I bought my MBP 2.53 in late 2008 and have had the flicker problem since I upgraded to Snow Leopard. I honestly don't remember seeing it even once before that. I have followed (and posted a bit) in this thread since it was started and have seen just about everything theorized and tried and nothing has worked.
Since no one in this forum has had permanent success, I held off on taking my MBP in to Apple since it's my only computer and I didn't want to be without it for a few days or longer. I finally decided to take it in a few weeks ago when the flickering went from every few minutes/hours to every few seconds. I seriously thought the display was going to fail completely. Of course, switching to 9600 and back got the flickering to go back to every few minutes/hours.
When I took it in, the nice Genius Bar person said she'd heard of the issue and wanted to run some of their diags on it (not the same ones we have, apparently). She ran them for a bit while we talked (in the back, so I couldn't see them, nor the results) and said that they needed to replace the display and logic board. They did so and, of course, the flickering problem came back immediately. I've not opened another issue with them, as I'm certain they won't have a solution.
To be honest, I'm disappointed, AGAIN, with Apple. This is my 3rd Mac and may well be my last. My first was the first generation Titanium PowerBook G4. It was beautiful in it's day. However, due to heat (huge surprise, huh?) the Titanium paint would eventually bubble, crack, and peel; making the Ti PB look horrible. To my recollection, Apple never acknowledged this issue either. They did quietly change to the aluminum design after a few years, though.
Next was my 20" iMac G5. A thing of beauty. And yet, less than a month after I bought it, Apple announced their switch to Intel processors. I saw the handwriting for the G5 and immediately sold it on ebay for almost what I paid for it (at least that lesson didn't cost much).
This is my 3rd Mac and, mostly, my favorite. I'm doing more with this one than any previous Mac I've used. I do light web work (not my main job, but interesting on occasion), sysadmin (my main job), and just about everything else with this MBP. I've even experimented to see if I could live with only a laptop, using this one. I found that I could, even with the faults this one has. Fortunately, the flashing is an annoying flaw, and not fatal. However, it may be fatal to my decision whether or not to buy future product from Apple.
I think I see the handwriting on the wall. I think this is a sign that Apple is shifting away from computers to media devices and phones. If you see their past few quarters of sales figures, the media devices are killing computers in sales and profits. That's where we're going to see them spending most, if not all of their future efforts.
I think it's highly unlikely that we'll ever see this problem fixed. I've no idea if they are even trying to find a solution anymore. Probably not, as they have newer things to work on.
I really wish this would be publicized mainstream in the headlines of every major newspaper in the country, if not the world. I bet that would open a few eyes in the boardroom. Sadly, nothing else is.
It's almost like Michael Dell has taken over and is slowly driving the company into the ground, as he's currently doing to his own.
