New higher res PowerBook displays having problems?
By Ryan Block 
posted November 28th 2005 10:05AM
posted November 28th 2005 10:05AM
Ok, so apparently some people are having some weird horizontal line issue with those
new Apple PowerBooks that have the
higher res, higher brightness displays — apparently it's
even something that's been spotted on display models in Apple stores. Frankly, given the gallery of pictures of the
issue, we can't really see much of a problem going on there; then again, it may well be one of those things you have to
eye in person to properly perceive. Anyone out there noticing this problem on their new PowerBook? Let's get to the
bottom of this, shall we?
[Via The Inq]
I just got my 15 inch PowerBook and after starring at a couple of these images I'm _still_ not sure what everyone is talking about. Maybe that means I've got a good display, or maybe I just have bad eyesight.
However, this is the second PowerBook. The first one I bought had a dead battery, regularly crashed, and finally ate a CD. So I returned it for this one which has worked fine so far.
#48 brings up a good point...
What graphic professional is using a PowerBook based on a 6 year old G4 processor to do anything remotely powerful?
They aren't -- they're using PowerMacs and whatever displays they want at the office. I imagine on the go they have a PB, but for minor tinkering around.
But nonetheless I feel bad for you guys that are bothered by this problem... for the Pro line of computers they should really get a pro-quality display.
Well, you have a year warranty (at least), and I'm sure new stock will come -- you may even be able to get a new intel PB when they come out, as they want to get rid of all PPC products.
Me? I'm happy on my 20" iMac, but when intel notebooks hit, I'm probably going to pick up an iBook.
I have the new 17" PowerBook and haven't noticed any horizontal line issues at all. The display is much more crisp compared to my 6 month old 12" PowerBook, too.
I've noticed the line too on my 17'' PowerBook (just two weeks old). It's more vlear to see if you're running on Battery Power. At first I though it was supposed to look like that (some kind of Apple creativity), but since it comes and goes I'm now thinking about returning it for warranty.
#48 and #50 bring up an excellent point:
Apple does not, and will never, care about this kind of thing.
The previous post is just plain wrong. Many graphics professionals (small and large scale) use Powerbooks for mobility. I'm sure that new high-resolution displays would have been intriguing to them. In fact, designers are the likely target audience for the new Powerbook line!
Yeah i can see the lines and half the people i work with can see them, however to see them we all have to be 1 inch from the screen. I looked at that image and saw some of the image problems but once again at an extremely close distance , same for the other new powerbooks at work and then again mostly on the 15". I mean personally when you see them they look like lines you see on other lcd's /crts generally older ones. They are the ones i think i have seen when you use glare filters. Personally i think its just a treatment on the screen. Oh and #50 thanks for bashing my new purchuse. #47 i used to get headaches on the older powerbooks but that was because i had the brightness so freaking high, and people have always had trouble staring at computer monitors for any length of time. I do have a problem with my new powerbook though , it wont run without AC power, the battery is fully charged well appears to be but if i disconnect AC it says switching to resever power please connect to AC in the next few minutes then it dies. I have tried various resets on the nvram and stuff but no luck. At least i use it for pleasure (browsing, gaming, pron) and not for pain ( work , WORK, WORK!!!!!, school).
Apple does not, and will never, care about this kind of thing
--
Erm.. a post on engadget about a problem that isn't really a problem, followed by about 40 Mac users saying, "Just got my 17", no problems here!"
Yeah, those greedy bastards won't lift a finger to fix this 'catastrophe'..
I have a new Powerbook 17" and have no problems. Based on reports and what Ive read from other users, the screen problems seem to be limited to the 15" Powerbooks.
it ONLY effects the 15"
NOT the 17"
It effects every single new 15" power book and no other model...
I have a 28 day old 15" power book that I maxed out and spend $2,500 plus on for graphic design work.
I have the line problem on mine... but then it goes way when i move my face further then 2 inches from the screen. I can see the RGB pixels on my giant old TV from a much greater distance than the "line problem" on my powerbook. The problem is there, I have it and every one has it, but i dont see what the deel is because you dont notice it unless your 2 inches from the screen. People have used some filters and other software to fix the problem so im just hoping that apple will be nice and have a firmware update or something for it and not need every body to go out and buy new hardware. Do I want apple to fix it? Yes but i dont care if they dont.
Apple apologists, get your eyes checked, have a good look at an actual new PB 15 screen, then have a look at a Cinema Display, or a Sony laptop, or a Dell laptop, or an HP laptop, or even an iBook, keep telling yourselves that the new PB 15 screens are fine, best ever, the banding problem isn't there, all LCDs look like that, Apple don't make mistakes, they're cheaper just because they are, it's an Apple PowerBook, it's aluminium, it's wireless reception is as good as an iBook's, it's just as fast as a 3GHz Intel...
Gee wiz. I like Apple's stuff as much as the next fanatic, but these reports are legit'. My new PB 15 has it, and it's annoying for a bunch of reasons. You can pretend that everything's fine, and I'll enjoy my PB because its good points outdo its shortcomings, but I won't pretend it doesn't have any.
