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Horizontal Lines in New Powerbooks

i feel really sad that Apple is still keeping silent on this issue.

Obviously, it is a manufacturing defect and they should be responsible for it.
How can so many buyers of the new PowerBook facing the same problem and yet Apple hasn't found any solution to soothe their concern...?

Sad and angry...
 
They are not actually being silent - instead you could say they are being quite pro-active.

How you ask?

Hows about by locking/deleting posts in their support forums for example.

The following thread is the latest to be locked. For those that have not gone there yet, it has a lot information:

Topic: 15" DL Powerbook horizontal lines-software issue? http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?128@32.X8gbazgcVe0.2278104@.68be6956

Yes. Sad and angry is a start :( :mad:

--
Edit: Wait, I got it wrong. This is the thread that has recently been locked:

Topic: Apple Says Lines are NORMAL?!?!?! http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?128@32.X8gbazgcVe0.2283483@.68be4011

I cannot see it in the list anymore! It's been deleted! But you can still link to it from that url.

---

Zoowatch said:
i feel really sad that Apple is still keeping silent on this issue.

Obviously, it is a manufacturing defect and they should be responsible for it.
How can so many buyers of the new PowerBook facing the same problem and yet Apple hasn't found any solution to soothe their concern...?

Sad and angry...
Click to expand...
 
So what do we do now? As consumers what recourse do we have against a fagot company who hides behind their many policies? "Oh, it is not in our policy to accept returns on items which are in working order"

**** your policies, just plain **** it. I don't give a ****.
 
Ot

OT

I just noticed your location. How is Sheffield at the moment? I used to live there - a great city :)

Zoowatch said:
i feel really sad that Apple is still keeping silent on this issue.

Obviously, it is a manufacturing defect and they should be responsible for it.
How can so many buyers of the new PowerBook facing the same problem and yet Apple hasn't found any solution to soothe their concern...?

Sad and angry...
Click to expand...
 
You might want to contact the police..

Angel Sean T O' said:
I live in Rome I bought a 3000euro new Apple Mac laptop. It never worked. I bought it in a registered store. I sent it back, 4weeks ago. In the meantime they still have it and I have lost two jobs now and have no pc to work with. I am not rich it took me a year to save for this machine. I called customer support which costs 20cent a minute. They are giving me the run around.
What should I do pleas help I need to work soon.
Are they alwasy this bad or is it just Italy.
Do you think I will ever see it.
the store is info@club-mac.it
I am Giovanni Calvanni in Rome
there number is 003930645425864 I bought it on 28th september 05
I hope some one working with Mac will see this and help me.
My email is seantosally@hotmail.com
Thanks
Click to expand...
 
generik said:
So what do we do now? As consumers what recourse do we have against a fagot company who hides behind their many policies? "Oh, it is not in our policy to accept returns on items which are in working order"

**** your policies, just plain **** it. I don't give a ****.
Click to expand...

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\


BUYING ADVICE: Pay with credit card at ALL times. If it is defective your cc company will not make you pay.



/////////////////////////////////////////
 
You know what I love? When an issue is as big as this one and you call apple and the guy says,

Apple: "Hmm, we are not aware of that issue, I have never heard that before".

You: "Well you can look at the apple support forums and see 10 thousand posts about it".

Apple: "We don't look at forums, that is not an indication of your problem as all problems are different".

You: "Are you serious, you just said you never heard of the problem and won't even look at this link to confirm my problem as its the same as the forums"

Apple: "No, sorry. Can I help you with anything else sir"

You: "Let me speak to supervisor"

Apple: "OK please hold"


On hold for over an hour, hang up.


This was my last powerbook support call about my Tibook screen fuzzing out. But I bet a ton of you guys got the same speech right?
 
MacTruck said:
But I bet a ton of you guys got the same speech right?
Click to expand...

my most memorable reply from AppleCare was:

"sorry your PowerMac is beyond its 90 days phone support. i understand that you have a genuine hardware issue which might require a part replacement, but without you first telling me that you'd like to opt for the 38 pounds per-incident phone support, I cannot proceed with giving any more assistant. if at the end of the repair we find that your PowerMac indeed had a hardware issue covered by the 1-year limited warranty, we will then issue you the 38-pound refund back to your credit card."

this was the kind of answer i got 100 days after spending 2000 over pounds on a brand new computer.
 
k

so what do i do ? i mean i am stuck in limbo shall i buy a new pb using my egg card (by the way can u receive the 10% discount when shopping at the refurb store ?) or do i wait and avoid apple ****ing me around with this machine is working sir yeah right pay someone £1400 to blatantly and publicly **** me over dont think so arrghhhh :mad:

sorry for the languauge
 
Be very careful...

