Here's an update. I finally made it to the Apple Store and it pretty thoroughly convinced me that I need to stop buying Apple products until they can refocus on providing both quality products and quality service. The MacBook Retina has been nothing but a parade of problems since I opened the package and Apple has been weasely about it at every turn. I don't feel like I'm dealing with Apple any more, but some creepy guy selling used electronics at a swapmeet.
So I go to the Apple Store and show them the hot spot using Photoshop, and illustrating the behavior against different colors. Deep greens and reds reveal a couple black spots in the cluster, while blues and blacks show the whole white cluster. Pastels make it almost undetectable... but when there's darkness, and especially if the screen brightness is jacked up, it's very noticeable.
First, the genius tells me "it's just one pixel", which shocks and confounds me. I keep my cool, despite the feeling of outrage from the guy saying something so outright and visibly false. I show him the macro photo I took with my phone and a reading loupe (see below)...
I count 25 fully hot pixels against darks, 5 dead pixels against colors, and 10 more "partially hot" pixels against black and deeper colors.
The guy takes the computer into the back and when he returns tells me that the computer "doesn't meet their criteria for replacement". I say "25 hot pixels in a cluster in the middle of the screen doesn't meet the criteria? What exactly are the criteria." He replies "Well, I can't tell you that. It's not public knowledge."
I am dead serious, this is the exchange that just happened at the Apple Store. I was flabbergasted and red-in-the-face angry. It's as if they strict instructions to never repair a MacBook Retina ever, and to lie and fabricate and conceal as much as they need to prevent replacing a defective Retina screen. It's outrageous, and I've never experienced such horrific customer service from Apple in my life until I bought this rubbish MacBook Retina (I didn't even bring up the fact in my original post that I have to reset the SMC & PRAM at least once a day when the computer mysteriously starts disabling things, like the trackpad, discreet graphics, or USB ports).
After some very restrained argument (again, I was trying VERY hard to remain polite), he finally offers to replace the screen but insists "this is a one-time thing. We will only replace the screen once."
To which I wanted to reply (but didn't) "You will replace it as many times as is needed until I get one that isn't defective." I didn't... but they wanted me to leave the computer for 3-5 days, which I can't afford right now with looming deadlines. So he made some notes and I'll take it back in a couple weeks when I can afford to be without it for a few days.
Still, I deeply, deeply regret buying this machine. It's been nothing but trouble and Apple has been nothing but useless at best, and deliberately antogonistic at worst.