Well every display at every apple store has this problem, and I'm quite sick of the average consumer saying things like "boo hoo..cry me a river" when their eyes are not trained to notice details.
The problem is existent across the field and I'm embarassed for the writer for not understanding the magnitude of the problem. The problem is there for all new 15" powerbooks, period.
And professionals need portability just as much as the average joe. Filmmakers like myself do edits on the field and to lug around a powermac and a cinema display between lighting changes would be moronic.
Graphic artists on the other hand need to show their work to clients on screens that are calibrated correctly, so a good laptop display is a must for pros. A faulty product is a faulty product, no matter how big of a fan boy we all are.
My PB 15" has it. I had just bought an older one a few days before this new model came out. I returned it just to get the new screen, the lines were the first thing that I saw. You don'thave to be that close, just put on a gray apple background and you'll see it clear as day, if your eyes aren't messed up.
Also #40, have you noticed that when your dragging a window, or scrolling in a window, that you can hear the clicks coming from the computer, not though headphone jack, but just coming from the ATI chip presumably.
Granted they are quite, but working in a library its easy to notice them. Something seems sketchy about al of this.
This is most likely caused by row inversion.
http://www.techmind.org/lcd/
I have the same effect on my Dell Inspiron 8100 (1600x1200).
[)amien
What is a few lines on the display of your $2,000 investment, right? I fail to see an issue here....
Damien: According to the test images on the web site you linked to, the Powerbook doesn't use row inversion, it uses line-paired RGB sub-pixel dot-inversion.
'Erm.. a post on engadget about a problem that isn't really a problem, followed by about 40 Mac users saying, "Just got my 17", no problems here!"'
Mikey, one person said that. One. Not 40. One.
One and 40. Two different numbers.
Understand?
You can practice your counting by totalling up the number of people who said they've bought a FIFTEEN inch Powerbook and have the problem, versus those who say they've just bought the FIFTEEN inch Powerbook and do not have the problem. You'll see that the former is the larger number.
Or will you?
I'm rooting for you, little Mike.
Ok!!! For everyone complaining out there... This is line problem is taken care of very quickly by turning on colorsync. If you bothered to ask the right questions of people and not be so quick to jump to the Recall/lawsuit (I want a share of apple profits) bandwagon, You would not be complaining about it anymore. If you want some money by apple stock.
I have a new 15" high res powerbook, and I do (quite clearly) see the horizontal line in the menu bar. However, when I look at the screen on my 1ghz 1st gen aluminum powerbook, the horizontal line is there also. I never noticed it on the older aluminum machine until I noticed it on the brand new one. I've found that it's great to have the added pixels, but the display does seem less "fluid" in color gradients.
I bought and returned a 15" PowerBook because of MULTIPLE issues with the display.
It's not just the horizontal lines issue.
There is also a pattern of ripples that are some sort of analog interference apparently leaking into the screen driver. And, the screen refreshes in a strange checkerboard pattern that's slow enough that you can sometimes perceive it when you look from one side of the screen to the other, or watch fast-moving content like video.
It was simply intolerable.
There were five 15" machines on display at the Palo Alto Apple Store, and all five had the same problems.
I went back to using my 1.5GHz 17" and am delighted that I did. There were some nice new features in the 15, but none of them made up for being driven crazy by the screen.
Oh, by the way. To the several people who say "you can't see it from more than away", let me just say this: Perhaps YOU can't see it from more than that distance, but it's a mistake for you to assume that your vision is the same as other people's.
Some people, plain and simple, have either higher visual acuity or are just more sensitive to artifacts like these. It's fine to say "I can see it if I look hard enough, but it doesn't bother me", but making the leap to "so it shouldn't bother you either" is fallacious. If the multiple problems with the 15" screen don't bother you, consider yourselves lucky.
I don't like lines.
I do like Apple Macintosh PowerBook things. A lot.
Does ColorSync solve the lines?
If so, I like ColorSync, and Apple Macintosh PowerBook things.
They are really, really nice.
And that Steve Jobs is a nice person.
I returned my newer 15 inch just days after receiving it. I've been using powerbooks for many years now and never had issues with the screens, but within seconds of starting this new one up my eyes just could not NOT see the horizontal lines. I showed it to the genius at the genius bar and his eyes were not ingenious enough to see the lines. I tried dealing with it but ultimately had to ditch the thing and go back to my wobbly, dented older model which displays none of the distracting horizontal lines problem.
Yes, I took very good look at that supplied photo, and you shouldn't be seeing that on a new PowerBook. That's also more than just pixels. My 12" G4 sure doesn't show anything like that. The photo reminds me of a worn out CRT. Apple should fess up and fix up.
Let's keep a clear mind about this:
1 - Not everybody is affected. If you can't see the lines even with the demo image, congratulations, you got a perfect one. They are out there.
2 - Some people simply don't care even though they can see the lines. I don't quite get that, but hey - we all see different so if it's fine for you, why not.
