Q: MacBook Pro screen blinks

hi everyone!

I'm constantly have eyestrain when working on my new unibody MBP17" Antiglare (already 3rd unit (2nd replacement) - i can feel how it's flickering.

Thought my 3rd unit has no screen flickering issues on low screen's brightness settings as it was with first two units but I can see pretty much clear now how my Display flickers in certain conditions - as an example check this image:









This flickering became even more obvious when this kind of image located in the bottom part of the screen on my laptop.
You can save this image and try to open it on your Mac. Please give it a try and let us know if you can see anything.

Thanks!

Oh dear - and I was hoping the upgrade to 17" would fix the problem. I hope I have better luck that you. The 17" machine is ordered already so I'll wait and see.

hey freethinker.

i m looking at your test image with a DELL inspirion laptop, 2004. since my 4th unit of the unibody MBP had to get sent back because of constand flickering. i am now waiting to get my money back and order a new MBP, however with a tiny refund.

I went to a electronics chain store called Media Markt yesterday. And i tested another test image i have on all the macs in store. all from the macbook air to the MBP 17" and all in between, even the imacs had the exact same flicker on the exact same test images out of maybe 10 different images.

i have been told by some here that these test images are not relevant and you cannot see the flicker sometimes even you can see it on the test image. so how can my eyeburning, headache be explained i only experienced with the new mac line so far? and how is it possible that my 5 year old crappy DELL has a qualitatively higher, flicker free display on ANY test image or website?

good luck everyone who has purchased one like me and is trying to find out what the **** is going on with this new line.

Hi pdutcher,

I am refering to your screen flickering problem when you connect your mbp to a 30" display. I have the same problem. did you solve this meanwhile?

thank you
zim

Hi all,

I have the random blinking screen problem with my macbook pro unibody also. I brought it back to the Apple store today at Westfield (London, UK) and the genius acknowledged the problem and took it in for a replacement logic board. I've been quoted up to 2 weeks to wait for the repair but as soon as I get it back I will post the result. Hopefully the issue will be fixed.

To be clear, the problem only happens on the less powered graphics card and I see either the whole screen going black for a fraction of a second, or sometimes the top half of the screen goes black. Also sometimes I can see small artifacts.

Anyone who has these problems should bring their machine back for repair or replacement.

I'll be curious if whatever they do to your machine fixes the problem.

I have this same issue, and I got my MBP in the first round, last Oct. It's strange to me that people who are buying them now are also having the same issue. That makes me not very hopeful that sending my machine back in would do anything.

Anyone had theirs "repaired" and no longer have this issue?

Still waiting for the repair to be completed but when I get it back I'll post the results straight away.

got my 9th machine and it still flickers, if flash.animations are on websites at low brightness and with the ac.cable off.

Your 9th machine? That is unbelievably bad luck! Have Apple compensated you in any way? I think that is totally unacceptable personally.

50 bucks...thats all i got.

Any news about solving the flicker/blink-problem?
I'm talking about the random black border flickering on the dispay, when the 9400m is enabled.

I recognized that the ramdom flicker on the top 1/3 area of the display appears with increasing frequency. At beginning in 2008, the flicker wasn't there, but now, the flicker appears mostly every 10-15 Minutes, when a Flash-Movie (on Youtube) is playing.

I thought, 10.5.7 will solve the backlid- and the upper black border-flickering, but nope.....

thats not good, apple.....

"I recognized that the ramdom flicker on the top 1/3 area of the display appears with increasing frequency. At beginning in 2008, the flicker wasn't there, but now, the flicker appears mostly every 10-15 Minutes, when a Flash-Movie (on Youtube) is playing."

Same here but unrelated to any type of use. Since 10.5.7 did nothing we just have to wait for a firmware update I guess.

aehaas

Sad to say but Apple get worse and worse every day, every week. From almost legendary quality down to ashes and debris, that is what I can say right now about Apple. And the only reason I am still with Apple is OSX or I should rather say UNIX base of OSX. My first PowerBook refuses to cooperate after almost 3 years. Second MacBook have said "Sayonara" after 2 years. If this trend is going to continue I would be forced to switch back to PC laptops. I can't afford to pay $2000 to replace laptop every year. Very sad to say so but Apple is steadily joining the path of "dark force" (dark force = Micro$hit).

I have a brand new Macbook Pro 15" 2,8GHz model.
Bought it just yesterday and I experience the same problems.
Although I mainly have the flickering issue with scroll my bookmarks in safari or my application stack in the dock.

I've recorded it and it can be seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQBDH9guhEs

Quote:
"The key Question remains: is this a software issue or is it due to a faulty NVIDIA 9400M graphic chip?"

Does anybody already know the answer to this?