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27", 21.5" iMac Owners, test your screen for yellow tint issue here

Is your display having the problem described?

  • iMac 21.5" both grey bars look identical in color

    Votes: 102 8.9%

  • iMac 21.5" the bottom bar looks more yellow

    Votes: 199 17.4%

  • iMac 27" both grey bars look identical in color

    Votes: 311 27.2%

  • iMac 27" the bottom bar looks more yellow

    Votes: 533 46.6%
  • Total voters
    1,145
J

Jamooche

macrumors regular
Jul 23, 2011
204
55
Here's a photo of the screen just before I boxed it up. I am now typing this message back on my old Dell. I opened the test image and it looks fine on my 24" Dell LCD.

I opened the image below in Lightroom and used the white balance color picker to see the differences from the top to bottom. Pretty significant from a white balance / photo editing point of view.
 

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  • IMG_2044.jpg
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J

Jamooche

macrumors regular
Jul 23, 2011
204
55
jm88 said:
Yeah, return it... Just remember that Apple screwed me after 8.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply. I just returned it at the Apple store. It took them a while to process the return, so I checked out the test page gray bars on several iMacs which ALL had yellowing. However, the non-thunderbolt 27" standalone display DID NOT have yellowing and looked perfect.

jm88 - What did you end up going with?

I'm thinking the Dell u2711 display with the new Mac Mini quad core i7 server model.
 
T

ttttaylor

macrumors regular
Jun 3, 2009
177
0
i got the mid-'11 27-inch... yellow bottom. i always come back to this thread whenever i feel crappy about it. so many reasons why i don't want to exchange it (main machine, don't live near an apple store, don't have a car, broke as a joke), and hearing about people having received 8 imacs all with bad screens makes me want to bother even less.

like someone said before, if it weren't for the screen this would be the absolute perfect machine for me. but sadly, i'm probably going to end up replacing it sooner now than i would have otherwise. hopefully by then i'll have enough money and balls to get the bottom-of-the-line mac pro.
 
Omek

Omek

macrumors regular
Jun 6, 2003
145
9
ttttaylor said:
i got the mid-'11 27-inch... yellow bottom. i always come back to this thread whenever i feel crappy about it. so many reasons why i don't want to exchange it (main machine, don't live near an apple store, don't have a car, broke as a joke), and hearing about people having received 8 imacs all with bad screens makes me want to bother even less.

like someone said before, if it weren't for the screen this would be the absolute perfect machine for me. but sadly, i'm probably going to end up replacing it sooner now than i would have otherwise. hopefully by then i'll have enough money and balls to get the bottom-of-the-line mac pro.
Click to expand...

Amen, brother. ;-) This has to be the longest running Apple hardware issue I've ever seen before without any fix in sight. Honestly, I thought this would be resolved in less than a year. Now, I think Apple is going to release a newly designed iMac model next year, and forget about all the current customers who have yellow screen issues.

Well if anyone feels the need or has the money to launch a class action lawsuit, I'd gladly lend my name and support you. I'm sure there are others in this forum that would love to do the same. There are probably thousands of witnesses out there that will attest to the fact that they went through several machines and screen replacements for nothing. Apple owes all of us new iMacs or at least a fixed screen.
 
M

MrT-Man

macrumors regular
Jan 22, 2008
127
25
I can confirm that some of the 27" iMacs have yellower displays than others -- and I'm not talking about the yellow tinge / color uniformity issues, I mean I had two side by side, both set to the same white point, and one was a lot more yellow across the entire screen than the other.

So if you feel your screen is too yellow, you may want to try returning it for another and it's possible you may have better luck.
 
S

syn1

macrumors newbie
Aug 26, 2011
2
0
Hey Guys,

got my 27 inch 2011 yesterday. I do notice a yellow tint on the bottom third of the screen, called Apple today and got a replacement coming just to check which one is better.
I took a quick snap shot with my iPod, what do you think chances are, that the replacement got a better screen than this one?



Uploaded with ImageShack.us
 
J

Jamooche

macrumors regular
Jul 23, 2011
204
55
washburn said:
so how common is this issue.. one in how many imacs?
Click to expand...

That's a hard thing to answer because most people don't notice it / don't care about it because they're not doing any color correct photography / videography.

I've had it on 5 27" iMacs and seen it at the store on 2 27" iMacs and 2 21.5" iMacs.
 
M

MrT-Man

macrumors regular
Jan 22, 2008
127
25
Yeah, it really depends on what your definition of a perfect screen is. I'd say maybe 30-50% have at least a bit of yellow, which may or may not be acceptable or noticeable to some people, and maybe 20% have really bad yellow that should be pretty noticeable. That's based on looking at a dozen Macs... you'd probably need to see 30+ screens to get a stastically representative sample!
 
A

auero

macrumors 65816
Sep 15, 2006
1,386
114
I was seriously praying that this whole fiasco was over but its obviously not. I almost pulled the trigger on another iMac but I guess I'll be going with a mac pro + display instead.

