I'm making this thread because over the past month I've seen some seriously poor quality control from Apple.
Some of you may have seen me posting in the yellow tint thread but the issues I've seen are more than just that. My concern is that Apples QC has significantly degraded over the past two years.
A little background: I've owned four Apple notebooks, two iPads, three iPhones, 4 routers, one iPod Touch and two iPod Classics.
I've never had to return any of these products to Apple before for any kind of defect. I've been buying from them for just over a decade and I got my first Apple laptop in 2004.
From what I've seen the new Retina MacBook Pro's have their worst quality control of any product I've owned.
To recap I've gone through four Retina MacBook Pro's. That is the fully maxed out 15" Model with 2.6GHz CPU / 1TB SSD / 16GB RAM / 750M.
And not one of them were adequate. All four had screen problems where the bottom 50% of the screen was yellow. My 3rd unit had mild yellowing but instead it suffered from a broken enter key on the keyboard and a dark shadow on the bottom of the screen. It did still have the yellowing too but only mildly so compared to the others.
Now you may chalk this up to two things.
1. I got all four notebooks from a bad batch
2. My expectations of quality are unreasonable and cannot be met
I want to first assure you that both of these are untrue. I received every single notebook straight from China each time. I ordered from the Apple Online Store originally and all my replacements thus came straight from the factory. The Model numbers on all the units I received indicated my notebooks were constructed about 1 to 1.5 weeks apart from each other.
The second point that I have an unreasonable expectation of quality is untrue but you'll need to take my word on that. I currently own a 2009 17" MacBook Pro and a 2006 17" MacBook Pro. They are both in perfect working condition and have better screens than any of the rMBP's I received Now I know that sounds crazy how can these old computers have a better screen? They are TN how can that be better than the IPS of these Retinas?
Well I'm talking about the overall appearance here. Yes the top 50% of every rMBP I got looked better than my other notebooks. But my other notebooks were uniform. The rMBP's I received were not.
I mean it's not like I had one dud, or two or three. I had four rMBP's straight from Apple all with the same yellowing screens + other physical defects. Two out of the four notebooks I received had uneven top lids. The 4th unit I received had a 3mm overhang on the left side of the notebook when closed and a 2mm recession on the right side for a total differential uneven lid of 5mm's - That is 0.5cm out of alignment with the base.
Now I'm not just going to give you my opinion on what I saw on my screens I'm going to show you two pieces of information from a high quality very expensive hardware screen calibrator. The Spyder4Elite from Datacolor.
In this first chart you can see the "white point" of the display.
And in the second chart you can see the illumination level of the display (basically checking the uniformity of the backlighting)
As you can see the varience of the display is absoloutely insane. Looking at the "white point" (if you can call any of that result white) it is so far off you cannot even calibrate it.
For those unaware when you calibrate a display it doesn't work in gradients meaning you have to calibrate the whole display towards one colour temperature. You cannot specify a part of the screen to appear more blue than another part to try and "cool down" the yellow parts.
This means if the display is not uniform (as these displays are not uniform) you cannot calibrate it as any change you perform will not look the same all over the display, it will only be "correct" in the small section of the screen that you placed the calibrator on.
The results above with the calibrator were done by placing the calibrator on the screen nine times and taking a reading. The Spyder software did everything, at no point was my own judgement or possible bias involved in the results. So to be clear the spyder told me to place the device on the screen in a specific place and then it displayed different colours underneath that space to determine the colour temperature of that space. It then compiled the charts itself at the end of the testing.
So you're probably wondering what kind of grade did the Spyder4Elite give this display? Well lets take a look:
Now you're probably wondering why is the White Point score empty? Well it actually isn't empty. It just scored 0 out of 5. That's right, as far as the Spyder is concerned this display cannot even display white. It can only display yellow. No matter how far the calibrator adjusted the colours it was physically unable to get it to display any kind of white. To confirm this 0 score, you can only get an overall score out of the Spyder if you perform every test which is what was done.
Now you're probably thinking, okay so you got a dud, that happens. And I agree with you it does happen. But keep this in mind, the test results here are for the best display out of all four machines that I received. These results are from the screen that showed the least yellowing of all four systems that I received.
So I'm making this thread in hopes that we can have a civil discussion about the quality control lapses with Apple. I want to be clear I'm not making this thread to start a flame war or to ward you off purchasing their computers. I can say with confidence I will again buy an Apple computer and I will continue purchasing their iPhones and iPads. Their customer support throughout my own ordeal has been nothing short of superb.
I just want us to have an open discussion about these problems and I'd like to hear what you guys think about this falling quality control problem and what you intend to do when it comes time for you to purchase a computer from Apple or if you've already purchased one and sent it back due to defects.
