There's an enormous thread of PowerBook G4 15" owners on Apple's discussion boards, going into detail on the "white spots" and "uneven illumination" problem with this model. I bought mine last fall, and had to return it twice (first one was DOA, the second had the white-spots so bad that strangers on airplanes would come up to me and say, "Jesus Christ, what the hell is wrong with your screen?"). Now I'm on my third unit, and it's got the same problem: screen at about 50 percent brightness, big white splotch in the middle of the it.
It's still under warranty, but that doesn't do me any good: There's no way I can part with my machine for 3-7 days while Apple fixes it. Normally, I own two PowerBooks, the current one and a slightly older one (so that I have a working unit during repairs), but when I moved to Europe, I divested myself of all but a single CPU, so now I'm pretty scr0d.
The scoop appears to be that Apple is replacing these lemons with the new 1.5GHz models (which may or may not have the same problem), but I doubt that they'll ship me the replacement, let me transfer my data and then send back the old 'un. I'm just going to have to work off the world's shittiest display until I can scrape up the dough to buy another machine. Bummer.
Recently it has worsened to the point where I took it in today to the Apple store in Old Orchard. The attending Genius immediately noticed the uneven illumination of my display and suggested that it be sent in to the depot for repair. He also mentioned that this was the first time he had ever seen or heard of this problem before, and that there are no reports in the knowledge base that described this issue. When I mentioned to him that he might take a look at this thread in the Apple Support discussions, he wanted no part of it. He said that he rarely reads these forums, and dismissed it as "Oh well, people posting to discussion groups are mostly complainers" (those were not his exact words, but it was implied). Then I told him that people are posting actual photos of this problem and that all of the symptoms look identical for each person, which could indicate a manufacturing defect. His response was that "for those people, I suppose perception is reality".
