I took my 24in Imac in to the apple store earlier tonight before they closed... I had made an appointment with the genius bar. I was told over the phone that if there was a problem that they could switch it out at the store.
I showed the tech guy what the screen problem looked like and it took him a while and a little convincing to get him to see what I was talking about. He told me that it was not a big enough deal to constitute being able to replace it with another computer because as far as he could tell, it was "within spec." After asking him what exactly "within spec" constitutes he asked me if I used the computer for color work, after I said yes he pulled over another person working at the genius bar over to get his opinion. "I'm more of an audio guy, this guy does work with photography so lets see what he says...."
This other guy sees the problem pretty quickly. He explained that all monitors are different and that all lcd's have inconsistencies, I told him I understood that but that I don't think that this is just a normal inconsistency, instead of telling me there was nothing they could do he offered to pull another computer out and open it up and he could let me compare it to mine and decide which one I want to take home, he stressed that he would only be able to do this with one other computer and I would have to decide, and he stressed even more so that this other computer might still have the same problem. I had shown them that website that displays the problem so it's easy to see, and asked if I could look around the store at the display Imacs and open this website on them to see how they compare before we try to open up another box.
I went to one of the display models, after opening safari, I was overjoyed to see that I couldn't outright see a big change in brightness from left to right. I then typed
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/#angleGrey into the address bar and the test came up and I could tell that this computer has the same problem mine has, it was not as drastic as mine but it was still there..... I preceded around to 4 other Imacs in the store and did this with all of them and ALL of them showed similar results, none of them where as drastic as mine was, but I could still see the bright to dark and cool to warm from left to right. Only one of the Imacs I saw out of the 5 display models I looked at would I deem as acceptable, it was extremely close, but it was just still off in the same exact way the others were, only it was pretty subtle.
I decided to add some controls to the experiment, I went first to the 20" imacs, ran the same website test, they showed change from top to bottom and when tilting the screen up and down, but when I moved the window around the screen from left to right, there was no noticeable color or brightness differences in monitor, and believe me I looked really hard here and absolutely no sign of my 24" problem for any of the 20inches I looked at.... then when on to the macpros and got the same things, normal changes in brightness etc from top to bottom, but no sign of what I'm dealing with.
It was getting close to closing and the people at the genius bar were probably wondering where I was so I went back, I took a look at my screen and told them that I would like to open up another computer and compare the two (my computer was the the worst of all I'd seen that day, so it can't hurt to try to get a improved one). But then they told me that they couldn't swap mine out with another because I had ordered the wireless mouse with mine and that changes things because now my computer is deemed a custom configuration and in order to do a swap they would have to fill out a sheet explaining what was out of spec with the first one and that they both agree that mine is within spec. The store was closing and I didn't want to be a jerk and try to push for anything so I just decided that I can come back some other time after I've thought things over.
Just to get everything straight, I didn't ever myself say that every imac had this problem, I was just stating that it might be a possibility, that's why the name of this thread "new 24 inch imacs all have a significant monitor problem?" has a question mark at the end of it..... I don't know, maybe I should have been more clear, anyway, here are a few things that I do know for sure:
1. My 24" aluminum imac has this problem.
2. Five (all that was available to look at at the time) different 24" aluminum imacs in the apple store had this same problem, some are more significant that others, one was pretty subtle, but all were noticeable while looking at
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/#angleGrey
3. The other computers I've looked at in the store, as well as some older imacs that I've seen do not seem to have this problem as I can notice.
4. Other people "have claimed" to have gotten a replacement/multiple replacements without this same issue being resolved.
Some conclusions (only possibilities) I make:
either:
1. All 24inch aluminum imacs do in fact have this problem, there is something in the way they are all built that effect the screen in a way that causes this issue. Granted, some are more noticeable than others, maybe most are not noticeable at all which would be ok if that's the case. And I don't think I would have noticed it, unless I was in the field I'm in and pay very close attention to these things, plus, I think it is very possible that most people wouldn't notice my screen being off much less other screens where I could only see the change reallywell after I used the test (this is what I believe but I know that doesn't mean I'm correct.)
2. Maybe a large batch (or a couple of batches) of imacs went out that have this problem and there are other batches out there that simply do not have this problem. Maybe this could explain the problem that when we return the imacs with problems to the place we got them from we get more imacs with the same problems from the same batch from the same place. Maybe all of the imacs in the store on display also come from the same defective batch.
3. Maybe I've written too much in this post.
