Apple preps patch for MacBook Air screen snafus
My friend flicker
Apple is said to be working on a fix for at least two of the graphical glitches affecting some of the new MacBook Airs.
Reports of dodgy displays appeared this past weekend on Cult of Mac. Three readers said they had seen distorted images, "weird colors in vertical lines" and blank screens on their Airs, and one posted a video of the problem in YouTube:
Commenters on other sites have claimed they too have experienced such problems.
Today, website BGR said it was sent snaps of Apple's internal support site which show that the Mac maker is aware of the issues - specifically "horizontal flickering on the internal display after waking the computer from sleep or hot plugging a display" and "fading dark to light colours after waking from sleep" - and will be issuing as software update to address it shortly.
At this stage, it's not clear how widespread the issue is. Internally, Apple apparently believes it to be an "isolated" problem. Whether it is indeed an issue that can be fixed in software, or will require a more serious remedy, such as a motherboard swap - the solution for video issues with the first MacBook Pros some years back - remains to be seen.
Separately, a number of sites have reported Mac OS X kernel panics that take place when an Air is awoken from sleep - presumably the deeper sleep this machine drops into in order to eke out the standby battery life to the claimed 30 days. ®
COMMENTS
"My friend Flicker"
Ha, memories. I actually named a pony Flicka when I were a lad. Never had to swap the motherboard. It loves apple, too.
Nitwits
"this issue has been isolated" is geekspeak for having figured out how to replicate the reported behaviour. It may also imply they have identified the defective code.
