14 DAY TRIAL // There’s no shortage of complaints regarding the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display from 2012. Many users have encountered screen flickering problems, and Apple has yet to officially acknowledge the problem.
Although the issue is quite well known among users, the company never really addressed the matter officially.
Users were left uploading videos to YouTube, as evidence of the screen flickering bug. Others took to the Apple Support Communities forums to complain.
Users who decided to fix the problem under warranty were given two options: - changing the motherboard (something that eventually proved to be a non-solution); - changing the display and the Wi-Fi antenna (which also didn’t prove widely successful).
Some of the affected users discovered that unlinking the computer from Wi-Fi seemed to dissipate the flickering problems. We decided to test out these claims and, sure enough, we made our own discovery.
Apparently, the easiest way to fix the flickering on a 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro is to simply switch your Wi-Fi connection to a non-crowded channel – ideally, one that only you are using. Try connecting to a new channel using iStumbler (free download), see how it goes.
In our test the Channel 1 fixed the problem, and Channel 6 had the biggest problems.
Another way to address the matter is to get yourself a new Wi-Fi router that can handle the 5GHz band. Granted, this solution is a tad more costly, but in our tests we were able to confirm that using a 5GHz connection resolves the issue (mainly because you'll never find too many people using this band today).
There are no actual steps to follow other than what I outlined above. In any case, changing your Wifi channel can be easily done in your router settings (and is therefore free), while buying a 5Ghz router is clearly less expensive than replacing your Mac’s motherboard or Retina display.
See how it works for you and let us know.