Q: MacBook Pro Retina display burn-in?

I figured that this would be the case.  My guess is that Apple decided to install high-end screens into their high-end machines (Samsung screens into the 15" Retina Macbook Pros).  Let's keep on tracking the new 2013 models.... I am buying my 15" tomorrow and will post the screen results on this forum.  I have already decided that the machine will go back to the store in case I get a LG screen.

And, it is a true buyer's dilemma.  Since customers are unable to verify the screen manufacturer when purchasing a 13" retina model, it truly is a longterm gamble.  What's the point spending all that money on a super-laptop that in the back of customers' minds is not a flawless Apple product we have come to expect.  Honestly, I am so worried about this ongoing problem that my entire decision to purchase a 15" model instead of the 13" model is predicated upon the fact that I am able to verify the manufacturer of the display.  I have written and submitted a short summary regarding this forum and the ongoing issues to some technology news and review websites.  I hope we can draw some much needed attention to this sheer lack of customer care and willingness to change manufacturing procedures. 

Putting the meaning of this entire debacle into plain language shows us that Apple is willing to maintain their use of faulty displays without exhibiting even a hint of care for the future performance of these professional tools.  At least Tim Cook accepted the stock decline during today's shareholder meeting... if all the other departments at Apple are treating hardware issues similar to the issue described in a thread with 478 pages (increasing at an average rate of 1 to 2 pages per day), it bears out our combined concerns regarding the future of this company.  I am an Apple fan and want to purchase this great laptop!  However, buying a laptop glorified for its unprecedented screen that cannot deliver on its promises for exactly THAT hardware component seems foolish at best.

You know....there are a few other things to consider here...

1) I would strongly suggest you buy the Apple Protection Plan.  That will cover your backside if anything happens, including battery replacement.

2) The 13" model only has a single fan inside...the 15" has dual fans.  This absolutely will help keep the inerds running cooler under heavy loads.

3) There is no number 3.

Scott

... quad core versus dual core is a MAJOR performance increase as well.

BoloMK33 wrote:

 

The 13" model only has a single fan inside...the 15" has dual fans.

The 13" Retina model also has dual fans. Just letting you know.

I have an early 2013 rMBP, 15", 768 GB, 2.8 Ghz, with an LG screen, so I don't think Apple is saving "LG" for the "low" end...

@TimSportsschuetz:  You normally cannot determine the manufacturer of individual components on most notebooks made, the fact someone figired out how to do it on the 15" is great but not usual or normal.  As for your submitting the issue to forums and tech sites, good luck.  From just reading the last few pages from you newer people it's clear that not many have read through this thread and none of you have stated any actual FACTS about this issue, it has been almost 100% speculation. I doubt any reputable site would write about this issue based on a forum with no hard facts available, but it may get some of them to pursue finding out whats really going on.  Also if you read a bit more of the thread you'd know that all versions of rMBP 15's have had both screens with no decipherable pattern.  As to the 478 pages, there was actually a reset after the first 500 pages or so.  But even from say 1000 pages you have to look at the actual number of people who reported having IR on their machines.  A vast majority of the posts here are from people complaining about the possibility of getting an LG with IR or about how to win the 'lotto' by returning an LG screen, without even testing for IR, in hopes of a Samsung.  Cosidering Apple produces approx. 133,000 rMBP per month and taking an educated guess that there have been less than 1000 people on this forum who actually have reported significant IR, the failure rate is fairly low. Even if you conservatively figure the 1000 people with IR on this forum are just 1% of the total overall that is still less than a 10% 'failure' rate.  Is that good? No but it's not nearly as bad as some make it out to be.  Keep in mind Samsung has had several documented issues also:  Yellow tinted areas, dead pixels, lower contrast, lower color gamut and the inability to calibrate accurate an white point.

@Bolomk33:  The 13" only has a dual core CPU and the intel integrated graphics, there is no discrete GPU.  All the reviews I've read for both sizes have been very positive about the great heat management system Apple has designed into the rMBP's.  I run my quad i7 2.7Ghz CPU at 100% load (on all 8 threads) for hours at a time daily doing huge batch processing files (10 to 50GB) in photoshop.  Heat is definatelynot an issue on the 15".

FYI, Anyone can add Applecare anytime during the first year standard warranty period to get the additional 2 years coverage.  B&H photo offers Applecare for the 15" for $244 USD ( I believe in the USA only) which saves $105 over Apple direct pricing.

For the record I have a flawless LG 15" display as do 5 other local photographers, 2 of these were from the initial pre-order release date and all of the machines are our originally received units.  One local has a Samsung and returned it due to inability to calibrate an accurate whitepoint, he just received his replacement (Samsung) and the new display has several dead pixels.  He says Apple has been very easy to deal with and even offered to send his new replacement in advance of returning the one he has (due to the downtime and hassle) but it goes to show you Samsung is not perfect either.

@TimSportschuetz:  1st model 2.6 15" received about 9/4/12.  And I have to agree to a large degree with Jajaba's response just above.  In addition, of all the hundreds of pages of posts here, many of them are from the same people.  If a person says they have severe IR on their screen, I have no reason to doubt them, but my experience has been very different from those who say all the LG's are bad or will be bad and I think many are acting, or actually re-acting based on opinions of people who never even have had the computer.  By the way, I'm a semi-professional photogrpher myself and the quality of the screen is quite important.

