So long, Retina

Sucks, but I think it's a good idea to wait a generation for stuff like this; even if it's apple. I got a big IPS LCD from Sony back when they were a new thing. I thought $1500 was well worth it for 1920x1200 in 24". I still use it but it has a similar burn in issue.

Display tech is a shady game, figuring out the actual panel mfg is hard, and years of custom modelines have taught me to avoid being an early adopter on displays. Retina is "teh futar" though, and I welcome it once it's been refined; we've needed higher dpi in large displays and software that can handle dynamic dpi well for a long time.

The three-year-old model (which I also have) has a native 1440x900 display, so abalone is right about that -- though you're right that RAM was upgradeable on the 2009 model.

But the bigger question is, why the crap is this polluting Hacker News? This horse isn't getting any deader. Yes, OP's complaints are legitimate, but so old at this point that the only reason to post this is Apple-bashing. It's tiresome, and it's decidedly not news. Let's talk about something interesting.

> The burn-in is the one issue where Apple dropped the ball, but it's obviously not big enough to get the attention of major media

It sounds awfully like the yellow tinge issue for the iMac screens.

I ordered a 21" on the online Apple Store, and it had the tinge. Called Apple, they sent me another and picked up the previous one. It was worse. The third one was better but still affected. The fourth one was on par with the first. All of that cost me zero money, and every Apple rep was friendly. At that point I had gathered enough info from various forums to know that about 50% of the 21" screens were affected, whereas the odds were much, much lower (maybe 15%) for the 27", and there was some dry-up effect that would make it disappear (whereas the 21" only got worse). Yet it was out of my budget (the 21" was a bargain at the time, one of the rare times where it was not 1$:1€). I called for what I thought was a final order cancellation (I was ready to buy a demo unit that I knew was not affected because I saw it in an Apple Store), and even before I mentioned anything except that the last unit was still affected, the rep called his manager to cancel the order and offer me a rebate which spanned the price difference between the 21" and the 27". That one had the tinge vanish in a few hours of use and is working fantastic to this day.