Q: MacBook Pro Retina display burn-in?

Coco_Jambo wrote:

 

After a while the obnoxious "Genious" agreed to replace the screen one more time just to make me happy. But he kept insisting that we could keep doing this for ages and that I might never be happy with the result.

 

I'm amazed that you were able to get a replacement. I've gone into two different Apple stores to complain about my yellow replacement Samsung display and both times I was denied a replacement. Based on your story I guess if I did get a replacement it would still just be yellow.

Apple sold you a product you did not agree to buy. Your first display wasn't yellow. If your first display was yellow you would have returned it within 14 days. You expect to get the product that you were sold. You aren't imagining the problem: the display is noticably dimmer and duller and has less contrast and the colours are simply wrong and you can see this just by looking at the display alone without comparing it to anything else. And Apple doesn't care because they already have your two thousand dollars and they're giving these yellow displays as replacements to people who are outside their 14-day replacement window so we're stuck with them.

MartyF81 claims to have calibrated his display using a tool. So now you're expected to pay another $100–$200 to correct the fauly display that Apple gave you. Personally, I haven't bought a colour calibrator because I don't believe this yellow display can ever look like the previous one because the display can't show colours correctly. You can use the built-in Color Calibration Assistant and crank up the white point so that instead of looking hideously yellow it looks hideously blue. I spend all day moving the dial between 7000K and 9300K because the display is also very sensitive to ambient light changes so I have to keep moving it around.

MartyF81 also claims that each manufacturer is different. That's not true. From my experience the display units in the Apple store are also the Samsung LSN154YL01001 but they aren't yellow, they look normal. If you set a display to 6500K it should show 6500K. If not, it's broken.

I understand that you think that people might want to trade places with me right now but what I want to argue is that Apple should admit this issue and try to resolve it so everyone can be happy with whatever screen they have got. I currently do not feel like I have a screen of the same quality as the one in the shop and that is why I am so angry.

And you are all talking about 2 screens but according to that obnoxious Genious that information has not been confirmed so how do we know that this is true?

I just think that we should not get these type of issues when we pay so much money for a laptop of that type of quality.

I strongly feel that Apple are tricking consumers into paying for screens of different quality when in fact the differences should be minor and the issues non-existent.

If you think setting the display to just "6500k" is "universal"  because 6500k is 6500k and that a viable work around is to "turn up the brightness" then you do not understand the science behind this at all and are working on opinion and not research.  Turning up the brightness is simply turning the LED so bright that you cannot see it the colors properly at all. The proper technique would be to excercise good color theroy and recognize that the proper way to combat too much yellow would be to boost the Violet spectrum as they are on opposite sides of the color wheel. The software in your computer has no idea if 6500K is being displayed properly. It just knows that it's programmer decided that it needs to turn up the voltage to the grid to "X" Volts in order to produce close to 6500k.

To further that point, the reason you "spent all day" adjusting between 7000k and 9300k is because your eyes NATURALLY adjust for white balance very quickly. Which is why you had to keep calibrating. Your eyes quickly adjust to your changes.

There absolutley can be be variences in manufacturing. I have 2 models of the same ASUS 22" LCD display, one was slightly cooler than another. I dialed it in with calibration.

The displays can absolutley be fixed with calibration. I did it with my old LG display as well as with my new Samsung display. As a Photographer it is very important to me to calibrate so all of my displays produce the same colors.

Thank you Merch Visoiu. You explained exactly what I have been experiencing and feeling for the past few days. But I don't think they replaced the screen. How would they have done this after 16 hours? I strongly think that they just "claimed" they replaced it so I can go away...

I just think this is unfair and Apple are misleading us... There should not be 2 screens on the market that are so different and have such different qualities and cleraly have some faults with them.

Coco it has been confirmed, mutiple places have taken apart the Retina Macbooks and found different display types. The Genius bar even has a Diagnostic test that the perform if you have the LG display to see if it "pass fails" for image burn in.... if it fails, the replace it with a Samsung.

I just had mine replaced last week and got a Samsung, it was noticeably "yellow". I took it home and calibrated it in about 10 mins and it was perfect and the yellow was gone.  It is perfectly normal, and can be corrected.... this is why calibration and color profiles exist so that the display can be "adjusted" to preference.

Thank you MartyF81.

I know this is a very silly question but could you maybe give me a tip of how to calibrate it in order to get the best results? Or do you know of any links that give you good guidance?

I am not very familiar with those tools and I gave it a go and I just thought everything looked awful...

Your help is much appreciated.

MartyF81 wrote:

 

I just had mine replaced last week and got a Samsung, it was noticeably "yellow". I took it home and calibrated it in about 10 mins and it was perfect and the yellow was gone.  It is perfectly normal, and can be corrected.... this is why calibration and color profiles exist so that the display can be "adjusted" to preference.

