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MacBook Air owners get laid

And they don't like it

Mac-centric web forums are abuzz with complaints about MacBook Air display problems. It would seem they're getting laid.

In paper-making parlance, "laid" refers to paper with thin, tightly spaced horizontal lines. Some unlucky Apple MacBook Air owners claim that noticeable horizontal - or nearly horizontal - grey lines are turning up on the displays of their precious-but-pricey lightweight laptops.

According to posts on the Apple Discussions forum, MacRumors, and eWeek's Apple Watch - and well-illustrated in a click-to-enlarge screenshot on TidBits - the offending lines may be subtle but they're inarguably annoying.

The lines, according to posters, are either there or they're not, and they appear as soon as you first fire up your new MacBook Air. They don't develop over time. On the bright side, a number of posters have reported that they've received no-argument replacements from their local Apple stores. On the less-bright side, our email and phone inquiries to Apple about the problem have gone unanswered, as have those of multiple posters.

And so the laid-paper display now joins the missing four-finger swipe reported on non-US units and occasional trackpad malfunctions among reported MacBook Air maladies. Perhaps the old adage of "Never buy version 1.0 of anything" may be holding true yet again. ®

Latest Comments

What's four finger swipe?

No idea of what this is.

However, the weird lines do sound similar to the new PSP model's woes with its LCD screen. Maybe the problems are related?

@BLoad - I think you're talking about the PSP-3000. ;)

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Oh, get over it!

Stop bitching. It's inherently secure, it's tiny and stylish, just don't switch it on and you'll be fine.

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Goddamnit

I was just about to buy a MacBook when until I read the rest of the article ...

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@Thomas

A civil discourse I can take part in - these have far too commonly descended into flame wars!

I was taking AC's line as including the end part:

"Mactards keep buying this... overpriced crap and when problem occur pretend it does not exist and as, Wade says, silence anyone who does complain."

Which I took to be regarding the company "silencing anyone", not the users, especially looking at Wade's post that he references which is exclusively about the company:

"Apple's solution to problems - Pretend it never exists, silence anyone who says it does exists..."

I don't deny that it is the Mac users that are noticing this problem and it is a good sign that at least some users are not blindly buying into the marketing and hype surrounding the products. However, with 4/5 of the top Mac sites complaining about these problems, you would think that the great and good Apple Inc. would maybe sit up and take notice, and at least acknowledge a problem? I would be pretty miffed if I'd spanked upwards of 2 grand on a machine that is being sold as a premium product and something like this doesn't even get recognised as a problem by the company, especially as it like to market itself as the Rolex of personal computing!

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@Big Bear

With all due respect, the post to which I responded reads:

"Mactards keep buying this...

... overpriced crap and when problem occur pretend it does not exist"

That clearly means to suggest that Mac customers prefer to bury their head in the sand. I therefore think it was legitimate to show that 4 out of the top 5 sites as returned by Google for Mac news were reporting the issue. Apple's highly questionable and sometimes insulting behaviour towards some customers is not relevant and - at least by me - not even disputed.

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