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Apple's Internal Policy on Bad Pixels Revealed
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And now, we shall quote: industry standard. Just because a company or two decides to make exceptions (which is completely up to them), that does not mean that Samsung or LG or what have you IS the industry standard. Standard usually indicates the middle ground reached by most companies, with some underperforming, and some extending additional niceties to the consumer. Also, simply because they provide an extended service and support agreement to one particular series of product does not mean that it is offered for ALL of their product type (So, even though a "prestige range" monitor offers this service, perhaps not all of their displays do).
Also, I quote from Samsung themselves: "What Can I Do If I Have A Bad Pixel On My LCD Monitor?
Since a 15 inch LCD display contains 2,359,296 pixels, a 19 inch LCD display contains 3,932,160 pixels, and a 24 inch LCD display contains 6,912,000 pixels, having a few "bad" pixels is not considered a defect."
Source: Samsung
Edit: Here is LG's policy, for those who were touting that they had an absolute zero-dead pixel guarantee:
"Bright or dark sub-pixels can occur during the production of the LCD Monitor panel but does not affect the LCD Monitor functionality. The customer may notice the bright or dark spots if the film of the liquid crystal does not perform as expected while customers uses the LCD monitor. However, this is not considered a defect unless the number of bright and dark sub-pixels exceeds the maximum allowable threshold as shown"
LG Dead Pixel Allowance Chart (Halfway down, Table 1)
Please check your facts before posting, just like you would do before voting in an election. Just because these companies offer additional paid support agreements covering pixel brightness/darkness does not mean that the most commonly purchased displays do not also fall within the range of the standard.
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So Apple is "Industry Standard" now? Damn, and I wonder why I paid over 2200 Euro for a 17" Apple laptop while my wife's 17" Acer only cost 500 Euro. Guess the Acer is not industry standard then?! 
Notice how my Samsung quote says "Prestige range" aka premium line?!
Let's talk about another industry standard:
Every inexpensive 500 Euro office PC comes with 2 years 48h on-site warranty out of the box and usually can be extended to 2 years 48h or even 24h for 50-100 Euro max.
Now tell me how much "on-site" do you get for paying over 400 Euro for AppleCare and how long does it take until you can work with your broken Mac again?
Apple's support plans are its main culprit for any serious business work. I usually tell my customers to keep away from Apple hardware unless they either don't depend on it daily or have enough money to buy at least one spare unit extra.
Notice how my Samsung quote says "Prestige range" aka premium line?!
Let's talk about another industry standard:
Every inexpensive 500 Euro office PC comes with 2 years 48h on-site warranty out of the box and usually can be extended to 2 years 48h or even 24h for 50-100 Euro max.
Now tell me how much "on-site" do you get for paying over 400 Euro for AppleCare and how long does it take until you can work with your broken Mac again?
Apple's support plans are its main culprit for any serious business work. I usually tell my customers to keep away from Apple hardware unless they either don't depend on it daily or have enough money to buy at least one spare unit extra.
If you actually believe the nonsense you are saying then you are actually the one "drinking the kool-aid." The fact that you spout such inaccurate facts and referenced the "RDF" proves you have no clue.
What quality/premium are you talking about? Apple products themselves have no premium, unless we are talking about upgrades (indisputable that a 5770 upgrade for a Mac Pro shouldn't cost as much as it does).
The products are priced very competitively, if you are actually fair and compare them to products with the same/similar specs.
Since this is a thread about displays, how about we talk about the 27 inch Apple LED Cinema Display, versus the Dell 27 inch Ultrasharp. The two panels might be slightly different, one is glossy, one is matte. One is LED and one is CCFL. This results in a different slightly different product. However when it comes to price they are actually identical. So when someone goes to buy one or the other, they are choosing not based on the panel but rather the extra features. Still, where is this "premium" you are claiming? In terms of quality they are identical panels with different backlighting, so the quality should be roughly the same. Yet the Apple comes with a solid aluminum casing, and Dell's have cheap plastic enclosures with plenty of holes for dust to collect inside. The panel itself might be the same in quality, but everything else goes in favor of Apple here.
Now lets look at computers, the only problem Apple has with their computers is that the pricing does not flex based on the amount of time it has been on the market. So as a product nears the end of its cycle, the price is less competitive and seems overpriced. In terms premiums there is very minimal amount in their computers. There is plenty of real breakdowns available, but in general the biggest problem people have with understanding Apple's pricing is that people assume that a cheap $300 computer is the same thing as a $1000 iMac. That is just patently false.
I am not going to talk about iPhones, iPads, or iPods because the only data we have to go on is the completely fabricated iSuppli numbers, and if you try to extrapolate anything from those you are just making things up. Nobody actually knows the real profit margins that Apple makes on those devices, it is anywhere from 10% to 50%, but no "teardown pricing" is going to give you the truth.
Quality is a perception for most people. Quoting some unscientific data on MBA logic board failures is a clearly biased way of judging quality. A better thing would be to look up Consumer Reports and see how they rate it, in which case Apple passes with flying colors on all products (iPhone 4 being the exception). Consumer Reports isn't not the best source, but it's certainly better than most.
To sum it up, you are just as biased, if not more so, than the people you claim are "drinking the kool aid." After all, what kind of person thinks using "iCon" is somehow clever?
well to start with iCon is a very fitting titlle I believe. Sadly I cannot claim the credit for it as it was used by Young and Simon in this book about him..
http://www.amazon.com/iCon-Steve-Jo...0836/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1288916180&sr=8-3
its the book iCon tried and failed to block its publication through the courts. You should read it, it would give you more of a clue than you currently seem to have.
