24 inch iMac display brightness problem and what you can do about it
Sun, 18 May 2008
After returning a new 24 inch iMac two times and getting the replacements I figured out that the problem is not related to the particular machine, but rather to all of them. I read tons of forums and the issue is so widespread that it leaves no doubt it’s a design fault. A design fault that Apple is leading us to believe they are not aware of, despite hundreds and thousands of calls to their customer support asking for help.
The problem is essentially this, the display is brighter on the left than it is on the right. Much brighter. Below is an illustration of how the brightness is distributed across the screen.
There are three areas of interest here:
1 - The display gets darker closer to the left edge of the screen
2 - The display brightness is constant
3 - The display gets darker towards the right side of the screen
Apple tries to compensate for this with ridiculously high level of brightness, which to be honest masks the problem rather well. The screen is simply so bright by default that any normal human being either needs to have sunglasses while using the iMac or turn the screen brightness down. The problem is, you can turn the brightness down only so far. And that is very little. Even the lowest setting is still way way too bright for most of us.
Here is the drill - the lower the brightness, the lower the panel temperature. The lower the temperature, the darker the edges of screen, hence the gradient. I am sure Apple is aware of this and this is exactly the reason why they keep the thing so bright.
I tested a few free utilities that will let you darken the screen further, and the one that best suits my needs is (or are) Shades. Shades actually doesn’t darken the screen by reducing the brightness, but rather applies a transparent overlay of specific colour. The default colour is black but you can change it to any other colour in the preferences window (not that I could imagine someone using a pink overlay).
The slider, that you can have either in the menu bar or on the desktop, doesn’t really change the brightness but the transparency of the overlay, which in turn makes your screen to appear darker.
What I did was to reduce iMac brightness to the minimum, then apply Shades to darken it a bit further. This made my display reasonably dark, but also produced even heavier gradient.
My wife, having heard me talking loudly to myself about the panel temperature and being frustrated with the gradient, came up with a brilliant idea… and not so brilliant solution. She laughed and said “If you need the temperature, why don’t you put the blow heater next to the screen, on the right end”.
This actually made me thinking and, of course ,brought up the answer to the problem. Turn up the iMac’s brightness control all the way up to generate enough temperature, then darken up the display with the Shades overlay.
The display brightness is now flat across the screen. When I wake up the computer in the morning there is a little of gradient along the right edge, about 2 inches, but within a few minutes this is gone.
One thing that may work against this is the screen calibration. I have noticed that some custom calibrations I have made have resulted in an unusual pink-ish tint towards the right edge, but Adobe RGB and sRGB work perfectly fine.
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Posted in Mac
Henry said: Sun, 18 May 2008 at 23:12
Are you talking about the new iMacs (released a couple of weeks ago)? This is not the first hardware problem you have with Apple products (especifically the iMac, right?), and you’re getting me really worried about quality from Apple lately.
David J said: Fri, 23 May 2008 at 10:41
I figure those of us who got the 3 year warranty will be getting new 24in iMacs in about 2 years. These Macs get really hot and in the small iMac casing heat will eventually kill the HD, CPU, and board capacitors. Basically I feel this is going to coat A$$ple some $$$$ in the near future because these units will be replaced. I use my iMac a lot and I hope it dies in about 2 years so I will get a new one!
Normally I don’t feel this way about a company but A$$ple is screwing it’s customers in so many ways today.
steve said: Sun, 1 June 2008 at 15:46
I have a 24″ iMac from oct 07 which is bleeding a little and creating dark areas in 3 areas near centre of screen. I have applecare..Should I live with it for now or get it replaced - ie will I set myself up for more probs ?
David J said: Wed, 4 June 2008 at 08:07
Up to you. If it’s not too bad I would wait as log as possible simple because you might end up with a better quality screen. I figure Apple will be forced to pay $$$$ and hopefully replace these crappy monitors.
toshi said: Sat, 7 June 2008 at 10:00
Hi
I’m an amateur of photography and computer graphics and when I bought first iMac in December 2007 I couldn’t stand it so gave it back to reseler and they gave another one with the same problem ofcourse. I already had a background of that problems from all kind of forums and that they’re people on all over the world with the same issue.
I said OK let’s try the third one in the shop and what? The same problem.
Now I uderstand why the gradient was deeper and deeper along with time of iMac being turned on, cause the temperature of the panel was increasing.
In March 2008 I’ve called apple care and after serious of conversations they have admited that: “such a problem existed but it has been adressed” and that “if I’ll order from them directly I’ll have an iMac from the newest batch without issues” So I gave it a go and I’ve played in this apple lottery ones again. First one was bad as hell. The second one was so bright that I couldn’t use it but the gradient was almost invisible. Now I understand this cover up from apple. I gave it back. They send the third one and ofcourse you know what was the outcome. Now I’m still using my PC. Looks like apple doesn’t want any “switchers” anymore. They have enough money from ipod’s and iphones that imac’s are just 15% of their profit so they just don’t care.
But the most anoying thing is that they niether fix the problem or admit it and give resolution time.
Oh and there is one more thing. 2 of my friends bought new silver 24″ iMac just when they have been released ( with Tiger ) and they screen is much diferent like it would come from diferent manufacturer and gradient.
And about software fix using “Shades” or other app. I’m afraid this fix comes with another problem which is “depth of colors”. With software shading of all colors you decreasing numbers of all colors that can be displayed. So one way or the other we loose something. Spending that amount of money for and iMac we geting great operating system, nice hardware all boxed in marvelous brushed aluminium box and crappy screen comes with along. Some things never change and computers are so strong as their weakest part. So I’ve been forced to stay with my Sony VAIO.
toshi said: Sat, 7 June 2008 at 10:01
Sorry mistake.
Oh and there is one more thing. 2 of my friends bought new silver 24″ iMac just when they have been released ( with Tiger ) and they screen is much diferent like it would come from diferent manufacturer and _no_ gradient.