Marty, can you please post photographs of your calibrated display? If a calibration tool could change this yellow Samsung replacement display I have now to look like the prior display I had I would go and spend the 200 bucks and get a colour calibrator but I believe the display itself is defective and can't be calibrated because it's not showing colours accurately. I can give you an e-mail address to send photographs to or maybe you have a Flickr page or something. I would like to see your calibrated display next to another display, maybe an older MacBook Pro or an iPhone or iPad or an iMac.

Regardless, the idea that a consumer should go out and spend another 200 dollars and buy a colour calibrator to adjust the display is absurd. I never had to do this with dinky 200-dollars Acer displays I used to buy. They "just worked."

I have from September 1st to September 10th to get a Macbook Pro

Honestly, I don't feel like getting the regular Macbook Pro.

Do you guys recommend me to wait til September 10th to see if Apple release the new MBPR or not?

I am going study abroad and really need to get this mac but i am afraid about having the ghosting problem :/

Coco the best way to do it is to get a Calibrator. You can get a ColorMunki for under $100. Honestly it was the best thing I ever did. Even before I did photography I got one and it is really amazing the difference it makes.  My wife thought her display was "great" until I calibrated it and then she was shocked at the difference it made.

Merch

I would happily post a picture, but the problem is unless you are looking at the image on a properly calibrated screen you won't really be able to tell. If your screen is already showing "Warm" it is going to pass along that "Warm" yellow on to the picture I send.

Besides, my camera DiGIC chip would adjust the White Balance "IN-Camera" anyway.  I don't know why people post pictures of their screens... it doesn't make sense. The person looking at the picture is looking at it on a screen that is probably not calibrated and something like and iPhone camera is going to add its own color cast. You can really only tell the difference if you are looking at 2 screens right next to each other in person.

As far as your "dinky ASUS" it probably came out of the box with a color that was "pleasing" to your eyes but to somone else it might look kinda blue or kinda yellow.... (kind of like how some people think Kim Kardashian is attractive, and she looks like a horse to me). That doesnt mean it was properly tuned, it just means it was acceptable to you out of the box. Everybody's eyes are different. I usually, for the past 10 years, buy a new computer about every 8-10 months. I have never once had a screen that looked the same as my old Machine, there was always variations and I would always have to calibrate. I have been using the same color calibrator for at least 6 years now. It was worth it.

MatryF81, can't you do it for free somehow? Do not really want to spend all that money on it...

I know it will have amazing effects and that it will be worth every penny you spend but I just would like to do it for free... Is there a way???

Thank you SO much!

To further the point, if you use a Calibrator, at the end of the calibration it will let you "Toggle" between Before and After.  You will be shocked at how out of whack your display was "Before" even though you probably thought it was ok.

Coco, Mac OS-X has a Color Calibration software built in that you can use. But you are trusting your eyes to make the decision and your eyes WILL decieve you and to be honest it does more of a "Macro" level adjustment, and the best way is with "Micro" level adjustments that only a Calibrator can detect by which it will end with programming a ICC color profile.

Spending $90 on a Color Calibrator may seem like a lot of money, but it will work for years to come and you can probably split the price with friends or family who you can calibrate as well.

Coco_Jambo wrote:

 

...But I don't think they replaced the screen. How would they have done this after 16 hours? I strongly think that they just "claimed" they replaced it so I can go away...

While it's possible you're right, take a look at step 20 here. That's what it takes to get the screen off. The process is relatively simple and it probably takes longer to get the bottom off than to replace the screen.

As MartyF81 said,  most of the posts on what may be the longest thread in the Communities are complaints about LG image retention;  getting a Samsung replacement screen is the stated goal of most and that's what Apple appears to be doing. You're in a rather special situation: your problem had nothing to do with the screen (which you liked) except that's what the camera was built into and the fix for the FaceTime camera is to replace the screen.

MartyF81 wrote:

 

To further the point, if you use a Calibrator, at the end of the calibration it will let you "Toggle" between Before and After.  You will be shocked at how out of whack your display was "Before" even though you probably thought it was ok.

I simply don't believe a colour calibrator will solve the problem. I believe the display itself is defective. I do expect that calibrating it will make it look better and the "after" image will look better than the "before" image but only in the same way that cranking the white point up to 8000K makes the display look better than leaving it at 6500K. But I don't believe that calibrating this display will make it look as good as the previous display was that this computer came with and that I agreed to buy. I could be wrong, though. But that's why I haven't bought one yet. I believe that you can only calibrate a display that's working correctly from the start. But you're the photographer, not me. I'm a programmer.