Wow that's a good question. Thanks. I'm actually surprised to hear there was a problem, I'd never heard of it before. Had I known I might not have bought it. Well, I looked it up here and here. I was pretty shocked. I kept reading, here for example.
From what I read, the problem affects LG panels (SJA1, on mid-2012 models), and not the Samsung panels. This is the most recent 2013 model available -- dated 4/25/2013. I checked using 'ioreg -lw0 | grep EDID | sed "/[<]*
As I said those pages are hundreds of pages long but the general consensus is that the 2013 hardware revisions fixed the problem. At any rate, according to the facebook page linked above, Apple is fully aware of the problem as they started ensuring anyone with an IR problem got a replacement Samsung (or SJA2) screen. And again, this is a 1 day old model with 3 years of Apple Care. There isn't going to be a problem with it and if there is, they will fix it.
Apparently these SJA2 screens are even better than the Samsung ones they used to replace the SJA1's originally. In fact, the latest trend is that the Samsung screens suck and people want the hardware revision LG's now
I decided to e-mail Apple. Explained this screen issues(non-uniform backlight, IR), and asked if I could have a SJA2 screen instead of samsung screen,since SJA2 seems to have fixed the IR issue and has no non-uniform backlight issue.
Here's another post comparing the Samsung models to the new SJA2's:
My unit was built on the 44th week and I'm hoping the rest of you guys will be fortunate in receiving one. Let's hope I won't be needing to return to this thread again and finally enjoy my machine that I have been longing for since 3 months ago
Anyways yeah those threads are hundreds of pages long but the issues seem to revolve around the first string of rMBP's they put out.
I'm happy to confirm the date on this model is 4/25/2013 and that after using it for a day or two now there are no issues. I can provide photos of the box and so forth if you need.
Thing is, at this point I am really on the fence on whether I should sell it or not. It's an amazing and beautiful machine. I love the gestures, the way it does notifications, and the way it does e-mail. The new Office 2013 upgrade is going to make this my go-to machine. The thing friggen talks to me in Japanese and Chinese (it even has more than four different Chinese dialects/accents). I can talk back to it in various languages too. It's all configurable. It has dozens of English voices too including voices with accents, like a London accent, an Irish accent, an Australian accent, an India accent, a South African accent.. amazing.
Funny story. I walk into the Apple store on Wednesday. I went to a big one. The #1 one in the city over. I ask them for their top of the line model. I wanted everything. So they say they don't have it. But, actually, after 15 minutes of looking around the store they come back and say they just got a top of the line model in only thing is it has the 512GB hard drive not the 768GB one. It's the only one left in the country, do I want it. I say oh wow really, and they get a guy to send it over to the store in about 10 min. Just as I am paying for it someone phones in and tries to buy it. Too late! So I feel lucky to have the most powerful and recent macbook pro in the country
Actually I've been using it for the last couple days as I said above and it's a kick ass machine. I copied over 400gigs of backup video to it yesterday in like an hour, which blew me away. The display is much brighter and clearer than the benq 24inch I use at home. In fact it looks horribly dim to me now, dim and old. Beware. Using a retina will spoil you forever. You can't go back to a normal screen after using a retina.
BTW, check out Parallels. It runs programs about twice as fast as Virtualbox and it runs them side by side with the mac programs. It's second only to dual booting. Oh and yes you can dual boot this with windows or linux (ubuntu) and there is a reasonable amount of support out there for it.
I also just bought a thunderbolt to VGA adapter for use with projectors at work. You might want to wait a couple of days and I'll report any screen issues (or confirm that there aren't any). But by that time I might decide to keep it for myself.