iMac 24 Aluminum screen burn-in?

darn
I have the same problem.



Only the dick shows outlines. The menu bar area isnt affected. Even the Spotlight icon (which I NEVER click on) is not burned into my screen. Only the dock, which oddly enough changes size almost constantly....

(scratching my head)

Btw, I always have the dock at the right side of the screen and is always visible... The dock is not altered. It is the original standard Apple Leopard Dock. The outlines are slowly fading away now since I made my dick a little bit smaller about half an hour ago.


Are these real screen burns?? Because my iMac is only 6 months old.

I've been having this problem as well lately. If I have a window open on top of my desktop icons, I can see the outlines of the icons. Since I have a web browser open quite a bit I can often see outlines from the top part of the Safari window when I'm working in a different application. Because some things are often moving around, I often get large "smudges" of image persistence (mainly in the middle of the display) with more recognizable objects in certain places. It's bad enough that sometimes when I'm working in Photoshop I have to move my image around just to figure out if what I'm seeing is image persistence or part of the file I'm working on.

Obviously image persistence is normal for an LCD if an image is left on the screen long enough, but I've never had problems like this in the past. Even if I do something to make it go away, the problem is it seems to come back relatively quickly.

I'm not sure if the brightness of the backlight affects image persistence in any way, but I did notice that bright objects are the ones that "burn" in the most noticeably, and this display is definitely much brighter than displays I've had in the past. So I've tried turning down the brightness—I've had it around 50% for a few weeks now—but I don't think it's made any difference. I didn't think it would but I figured it was worth a shot.

I'd like to take it in to get it looked at, but I just haven't had the time to go through that ordeal. If I knew I could get it fixed I would, but I'd hate to go through a lot of trouble and find out this is basically "normal" for the current 24" iMac.

Here's a photo of my full screen showing a perfectly flat grey image:
http://mikepiontek.com/journal/uploads/misc/imagepersistence01.jpg

You can see there are some darker smudges in the middle and a lot of lines in different directions. Here's a close up of an area in the top left:
http://mikepiontek.com/journal/uploads/misc/imagepersistence02.jpg

You can see there's some legible text with pretty noticeable horizontal lines above and below it. These pictures aren't ideal, it's actually more noticeable in person.

I guess I'll try the all-white screen saver for a while to see if that helps. Perhaps if I completely clear the image persistence I can at least get rid of the dark smudges.

We have an office with 5 of the 24" AL iMacs and all of them suffer this same problem. We notice it a lot considering we do design work all day. I can say 3 things for sure.

1. It's not burn in, the ghosted image changes frequently.
2. The attached Dell display DOES NOT suffer these effects.
3. The jscreen fix didn't work for us.

*What did help:*
I think it's the heat that plays a big role in the ghosting. We installed smcFanControl ( http://homepage.mac.com/holtmann/eidac/software/smcfancontrol2/index.html ) on all of our machines and raised the minimum fan speed to about 60%. In about 15 min the ghosting goes away, but the iMacs are noisy as ****. It seems like the internal temp needs to be below 105F for them not to ghost.

Turning down the brightness helps too. And it will stop your eyes from bleeding! The iMac even gave me headaches! I couldnt figure out where these headaches came frome until I read about Apple making these iMac's too bright! You should install something like Brightness Control. It's free
http://www.splasm.com/products/productbrightness.html

Here is an interesting read:

Some iMac's have uneven brightness problems.

+Apple tries to compensate for this with ridiculously high level of brightness, which to be honest masks the problem rather well. The screen is simply so bright by default that any normal human being either needs to have sunglasses while using the iMac or turn the screen brightness down. The problem is, you can turn the brightness down only so far. And that is very little. Even the lowest setting is still way way too bright for most of us.+

source:
http://www.silvermac.com/2008/24-inch-imac-display-brightness-problem-and-what-y ou-can-do-about-it/

Out of all the responses in this thread, I think you are the closest to hitting the nail on the head. Apparently this is a heat-related problem. I tried the utility you linked to, and increased all three fans to 2500 rpm. The ghosting is still somewhat there, but markedly better than it was before. Of course, now my iMac sounds like a regular computer rather than the whisper-quiet machine it once was, but I can live with that much more easily than I could live with the ghosting. And I can always turn down the fans temporarily if I need the silence to watch a movie or something.

I have had this same problem for the past month and it is driving me crazy. i bought the imac in September 2007. It is just getting worse and worse. i work on a lot of multimedia and graphics projects and this is a serious problem. i asked for help at the local apple shop in Edinburgh and they were useless!!!

i will try the fans as mentioned above.

I hope apple will take these macs back and replace with new ones. This is quite ridiculous. i spent a lot of money on it and got the 1tb and maximum memory so it sure wasn't cheap!! i love apple and would like to think i can keep using their products.
will let you know how i get on with the fans.

