This is something I noticed as well - I upgraded from a PowerBook G3 to a PowerBook G4 in 2009, and then to a MacBook Pro in 2010. I bought the fastest non-unib

This is something I noticed as well - I upgraded from a PowerBook G3 to a PowerBook G4 in 2009, and then to a MacBook Pro in 2010. I bought the fastest non-unibody machine available, a 2.6GHz A1260. It lasted me very well, five years of daily use before I upgraded. However, I began to notice the backlight issue. I'm a writer in my spare time, so staring at a screen is an occupational hazard. With a CCFL screen, I can stare at it all day at a comfortable level. With an LED screen, full brightness is astonishingly bright, so you have no choice but to use it dimmed. I found I could only go an hour or two at a time in front of my expensive MBP, and for a long time I couldn't figure out what it was. I considered going back to the G4 many times. It was only after I started using an LED-backlit external screen that I spotted the connection. Apparently I'm a little more sensitive to PWM than average, although perhaps not as much as the OP of the Apple thread. At worst, after about 45 minutes, my expensive LED-lit monitor would give me migraines when dimmed, which the laptop didn't. Either LED technology has improved or I'm no longer sensitive to it, because my current Clevo laptop is LED (as is just about every screen on the market now) and I'm okay using it for long periods. I had to learn to tolerate the external screen on maximum brightness in a well-lit room for a long time. It's annoying and certainly not ideal, but I can't blame the manufacturers. CCFLs are power-hungry and toxic, and were always going to lose against LEDs. The technology is easily superior but lacks finesse. It only affects a minority of people, which is probably why it quickly supplanted CCFL - either no study picked it up, or it was such a small number that it could be ignored. I wouldn't want to keep using CCFLs but I wish they'd figured out a better solution before bringing LEDs to market.