Kuo: Apple's First MacBook With an OLED Display to Launch as Early as Next Year

OLED provides far better contrast than LCD—but unless Apple improves its OLED dimming technology, this will not be a beneficial change for those very sensitive to OLED flicker.

OLEDs can be dimmed with analog dimming (aka constant current reduction), in which the OLED's simply emit less light. But analog dimming's downsides include color shifts as the screen is dimmed, larger circuitry, and higher power consumption. Thus OLED screens are instead usually dimmed digitally by keeping the OLED's brightness constant (when they're on), and rapidly switching them on and off. This is called pulse width modulation (PWM). The idea is that if you want, say, 50% brightness, you rapidly switch the OLEDs on and off so that they illuminate the screen only 50% of the time.

The problem with PWM is that the frequency at which OLEDs can do this is not that high (often just a few hundred Hz, though it can go higher), and some can perceive this flickering and get headaches from it. The flicker becomes especially noticeable when the display is significantly dimmed. E.g., at 10% brightness, the display would have a duty cycle of 10% on and 90% off. That's why people using OLED devices at night are more likely to get eyestrain.

It would be nice if Apple gave consideration to this in making its MacBook Pro OLED screens, and either implemented an improved analog dimmer, or chose an OLED technology with an extremely high PWM frequency. For instance, according to https://www.notebookcheck.net/PWM-Ranking-Notebooks-Smartphones-and-Tablets-with-PWM.163979.0.html?&sort=b_350_944&max_results=50000&or=0&showBars=1&bench_350_944=1&model=1&screen_resolution=1&screen_panel_type=1 , OLED variants are available with PWM frequencies > 800 Hz (833 Hz for the AMOLED Lenovo Legion Phone Duel). According to https://www.xda-developers.com/apple-iphone-14-pro-max-display-review/ , Apple's implementation of PWM in Apple's iPhone 14 is complicated, with two different PWM frequencies (240 Hz and 480 Hz)*. [Unfortunately, the article doesn't fully explain how that works.] 480 Hz is towards the upper end of the range, but higher would be better.

The LED's used to backlight LCD screens also use PWM dimming. The difference is that their PWM frequency is much higher, which makes flicker far less noticeable (and typically imperceptible, even for sensitive viewers). For instance, according to the above link, the PWM frequency for the 14" & 16" M1 MacBook Pro LCD screens is 14,880 Hz.

See also:

https://www.dxomark.com/flicker-the-display-affliction/

https://osxdaily.com/2021/05/14/workaround-pwm-oled-iphone-ipad/

*Correction: I had previously quoted a 60 Hz PWM frequency for the iPhone 14 from the notebookcheck table but, based on the more detailed analysis from xda-developers, that appears to be incorrect.

Kuo seems to pop up in countless MacRumors stories. Yet, a Google search turns up very little substantial information about him. And, oddly, on his Twitter bio, he describes himself as a "social media influencer."

Has anyone done an analysis of the analyst's track record? Is he right about most of the things he predicts?

I'm genuinely curious.

Last year it was confirmed that Kuo’s Twitter account is legit. He is the real deal.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/kuo-only-iphone-14-pro-models-to-get-a16-chip-standard-models-to-retain-a15.2337802/post-30929547

Thanks for the replies. I didn't mean to suggest he wasn't legit. I'm mostly just curious how accurate he is with his predictions.

Seems accurate to me but his timings can be off. Tons of research about him out there. The article below gives you a good break down.

https://appletrack.com/ming-chi-kuo/

https://www.macrumors.com/guide/ming-chi-kuo/

https://appleinsider.com/inside/ming-chi-kuo

Seems accurate to me but his timings can be off. Tons of research about him out there. The article below gives you a good break down.

https://appletrack.com/ming-chi-kuo/

https://www.macrumors.com/guide/ming-chi-kuo/

https://appleinsider.com/inside/ming-chi-kuo

Kuo is so popular that people become analysts of an analyst.

Technically, the MacBook Pros with Touch Bars were the first Macs with OLED displays...

It would be weird to have OLED displays in the iPad Pro but not the MacBook Pro.

I'm also having trouble at this point keeping track of all these display predictions. Can we get a chart showing when the iMac, MacBook Air/Pro, iPad Air/Pro, and Watch are switching to microLED/OLED/ProMotion?