MacBook Pro Retina Display — Screen Burn-In — Ghost Images

On June 20, I reported a screen burn-in issue: a latent image “burns in” to the deskop when a window is left on screen. This has now happened repeatedly.

The problem occurs in as little as 20 minutes; close the window and the desktop is left with a latent image; a ghost image of whatever text or graphic was in the window left on screen.

Quitting the Finder or logging out has no effect, indicating that the problem is a hardware (screen) issue, not just a screen-bits (graphics memory) issue. After some minutes, the ghost image slowly fades away back to the background color (I use a dark gray desktop, so ghost images are easily seen).

Bad news if you ask me. What would happen if left that way for a few hours? What happens after a year’s use?

There are other implications too— what if you are a photographer trying to evaluate images? This ghost image problem could lead to bad judgments about image brightness, contrast, or color. Yet another reason Why I Will Not Be Taking the MacBook Pro Retina Traveling With Me — Yet.

Of course, I don’t know if this means that my MBP Retina has a bad screen, or if this is a problem common to any Retina display. But this sure as heck looks like a critical DEFECT to me. Looks like my MBP Retina will have to be returned to Apple for a replacement.

There is a discussion thread on the burn-in/ghost image issue developing on this over at Apple.