My advice is to use what the government has set out for people to use: the courts. Sue them in small claims court.
Apple has sold something that is not suitable for its intended purpose, and has breached warranties required by law such as warranty of merchantability.
Even a place like Texas has the Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Under this act a consumer can sue for breach of these warranties and receive damages, AND get court costs and attorneys fees!
Take them to small claims, you will probably win, if they show up at all.
What's the "intended purpose" for a general-purpose laptop?
Editing text, watching video, playing music, etc.., plus the long tail of more unusual things that may be possible depending on what software you install.
Are there any relatively common tasks that will actually be prevented by this level of ghosting? I don't mean "it's a bit annoying", I mean "this task is no longer feasible".
I've never used a computer with any ghosting that bothered me personally, so I may be missing something.
I'm not a graphic designer though; but neither is the author of the post AFAICT (PhD business student).
So my feel is that this is more in the category of a scratch on the bottom of a new laptop (doesn't actually affect the use, but annoys you each time you notice it and remember you paid full price) than, say, a space bar that only works 80% of the time (which would actively mar your ability to use the device).
So sure, Apple may not be playing this right to give their customers the appropriate warm fuzzy feelings, but I highly doubt they're doing anything illegal.
>Are there any relatively common tasks that will actually be prevented by this level of ghosting? I don't mean "it's a bit annoying", I mean "this task is no longer feasible".
Apple bills their computers as "the computers you do stuff with". They have a long history in the professional media/content creation business, and their marketing campaigns and advertizements for the last several years were based on bringing those capabilities to the mainstream.
If nothing else, iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand come with every Mac.
With those issues, two of the potential uses for the computer–which comes bundled with Apple software to do them–become infeasible for anyone who cares if they exist at all.
I know all that; but I'm looking for at least one specific use case that would become unfeasible.
Mild ghosting -- e.g., if you leave a static image up for 3 minutes with no change, then switch to a gray background you can see the outlines of the old image -- is pretty obviously not going to affect GarageBand (!).
I doubt it'd be detectable in any video work, but I don't do much of that.
I do occasional image editing, and doubt I notice it there (I don't normally have any single view of an image up unmoving for more than 30 seconds or so, max... I'm constantly changing the zoom or shifting the view).
Apple has sold something that is not suitable for its intended purpose, and has breached warranties required by law such as warranty of merchantability.
Even a place like Texas has the Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Under this act a consumer can sue for breach of these warranties and receive damages, AND get court costs and attorneys fees!
Take them to small claims, you will probably win, if they show up at all.