Thanks for reading, I know it's a long post.
Some of you may have seen me posting in the yellow tint thread but the issues I've seen are more than just that. My concern is that Apples QC has significantly degraded over the past two years.
A little background: I've owned four Apple notebooks, two iPads, three iPhones, 4 routers, one iPod Touch and two iPod Classics.
I've never had to return any of these products to Apple before for any kind of defect. I've been buying from them for just over a decade and I got my first Apple laptop in 2004.
From what I've seen the new Retina MacBook Pro's have their worst quality control of any product I've owned.
To recap I've gone through four Retina MacBook Pro's. That is the fully maxed out 15" Model with 2.6GHz CPU / 1TB SSD / 16GB RAM / 750M.
And not one of them were adequate. All four had screen problems where the bottom 50% of the screen was yellow. My 3rd unit had mild yellowing but instead it suffered from a broken enter key on the keyboard and a dark shadow on the bottom of the screen. It did still have the yellowing too but only mildly so compared to the others.
Now you may chalk this up to two things.
1. I got all four notebooks from a bad batch
2. My expectations of quality are unreasonable and cannot be met
I want to first assure you that both of these are untrue. I received every single notebook straight from China each time. I ordered from the Apple Online Store originally and all my replacements thus came straight from the factory. The Model numbers on all the units I received indicated my notebooks were constructed about 1 to 1.5 weeks apart from each other.
The second point that I have an unreasonable expectation of quality is untrue but you'll need to take my word on that. I currently own a 2009 17" MacBook Pro and a 2006 17" MacBook Pro. They are both in perfect working condition and have better screens than any of the rMBP's I received Now I know that sounds crazy how can these old computers have a better screen? They are TN how can that be better than the IPS of these Retinas?
Well I'm talking about the overall appearance here. Yes the top 50% of every rMBP I got looked better than my other notebooks. But my other notebooks were uniform. The rMBP's I received were not.
I mean it's not like I had one dud, or two or three. I had four rMBP's straight from Apple all with the same yellowing screens + other physical defects. Two out of the four notebooks I received had uneven top lids. The 4th unit I received had a 3mm overhang on the left side of the notebook when closed and a 2mm recession on the right side for a total differential uneven lid of 5mm's - That is 0.5cm out of alignment with the base.
Now I'm not just going to give you my opinion on what I saw on my screens I'm going to show you two pieces of information from a high quality very expensive hardware screen calibrator. The Spyder4Elite from Datacolor.
In this first chart you can see the "white point" of the display.
And in the second chart you can see the illumination level of the display (basically checking the uniformity of the backlighting)
As you can see the varience of the display is absoloutely insane. Looking at the "white point" (if you can call any of that result white) it is so far off you cannot even calibrate it.
For those unaware when you calibrate a display it doesn't work in gradients meaning you have to calibrate the whole display towards one colour temperature. You cannot specify a part of the screen to appear more blue than another part to try and "cool down" the yellow parts.
This means if the display is not uniform (as these displays are not uniform) you cannot calibrate it as any change you perform will not look the same all over the display, it will only be "correct" in the small section of the screen that you placed the calibrator on.
The results above with the calibrator were done by placing the calibrator on the screen nine times and taking a reading. The Spyder software did everything, at no point was my own judgement or possible bias involved in the results. So to be clear the spyder told me to place the device on the screen in a specific place and then it displayed different colours underneath that space to determine the colour temperature of that space. It then compiled the charts itself at the end of the testing.
So you're probably wondering what kind of grade did the Spyder4Elite give this display? Well lets take a look:
Now you're probably wondering why is the White Point score empty? Well it actually isn't empty. It just scored 0 out of 5. That's right, as far as the Spyder is concerned this display cannot even display white. It can only display yellow. No matter how far the calibrator adjusted the colours it was physically unable to get it to display any kind of white. To confirm this 0 score, you can only get an overall score out of the Spyder if you perform every test which is what was done.
Now you're probably thinking, okay so you got a dud, that happens. And I agree with you it does happen. But keep this in mind, the test results here are for the best display out of all four machines that I received. These results are from the screen that showed the least yellowing of all four systems that I received.
So I'm making this thread in hopes that we can have a civil discussion about the quality control lapses with Apple. I want to be clear I'm not making this thread to start a flame war or to ward you off purchasing their computers. I can say with confidence I will again buy an Apple computer and I will continue purchasing their iPhones and iPads. Their customer support throughout my own ordeal has been nothing short of superb.
I just want us to have an open discussion about these problems and I'd like to hear what you guys think about this falling quality control problem and what you intend to do when it comes time for you to purchase a computer from Apple or if you've already purchased one and sent it back due to defects.
Thanks for reading, I know it's a long post.
