Updated: My Apple is a Lemon -- How My 23" Cinema Display Turns White Into Pink

Updated: Below is the saga of how I got a sick Apple 23" Display. Here is the latest:

I got tired of waiting for Century 23, the Apple Authorized shop that I had hauled my monitor to, so that it could be sent to Apple for repair.  My system had been down a week (ever try to plug a standard CRT monitor into an Apple? Oops wrong plug).Cult of the Mac" guys and told him that finally got the monitor back. He told me to call him when i plugged it in.

The man who answered told me that he had indeed just received the monitor back and was putting it in the box I had brought it in. (This made me wonder what they had shipped the monitor to Apple in, and why I wasn't getting that box instead. An hour later, I arrived at the shop and they brought me into the back room and pointed to my box. I asked them if they had tried the monitor out. They told me that they didn't have one of the 23" display power adapters (which I was not required to bring in for the repair. But the repair guy pointed out that the had replaced both the LCD panel and the logic board.

"Wow, that sounds good," I said, there isn't much to left besides that to the monitor (just the aluminum frame and the glass in front of the panel.).  So I lugged the heavy box back to my car and headed home. I called my friend Will (who is one of those "

Well, guess what? The monitor displays white without pink in it now. When I recalibrate the monitor, it was absolutely amazing how much I had to change the settings that I had created for the defective monitor.

The montior is better, still no where as good as my Samsung 213T that I use on my PC in terms of eye-pleasingness (not a word but you get the idea). I called my friend Will and he said, "Thank heaven, now you can stop badmouthing Apple."

He then paused a second or two and said, "But I guess they did give you quite a runaround."

Yes they did.

The original story begins here:

After months of pondering the idea that Macintoshs are somehow better than PC's, last October I splurged over $5,000 on a Macintosh G5 Powermac with two 1.8 MHZ Processors, 2 MB of RAM, an ATI Radeon 
Mac Special Edition Graphics Card and one of those then new aluminum 23" Cinema Displays.

After managing to haul the boxes filled with my new equipment up the stairs (they must be made out of heavy aluminum), I set up the system and booted it up. It was the first time I had owned a Mac since 1993 when my employees at Mindware bought me a Pentium 2 for my birthday. I was excited since had heard so much about the superior graphics of the Mac.

Well after getting rid of their one button mouse and putting on a two bottom Microsoft IntelliMouse, I had a good look at the new interface. I noticed something odd. The display had an odd pink cast to it. I talked to my friend Clay by phone and he told me that this is how Macs are supposed to look. I thought, I guess I'll get used to this. If you want to get an idea about the problem, take a look at " Color Consistency Problems with the New Aluminum Apple Cinema Display HD 23" To read a weblog that chronicled this problem, read Cinema Displays.

I never did get used to it. A week later, I found an article on Apple Cinema Displays have faulty LCD panels: Bad Batch in Barrel.  When I read this, I immediately called Apple Support. The tech recommended I read the Apple Forum on their Tech Support Site so I did. I read story after story about people who had gotten Apple to swap their pink-eyed monitor for a new one -- only to get another one with similar problems. When I went to computer stores that sold Apples, I always looked at the 23" Cinema Displays and they are always pink.

Here is a post from AppleNova Forum:

Just a quick note for those suggesting color calibration:A good percentage of the 23" apple displays are permanetly pink. This is a well known and documented problem which no amount of calibration will ever remedy.

Granted, there are people that have a slightly pink display that can be fixed by calibration. Yet, this is of no help to those with one of the defective displays.Do a quick google on pink apple display problems and you'll turn up a billion reports. It really is astounding that there hasn't been a recall. I'm not one to scream the sky is falling, but in this case, the product has a widespread, major defect.

I predict a class action lawsuit relatively soon...(authors note: see Forbes story)

The day before yesterday, I spent an hour trying to adjust the monitor "just one more time." I could not get it right so I went to the forums again. All of the posts that I had made about the pink problem had been deleted. But new ones had proliferated. One person said that he had gotten a new monitor and that it was good. White was white again.

So I called what has always been called the Superior Apple Technical Support. After all, I had paid several hounded for an extended warranty, maybe they might swap my defective screen for a good one, like the fellow on the forum. Well I think that I reached all the way to India on the first call. After going through all sorts of tech support steps read off a cue sheet or screen, I told the guy, "Look, I think I should get a new monitor."

No, you have had the monitor too long. We are going to repair it. So he told me to call CompUSA and schedule to have it repaired. When I called CompUSA, they told me that they no longer serviced Apples and to take it to Century 23 near the Meadow Mall (I live in Las Vegas).  So the next day, I packed the monitor in its original packing and took it to the store. They told me "they had heard about this problem before" but that I had better be prepared to have Apple "repair" the monitor several times before they finally replace it.

Now I ask you, why does a rich company like Apple continue to stonewall its customers on something like this. They will not admit that there was a problem. Apparently they bought a large lot of defective panels and they can't afford to take a hit on them. So their customers are paying.

So those of you who are considering switching to Apple -- remember this story. And also you should know that if you are every unhappy with Apple as a vendor, there is no other company to turn to and still continue to use their operating system. And they want to keep it that way.

Not only is my expensive Cinema display a joke, now they decided to switch to Intel processors. So my expensive aluminum tower is now an instant antique!