The Apple M1 iMac, originally released in May 2021, may have a design flaw that is only now becoming apparent. A flood of users have noted that their Apple Silicon desktop All-in-Ones are suffering from a series of display failures causing dark horizontal lines to persist on their screens. A thread on the Apple Community site discussing this specific issue in detail began in October 2023 and has since garnered 17 pages of responses from disgruntled users. However, Apple has yet to recognize it as a manufacturing defect or flaw, with no official announcements from the company regarding a fix for this issue.
Many affected users assert that Apple’s service centers describe this screen issue as an irreparable malfunction, and that the only viable solution is to replace it. However, since the problem only typically appears after two years, most devices are already out of warranty, meaning those affected have to pay around $600 to $700 for a screen replacement. At that price, you could buy a brand-new base-model M2 Mac Mini, for example
According to an investigation by one of the affected users, the Apple iMac screen uses a flex cable that must sustain a voltage of around 50 volts when the screen is set to high or maximum brightness. This causes the connector to burn out over time, it was theorized, resulting in short circuits that cause the black lines to appear on the screen. Thus, you could spend the money on a screen replacement, only for the issue to return in a year or two.
The user theorized that there are three possible reasons why this is happening: a design flaw, a manufacturing defect, or a supplier delivering parts that didn’t meet Apple’s standards.
We were interested to see another user reporting that their M3 iMac, which they bought in May 2024, was suffering from a similar problem. If Apple did not change the flex cable design from the previous generation iMac, then it is conceivable the defect could occur again in newer generation iMacs. However, we must remember that even tens or a few hundred users complaining about this issue account for a very small percentage of iMacs sold.
Unless you have an active AppleCare+ plan, repairing this issue would be prohibitively expensive, unless Apple decides to do a recall. At the moment, if you don’t want to spend money on the screen repair and are hoping that Apple will someday repair it for free, your only choice is to attach an external monitor and use the system that way.
One user did get a free repair authorized by a senior Apple representative, but this seems to be an exception rather than the norm. And if Apple still uses the same flex cable design that is purportedly causing the issue, with the same thirst for power, then the same screen issues may proliferate across generations.
