asking for info).

I will let you know what happens. I made them notice both the (pictures of the) stripes and the yellowish tint. They agreed on the yellowish tint.

Ciao,
mac.cardi

Do you see the yellow display when the stripes are on the screen?

May be you were joking and I did not get it. Anyway...

No, the yellowish tint is always present, unless you calibrate the screen and move the colours toward the blue. With such a calibration, there is no yellow tint on the screen, that obviously becomes blueish.

Going OT, I repeat: I am not able to have a gradient from black to white without having a yellow region. This is not matter of calibration: my screen is not able to show gray on some RGB triples with equal components.

mac.cardi

I have the vertical stripes problem too
My 15" MPB is less than 1 month old and it's happened about 3 times - but only when I unplug the power adapter (never when waking from sleep, like others have said)

1. How often does it occur? Does it occur reliably?
Approx once a week. No, most times I can unplug the power cord without incident.

2. Does it resolve if you perform a specific action? What is this action?
Rebooting solved it (but I'll try ctrl-shift-eject from now on!)

3. Does it always resolve by performing this action?
Yes.

4. Is the machine plugged into AC when the problem occurs?
No. The problem always occurs immediately AFTER I unplug the power cable from the laptop.

5. Can you cause the problem to occur by performing an action?
No.

6. Is your display glossy or matte?
Glossy

7. What type of video graphics hardware does your machine have? How much VRAM?
GeForce 8600 GT, 256MB VRAM

8. When did you purchase your computer?
May 25, 2008

9. Do you have a photograph of the defect? If so, please post a link.
No, but other photographs in this thread match mine exactly.

Anyway, I'd REALLY rather not send my MBP in for repair. Is the general consensus that this is a software/firmware problem? Will we see a fix in the next software update (10.5.4)?

same problem here. it happens to me about once every month and i think it's related to the light sensors. don't remember the conditions for the first one, but this last one seemed to have been caused when i unplugged my usb printer from the mbp (power cord was also not attached). I put some papers on the keyboard, covering the light sensors, i guess, and i got the zebra stripes.

closing the monitor and reopening it cleared the stripes. i haven't tried to recreate the issue.

I had the same problem with my 1st macbook pro. It's really strange why apple didn't take care of this problem before they sell products. I found this problem on the first day that I bought it. Fortunately, I got a replacement because when I showed to apple staff, they saw the problem right away. I heard that the problem came from the inverter of screen (you may hear a noise from a screen) or something like that.
http://lh3.ggpht.com/shiori2525/SE7f3dCbPRI/AAAAAAAAABU/XqNp1QlUaM8/Resize%20of% 20DSCF1764.JPG

Message was edited by: shiori2525

"It's really strange why apple didn't take care of this problem before they sell products."

Well, doesn't surprise me at all. Seems that all they care about these days is pushing out the newest most innovative products as FAST as possible, leaving the consumer as the testers (or enterprise users in the case of the iPhones)...WHICH IS WHY WE DEAL WITH THE PROBLEMS AND THEN THEY LATER CORRECT THEM. There is no time to really test these things, but anyway, I am glad you got yours taken care of. Hopefully production will SLOW DOWN during the next generation of portables, Multi-Touch and we can at least buy one almost perfect model. It's never going to be perfect.

The most disturbing aspect of this stripe issue is not the stripes themselves: it is the way apple is handling our cries for help.

Frankly, after this experience, I cannot understand the sense of writing in this forum, which is a MODERATED (by apple staff) one. We write here hundreds of messages in a single thread, read thousands of times with no reply.

Not only there is no reply here, but the support teams say they are not aware of this problem. You call apple care and they are not aware either. You call again, and STILL they are not aware. After months they are not aware. How can we tell apple that we see stripes? Is it a hallucination caused by the new MBP? Should I look for a doctor who would cure me? Is my mind gone?

Yesterday I cried for the happiness when I realized that my camera took a picture of the stripes and the presence of the stripes was confirmed by the apple seller. I was worried.

It would be enough a sentence like: it is a defect, bad things happen. At least we might repair our notebooks with a little confidence that the problem will be solved. Otherwise, who knows what happens?

mac.cardi

Message was edited by: Mac Cardi