this is a common with apple, each year they cut back on the quality on their products.
the problem with fading color has to do with the back light and the shape of the screen,
if you look at a quality LCD and a cheap one, you will see that the surface of the screen has a different shape, this shape is design ti fight against the poor vertical viewing angle of LCD's
the shape is usually like a concave mirror, this is because as you change your viewing angle, the brightness and color values also change so they design then in a way that provides the most even color possible
for the recommended viewing angle
the back light is also positioned in a way that allows for an even amount of brightness, cheaper LCD's don't have the precision in their design ass you will find in higher quality ones, the same mostly goes with apple
when you buy something prebuilt instead of building it your self, the quality is greatly reduced as the company is trying to make the max amount of profits by keeping the prices as high as possible, while reducing production cost.
most items built today are more fragile than items built 10 years ago.
and since you cant buy all the parts and build your own mac, most of the parts are coming from one place so theres no real competition for quality.
if they allowed you to install your own LCD, the quality would be better because there would be hundreds of companies all fighting to get you to pick their monitor, so if one company decided to reduce the quality, no one would buy their product as people will just buy the better quality item from their competitors
with apple, your locked into a few select companies in which they have a monopoly over the hardware and if they decide to make their crap, people are still going to buy it because thats the only company.
look at this video from the screensavers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWWB6FVNKcA
on this ancient mac, after hitting it multiple times with a steel baseball bat, he was unable to destroy the case, only break some of the plastic and put a few dents, until he opened it then the real damage started to the case try doing this with the new macs (also try doing this to the new DELL pc's just for fun)
all companies reduce their quality over time, but with apple it is more rapid since they have a monopoly