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Apple Faces Lawsuit For Retina MacBook Pro 'Ghosting' Issue

Posted by Soulskill on from the but-it's-very-trendy-ghosting dept.

redletterdave writes "Apple is facing a potential class action suit in San Francisco's California Northern District Court after an owner of its MacBook Pro with Retina display accused the computer company on Wednesday of 'tricking' consumers into paying for a poor-quality screen, citing an increasingly common problem that causes images to be burned into the display, also known as 'image persistence' or 'ghosting.' The lawsuit claims only LG-made screens are affected by this problem, but 'none of Apple's advertisements or representations disclose that it produces display screens that exhibit different levels of performance and quality.' Even though only one man filed the lawsuit, it can become a class action suit if others decide to join him in his claim, which might not be an issue: An Apple.com support thread for this particular problem, entitled 'MacBook Pro Retina display burn-in,' currently has more than 7,200 replies and 367,000 views across more than 500 pages."

2 of 195 comments (clear)

  1. Re:They should sue LG instead by femtobyte · · Score: 5, Informative

    What really cuts down on legal costs is having millions of potential plaintiffs who each, for the ~$50 of damage done to them, are not willing to go through the bother of even small-claims court (except for a tiny number, who can be paid off a couple hundred bucks on an individual basis). Can you cite any examples of companies being swamped by "thousands" of individual lawsuits over small-cash issues? --- because in the real world, that never actually happens. On the other hand, class actions frequently allow a too-small-for-individuals-to-bother case to get serious, top-notch legal representation, and take a big chunk of cash from the company (as they deserve for mass-screwing-over their customers). This is why all the big pro-corporate-interests media/political loudmouths (aside from the small fraction of them working for law firms) shout so much about "tort reform!" and try to push through legislation *weakening* class action abilities --- megacorporations overwhelmingly prefer to keep their I'm-bigger-than-you legal advantage over private individuals.

  2. I had an LG screen, replaced with Samsung by Falc0n · · Score: 5, Informative

    As soon as I received my MBPr I started testing to see if it had ghosting issues and if it was an LG screen. Sure enough, both were true. I returned it, and referenced the specific part number 661-7171 (that was the samsung screen) to replace it with. My local apple rep obliged and I had a nice new Samsung screen. Re-ran the stress test and it cleared.

    That was 6 months ago, haven't seen a ghosting issue since.