MacBook Pro Retina display burn-in?

so I'm back:

I had my replacement on Wednesday and today on Monday i can see the first IR after a quite long time of testing on a gray background. It was gone very quickly.

I will do another test soon to know how bad it is really.

So far i will keep it because I can't see any other hardware problems but if it get worse I will change the display....

Now I see that samsung gonna stop producing displays for apple I think I have to do it very soon....

Think I can get a note from Apple for my employer that says I need to cut my work time in half so I can let the screensaver run for the other half?

@nt wrote:

Accept the IR and do what this article says.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5455

If not, get another computer. The pros out weigh the cons in my opinion. This machine is awesome. Also, get rid of these darn gray backgrounds and stop observing it. If it interferes with your work return it. I am still getting used to the speed of this thing. I am music producer and this machine enables me to do stuff I couldn't do with most computers. Helps with the creativity when your computer is as fast as the ideas coming to you when composing music.

Sound Evolution wrote:

I can tell everyone, that they slightly changed the rMBA design. I have a week 43 and a week 41 side by side as told in my previous post. The upper shell seems different. It is slightly thinner (this is not a good thing, since it flex more) and my suspicous is right by discovering that the week 43 is 0.2KG. lighter. They changed "something" in the display shell, or it are different manufactuer tollerances.

Are you sure the difference is that big? 0,2 kg is 200 grams - it's really much in laptops. I noticed that my 2 rMBP were also different weights (on the boxes) but it was a difference of 0,02 kg (so 20 grams).

@Canuck1970...I hear you on that one. If it gets in the way of your normal day to day use I would return mine also. Some people have legit issues with both Samsung and LG screens but where I made the mistake is I read this thread and started getting paranoid and checking my screen every 15 minutes. It shows slight IR but it wasn't until I accepted it and worked on my computer for a whole day that I realized how great of a machine it is and how I couldn't even notice it after I really started working on it. Every person is different though...for me it was keep the rMBP or get and regular MBP and beef it up which came out to the same amount of money. I had no option of waiting until the next one to come out. In this case I would much rather have slight IR and have an awesome machine than the previous more bulkier model. The retina display is amazing. Also keep in mind that youn can get it repaired within a year. I guarantee if it gets to the point that it is distracting I WILL get an exchange regardless of what some Genius tells me is within spec.

@Mark...what I did was take mine and let them note my account on how I noticed it within the 14 day period. Now if I ever go back and can reference the notes attached to the Apple Care on my notebook and point out this was noticed within the 14 days and it has gotten worse. I hear they have a test I think anyway in which they have an image they keep static on your screen for 3 minutes and if it disappears within 1 minute after being removed its within spec. Thats actually fine with me. If it gets to the point where it annoys me I'm sure it will fail this test so I am good with that.

@Peter. Nope. In your case I would send back and grab something else.

There's the fact that Apple's geniuses are likely to get your display replaced if your IR becomes terribly visible, to the point that it's blatantly obvious to the genius him self.

Sound Evolution wrote:

I can tell everyone, that they slightly changed the rMBA design. I have a week 43 and a week 41 side by side as told in my previous post. The upper shell seems different. It is slightly thinner (this is not a good thing, since it flex more) and my suspicous is right by discovering that the week 43 is 0.2KG. lighter. They changed "something" in the display shell, or it are different manufactuer tollerances.

Have you done any precise measurements to check its dimensions? If this is true they have not updated the tech specs yet.

Peter van Broekhoven

Re: MacBook Pro Retina display burn-in?

Oct 22, 2012 4:26 PM ( in response to @nt)

Think I can get a note from Apple for my employer that says I need to cut my work time in half so I can let the screensaver run for the other half?

@nt wrote:

Accept the IR and do what this article says.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5455

If not, get another computer. The pros out weigh the cons in my opinion. This machine is awesome. Also, get rid of these darn gray backgrounds and stop observing it. If it interferes with your work return it. I am still getting used to the speed of this thing. I am music producer and this machine enables me to do stuff I couldn't do with most computers. Helps with the creativity when your computer is as fast as the ideas coming to you when composing music.

As you sarcastically implied, anyone who suggests screen saver as a solution to IR is irrefutably an idiot. Screen saver was a preventative measure to the ancient problem when pixels could actually burn out.

Now that Samsung won't be building more displays for Apple, everyone will be stuck with LG and all LGs have IR. I would suggest a non-Retina MBP or a non-Apple laptop.

agree. boy apple is screwing up big time. going after sammy and hence loosing their best supplier. apple is a joke today. making crappy products and suing sammy because they are ****** afraid of samsung competition. apple cant produce a lcd itself thats half as good as sammys.

I'm as far from an Apple fanboy (or fanboy of any company) as you can get and your statement sounds ridiculous to even myself. If you're going to measure Apple based on this rmbp and their handling of all it's problems then maybe you can say "crap" but "crappy products"? Come on, get real. My wife's 4s for example is great (for her) and people that use Apple computers for work are not just fanboys. Clearly their computers are better than alternatives to get their specific work done I would think.

For example the iPhone 5. After Steve Jobs, I see a decline.

If its true that they are no longer using Samsung and instead will just be using LG for screens like this then I can't afford to keep using Apples.