Not sure I referenced any facts other than somebody else's graph, sorry if that offended you.
Apple products in general are average performers with premium tags brilliantly marketed. For nearly 40% below the price of a mini I can get an i3 rig with 4gb of RAM, big hard disk etc. Will it be as small and 'pretty' as a mini? No.
Do I need it to be tiny? No. Will it be twice as fast, as reliable, run a better OS? oh yes....
If you're happy with what you have then great, but don't try and deny the Apple tax or the (lack of)specs...... its pointless!
So Apple is "Industry Standard" now? Damn, and I wonder why I paid over 2200 Euro for a 17" Apple laptop while my wife's 17" Acer only cost 500 Euro. Guess the Acer is not industry standard then?!
Notice how my Samsung quote says "Prestige range" aka premium line?!
Let's talk about another industry standard:
Every inexpensive 500 Euro office PC comes with 2 years 48h on-site warranty out of the box and usually can be extended to 2 years 48h or even 24h for 50-100 Euro max.
Now tell me how much "on-site" do you get for paying over 400 Euro for AppleCare and how long does it take until you can work with your broken Mac again?
Apple's support plans are its main culprit for any serious business work. I usually tell my customers to keep away from Apple hardware unless they either don't depend on it daily or have enough money to buy at least one spare unit extra.
AppleCare does provide for on-site support, as long as you are within 75 miles of a service provider, retail center, or field support technician. That is part of what you get with your AppleCare Protection Plan, and I had to file several in-home service dispatches for customers who called in. In terms of business applications, they have separate service agreements that you can arrange in certain industries which permit you to get on-site or expedited service and repairs (including a program allowing a company of a certain size to certify one of their technicians as Apple certified and thus allowing their paid, on-site technician to order Apple parts straight from GSX and perform the repairs themselves, with most parts shipping within 24 hours). I know HP, Dell, and other companies also provide similar services to their business customers. We utilize a 4-hour repair and support window with HP where I work, and know that most other companies do also provide this if you are willing to pay, including Apple.
Also, I did not say in any regard that Samsung's "prestige" line did not offer this service. I said although some companies might choose to provide extended support to their customers through a paid agreement plan, that fact alone does not mean that those same companies do not provide a zero tolerance policy for ALL of their products. In addition, the numbers that Apple uses are provided by the manufacturers (e.g. SAMSUNG and LG) and are not generated by Apple itself. They are essentially just a reseller of those displays, having bought them from the manufacturer and reselling them as part of a desktop computer or portable, like a middle man.
I didn't say I was absolutely thrilled that Apple chooses to follow these standards set by the major LCD panel manufacturers, just that it is rational for them to do so and that everyone is making a much bigger issue of this than it really is.
Absolutly! as a writer I covered this a few years ago when Dell finally gave in to the rest of the industry because of their "acceptable dead pixel policy" and now even Apple are towing the line! to save a buck or two. This is outrageous and by UK law still illegal to sell a defective product no matter what specification the monitor manufactures come up with as acceptable. If you get a dead pixel return it within 7 days! take them to court if you have to this trend has to be stopped.
I completely agree with you.
If the product is not as described i.e. they say it has X million pixels, but in fact it has X million pixels minus one, which is dead or stuck, you are fully entitled to repudiate the contract (in the UK at least).
Do you deserve 100%?
Unless I am missing something here: in practice it is impossible to manufacture every LCD display with zero dead pixels. That is what testing is for, after the fact. That is what a Class 1 display is, one that has been tested and proven free of defects.
So someone like Apple opts to cheap out and put Class II or something in their displays, KNOWING some of their customers will end up with defective merchandise. And the temerity to question a customer mentioning their expensive purchase less than perfect . . . ?
Indeed, I doubt Steve Jobs uses displays with dead pixels.
Unless I am missing something here: in practice it is impossible to manufacture every LCD display with zero dead pixels. That is what testing is for, after the fact. That is what a Class 1 display is, one that has been tested and proven free of defects.
So someone like Apple opts to cheap out and put Class II or something in their displays, KNOWING some of their customers will end up with defective merchandise. And the temerity to question a customer mentioning their expensive purchase less than perfect . . . ?
Indeed, I doubt Steve Jobs uses displays with dead pixels.
True... Almost
I am an Apple employee, and I can confirm/correct this for you. I had a customer come in to return a 27" screen because of 1 dead pixel. After speaking with a technician we reviewed the current policy to be that up to 5 dead pixels is "acceptable" on the 27", the same for the 21.5", and 3 for any other smaller screen. You do, however, have the option to open another computer to review for dead pixels (one only), then you can choose between the 2. From there if the second is also unacceptable, a return can be processed. Although i disagree with it, that is the current policy as of 2 days ago.
I am an Apple employee, and I can confirm/correct this for you. I had a customer come in to return a 27" screen because of 1 dead pixel. After speaking with a technician we reviewed the current policy to be that up to 5 dead pixels is "acceptable" on the 27", the same for the 21.5", and 3 for any other smaller screen. You do, however, have the option to open another computer to review for dead pixels (one only), then you can choose between the 2. From there if the second is also unacceptable, a return can be processed. Although i disagree with it, that is the current policy as of 2 days ago.
Technically it still has X pixels, just one misbehaving...
But I work in the UK for a large Retail Store in the technical department, (it has a very nice purple colour scheme)
Our policy is simple when it comes to Apple machines or any machine with a LCD display. We explain that the manufactures have a policy where they are allowed to have a certain amount of bad pixels on the screen, but we'd expect a perfect machine when purchasing so we'll exchange it and even allow you to check before you buy the new one.
And that will continue regardless of how many bad machines you have. (up to 28 days of latest receipt)