Q: New iMac 27inch screen flickering/tearing/shutoff

When I had my iMac I did go into RGB to see if it cured the Yellow. It did not! But I had Flicker also. RGB just looked darker as far as I can tell.

Thank you Paul_31 and jobu338.

We should try to find out, why the RGB mode has this positive effect.

BTW Who was the first in this thread finding it out? I remember he was very happy, when he posted it some days ago.

Let me clarify what I just wrote. I did not try RGB mode for more than one Minute. So I never tried it to solve Flicker issue just Yellow tinge. And it did not fix Yellow tinge. But had I left it on RGB, pergaps it would have at leased solved my Flickers. Judging by what I'm reading here.

As an electrical engineer with 40 years experience and hoping to move from a PC to an I7 there are several issues that may need clarification.
Having been on the receiving end or these kinds of problems as a first order the diagnose to one of three areas: quality, reliability and design. First; quality is either a bad product or a bad specification. Issues like dirt under the glass, dead pixels, scratching CD drives, cracked displays are either a quality or specification. Quite possibly the ISight camera spec allows so many dead pixels so it may need to be changed. If a computer operates for an extended period and then stops this is a reliability problem. Machines that arrive DOA are not a reliability issue.

This brings us to design and a term best appreciated as WIP (Work in Process), I can tell you that there is a three month stream of product flowing into the Apple manufacturing process that has components that will need to be changed to correct this problem and a team of design, manufacturing, purchasing and suppliers that are all involved in a non stop effort to find, redesign, order prototypes, checkout and reorder changed components to fix this issue. There may be a four week cycle for a new 5 to 7 layer printed wiring board or a 8 week IC design revision. Rest assured Apple will fix this problem and they will resolve all the quality and reliability issues as well. In April Apple will report their financial results and there will be no impact from the IMac fiasco.

Whether you decide to keep or return you existing product that is clearly your decision. Understand, it will always be two eras, like the old Fender guitars, pre-CBS and post-CBS, there will be "pre-flicker" and "post-flicker" IMacs.

Great insight. Thanks for sharing that.

Megallis wrote:
The "Apple RGB" settings only makes the screen a little "darker" I think. I´m not so sensitive about that. If this helps and I really don´t think so. Then all this is crazy. Please Apple, then send me a gift or maybe you need another employe

Yea, it was Megallis from Sweden!

Well, one day there will come a day when we can say: That was the day!
- Or something to that effect.

Not knowing, but hoping, I can say: 24 hours with my new iMac and no faults whatsoever. Maybe it really holds up. I'll post news every few days now.

So John,

When would you say it would be safe to buy a 27"- i7 ? June?

It´s quite nice that the RBB screen settings has come up.

It was actually the nick "ssls6" from Dallas, US, who got me the idea when he/she some days ago talked about the Xserver graphics (another Apple product). I qote: "The Xserver settings are critical to get matched to the display chipset and display itself." ... " I for one, think it is a software problem. Specifically, I think it's a sync problem. If I had my imac, I would try playing with the resolution, color depth, and screen size (assuming you can mess with V & H size, keystone, etc.)."

Look at page 64 in this thread, at the bottom for hes/hers comments.

I thought it was interesting and got into the RGB.

My contact at Apple phoned med today, the nice guy, I told him about the the RGB settings and he said it was very interesting and that he should forward it to the Apple engineers. They have to decide what to do with my machine. I said OK, let go for that.

"... he should forward it to the Apple engineers."
Now I realize how funny this sentence is

Take care and the best of luck to us all.

Sorry I forgot.

Still in RGB mode, fourth day. No flickering, No blackouts, No nothing.
I´m amized!

Keep in mind that I for the moment just are using the iMac for fun. Talking to you. Surfing the web and so on.

This is interesting!

http://www.macworld.co.uk/mac/news/index.cfm?newsid=28399

This may be a stupid question to some of you but I just don't know.
Would it be correct to suggest, that if in fact the RGB Setting does permanently fix the problem, then a software Update could possibly stop the Flicker? Thanks.

Well it's nice to see we are finally making a big enough noise & people are starting to pay attention to our iMac issues. Three Words: It's About Time!

On my iMac that now waits to be picked up and go back to Apple I calibrated the display using "Spyder", a calibration tool consisting of a display measuring unit (hardware) to be connected to the USB port to create the adjusted profile and software accompanying it.

The result is a unique colour profile that should make especially photo and video on the Mac appear more accurate and close to the results you then get on prints.

In short, using this profile did not cure the flickering. It noticeably changed the appearance of the display, making it look darker and with higher contrast, but as I said did nothing to correct the blackouts, flicker and such.