Purchased a 2015 Macbook Pro with the Retina display (15 inch) today, so far so good, no flicker as proven in store. Unfortunately the backlit keyboard uses PWM at most brightness levels it seems. Just don't use that 
Filmed unboxing on T5i and will edit eventually.
JTL
The reason I state "no flicker" instead of "no PWM" is that it technically does use PWM at 100Khz (most problematic PWM systems are under 2Khz in comparison) according to my insider source at Apple. So far so good, got the config with both GPU's, don't notice any eyestrain with different GPU etc, or maybe it affects people differently.
Video of the no flicker, taken about half an hour ago using my Note3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh23icqVxYQ
I'm curious if you notice any fatigue or anything with over time with use. I'm very suspicious of PWM with LED at all - since the previous setup should of been "unnoticeable"
Alright. I was testing using my no PWM at full brightness ASUS monitor and my desktop running Kali Linux in a VM using the VMWare "pop out" feature some things and got eyestrain. Recall it being font anti-aliasing/smoothing, once I dealt with that all was well.
I've been having eyestrain for the past few days from other causes I can attribute to. I will be testing this new laptop extensively however.
What OS are you running on the problem laptop and what GPU does it have?
I'm curious about temporal dithering. In the Apple forums' eyestrain thread I believe it became known that Mac OS X uses forced temporal dithering. Is that not an issue on Macbooks?
No idea. I believe I'm not affected and don't know how it manifests on camera, etc.
Font smoothing/anti aliasing can make fonts hard to read - which can trigger similar symptoms, know from running KaliLinux/Debian in VM and having eyestrain issues.
I get eyestrain with every Linux I use when the X-Server is active.
Maybe the font rendering uses temporal dithering.
Not sure how to get more information about that.
Even with Nvidia proprietary drivers and dithering disabled (in said driver), I get Linux eye strain.
My only explanation so far is either forced temporal dithering from other sources than the driver that are still unknown (X.Org, font rendering, ...?) or issues we didn't think about yet like vertical sync or other video mode aspects.
I tried countless distributions, and they all have the X-Server in common. 2 weeks ago I tried Arch Linux, it starts pretty much from the scratch, showing just a command line. But that command line is no ordinary command line video mode. It's full HD 1920x1080 and, for me, triggers eye strain. Allthough it's just a few pixels of seemingly static command line text. My Linux knowledge is not too deep so I couldn't track this further down. BTW: same on the Raspberry Pi command line (Full HD), which uses a totally different graphics unit. So it might be a software problem.
Perhaps the upcoming Wayland might solve the issues.
yeah, heard something about font rendering fixing it. Haven't used Linux as a desktop OS since 2012 when this issues for me were in their infancy and never noticed anything like that. Seems like the "smart console" at 1080p could cause some of the problem.
Not sure anymore as that was an older temp system. Sorry.
JTL Hmm.. I don't have access to windows anymore and I actually gave the laptop away..
I was frightfully close to failing on over 3+ years of school, in full constant headache mode and could barely focus... so my train of thought wasn't 100% clear.
Funny enough, once I rid myself of all of devices (and started using this monitor) I was able to start remembering stuff I read and passed everything really easily - kinda a interesting story..
Anyways I'm using Linux Mint Cinnamon that that permits you to turn it off (conveniently)
It was originally on "slight". I'll see if I notice any difference.
Understood - sorry to hear about the issues you were having.
Quick status update 
: still been sick with eye pressure pain but have noticed no added eyestrain using the MBP. Been using it a lot with both Windows 8.1 and Mac OS X Yosemite and on both AMD and Intel GPU (Windows seems to be forced into using the AMD GPU) and it all feels the same.
Need to find a good resolution and DPI for Windows however, as Windows does it differently from OS X.
UPDATE: September 10th - 00:50 PDT: Still feel fine, turning down screen brightness as the night goes it to not have sleep issues, going to go to bed in a minute.
What is hinting? I noticed this option as well in Mint. You can also choose between grayscale and sub-pixel font anti-aliasing. To make matters even more confusing there is also the Infinality package to change font rendering http://www.webupd8.org/2013/06/better-font-rendering-in-linux-with.html
I've also been wondering.. What if a manufacturer is sourcing different panels for the same laptop model? Would that change PWM status?
degen It depends, some laptop panels have the PWM generated in the panel itself, given a brightness value, some have it modulated by the motherboard, etc.
In the near future I may be buying a cheap netbook with PWM to test my idea of an external device that "upscales" the PWM frequency from the low frequency to a higher one that is "undetectable". Based on my review of laptop panel datasheets, this idea seems plausible.
