Test Your MBP

Does your MacBook Pro have a defective display?

Here’s what you’re looking for: a condition in which the bottom 1/3 or 1/4 of the display has a yellowish hue. This can’t be fixed using color calibration tools because no matter how you calibrate the display, the colors at the bottom will still be different from those at the top. This is not the same thing as having an overall yellow cast to the screen.

Most people who have defective displays do not know their display is defective.

Here’s how to tell if yours does:

  1. Download this 1440×900 test image to your MacBook Pro (control-click, Save Linked File As…)
  2. Set up this image as your desktop background image. (System Preferences : Desktop & Screen Saver : Choose Folder… )
  3. If necessary, hide the dock (System Preferences : Dock : Automatically Hide & Show Dock)
  4. Now close/hide all your application windows, and look at your screen straight-on. (Don’t look at it at an angle as that introduces all sorts of ordinary color and brightness variables.

Is the white bar at the top of the background the same color as the white bar at the bottom? Or does it have a distinctly yellow cast to it?