New MacBook Display is Horrible

I just got my new Aluminum MacBook last night, and it's going right back for refund this morning. The LCD is far inferior to my 1st generation MacBook display, and it's actually one of the worst displays I've seen on a modern notebook computer. I've been an Apple owner since I bought an SE/30, but Apple has screwed up badly here, and I find the new MacBook nearly unusable. (Please note, my current MacBook has a glossy screen; that level of glossiness is not the issue here.)
The issues:
1. The whole screen has an icky blue cast, and nothing in the display calibration settings will fix this. My old MacBook has a much more pure and natural looking white. I think Apple needs to work more on the LED back-lighting (or maybe they cheaped out on the MacBook LEDs).
2. The blacks on the new display are washed out. This is obvious on the start-up animation (with the multi-lingual "welcome" animations against the Leopard nebulae in space). It's not just an issue with black images, however, this propagates to everything looking less crisp. And it's not an issue of adjusting brightness or screen angle. In fact, if you try to adjust the screen angle to get some reasonably good blacks, you get parts of the screen where you have a metallic or posterized effect. I saw this in the store displays as well, but I didn't realize that it would occur under normal viewing angles vs. extreme situations.
3. Colors are not vibrant (nothing compared to my 1st generation MacBook). By not vibrant, I mean that different hues of blue, for example, are not distinct from one another. When I open Word, the splash screen has four different blue colors in the "feather" shape at the top right. On the old MacBook the blues are distinctly different and colorful, on the new MacBook they are much closer in hue and more dull. I think this is a result primarily of issues one and two above, but it may also have to do with other aspects of the inferior LCD on the Aluminum MacBook.
4. The new MacBook screen should be called "mirrored" not "glossy". My 1st generation MacBook has a glossy screen. It's good. I rarely have an issue with visible reflections from it. The new MacBook is a constant battle. One major problem is that the screen needs to be pushed farther back to get reasonable contrast, but this angle directly reflects ceiling lights at the user. It's also so significantly more reflective than the previous glossy screen that it picks up windows and floor lamps and everything else a lot more easily. It's a mess.
I hope this helps other folks avoid my mistake in seeking to upgrade from an existing MacBook. The new one is not any faster in day to day use (3D rendering excepted), and it has crippling issues with the display.

Hey Araboston,
Unfortunately, I personally don't see what you're talking about on my machine, however I want to help in any way I can. First off, it's possible you're seeing two different problems emerge. Using the mini-display port is a different technology than the mini-dvi port of yesteryear. I know from experience, when I hook up components to my hd tv using different connections (hdmi vs. component cable) I notice a difference. With the new technology you may have to re-calibrate your secondary monitor.
As for the laptop screen, I'd be interested to know what lighting conditions you're using your laptop mostly in. Mine worked great in all conditions, right out of the box. But, I'd like to also note that when I checked, the battery count showed a count of 7. In real world terms, that means that the battery was discharged and recharged 7 times. I'm wondering if they do some sort of in-house calibration, that was possibly missed on your machine. The best test would be to take your macbook into the apple store, set it next to a display macbook and see if yours looks any different.
Best of luck.

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Thank you Malcom. I read these articles. They describe how you enter the clamshell (or closed display) mode. But I still feel that they don´t not really cover my question: Can extensive use of the Macbook in clamshell mode damage the internal display (for example while watching movies on the connected 24" LED Cinema Display)?
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Message was edited by: titusm

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Embarassingly, I didn't look close enough to discern. The Genius claimed to have "calibrated" the MacBook for me and essentially sent me on my way. It wasn't until I got back to the office and began comparing the same screen and image across various computers when I noticed that all he did was make the colors "cooler" (bluer) to offset the pink.
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ARealMac(PPC)User wrote:
...I found a few discussion threads on here somewhere where some users indicated that their original MacBook Airs, or other SSD-equipped MacBooks, were still performing quite well and responsively after a few years of use. Can anyone substantiate this for me? How long have you been using your SSD(s) in your Mac(s), and do you think the newer models will be able to last several years? I would greatly appreciate any insight.
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1TB HD upgrade $69
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I am going to buy myself a MacBook Pro in the near future and was wondering if the new Retina Display model would be worth the extra cash. I will mostly be doing photo/video/music editing.

I am going to buy myself a MacBook Pro in the near future and was wondering if the new Retina Display model would be worth the extra cash. I will mostly be doing photo/video/music editing.

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New MacBook Display is Horrible

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