in late January we told you about an
issue affecting 2016 and later MacBook
Pros dubbed flex gate overtime the back
lights on these machines would start
displaying a stage light effect where
bright spots would show up along the
bottom of the display and would
eventually fail after doing some digging
we discovered what was causing the issue
the cables that connect the display to
the body of the laptop are wearing out
over time and that wear is just normal
use you opening and closing your laptop
and in one or two years they're starting
to wear out we found that there were two
things that are contributing to this
problem the first one is Apple opted to
use thin flex display cables for this
MacBook Pro as opposed to the beefier
wire cables that they used in previous
ones the other problem is they wrapped
those display cables partially around
the display controller board so that
when the laptop opens those display
cables are getting pulled to top around
a corner of that board and that's what's
causing them to wear over time the
biggest issue here is that even though
it's just a problem with the cable the
only way to fix the problem is by
replacing the entire display a repair
that costs around $700 now there appears
to be an update to the story
even though Apple has never acknowledged
the issue and has even gone so far as to
remove the posts about it in their own
technical support pages it seems they
may have addressed the problem a
MacRumors user Olivia 88 noticed their
20 18 13-inch MacBook Pro seemed to have
a longer cable than previous models and
sure enough when compared the 2018 model
has a cable a full two millimeters
longer than the 2016 model while two
millimeters doesn't sound like much it
is enough for the cable to wrap around
the board without coming into contact
with it while the machine is open past
90 degrees while this might be good news
for people who purchased a 2018 MacBook
Pro it's as little to help people with
older models that are affected by the
same issue and since Apple still isn't
acknowledging it officially your only
options are to sign the online petition
or go fill out Apple's online feedback
form we'll continue to keep you updated
as we learn more