New Thunderbolt Display Defect

Looks to me that there is just some debris behind the glass. The glass is just held on by magnets. It's pretty easy to pull off and clean. Or you can take it back to Apple and they can clean it.

 

It is not airtight between the glass and LCD so it could have happened during assembly or during shipping. If you take it to an Apple store, it should only take them a few minutes to pull the glass and clean it.

 

Suction cups...$4.00 at Lowes. Takes all of 10 sec to do.

 

Exchange it; I had a display repaired at the apple store, and they still cannot get the glass flush/tight back onto the housing

 

Mine had the same issue, called Apple and they did a exchange for me.

 

Do keep in mind that unless your place is not 100% dust free environment or something, you will get some sort of dust in there once you open up the front glass. If you clean it well, you won't have any visible debris like the one that shows on picture, but it probably will have some dust sitting on your panel.

I totally understand that feeling you just spent close to $1k for a monitor and it's got something under it. If what I said above really bothers you, best would be to take it to apple store. Heck, after my display replacement service they still have some dust sitting on my LCD panel but I just decided not to bother anymore.

 

The seal between the glass and panel is far from air-tight. You're eventually gonna get dust in there and I've seen four TBDs new from the factory and they've all had dust to some extent. The question is whether the dust is visible when the monitor is on. Since in your case it is, I'd simply take it to the Apple Store and have them clean it, especially if your display is otherwise good. Just for giggles take a flashlight and look very closely at the panel. You'll see more fine dust back there than you'd likely expect to. Fortunately, the majority of it is completely invisible in actual use.

Another option which worked great for me is to clean it yourself. I did this by laying the monitor on its back and lifting the glass along one of the long edges. While holding the glass up, I vacuumed the back of the glass and the front of the panel with my Dyson vacuum and a Dyson soft dusting brush attachment. This allowed me to get all traces of dust off. I tried simply wiping the dust off first but with every bit of dust I removed another piece would float in or come off of my microfiber towel. The vacuum method worked perfectly though...I was amazed.