I thought I'd go ahead and share my in-store MBA experience for the benefit of those of you who are on the fence about this issue. My main machine is a (rather large and heavy) MacBook Pro, so I'm interested in having the MBA as a portable machine for e-mail, web, and some light gaming and/or graphics work. Having read this thread, though, I wanted to be sure that I would get a quality screen, so I traveled to Brandon Apple Store (about 1.5 hours away) to talk to the staff and play with the MBAs before committing to one.
The staff member who met and assisted me first was very understanding of my concerns and said that if I were to go ahead and purchase an MBA, I could open it in the store and return it if the screen was not to my standards. The revision B MBA that I used at the front of the store looked, based on my cursory inspection, to have a good screen. The patterned images in this thread all passed and didn't display any flickering or strange discrepancies, and the screen otherwise looked okay, so I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the new MBA. When I opened it up and turned it on, though, the "texture" was immediately visible on the gray startup screen, and I knew I'd gotten a bad display.
There has been some concern that people can't tell which displays are affected and which aren't, and, indeed, the Apple Store employees who all came around to look confessed that they hadn't heard of or noticed the problem before. From an average viewing distance, it definitely carries the appearance of a texture/grain more than horizontal bars, as they're slightly angled and have a granulated, pixeled appearance. They are not opaque, and their appearance varies depending on what is being displayed on the screen. I was able to see them most easily by opening a website with a white background, setting the machine on a table, titling the display to a regular viewing angle, and looking at the lower half of the display. The white is bright at top brightness settings, but once your eyes have adjusted, the texture is pretty plainly visible. It is definitely a far departure from my MacBook Pro, which displays solid areas of color in a consistent smooth shade.
Everyone had a different way of describing the issue. I thought the "recycled paper" descriptor was pretty accurate. One employee described it as looking like "parchment." A customer at the Genius Bar with me was able to spot the issue immediately without it being pointed out to her, and she said it looked as though the screen was dirty. I think all of these are true to some extent.
I considered my options for a bit, as a MacBook Air is really what I want, and compromising on another machine wasn't going to suffice. One of the employees who was assisting me at this point called out a manager, and another employee brought over a revision A MacBook Air to compare the displays. As it turned out, this revision A MBA had the same display issue. Walking over to the display MBAs confirmed that the display revision A MBA had lines, as well. The store display model I'd used originally (the revision B) was occupied by a customer, so I wasn't able to compare it to my model to see if it had the problems, after all. I can't confidently say that it didn't, though it definitely looked better than the display from my purchased MBA.
Once the manager came over, we chatted a bit; I showed him the issue, and he acknowledged that something was happening there, and it was definitely not up to the standards of my pristine MacBook Pro display. He suggested that it might be a difference in the integrated graphics versus the dedicated graphics, but when I observed that the floor MacBooks did not have the same issue, he seemed genuinely puzzled. He did state that no one else had pointed out such an issue before, which surprised me a little, but probably more than it should have.
Anyway, it was definitely a deal breaker, by the end of it. The effect is pretty jarring, and my shopping companions and I all had slight headaches within minutes of using the display, so I returned the machine for a full refund. There isn't any other machine I'm considering for portable use at this point, so I'm holding out hope that this issue will be addressed. I'm not sure what the best way to proceed is, though. I'll be heading out sometime this week to Best Buy to check out their display models. Staff permitting, I hope to return with news, photos, and specs, whether they're affected or not. I will let you all know!
(As an aside, I can't give the Brandon Apple Store staff enough credit for being so understanding and accommodating throughout my visit. Kudos to them!
Now, if we can just get corporate and retail on the same page regarding this issues, we'll be in a very good place.)
