wrap my head around the image retention issue

[roadkill401]

I have one of those late 2014 27" iMacs that has the image problem. I have already had the display replaced once under AppleCare, but as that has now ended, I am left with the image problem.

But here is where I get sort of confused about what is the actual cause. I have turned the auto hide for both the dock and the status bar. I have removed all the on screen icons so I am just left with a blank screen medium gray (set as the background colour). If I open up a Safari, and then minimize it right away so I am left with a blank screen again, then hit the shift-control-eject to turn off the screen and leave it off for 2-3 hours. When I turn the screen back on, I can see the shadow outline of where the Safari window would be if it wasn't minimized.

But how can that be??

1. the screen was effectively turned off, so it wasn't displaying anything. it was black.
2. the Safari window was minimized, so even if the screen was on, it wasn't displaying the Safari window, so how could there be any image retention of something that simply just is not there.
3. it has been pointed out that setting up the background to show an image, that don't burn into or have any retention issues, it is just apps that seem to gain retention.

I am lost to explain the cause of this problem.

 

[jerwin]

another datapoint. When I reboot from Windows 10, I can still see the windows taskbar superimposed upon the macos login screen.

 

[roadkill401]

but if you turn off the computer (pull the plug from the back of the imac for 3 seconds) then boot into Windows 10, the image is not there. It is just if you leave the iMac turned on and then do a reboot.

I have a sneaking suspision it is a design fault inisde the modified display buffer controler chip that was used the get the Retina display on the grapics card, and not really anything to do with the actual display pannel.

 

[aliensporebomb]

Thank goodness someone else ran into this. I thought it was screen burn in of a type I'd never seen before. What a weird issue: I even ran into this: it retained the screen image after a reboot into bootcamp/windows 10 then it eventually faded. It's got to be some weird video display driver error. it doesn't always do it, but it does it sometimes.

 

[294307]

Any image retention will remain on the display even if it's turned off. It's not a case of turning off the computer or restarting it in order to fix the problem – the image is temporarily burned into the display.

Your only option at this point is to put up with it, and make sure when you are not using the machine that a screensaver is displayed automatically. Go to System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver and from the "Screen Saver" tab, make sure "Start after:" is set to 10 minutes or less. That way, by the time you return to your computer, most of the image retention would have hopefully disappeared.

I should warn you that it is possible image retention will only get worse over time. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Unfortunately, IPS panels in general are prone to develop image retention. Not all displays have this problem, however. I've had my 2017 iMac for over a year now, and it hasn't developed any image retention, but my last iMac did within six months of purchase.

 

[jerwin]

None of the screensavers are really suitable for "clearing" the regions where I experience the most retention.

The top--with the menubar, and the title bar of certain maximized windows/
The left, where I have my dock
The bottom, where windows has a task bar.