Macbook Pro (15", 2018-ish) lost green channel

[Matt Diamond]

My mom has been complaining for a while about the Windows laptops my dad gets her -- he likes bargains, he likes to fiddle, so they end upend up with Windows laptops that fail or just slow way the hell down, and then he has to fiddle with it. (And he's slowing down too.)

She just wanted her old iMac back but it's long gone, when they downsized they thought a laptop would fit better.

So a month ago I lent her my old work MacBook Pro (Intel, Retina, 2018-ish) expecting she could happily use it for years to come. She loved it, but two days ago the entire screen lost its green channel. :-(

At least that's it sounds like from the info I've heard so far. I'm still gathering symptoms and the exact model number. But it sounds like hardware, and expensive to fix. The part alone (used) is probably $200. I've fixed a few iPhones in my day so maybe I can save money and  try to fix it myself... Oops, now I sound like my dad. :-)

Strongly tempted also to lend her my Intel Mac Mini, and buy myself a Mac Studio M2. (If only Apple hadn't just showed off the M3 chip with h/w raytracing!) 

I feel like a Macbook Air (with Applecare) might be the best fit for her, but its a tough sell, my parents are pinching pennies at the moment.


Comments and commiserations welcome.

[Matt Diamond]

Well, not 10 minutes after I wrote the above I read my dad's latest email, which is that it was apparently the display settings.

Turns out various settings were wrong.  In particular the contrast was set to maximum. It appears that in trying to fix this I may have hidden all the icons and caused text to be white on black, so there is a lot of cleanup for me to do but we are on trail.

I did say he likes to fiddle! Apparently Mum complained about the screen brightness going up and down when the ambient lighting changed, and somehow while turning that off Dad changed a lot of other settings. Or equally likely, my mom pushed contrast and brightness settings on the touchbar, possibly while trying to change the sound volume.

Maybe we'd better tape over the touchbar :-)

Anyway, not a hardware problem. Whew!