Unless LG has a major quality jump there is no reason for me to take on the additional risk of (a) a computure with a crappy resale value because of a bad screen, (b) messing up implementing a design because of IR effecting colors and or lines, (c) having to replace the screen every 6 months because of major IR problems and having to go with out a computer for up to a week....

I have already started with my Desktops, went out and built a rig, next step is to transition my work flow over to Ubuntu.

PS: If this is about price with Apple I think most people buying a laptop that is this expsenisve would be willing to pay a few hundreded bucks more to not have these silly issues.

PS 2: I have said it once and I will say it again to ya'll that are saying the Samsung screens are more yellow then the LGs, yes they are, but that means they are actually closer to true white. Its not a bad thing, its a good thing..... It just seems extreme becaue the LGs are all out of wack. Thats of course if your seing what I am seeing god only knows with this computer......

Well I'm going to ring in as the proud new owner of a retina MBP that arrived today.

Yes... I've only had it 6 hours. I don't know yet if IR will become a problem. I will watch it carefully but as I mentioned earlier, I'm programmer, not a graphic artist so while the retina display is nice, what I was really after is the large RAM and Flash. The extra space of the retina in full resolution mode is very nice too.

So 6 hours into it. I've installed most programs I use daily including VMWare Fusion. After it was installed I copied over my two Windoze 7 VMs that I need to run and fired them both up. Both are using 2gb of RAM and 2 processor cores. I started long compile jobs in each.

While this was doable on my 2010 MBP it groaned mightly under the stain running its fans at full speed. The retina MBP simply hummed. It got a tiny bit warmer but not much. The fans never exceeded 3000 RPM. It was pretty amazing and I think I'm gonna love working on this machine. (assuming of course IR doesn't get so bad I can read my code hours later).

At one point today I needed to leave for a doctors appointment. Since this machine was connected to the LAN and a USB disk I left it to continue synching and copying. I took my 2010 MBP to the doctor appointment to wait for my son for 90 minutes. This was just after having the new retina model for about 3 hours. I could not believe how bad I felt the screen was on the 2010! These retina displays (when good) can be addicting.

Anyway for those of you monitoring this thread and trying to make a decision you really do need to make this decision yourself. I'm 100% sure there are people here that have had crappy screens. I'm also 100% positive that there are people here that had terrible IR and they are graphic artists or presentors. Either way I know these people were not happy but everyone needs to understand that being happy is a personal thing.

In my case I needed the speed, space, RAM etc. I took the plunge and so far (granted only 6 hours in) I'm loving it.

Just decide for yourself. Remember that these forums are mostly visited by people with problems. There are probably lots of rMBP owners that are just fine.

Is your display made by LG or Samsung? You can download this small app I made that identifies your display manufacturer here.

Try to tell which maker manufactured your screen just by eyeballing it before checking in Terminal or using the app. You may be surprised by how easily you're able to tell, based on the issues both are having.

Remember that these forums are mostly visited by people with problems. There are probably lots of rMBP owners that are just fine.

While I wish you were right, and that does make a lot of sense, it's actually the fact that most people don't notice the problem. Which is fine; I wouldn't have noticed the image persistence (probably not anyway) if I hadn't seen this thread before ordering. However, there is strong evidence that all LG-made screens develop IR at some point, whether it be a week in or a month in.

@shayster98

Mine is an LG. Ran the terminal command and verified it. Now on your idea of comparing it BEFORE running the terminal command, well I don't have a samsung sitting side-by-side to compare to. What I do know is that if I sit this display beside my MBP2010 without retina the difference is stunning and I mean STUNNING. This display is brighter, crisper and in my use through 7 hours today I have not noticed any IR. Granted I've read that it takes time to appear and it still might. But so far, right out of the box. Nothing.

I like this display so much that when I went to my doctor appointment with the older laptop I didn't enjoy working on it and that was after just a few hours on the retina.

On whether I'm right or not you raise a good point. The problem may exist. People simply may not notice it. Either way to me that results in a "happy" user. My point is simply that what you read in this 350+ page thread is the people that either have noticed or really were bothered by their displays.

I think if we went through this thread and counted up the unique number of rMBPs seen in this thread we are talking perhaps 350 pages times a maximum of say 20 posts per page that would be a maximum of 7000 unique MBPs. I would have to venture that Apple has sold quite a few more than that and I'd say my 7000 number from this thread is really high because there are lots of duplicate posters.

So my point is that the existence of this thread shows that there is a problem, at least with some rMBPs. Perhaps with all non-samsung rMBPs. The problem may be noticable only in specified conditions so that myself, grandma checking her email, or the teenybopper posting on facebook would never notice. On the other hand the problem is very real to those that depend up on the display for true graphic work which is what the Mac made its name on.

So I do not discount it. But I wanted to simply say that the "problem" even if it exists in all rMBPs is going to have different effects on different people. LIke grandma who would never even know what IR is to myself that probably won't care to the graphic designer whom it will drive them nutz.

What I don't agree with is the people calling Apple products crap for this. I do agree that Apple not coming out and acknowledging it is frustrating and probably will cost them some customers and sales. That bothers me more. If the CEO had simply said: Hey we got problems with iOS6 and maps and oh by the way, those of you suffering with the IR problem on the rMBP, never fear we got your back we are working on it! Don't you think this thread would be a ton shorter?