Ive had similar problems to ones specified here . top left corner had streaking down it and I also had persistent text and images appearing on screen, to the point where I only had to leave a window in position for 60 seconds before the image remained once the window was moved.

So took it to my local Apple service center, who explained that the streaking in the corner is a well known problem with the new iMacs, its where both the atmosphere between the screen and the magnets allow air flow, the air sucked in by the fans takes in dust and expels it and it get behind the screen , so this problem is resolve by simply cleaning the screen and keeping the area around your machine dust free.

As for the the persistent ghosting of images and text they had no explanation, and I had to fight to get the screen replaced, the guy in the shop said they are very reluctant to replace the screens as they know of this problem happening allot and every warranty replacement goes against their store.

If Apple are aware of this, and I should think they are by now , they should do something about it I have been a Loyal customer for over 10 years and as its been previously said these are not cheap machines!!!

Let hope theres some action from apple

You should cool down your mac with smcFanControl and install Shades. You will have less ghosting images in your screen this way. Because you can't turn down the brightness on your mac, there is more contrast. Shades add a transparant layer over Leopard.

I had thoughts of buying a iMac 24" 2,8GHz with 8800GS graphics card... but now when i read about your monitor and heat related problems im seriously reconsider of buying a PC instead =/

When do you think Apple could fix this problem?

Hi

I'm an amateur of photography and computer graphics and when I bought first iMac in December 2007 I couldn't stand it so gave it back to reseler and they gave another one with the same problem ofcourse. I already had a background of that problems from all kind of forums and that they're people on all over the world with the same issue.
I said OK let's try the third one in the shop and what? The same problem.
Now I uderstand why the gradient was deeper and deeper along with time of iMac being turned on, cause the temperature of the panel was increasing.

In March 2008 I've called apple care and after serious of conversations they have admited that: "such a problem existed but it has been adressed" and that "if I'll order from them directly I'll have an iMac from the newest batch without issues" So I gave it a go and I've played in this apple lottery ones again. First one was bad as ****. The second one was so bright that I couldn't use it but the gradient was almost invisible. Now I understand this cover up from apple. I gave it back. They send the third one and ofcourse you know what was the outcome. Now I'm still using my PC. Looks like apple doesn't want any "switchers" anymore. They have enough money from ipod's and iphones that imac's are just 15% of their profit so they just don't care.

But the most anoying thing is that they niether fix the problem or admit it and give resolution time.

Oh and there is one more thing. 2 of my friends bought new silver 24" iMac just when they have been released ( with Tiger ) and they screen is much diferent like it would come from diferent manufacturer and no gradient. Just a barely visible yellowish stain in the centre of the screen but I would live with that.

And about software fix using "Shades" or other app. I'm afraid this fix comes with another problem which is "depth of colors". With software shading of all colors you decreasing numbers of all colors that can be displayed. So one way or the other we loose something. Spending that amount of money for and iMac we geting great operating system, nice hardware all boxed in marvelous brushed aluminium box and crappy screen comes with along. Some things never change and computers are so strong as their weakest part. So I've been forced to stay with my Sony VAIO.

I visited a Apple reseller yesterday to see if the iMac 24" in the store had some problems with the display, and i couldn't see any problem at all?! No gradient light, yellow colour or colour washout... does the displayproblems exist from the beginning or does it take time?

Heh, I had 6 of them + 2 tested in the shop. Last one today. Still the same.
Just see that posts about, they just keep on coming.

Anyway. Did you tested in specific conditions like plain or pattern background, brightness on low level (minimum is the best)? And then, behold! the great hardware gradient absolutely for free!

Anyway, the only thing we can discuss now are now is the health of your eyeballs (pardon me) cause it has been proven on serious of forums that it's a design fault which cause overheating with result of visual distortions like uneven luminescence of the screen or smudge.

Probably there is no point of buying iMac's until they're gone be redesigned which is at least 1 year.

Crap you just made me think if its really worthy to buy this beutiful/low-quality computer... What type of mac computer should i buy instead? I love everything about the iMac but i really think it's sad that it have serious problems with the display...

No i didn't try the store resellers iMac with plain background and with brightness on low level... i shall visit the store again and reconsider my mac-computer buy... =(

Does the problems with the display come directly from the store or does the gradient lightning getting worse along with time? Im not a professional photographer och designer so i don't know if the display related problem is big for me?.. Does the computer have thermal issuses even if i install the smcFanControl application? http://homepage.mac.com/holtmann/eidac/software/smcfancontrol2/index.html

It comes directly from the store. After about 15min from turning on an iMac it's showing it's "full class" 😉.
I haven't tried the fan controled but i haven't heard anyone who got it fix with that but I've seen oposite:
http://www.silvermac.com/2008/24-inch-imac-display-brightness-problem-and-what-y ou-can-do-about-it/
You'll loose peth of colors with that but for web browsing or word processing it's OK, but in that case I don't see the point of spending 1,5K euro or $ for such a tasks.