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miscend

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 5, 2009
141
73
Its funny. I have three desktops in the house - two are PC's. None of the other ones hurt my eyes. I can use them for many hours. But whenever I use the iMac for more than an hour my eyes start to hurt - especially when reading.

I've had this white iMac for three years now. When I first bought it, I found the screen far too bright6 so I always have it on the very lowest brightness setting. But I've never really gotten accustomed to the screen. Its recently started to develop the infamous vertical lines, so I dunno if that maybe that's what's hurting my eyes?
 

jjahshik32

macrumors 603
Sep 4, 2006
5,366
52
Because YOUR TOO WEAK!!

J/k, I'm sure its maybe due to the iMac's brightness being too bright? How bout turning the brightness down.
 

miscend

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 5, 2009
141
73
Because YOUR TOO WEAK!!

J/k, I'm sure its maybe due to the iMac's brightness being too bright? How bout turning the brightness down.
I've tried. Its always on the lowest setting.

Maybe its the gamma settings?
 

hallaisen

macrumors regular
May 28, 2006
209
0
mine does it too, and i get headaches the day after ive been on my computer a lot. i always turn down the brightness unless its really bright in the room, and am also curious why its like this. i expected such a high quality monitor to cause less problems with headaches and eye pains. i even make sure to take lots of long and frequent breaks when im using it, but still get problems.
 

TMRaven

macrumors 68020
Nov 5, 2009
2,099
1
Altho I can't be too sure of it, it might due to the way the operating systems set the refresh rate of the screens. Windows sets the refresh rate of the lcd to highest possible, while osx leaves it at either 60 or 72. Higher refresh rates from the lcd will cause less wear for your eyes.
 

Ace134blue

macrumors 6502a
Sep 17, 2009
734
2
Because YOUR TOO WEAK!!

J/k, I'm sure its maybe due to the iMac's brightness being too bright? How bout turning the brightness down.

How about you read what he says next time.... He said he turned down all the way already......................
 

Vylen

macrumors 65816
Jun 3, 2010
1,026
0
Sydney, Australia
you can make it even dimmer, theres a nice program called shades heres the link http://www.charcoaldesign.co.uk/shades you can turn it down EVEN MORE!!! its wonderful

I think if you're finding your monitor to be too bright, despite lowering it down to its (default) lowest, you should probably stop sitting in the dark ;) Turn on some lights :p

Aside from that, how far are you sitting from your Mac? Compared to other computers? Do you think things are a bit more blurry on your iMac's screen? Slightest blurriness can cause headaches especially when reading since you are concentrating harder to see characters on a screen rather than images.
 

mrwonkers

macrumors 6502
Oct 31, 2004
362
0
Cyberia
you can make it even dimmer, theres a nice program called shades heres the link http://www.charcoaldesign.co.uk/shades you can turn it down EVEN MORE!!! its wonderful

4get shades its a an ugly clunky piece of crap: What U need is Blacklight its free and allows you to dim your screen to your hearts content to much more varying degrees than your iMacs screen brightness control allows.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/34106/black-light

once installed open Blacklight preferences and set it howeva U like

Enjoy
 

NATO

macrumors 68000
Feb 14, 2005
1,702
35
Northern Ireland
Altho I can't be too sure of it, it might due to the way the operating systems set the refresh rate of the screens. Windows sets the refresh rate of the lcd to highest possible, while osx leaves it at either 60 or 72. Higher refresh rates from the lcd will cause less wear for your eyes.

That's not the case unfortunately, LCDs don't have a refresh rate as such due to the nature of the technology, they would only have an update rate from the graphics card (typically 60Hz) but that wouldn't be the same as the refresh rate of a CRT display which would cause noticeable flicker if set too low.

I wonder if the problem the OP is experiencing could be related to the LED Backlight? It seems that some people seem to have encountered eye strain when Apple changed to LED-backlit displays, could it be the nature of the light compared to the old CCFL backlit displays?
 
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