MacBook Pro 15" Grainy Matte Display

Apple hasn't been on these threads for a few years now (maybe sometimes their tech guys take a glance at problems being brought up here).

I suggest you phone them up 🙂

I suggest everyone with this display questions try this test:

Open up Photoshop (if you've got it)
Go to the color picker
Scroll up and down the color bar, noticing the smoothness of the gradients as you move it. Most of the MBP's I've seen have issues with banding in the gradients when doing this.

It's most obvious when looking in the Reds and less prevalent in the Greens. The people at the local Apple store acknowledged that they saw the banding, but on seeing that the other MBP's had the same issue, glossy or matte, 15" or 17" suggested that it was not an issue but a trait of the hardware.

I'm flippant, because this means that this machine is absolutely useless for Photoshop retouch work because I can't trust the colors I'm seeing. From what I've read, this is because the current displays only render at 6bit as opposed to 8bit using dithering to compensate - that's what gives things the graininess.

I don't know what I'm going to do because I didn't get to the bottom of this problem in time to return the thing. I thought for so long that it was on my end, a calibration issue, or some setting that I didn't understand properly since this is my first Mac.

I can't do my work on the road like I thought. I need to be tethered to a monitor to get colors to show properly. This MBP is a $3k anchor.

Doc,

What exactly is banding. I pulled up my photoshop CS2 Color picker, and I was not sure exactly what I was looking for when I scrolled through it.

It's really bad! It can't show gradients and, to make matters much worse on my 17" when I drag the color picker from left to right, the right side shows gradients better and more smoothly ( the displays is lighter on that side) while the left side looks terrible with an almost solid horizontal break in the reds. That means that not only can't I trust what I see in the middle of the display, but even what I do see differs from side to side.

Is this just like a ghosted out line in the reds ? I think I see something like that. Goes from the left to the right.

yes, that's it. On a good quality, 8 bit display it would be completely smooth and all colors would show.

Yep you're right, it's a hardware "feature", repeat the mantra "It's an Apple feature, an Apple feature, Apple good....".
Apple's advice, buy an Apple Cinema Display 😉

Yet if you connect to an external monitor the MBP display goes crazy after a few minutes....hmm not much choice. 😟

(Btw the external monitor issue isn't affecting everyone, according to some users on here).

Hello! looks like it isn't the right time to buy a Mbp. I had read all posts about the display issue and feel that the glossy could show less dark spots. Am I right?

I bought a refurbished model of the macbook pro 3 weeks ago. I put in a DVD expecting a good show but it turned out to be like my old pc laptop which has no graphics card. All grainy.
Talked to the engineers at appel but they don't know what is up.
I took it into a repair centre and showed them the picture of a real DVD in this compared to a macbook with only 64mb card - same if not better on macbook. They will look at it on monday.
If people can't really see the problem then i suggest going into the photobooth utility and wear a black jersey or something. For me it appears my jersey is shimmering and grainy!
This is my change over to macs from pc's. Wasn't there a myth that designing people use macs because macs graphics are better?? So, instead i pay more money than a pc and get worse graphics. Hmmm.

From what I know, after reading all the opinions on these threads, the MacBook display is a lot better than the MacBook Pro display.
Though in terms of banding problems (especially in gradients of photos and graphics), the MB has the same issues as the MBP, they both seem to use 6bit displays. See this thread http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=744286

Apple does say it's notebook displays have "support for millions of colors", yet that's arrived by dithering in the graphics card, so it gives the illusion you're seeing full million colour support. But design professionals will immediately see there's something wrong.

Apple cut on costs by using cheaper, brighter screens. Personally I would have paid a lot more for less bright yet colour correct displays. (please note that gradient issue is not to be confused with the grainy screens).

I have a glossy screen, it doesn't seem as dirty. Do you have a matte screen?

Supposedly the glossy doesn't have as much of the problem as the matte. I have a glossy, and there is some slight shimmering, especially noticeable in areas of white, though I can't say it's dirty.
So in terms of graininess it's "ok" for me, but sometimes it does seem like there's fine dust particles on the screen :/

displays. See this thread
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=7442
86

I had a look at the red gradient jpeg in that thread, and got pretty confused: Safari, Preview and others show the red block, but the gradient looks fine in Graphic Converter and QuickTime player. Is it a problem in some cocoal library (I assume QuickTime player and Graphic Converter are possibly both carbon)?

MBP C2D 15" 2.33/2/160 - MB (white) 2/2/120 - PBG4 12" 1.33/1.25/60 - 8GB nano Mac OS X (10.4.8) My workstation runs debian linux

Yeah it was confusing for me too, especially when viewing the same graphic in Windows (running in Parallels). So it seems that in systems (or programs) that ignore colour profile information, the red column doesn't appear. As, in Firefox running in OSX the red block isn't there.

In the other thread I mentioned somewhere that the block didn't appear in Preview, well I'm not sure what happened then, but when I had a look today the block was there.

Either way ignoring the red block issue, in whatever app you view graphics or photos with distinct gradients, you will definately see banding.

Not sure why there are few people saying that with WinXP the grainy-ness looks worst. I have Boot Camp installed and reading text on WinXP is "way" better than reading on the OSX. Please try it! This threat is long enough, do the test, read it on both, WinXP (IE) and OSX (Safari). You will see that on Win XP text looks crisp and clear, almost like there's no pixels.

On antoher note, I have the office crapy Dell Latitude D810 with an ATI X600 - 128 MB RAM and the darn thing can go up to 1920 x 1200 pixels. Really sharp for pictures and videos. Like someone said previously... "I thought Apple's machines were for high-end graphics." Doesn't look like to me.

I switch to MAC last year and that was the first thing I noticed when I got the machine that claims to have a 256 MB RAM. Well, where is that sharp resolution?

I've sent my 1st generation MBP machine back to service for several issues that I'm not going to discuss on this threat, but the last thing was the amount of dead pixels on the screen. Apple Care replaced the screen, but now the grainy-ness is worst! I've purchased movies and music videos from iTunes and when I got my machine back from service this last time and played a few music videos, that's when I hit the roof. The picture quality is worst than ever and trying to view those purchased videos on full screen, forget it! I'm calling the "product specialist" again to find out what are they going to do this time.

Don't get me wrong, I like the OS, I like the product, but my concern is why a 256 MB video card gives such a crappy resolution?

Cheers!

MBP 2.0 Ghz Core Duo Mac OS X (10.4.8)

What's the best way to clean the laptop screen? Fingerprints?