[lenox]

Just received my 20" 2.66 ghz iMac last night. I haven't gotten a chance to do too much, but I noticed two graphical glitches, and wanted to know if anyone has experienced similar.

The first is pretty innocuous and deals with dialog boxes. It looks like the text areas' background color is slightly darker than that of the rest of the dialog - for instance, a dialog with 2 'blocks' of text in it actually shows the 'square blocks' behind the text. I took a screenshot of this and will post tonight. Calibrating my monitor seemed to help a lot, but it's still noticeable. You'd think the color should be exactly the same, right?

The second one is a bit more disconcerting, and deals with the 'default' selection in dialog boxes. This one is hard to get a screenshot of, but instead of 'pulsing' as the default button usually does, it's flickering rapidly and in random areas. This seems to coincide with heavy disk/bus activity (I was installing WoW, running Software Update, and doing a firewire transfer from my old mac in target disk mode).

Typically on a new mac purchase, I always play around for a bit on it, but then do a wipe and reformat. I'm thinking I made a mistake not doing that this time...or is that just superstition?

[ibook_steve]

Is it any of these (Voiceover perhaps?):

http://forums.macnn.com/90/mac-os-x/...utions-useful/

Steve

[lenox]

No..
as for the first problem, it's more like the colors don't EXACTLY match properly - no black boxes or anything. As for the second, it's a definite bona fide glitch...very flickery, random flickers of white over the button. Hopefully it won't happen again but I will keep a close eye on the machine for a week or so. Thanks for the response!

[Atheist]

I've seen the problem with the slightly discolored boxes around text on an external monitor. If I recall correctly, it was most obvious when using iTunes. (Carbon vs. Cocoa thing maybe?)

[lenox]

Originally Posted by Atheist 

I've seen the problem with the slightly discolored boxes around text on an external monitor. If I recall correctly, it was most obvious when using iTunes. (Carbon vs. Cocoa thing maybe?)

Good call - once I calibrated my iMac's monitor ... it became nearly-unnoticeable...but you'd think it can't be that hard for the UI designers to specify a uniform color, you know? Maybe their monitors are perfectly calibrated and they don't see it at all

[mduell]

Are you looking at the display straight on? The sh!tty TN panels in the 20" iMacs look horrible if you're slightly off-normal.

[lenox]

Originally Posted by mduell 

Are you looking at the display straight on? The sh!tty TN panels in the 20" iMacs look horrible if you're slightly off-normal.

I don't think that the "sh!tty TN panels" have anything to do with these problems. These are pixels being delivered by the graphics card, in turn by the software/firmware/whatever A panel isn't responsible for the data sent to it, just how well it's displayed and lit.

I do understand what you mean by the poor viewing angle on the 20" iMacs, and that does bug me a bit, but these are separate issues.

[0157988944]

I know what you are talking about in terms of a darker grey behind the text. I think it is Carbon vs. Cocoa related, though not sure how. I see it in iTunes, and Photoshop CS3 most often. It looks like they didn't match the dialog box background color to the area behind text and around buttons. I had posed a thread about this earlier, I'll try to dig it up; it had a screenshot.

Edit: here's the screenshot. Its easier to tell when the window is selected, I'll try to get a pic of that.
http://forums.macnn.com/82/applicati...or-difference/

[zykron]

Meh, that's normal, I have that with CS 1, it's always been there.

[lenox]

"Normal" though it may be, it is still a bug, and thus many of us will never consider it "normal".



Edit: The question is, does EVERYONE see this same error - or just some of us?

Luckily, the other glitch that I have seen hasn't manifested itself in a bit, but I'll try to capture a screenshot or movie of it if I can.

[0157988944]

it looks cheap and crappy and looks to be a rather simple fix.

[BreadRecipe]

I don't have that problem, although mine's a 24" iMac. I assume the problem persisted even after all of the software updates? And also, does yours tear when watching videos? Mine tears terribly in iDVD (but iDVD is a terrible program), runs better with VLC, but only with DVDs. Quicktime optimization on GPU maybe?

[lenox]

Originally Posted by BreadRecipe 

And also, does yours tear when watching videos? Mine tears terribly in iDVD (but iDVD is a terrible program), runs better with VLC, but only with DVDs. Quicktime optimization on GPU maybe?

Hm, no - I don't get that. Does your iMac have the nvidia gpu in it?

[lenox]

The _other_ glitches are back

This time, it was happening with file names for icons. They were rapidly selecting/unselecting and flickering rapidly with white distorted blocks. A very similar glitch to the prior one but this time it actually interfered with my work in the finder. It seems to coincide with heavy disk activity but I am not certain yet.

[Atheist]

Sounds like your video adapter may be wonky

[lenox]

Hmph - last night my graphics card overheated...really disconcerting. I installed smcFanControl and will keep a wary eye on things...