MacBook Pro screen blinks

FYI - Just spoke with Applecare. Neither the guy who answered, nor the Product Specialist, admitted to knowing about this issue. Really?? How the heck is that, I have to wonder. I mean, this thread only has 420 replies and over 52,000 views. They were nice, but said that there was nothing they can do without a tech checking it out. I totally understand that. But it's still a frustrating issue/situation. I was hoping that they would have acknowledged that it's a firmware issue or something and that they're working on it.

Oh, well....

Guess I'll have to take it to my local Apple Certified Tech at some point to see if I can get some diagnostic progress going. Arg.

Note: Oh, and the second I posted this, the whole screen flashed black (the 4th time today). Nice. Not frustrating at all....

Message was edited by: walker7366

I was reading this post and noticed that quite a few people have the same problem I have with my late 2008 mbp. I'm quite ****** at apple at this moment, I sent this computer in twice and it still have the problem (the first time they sent it back unchanged saying they were unable to reproduce the problem. Funny because sometimes it happends even during the startup apple logo).

Plus their service is worse then what they would like to show, I spoke to a lot of people who suggested me all sort of key combinations even though I told them I tried them already and nada.


This was my first apple, I was expecting to use it for visual effects compositing but I have to say it has been a pain to use. Next time I'm going with a different brand, no need for osx anymore since they stopped supporting shake anyway.

Hey there,

i had it all...i had the 2,53 for about 4 times and the 2,66 macbook.pro another 4 or 5 times. with every book i had this horrible blinking and flickering screen at low brightness and just in battery.mode. i had to send my book fully back to get my money back.

with my 3rd order finally everything is OK!!!!! Since the new unibody.macbooks came out in october i ordered one at the end of october and tried to get a flicker free macbook since then.

now i have my 10th machine (the first 15" with the better battery and matte finally!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and its all fine. i think they had a problem with the batterypower!

I have the laptop at the Apple Store, and after showing them the video of the flicker, they understood that it was serious and suggested the logic board replacement. Hopefully I will get it back soon with the problem gone. I will post a new reply once I get it back.

I'm adding my name, and my late 2008 machine, to the much too long list of Apple customers with a flickering screen MacBook Pro. I've seen this problem so far only when on the "better battery life" setting (that uses the NVDIA GeForce 9400M chipset), under the Energy Saver Preference pane. I plan on taking this machine to an Apple Store Genius, and will report back when I do.

Ok - so I've had the third repair, logic board replacement this time around and I saw one or two blinks the first day I got it back.
After reading through a few other previous posts I've noticed that the blink is much more evident when the computer has been put to sleep and woken up a few times. I have been trying to not sleep the computer to see if this makes a difference and I'm not sure if its the logic board replacement/ not sleeping the computer or the mixture of the two but so far so good...
Has anyone else tried not sleeping their computer? I used to leave it on all the time/ sleep it and perhaps the reason why it hasn't previously shown up at the genius bar more than once is simply because they make you shut your computer down when the re-set the pram etc etc?

I want to report that an Apple Certified Tech in my town is willing to perform a logic board replacement---he believes me that I have the flash (without seeing it himself---this seems to be a key in getting something done about this problem we're having), and agrees that a logic board replacement is in order. So, I'm brining it in tomorrow. Crossing my fingers. I'll report back.

Oh, the tech tried to run a hardware test on my machine, and the test wouldn't even start! He said that 8 times out of 10 that suggests a hardware problem, which made him even more willing to order the logic board. Strange. Not sure if it was my machine, or if it was something with the test, or them using the wrong test?, or what.

I'm not expecting it to solve the problem, given how many people have reported that they got a logic board replacement and the problem was still there, but... I want to have a record that I have tried different things, to bring to Apple.

Shoot...beyond swapping RAM (which I've already done), replacing the logic board, and/or replacing the display, what can be done to a computer?

Same problem here, but my unibody MPB has had this problem when it was still running Leopard, so the Snow Leopard upgrade didn't cause it.

Here is a youtube video showing exactly what the problem is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJMuYneBLLE

The flickering occurs at the following time increments in the youtube video: 0:02, 0:27, 0:37, 0:45, etc. Luckily it is not as frequent on my laptop as the one in this youtube video, but it is still annoying nonetheless.

Is there hope?...

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/10/16/appleseeds_new_mac_os_x_10_6_2_beta_todevelopers.html

Too bad it's impossible to know what they mean by "a screen flickering issue," but I suppose it COULD be this blinking problem...

My MACBOOK PRO (15-INCH, MID 2009) has the similar flickering problem. It usually happens under a heavy load, such as HD-movie editing in iMovie, also in Windows Vista (though boot camp). I also noticed that it's more easy to flicer when the screen is wider open, thus very likely hardware-related. I went to the genious bar and was luckily able to replicate the flicker. They suspected it to be an inverter cable problem and sent it for repair today. Let's wait and see how it goes.

I have been following this topic for a while, so I was quite hopefull to send my MBP back to apple to fix the screen flickering (to black) problem.

After getting it back after a week, with LCD panel replaced, the problem persisted 15 mins after I turned it on, they replaced the logic board the day after, and all was fine - the flicker/flash was gone..

BUT,
Since then, my brightness seems to blink/pulse every now and then..like the brightness or backlight is fading in and out. When pulling the brightness up to above 3 notches it dissapears. I have read similar issues in this same thread as being referred to the display "flickering".

I believe there is some confusion about the word "flickering" as some people refer to both of these things. Please people, be more specific when it comes to "the display flickering problem".

The post above on the new Snow Leopard update fixing the "screen blinking" is very interesting..let's see what will come out.

I see they have this thread as "Answered" BS!
I just noticed this issue on my new refurb when I changed to Better Battery. After just reading 200 posts in this thread, I changed back to AC Power setting and the blinks went away.
So, this issue is unresolved.
Mine is a 15" 2.4 MBP.
Just thought I would add to the list so that when the Genius tells me he hasn't heard of the problem, I can show him this very lengthy thread.

Just adding my name to the list of people who have the screen blinking black issue...

Doesn't happen that often. Sometimes the whole screen, sometimes just the upper part.

charlie

Now, because of the mysterious nature of this problem, I'm not claiming that this fixed it--because it could show up again at any time--but a local Certified Apple Tech was nice enough to replace my logic board almost two weeks ago, and I have yet to see a blink. YET. Again, since it took a couple months for it to start up in the first place when the computer was new, it makes sense that it could just as easily start up again the next minute, in an other month or two or four or who knows?

But, I wanted to report this in the hopes that it might encourage others to seek a logic board replacement. For one thing, it might help fix or delay the problem, and maybe if they have to replace enough logic boards, Apple will start paying proper attention to this problem.

As a side note, I wonder if anyone with the new MBPs which DON'T have the 9600 included are seeing this problem with their 9400...?

So does everyone else here see the huge flicker like in the youtube video above?

My early 2009 unibody MBP 17" screen flickers but only under these conditions:
- Battery savings mode (9400)
- On battery - flicker disappears as soon as power is plugged in
- When brightness is set to < 50%

Then I get constant flickering, but not huge black flickers like in the video, more like the display is refreshing at too low a rate. My flickers are much shorter than in the video so it's not so apparent. Then again, it flickers all the time, not just ever x minutes. It's annoying and somewhat headache-inducing when looking at it for an extended period of time. The MBP had this issue from when I first bought it 8 months ago.

My flicker is so subtle that it will be hard to convince the store people that there is a problem at all. It's not something you immediately see in a noisy, brightly lit store. Still - its certainly annoying. My only workaround is to increase brightness past 50%, then it's all good.

Message was edited by: orthorim