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Yellow stains on new white MacBook?

I'd call Apple. You didn't purposely have some weird acid on your hands, so it could not have been a user accident. If there is some sort of plastic coating on the white macbooks, you may have eroded it. I'd talk to them. Looks bad.
 
latex

hey all. i work at lab and found the same problem within a week. We've seen similar issues with other plastics and believe it is from either direct contact with latex or residue left on your hands.

Not sure what could clean it.
 
orthodoc said:
After about 2 days, a small yellow discoloration popped up on the mouse button and where my hand rests when I am using the trackpad.
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I was just passing through town. I swear I never touched it.. for very long..
 
cloudblood84 said:
yeah mine is just a "dirt" color. i wash my hands all of the time though...its most noticable from an angle, and just the left corner of the trackpad button. im gonna try scrubbing it again (last time i did it, i did it for about 30 sec so ill try for longer this time)

its no so bad with the flash on but in natural light at an angle it looks really bad....
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ewww no offense but man throwing a thursday sticker on your new MB.. that should be against the law 🙄
 
jeeshan said:
hey all. i work at lab and found the same problem within a week. We've seen similar issues with other plastics and believe it is from either direct contact with latex or residue left on your hands.

Not sure what could clean it.
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Glad you posted. I am an orthodontist and I am starting to think that it does have something to do with my latex gloves. The only luck I am having is using an ultra fine steel wool. You can get it at home depot. I have tried 00 grade and believe it or not, even this barely does anything. I am avoiding the latex around my macbook from now on.
 
I have exactly the same problem with my MacBook. I've had it three weeks - two weeks after buying it, the yellow marks began to show. I have had no contact with latex or those wheaty biscuits or anything else I can think of. My two year-old iBook has no such stains. I think Apple have used some sort of inferior plastic on the palm-rest and trackpad that is *really* sensitive to skin oils - maybe this is why they are charging extra for the black one. The palm-rest definitely feels like a different material to that on the iBook; either that, or the heat of these things is affecting how the plastic reacts to your hands, but I doubt that, given that my iBook was a lot hotter on the palm-rest area than my MacBook.

If anyone finds some way of fixing this, I would love to hear about it. At the moment it seems like a really horrible design flaw (others are complaining of the same thing over on the Apple support forums). Shame, as I love everything else about my MacBook...
 
use a gentle rubbing compound, 3M makes a nice "fine-cut" compound. It WILL work if you haven't irrepairably damaged the plastic already.
 
I have yellow spots now, as well. After reading this thread I noticed them. Anyone know if Apple will fix this? It's only been 2 weeks -- if my hands don't make a stain on my iBook in 3 YEARS, a 2 week stain seems to be faulty casing.
 
Wow that looks pretty bad, almost like it's been scorched.

No wait, it could be.... nah it couldn't, could it?

Hey you dont use Fake Tan do you? 😛 Only kidding buddy, you should definitely take it back.
 
I have a new MacBook and I'm TERRIFIED by this. Would I be able to get a refund from Apple if it happened to me?
 
I just began to notice this on my new MacBook as well. Light yellow stains to the right of the trackpad where I rest my palm and on the trackpad itself. And here I thought it was just dirt that needed to be cleaned off like with my old iBook G4. 409 cleaner used to work with my iBook; I'll give that a shot when I get home tonight.

[Edit: I've attached a picture of the stains and where my hand is normally placed on the MacBook, so you can clearly see why. I don't smoke and I wash my hands regularly, and I don't use latex gloves or handle any chemicals. This is normal, everyday usage here. Incidentally, my serial # begins with 4H620 (2006, Week 20). 1.83GHz MacBook, 100GB, 1GB RAM.]
 

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Actually, I'm on my third white macbook 2.0 for various reasons; however, the reason the 2nd one went back was because I noticed a little discoloration on the top left side of the trackpad button and attempted to clean it off using iKlear Apple Polish and one of their blue, microfiber chamois clothes. When I did this, I found that the area I was wiping off had become blue, just like the cloth.

At this point, I tried using soap/water, more iKlear with a different cloth, Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, and a Clorox bleach pen and *nothing* made the stain even budge. 😕 😱 I'm now on my third macbook in 15 days and I've had this one now for almost a week...no discoloration yet. I'm really terrified of this whole "discoloration" business for obvious reasons. I've decided to only use it (for right now, at least) with an external keyboard/mouse and not to use *ANY* cleaning agents on it until I hear more about this from others or Apple.

For what it's worth, AppleInsider just posted an article about this here. I don't understand...peeling/scratching with the BlackBooks and now discoloration with the white ones...frustrating to say the least. I absolutely love my MB in every way, so I hope this doesn't become a problem. 😡
 
Mine's three weeks old today and no problem so far. We'll see what happens.

For those having the problem, have you noticed any problems with the keycaps or is it just the palmrest/trackpad?
 
MACDRIVE said:
This stuff will definatley do the trick, but may leave a slight abrasion behind. Just rub it in with a damp sponge. I only recommend this as a last resort though. I've used it to remove black marker stains from a white laminated kitchen table. It removes all of the ink leaving no trace whatsoever.

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I love a little Bon Ami on my peppers. It adds that extra zing.🙂
 
Being a girl, and being into clothes and being into taking care of my wardrobe, I know about these little bottles of stain remover called Carbona.

They have ink, glue, chewing gum, sweat, makeup, grass, wine, tomato juice removers. Each in a separate bottle for each type of stain. They work. I once marked up an ibook with pen and it was gone in one second with the Carbona stain remover for inks.

Just a thought, but maybe the sweat remover would help here.

I also know that certain cleaners can irrevocably change the nature of plastics. I had an art deco bakelite lamp once and i used a certain harsh cleaning agent on it, and it completely changed the color of the bakelite -- turning it darker by virtue of a chemical reaction. One hopes that this is not the case on the white mbs -- i.e. that this is a chemical reaction to the plastics involved.

Pity, whatever the reason, because the iBooks were known to be able to have been wiped clean with those magic erasers.
 
Looks what's happening to my black MacBook!

I have the black MacBook, and have been using it daily for a couple of weeks. At first I thought that it was just discoloring a bit around the trackpad, and that this could be expected with the amount of use I give the machine. On the wrist guard, I noticed it becoming increasingly lighter, with the black finish wearing away a bit. I kept telling myself that this was "normal wear-and-tear" and since everything else was fine with it, that I should live with it. In fact, because I get absolutely no "MOO" sounds, i counted myself as one of the fortunate ones.

But tonight it happened. My wife walked in and saw what was happening to my MacBook and made me own up to the fact that there is indeed a problem with it. I have now scheduled an appointment for tomorrow with a "Genius" to see what they can do about the change to the wrist area and trackpad.

Here's a link to a photo showing what I'm talking about:

http://flickr.com/photos/richlegg/166230097/

hth.... Rich 🙂
 
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