So I thought I would be pro-active and see if ATI could provide a fix for the issue, perhaps something to adjust the refresh rate or whatever.

I went to the ATI web site and downloaded the ATI Graphics Software for Mac OS X. It says it supports all retail and OEM ATI chipsets, including the Mobility Radeon 9700. Check. I installed it without a hitch and rebooted the machine to be sure all of the ATI options took effect. Check.

I then went into the ATI Displays panel and found it did not provide much help at all. As a matter of fact, the ATI Display panel could not even determine the refresh rate of the panel, though it did know the resolution. The ATI Display also gave the option to rotate the display by 90 degrees, similar to the NVidia NVRotate options on their Windows and Linux drivers. That sounds interesting, I wonder what happens to the lines if I rotate the display? Click. "Oh s**t" The display went black and I now had red and green lines randomly jumping around. Bad news. So I waited a minute, hoping the display would revert back to normal, but no. I powered the machine off using the power button and then turned it back on, hoping it did not save my screen rotation setting. Of course it did. Green and red lines again. Boot into safe boot. Thankfully that worked and I was able to remove all of the ATI extensions from the System/Library/Extensions directory. Of course, now Core Image and Quartz Extreme no longer were supported. So I reinstalled the Mac OS X 10.4.3 update and thankfully my machine seems to be back to normal.

So, word of warning, do not try to use the ATI Display software to adjust anything on the PowerBook!

~Jeff Corbets
 
MacFan26 said:
picture24fe.jpg


Here's another shot
Click to expand...

I have been reading all the topic and I dont see the problem?!?!
Mi 17" looks perfect, as that image (I have a Rev C)
 
After the joyous occasion of opening my new powerbook box and photographing its "birth," installing some software, playing around with it some, I finally remembered to go back to reality and check the ESPN site and some other graphics I have for the line issue (something I noticed a bit when I first turned it on, but never ran tests to verify).

So a few moments ago I pop open Safari, head to ESPN, and voila, the lines exist, the logo blends as stated previously, and my joyous occasion just turned into a sad return.
 
I was using a PC today (one that I use sometimes but it's not mine), and it has a Hyundai 17" LCD. I remember the picture was never really perfect (mainly cos Windows sucks with antialiasing), but today I noticed something on the Silver XP theme title bar - white horizontal lines every other pixel, exactly like with these powerbooks! It wasn't visible on anything other than gradients or dithering. It hasn't really ever bothered me, so I don't care, but the other problem with the display is some pixels bleed onto others (especially when clear type font smoothing is turned on). Is there any sort of bleeding like these on the powerbook displays? If there isn't I'll still get one, the lines aren't a problem for me (I've attached that screen to my iBook, and it looked great with OS X, compared to the hopeless looking XP, but it had those lines then too and still didn't bother me).

BTW, my bro does graphics work, and uses that computer a hell of a lot, and I just asked him if he noticed the lines. He said he did, but he ignores them, lol.

Oh, I just remembered, I tried changing the refresh rate on that monitor, and it made no difference. I think it may be just a bad LCD panel then.
 
While we're waiting from an official response from Apple, I've found that a custom calibration of 2.2 Gamma/D50 white point combined with the brightness set to half makes the lines less hard on my eyes. The lines are still there, but less glaringly obvious to me.

I wonder if all this could simply be fixed by Apple just going back to the original backlight used on the rev.A-D 15" Powerbooks.
 
I've also seen PC laptops with the same issue with lines. I guess I've been spoiled so far in not having seen them. I don't think that there's a line issue with any of the hi-gloss screens (Dell's TruBrite, Sony's XBrite, etc.)-I haven't experienced it on my Dell 700m, but a Dell Inspiron 1150 that my co-worker used does have them.