Someone above mentioned if its only the iMacs and it's not. The Cinema Displays also do have this issue but not as frequent. Of course the one I bought had it, I just returned it instead of dealing with exchanges.
 
J

Jamooche

macrumors regular
Jul 23, 2011
204
55
auero said:
I almost pulled the trigger on another iMac but I guess I'll be going with a mac pro + display instead.
Click to expand...

I've already purchased a Dell u2711 since my last post (no yellowing problem) and am planning to go the Mac Mini Server SSD route. Right now, I'm running off my MacBook Air.
 
A

auero

macrumors 65816
Sep 15, 2006
1,386
114
Jamooche said:
I've already purchased a Dell u2711 since my last post (no yellowing problem) and am planning to go the Mac Mini Server SSD route. Right now, I'm running off my MacBook Air.
Click to expand...

May I ask where and how much you got it for? I've seen some deals of $850ish that look very tempting.

Truthfully at this point I'm totally lost. I was going to get an iMac 27" thinking they fixed this issue and now I rather not deal with the hassle. I'd get a Mac Pro but I'm assuming they're very close to being updated (few months). I saw the Thunderbolt display is going to be shipping soon/available in store so I was weighing out the option of keeping my current gen 17" i7 mbp and using the display.
 
J

Jamooche

macrumors regular
Jul 23, 2011
204
55
auero said:
May I ask where and how much you got it for? I've seen some deals of $850ish that look very tempting.

Truthfully at this point I'm totally lost. I was going to get an iMac 27" thinking they fixed this issue and now I rather not deal with the hassle. I'd get a Mac Pro but I'm assuming they're very close to being updated (few months). I saw the Thunderbolt display is going to be shipping soon/available in store so I was weighing out the option of keeping my current gen 17" i7 mbp and using the display.
Click to expand...

I hear and feel your pain. What a frustrating debacle this is! But I have come to a conclusion:

I bought the u2711 from Amazon.com. I am currently using it hooked up to my MacBook Air and am very happy with the display. People complain about the antiglare coating, but it's really a non-issue. Yes, if you squint and look close, you see it. If you sit back and focus on what it is you are doing, you don't notice it. Compared to a glossy display it's 8000x better! I love it.

http://www.amazon.com/Dell-UltraSha...48BO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1315443609&sr=8-1

I also today placed my order for a Mac Mini server with the 256GB SSD / 750GB HD option. I've done tons of research on the subject and it should be more than perfect for my needs. You can read my discussion topic on this here:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1017&message=39297123

With the Thunderbolt port, you can have fast external drives, and future options will give you external graphics and audio processors / cards. All this with a savings of $1000-1500 of the entry level Mac Pro.
 
B

Binarymix

macrumors 65816
Nov 1, 2007
1,121
353
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8G4 Safari/6533.18.5)

I got a 21.5" refurb a few weeks ago after sending two back. This time there was a brightness uniformity issue. So seeing as it was a refurb, I opted for a screen replacement.

Well. After the replacent the yellowing and uniformity issues are now 100x worse. So don't expect a replacement to help any.

Going to give apple heck now.
 
B

Binarymix

macrumors 65816
Nov 1, 2007
1,121
353
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8G4 Safari/6533.18.5)

heliocentric said:
I posted concerns about the screen issues on the iMac in this thread

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1222785/

But just got shouted down, saying I was wrong...
Click to expand...

Well hundreds of people with the issue can't be wrong.

Unless of course we have superhuman sight that can only pick out yellowing flaws in screens.

Mind you I can see the pixels in a retina display, so maybe the naysayers are on to something...
 
M

MrT-Man

macrumors regular
Jan 22, 2008
127
25
I don't doubt that some % of iMacs (maybe even most) are more or less perfect.

The issue is that people with a perfect iMac are assuming that if theirs is perfect, then all iMacs must be perfect, so the rest of us are nutjobs who are imagining problems that aren't there.

All it takes is a close look at a half-dozen or so iMacs in the store to realize that the screen issues are real and not all that uncommon.
 
H

heliocentric

Guest
Nov 26, 2008
385
0
jm88 said:
Update to my story of the eight bad imac 27's:

I have been patiently waiting for August week 34 imacs to arrive in the local brick and mortar stores. The sales associates have flat out lied and denied that new imac's with Lion pre-installed were even in store (in inventory). Each time, after getting a manager involved... lo and behold they had one or two mysteriously in stock.

The local stores i deal with have now briefed EVERYONE in their stores who i am and how to deal with me. A sales associate less than 3 minutes after i walked into the store had already identified me and given me a lecture about buying one last imac and if I wasn't happy... They couldn't help me any further.

I find this extremely disturbing that ALL of the employees have been Informed of my situation and are now taking the liberty of being disrespctful and downright abrasive. If Apple would produce an imac with a Properly working screen... I never would have gone past machine number one ! It's now my fault for not pissing away $2000 plus USD on a defective imac ?

----------

One more thing: i find it extremely creepy that more than one brick and mortar store has informed ALL of their employees about me. Is Apple circulating emails with my personal information or photo for it's employees to review?
Click to expand...

You should probably give up now and get a different product from a different company
 
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