3 - Others have the problem and it's serious. I am one of them. It doesn't make the machine unusable but it has the subtle effect of making the image worse. It looks like permanent dirt on the screen, images look very slightly wrong and when I drag a finder window the lines stay in place so it looks like I am dragging _under_ something.
Apple will probably deal with this problem the same way they dealt with the white spots problem: Some people see it and are fine with it, others have it and don't see it, others have it very lightly - all of those, Apple doesn't want to exchange. Those of us who are unhappy with the display will get a replacement.
(I am out of the country now or I would already have returned it)
hi. i received my 15" Powerbook a month ago and didn't notice the lines right away, i did think that the display was a little muddy compared to the previous 15" model with lower resolution i had used just before, but i did also notice the lines after a few days and was shocked to find so many people describing the exact same behaviour when i made a simple search on google for 'powerbook 15" horizontal lines'.
i needed the computer to work so i just then calibrated the screen with the crankycat.com/pb15_problems.png image on the desktop and could tune out the lines with the calibration process (i also used Supercal, and displayConfigX to trydifferent things), however the lines reappeared on red or grey or green or blue backgrounds, depending on the calibration.
so i returned to the Color LCD calibration profile and this is just intenable, on this page for instance i see the diagonal lines - although faint, but they are there - on the grey rows of the replies. it's faint but it's there, and it varies depending on the angle i look at the screen: if i look at the screen from above, the lines disappear, but so does most of the contrast! i have a good eyesight and yes i rely on my eyes to make a living. and no i am not two inches from the screen, i am looking at it perpendicularly and at a normal reading distance. it's a strain to your eyes to be reading black text on a scrolling background, and not see shapes and colours accurately. and i paid $2000 for this?
i have been waiting three weeks for anyone posting any kind of resolution on a forum or apple acknowledging the issue but i return today to see that it still has not happened - some say they don't see the lines, some say they don't have them, but noone who said they had them found a solution or sent the unit for repair to apple and it came back without the lines. and it makes me sick. i need a computer that doesn't give me headaches when i code, and that i can rely on for graphic work and presentations, i don't need a desktop computer, i don't really want the 17", which might come with its set of issues, i don't want an iBook, i can't wait a year for the new models to come out and for apple to iron out the bugs, i can't seriously go back to using a pc... (providing even that apple would let me exchange my powerbook), so what options are there for me, apple? what laptop does steve jobs use? could i deal with a refurbished 15" with smaller screen definition now that i have tasted the 1440 px?
so i talked to several apple tech persons on the phone today, they had not heard of the issue (or are not allowed to mention it) but urged me to send my unit for repair, that they were very good at fixing such things, replacing a monitor, a faulty cable, etc. that's what they told me. i demanded a reassurance that they knew the issue and could tell me that indeed it was fixable but i got nothing but the blanket statements above. for all i know it could be a firmware issue, a cheap screen, or the unit could be returned to me untouched in a couple of weeks with a post-it note saying 'sorry the lines are within specs', if i decide to indeed send my computer to apple.
also since they issued me a dispatch number i just received an email from them warning me: "note that if you decline service because the repair is not covered by Apple or no issue is found with the product, a diagnostic fee of no more than $100 USD may be charged".
so they might actually charge me not to fix an issue, by claiming it a non-issue? judging from the replies above people are sometimes quick at calling this a non-issue so this scares me, should i trust these apple specialists? i can see how the lines are not a big deal especially if it's not your computer...
As a long time Apple fan I'm saddened to see some of the quality issues of late. I really want to buy a 15" powerbook before I leave for Europe in a few weeks. I went to the Apple store to look at the displays and, sure enough, every model out on the floor had the problem. Everyone there claimed to be ignorant of the issue. My biggest fear is that Apple is going to just ignore this just like they did when all the 23" cinema displays were pink. I never had a problem in the past paying a premium for an Apple since I new it would be a quality product. Where did that company go?
All you arm chair quarterbacks, that don't even own a new Powerbook 15" need to keep silent—you don't know what you are talking about and you are cluttering up the discussion with uninformed opinions. This is a known issue, it's all over the apple bulletin boards. I have a Powerbook 15" 1.3 GHz, to compare with, that doesn't have this problem (purchased 08/04). But my new Powerbook 15" 1.67 GHz clearly has the problem (purchased 11/05). I tested all the 15" models at the Apple store and they also have the problem, although none of the 12" or 17" models have the problem. It seems to only be affecting 15" models. #11 above described the problem well. It happens with medium value solid images, i.e. 50% gray background, etc. I'm amazed that Apple's techs don't seem to get out much, because they seem to be unaware of the problem when I've described it to them. I'm disappointed. It doesn't interfeer with my work, but after paying $2000 for a machine that I use everyday, I'd like it to meet Apple's normal standards that they have for their other displays.
I think the lines go hand in hand with the brighter display. The backlighting has to have a material that defuses light and reflects it through the screen, the lines you see is this material that they are using to push the light through the screen. Take apart any lighted LCD device and you will see a white plastic like material that defuses the light and directs it through the LCD