A customer recently dropped of their 15” Retina display MacBook Pro for an issue I had not yet seen with this particular laptop. When transitioning from a lighter image to a darker one, the screen would experience temporary image burn-in. Every time, the burned-in image lasted about 30 seconds total, and would gradually fade-away. This proved to be very distracting to this customer, as they were working with high-resolution images/graphics, and bought a MacBook Pro with a Retina display for that very reason.
I understood the customer’s frustration, as the computer was only a few months old. We checked it in for repair, and I ran our readily available Apple Service Toolkit diagnostics on it. One of the tests bundled in the toolkit, is an “image persistence” evaluation, which basically tests for this exact issue, image burn-in. Sure enough, the test failed, and those diagnostic results were then sent to Apple.
Having failed the test, Apple considers the display defective, which is most certainly covered by the warranty. I ordered a replacement display, and installed it the following day. The image burn-in was no longer present with the replacement display, and the computer now passed all diagnostics. The customer was very happy to receive their computer back in a timely manner, and I was glad that it was resolved so easily.
Please feel free to stop by any of our stores if you think you may be experiencing a similar issue, and we’d be glad to run the test and take a look at it.