Earlier this year we reported that several Retina MacBook Pro owners were afflicted by a screen coating problem in which the anti-reflective coating on their laptop’s displays started to peel, leaving behind a rather ugly mark/stain in the process (see above). This has led to the incident being called “staingate” and it seems that laptop owners have had enough and are now calling Apple to take more aggressive action.
This has resulted in a website called Staingate to be launched. There has even been a petition in which owners of the laptop are asking Apple to do something about it. A Facebook community has also been started and it looks like Apple could potentially see themselves hit with a class-action lawsuit as lawfirm Whitfield Bryson & Mason have offered their expertise in seeing what kind of legal options owners could explore.
Apple has yet to formally acknowledged the problem, but apparently they have told customers affected by the problem that it is considered a cosmetic damage and it will not be covered by the warranty. One user also told the BBC that after taking his laptop back to Apple to change the coating twice, he was told that he would no longer be entertained.
Now if all of this sounds familiar, it is because several years ago Apple’s MacBook Pros ran into GPU problems. Apple back then ignored requests to formally address the problem until a class-action lawsuit was filed, after which Apple then initiated a repair program for it. Hopefully staingate won’t lead to that, but for now it certainly looks to be headed for that direction.
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