This looks more and more (to me) that this is due to the choice of the LCD used, possibly in conjunction with a brighter backlight with said LCD. As Apple uses Phillips LG on their cinema displays, they probably got everything from them in the past. There may have been a recent change on their end to a new supplier; we won't know unless we get an official statement from Apple one way or the other.
 
I created a small info website on this topic. I included some of the various photos people posted. Comments and feedback appreciated. Feel free to link to this website whenever you want to show the problem to someone who is not yet aware of it. If you posted one of the images I included in the site and want it removed, please let me know, I'll do so immediately.

http://15inpbscreen.appleplace.com/

P.S: feel free to correct any mistakes in grammar or language. English is not my mother tongue.
 
Well, with this snippet of evidence from hopejr it sure looks like it could be a display panel.

But the history of Apple using panels is this -- the Cinema displays come from Phillips-LG because they are based on Super In Plane Switching (S-IPS), a technology in which LG have led. That's how they get the impressive compromise on viewing angle, refresh rate, shadow detail and color fidelity; each little line of pixels is itself subdivided (a bit difficult to explain this in text) and so won't compromise the viewing angle or the refresh rate.

But I am not aware of any S-IPS in any laptop. I have no idea where Apple has been sourcing their displays for laptops (Samsung, perhaps, on the 1280x854 15 inch models?) but I am pretty sure S-IPS is too much of a power-hog for laptops, so there goes the specific reason for using LG for a laptop.
 
I'm curious to know what the first 5 characters of the serial numbers of the powerbooks with a GOOD screen are. Could those without these defects please post this info? I'm mainly looking for where they're made, and what weeks the good ones were done, because there seem to be heaps of bad ones coming from Shanghai.

Wombert: the site is good (nice stylesheet!).
 
dblissmn said:
Well, with this snippet of evidence from hopejr it sure looks like it could be a display panel.

But the history of Apple using panels is this -- the Cinema displays come from Phillips-LG because they are based on Super In Plane Switching (S-IPS), a technology in which LG have led. That's how they get the impressive compromise on viewing angle, refresh rate, shadow detail and color fidelity; each little line of pixels is itself subdivided (a bit difficult to explain this in text) and so won't compromise the viewing angle or the refresh rate.

But I am not aware of any S-IPS in any laptop. I have no idea where Apple has been sourcing their displays for laptops (Samsung, perhaps, on the 1280x854 15 inch models?) but I am pretty sure S-IPS is too much of a power-hog for laptops, so there goes the specific reason for using LG for a laptop.
Click to expand...

Does Phillips make LCD's that don't involve the S-IPS technology?

I think Apple changed providers on their Powerbook LCD's before the latest revisions (assuming that they all came from a single source, which would makes sense from a cost-cutting bulk-buying standpoint) or that all affected 15" screens came the same LCD maker..and there may only BE one manufacturer making these custom 1440x960 screens.
 
hopejr said:
I'm curious to know what the first 5 characters of the serial numbers of the powerbooks with a GOOD screen are. Could those without these defects please post this info? I'm mainly looking for where they're made, and what weeks the good ones were done, because there seem to be heaps of bad ones coming from Shanghai.

Wombert: the site is good (nice stylesheet!).
Click to expand...
I believe they're all made at the same factory. 12" PB (and both iBook models) are manufactured by Asustek, 15" and 17" PB are made by Quanta.
 
hopejr said:
I'm curious to know what the first 5 characters of the serial numbers of the powerbooks with a GOOD screen are. Could those without these defects please post this info? I'm mainly looking for where they're made, and what weeks the good ones were done, because there seem to be heaps of bad ones coming from Shanghai.

Wombert: the site is good (nice stylesheet!).
Click to expand...

So do you feel a whole batch were affected?
 
wildcard said:
Does Phillips make LCD's that don't involve the S-IPS technology?

I think Apple changed providers on their Powerbook LCD's before the latest revisions (assuming that they all came from a single source, which would makes sense from a cost-cutting bulk-buying standpoint) or that all affected 15" screens came the same LCD maker..and there may only BE one manufacturer making these custom 1440x960 screens.
Click to expand...

I think you're right. Even after some googling around, the 15" PB is the only TFT display I'm aware of that has this resolution. 1440x900 or 1440x1050 are far more common
 
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