Dear All

Image Persistence  is real.  Apple says its normal.  I believe the industry would say otherwise and not acceptable for a machine of this status.

You will find if you really had a proper look its not all the same people posting, and there has been over 700,000 hits on this thread. It's been reset.

New thread starting up about the new iMacs with IR, they have the same screens IPS.

My iPhone, iPad two and iPad with retina have IR too but!!!, they are not computers that we create professional  work on and I am happy to use them the way they are and have not approched Apple for a replacement as I did for the Mac Book Pro Retina that I purchased. Twice!

There is a lot of, off topic contribution to this post, and think it should be kept to the topic at hand and that is letting people know that there is an issue and its not their imaginations and when Apple says its normal it seems that they might be incorrect in their assumption on this topic.

I love Apple but what is right is right.

"There is an issue and its not your imaginations!!!"

Based on my checking of displays for units at the Apple store, the newer 15" models have both LG and Samsung displays, regardless of configuration.  I prefer the slightly whiter screen of LG, but with all this noise about image retention, I wonder if too much is being made of the LG vs. Samsung "lottery."  One has to look very hard, under the right conditions, to replicate IR.  And I'm a photographer. 

In any event, I recommend getting AppleCare on these machines: It's totally worth it.

OK  Just to add my 2 cents

Retina MacBook Pro 15" developed an area of dead pixels.  So it went back to Apple and they replaced the screen with A samsung (previous was LG).   The new Samsung screen was terrible...  strong yellow tinge.  When the screen was calibrated to reduce this yellow - it ended up dim so that white appeared grey.

So went back to Apple   and told them that I preferred a screen with dead pixels rather than this yellow screen.

They again replaced the screen  - another Samsung - and this one was perfect -  still a slight yellow touch but quite acceptable.  Comparing it with all the other retinas in the store (strangely they were all LG) I found that Samsung was equal brightness and had more depth of colour than the LG. 

Regarding the Samsungs being yellow - mine from the factory was too blue.  When I calibrated it with an i1 Display Pro the result was a more yellow tint. 

So either there are wildly varying amounts of yellow in Samsung displays or people are just too used to blue-ish screens and think this is yellow in comparison.  Because in actuality, it still was still too blue from the factory (at least my unit).

@crispin williams

The photographer I mentioned in my post above who returned his Samsung (twice now) found that on his first Samsung 'out of the box' it was oversaturated and the white point was 7100 with a 2.4 gamma.  He uses a Spyder3 calibration system and found that in order to acheive a 2.2 gamma all the color channels (RGB) were reduced significantly.  He still could not get near 6500K white point, at best he was at least 300K off.  We tried my i1DisplayPro system with similar results.  The results on an sRGB gamut graph were approx. 90% of sRGB with an off center shift toward the red / yellow spectrum.  My LG displays achieves a 97+% sRGB gamut and I've heard of no white point issues.  I just checked my whitepoint and it's at 6506K, can't get much closer than that.  The second Samsung he is returning, do to dead pixels, was also calibrated (with spyder3) and he said the gamma and white point were closer out of the box and ended up at 2.2 / 6600K but the corrections still had to pull down all RGB values to get correct gamma.  This indicates that the Samsungs were (are) oversaturated by default which may be why you thought the samsung display appeared to have 'more depth of color' compared to the LG.  Depth of color is completely different than saturation, it is basically the range of colors (gamut) a display can actually reproduce and is almost impossible to compare with the naked eye.  The LG 'out of the box' typically is at 95+% of sRGB gamut and they have a slightly higher color depth than the Samsung (at least the 2 tested above).  Bottom line is you need to be careful and not confuse saturation levels in any way with color accuracy and color gamut.

@millerrh512

Interesting.  I agree most people seem to be accustomed to cooler white points, probably due to the fact that almost all TN LCD's from the major notebook manufacturers come from the factory with a very cool white point.  In essence they have been fooled into thinking this is how it should look.

How did your Samsungs color gamut end up after the i1display calibration?  I know there is no numerical percentage provided for the gamut graph but it's fairly easy to estimate the sRGB % coverage.  Also did the overall calibrated gamut graph end up slightly shifted toward the red / yellow side?  Or is it well centered in the overall sRGB / RGB spectrum?

@ Joseph from Austrailia

Really, your iPhone, iPad2 and iPad 3 have IR?  Funny out of the 100,000,000+ of those models shipped I have yet to read about any IR issues.  You must be very unlucky.  As for the 700,000 hits on this thread you mention, that doesn't mean a thing.  Every time anyone clicks on a page, a post, a link or refreshhes a page the counter registers it as a 'hit' it does not indicate in any way how many of those 'hits' have anything to do with how many machines actually have IR.  The number of 'hits' grows close to exponetially as the length of a thread increases.   I do agree that there is an issue with IR on some LG displays but I believe it is much less widespread than many, like yourself, claim.  IPS displays are not in any way prone to IR, they are used almost exclusively by all professional imaging industries and have been for years.  Including medical CT scanners, Ultrasound and Xray displays, movie / TV / CGI editing, photographers, print editors, publishers, scientific research etc. etc.

Feb 28, 2013

A pixel died!