Genius bar not convinced with iPod touch negative black problem. Help.

A) Update your firmwire, some have said that resolves their negative black screens.

B) If you experience negative black screens, call Apple Care. They should be more helpful than the geniuses, they aren't always the smartest of cookies. Most likely they will ask you to send them the unit back and send u another one.

C) If you CAN'T wait for that and want to go to the Apple Store, bring with you cut outs of news articles and/or printouts of online news sources about negative screens. Think Wired or NYTimes that are more reputitable. For example: http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20070920/apples-ipod-touch-is-a-beauty-of-a-player-short-on-battery-life and http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/09/20/apple-fesses-up-to-ipod-touch-display-problems

These should update any geniuses knowledge about the iPod Touch.

 

Sometimes going to a different store, or even speaking to a different "genius" will do the trick.

Since the visual perception of something is subjective, and varies from person to person - as well as each "genius" having their own personality (I sometimes doubt this, too ), some will say your product is fine, others will be outraged that no one has replaced it for you sooner.

Back in the day, I had trouble with my iMac "buzzing." Same kind of thing. Some Apple employees thought the noise was ridiculously loud and not what it should be, others felt it was fine. Took me a looooooooong time to get Apple to fix it, but they did.

Hopefully your venture is much quicker.

 

I had somewhat of the same issue.

I have two local Apple stores, I went to the one near work and asked about the problem - my Touch was borderline and it really looked bad only on certain scenes and The Jay-Z album cover looked surreal.

The Genius said he never heard of the problem, and wanted a demo. I showed a few graphics that had the problem, but to his credit the problems were hard to see and I was in on a lark and didn't have the unit loaded with examples. Still he was acting like a hardcase.

A few days later, I was armed with a video and the Jay-Z album cover. I was at the other store and met a Genius and showed them album cover. 5 seconds later they said that they would exchange it, but they were out. The only local store that had them was the one with Mr. Hardcase.

She wrote up a case # and had the other store hold one for me. I was to do the exchange in the other store.

Wen I drove over there, Mr Hardcase was behind the counter working on a customer with an iPhone. Another employee started to process the exchange and was stopped by the Genius who said he has to verify any problems before the exchange can go through. When he was told by the employee that I already had a case number and the exchange was approved by a Genius, he stated "It wasn't approved HERE".

Anyhow, after 15 minutes he was still busy and the employee helping me was questioned by the store manager why things were taking so long. After he was told we were waiting for an exchange approval from Mr. Hardcase, he typed something into the terminal and apologized for the wait and I was off with a new week 38 Touch (which did have better contrast than the week 37).

So the short version is: Whether you get an exchange or not, it's a crapshoot depending on who you talk to. The good thing is if you have the new firmware and it still looks bad, you have an even stronger case for an exchange due to defective hardware. The best way to demonstrate this is to see if they have a week 38 on display or a Touch with v1.1.1 firmware and do a direct comparison between it and yours with the same brightness settings and the same video off of YouTube. Note: Wi-Fi is public and free in Apple Stores. When you show your unit is clearly lacking in picture quality they will have a much harder time denying & justifying your exchange request.

 

I agree it can vary wildly from store to store. In my case, I took it to a Genius who'd never seen the problem and he very quickly agreed to do a replacement. But they were out, and calling AppleCare has been long & frustrating - initially they wanted me to "send it in for testing," despite the Genius being ready to do an on-the-spot replacement.

My bias would be towards having a Genius look at it. Make sure they take it in the back, where the lighting is less overwhelming, so the problem is clearer. Jay-Z album really does show it well. You can also see it in Cover Flow, in the reflections of ANY album cover. Use that to indicate it's not just "you encoded your video wrong." Other threads here have suggestions on free iTunes videos that serve this purpose.

Newspaper: search for the Walt Mossberg article in the Wall Street Journal last week. It said "Apple has acknowledged some screens are defective." Mossberg is one of very few trusted, inside-circle journalists to Apple, so if he prints it, it carries more weight than some forum posting. That's also the closest Apple has come to a statement on the issue.

Me, I wouldn't settle for the firmware patch, if all it does is compensate for a bad screen. Insist on a replacement. Above all else, be persistent yet polite & patient - yelling at people won't get them to cut you any slack.