Apple settles the amazing multicolor lawsuit
The heated debate over whether Apple is tricking you into believing you can see millions of colors on your Mac has come to a quiet conclusion.
The Chicago Tribune noted last week (spotted by AppleInsider) that Apple has settled a lawsuit brought by two professional photographers claiming that the company falsely advertised the capabilities of their MacBook Pros as being able to display "millions of colors."
The plaintiffs claimed that Apple could achieve those heights only through "dithering."
How many colors can you see? Thousands? Millions?
(Credit: Apple)There's an option in the Displays screen, under System Preferences in Mac OS X, in which you can set the Colors option to "millions." The thing is, the MacBook Pro uses a 6-bit display, and Apple can get to that "millions" number only by using a technique called dithering, which basically blends pixels together to create a shading effect.
The plaintiffs claimed that this use of dithering affected their ability to edit their photos and constituted false advertising, since a 6-bit display is capable only of rendering 262,144 colors without resorting to dithering, not "millions."
Few others seem to care, however; The Tribune said the plaintiffs' lawyer declined to take the case to the limits "because it was difficult to find other people who were wronged because they had bought Macs solely based on the 'millions of colors' claim." Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
A representative at the San Diego County Superior Court said the case was actually dismissed last year, and so it's not clear why this took so long to come to light. But the outcome is not all that surprising, and I'm left wondering if it took "millions of dollars" for this case to disappear.
Apple has not removed the "millions" option from the display preferences for Mac OS X Leopard.
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Internet search, including Google, Yahoo, online advertising, and portals, as well as the evolution of mobile computing. He has written about traditional PC companies, chip manufacturers, and mobile computers, spending the last three years covering Apple. E-mail Tom. 
Thanks Apple.
In this day and age to sell 6 bit display is so ridiculous it bogles the mind, but to have the audacity to lie about it and say it shows millions, ***?! I love Apple products, but the people running it are worst than Microsoft. The Wired article calling Apple Evil is so right.
People would have their machine crashing for unexplainable reasons due to data corruption but were never given a clue that the hardware needed to be fixed.
Apple laptops show millions of colors now. And most PC laptops
too.
this has been the case with all Apple's upgrades.
I have a feeling that more companies than Apple are at fault in this matter. The thing is, Apple charges so blasted much for their products that you'd think you're buying something really top notch. To then find that Apple cut corners on you is an insult. The thing is, this seems to be a recurring theme with Apple. They design very stylish devices that appear to be really high end, and then you find out just how crippled the devices are in terms of functionality. This can be seen with the MacBook Air (no optical drive, no ethernet, no removable battery, and one USB port?), the iPhone and iPod Touch (no decent customization, no apps, again no removal battery, iPhone locked to one lousy network) Mac OS X itself (can't legally run on PC hardware? you're only hurting yourself) and so on.
The image that Apple designs great products is flawed. Do they develop great-looking products? Absolutely. Do they develop products that work as good as they look? No. Do they develop products that are worth what they charge for them? Absolutely not. I have an iPod Touch that was given to me as a gift. I will say that the device looks great and even works pretty good for the most part, but I would never pay $300 for such a device. Maybe $200, but that's even pushing it. I say that partly because my cash flow wouldn't allow for that, and partly because while it's a very handy device, the real potential and usefulness of it has been locked away by Apple's narrow-minded leaders. Web apps are great in some scenarios, but are a really stupid thing to do with a mobile device that's not always guaranteed to have an internet connection available. And even if you do have a connection, why should you have to pay for data service on a cell phone just to play a game of solitaire or calculate a tip at a restaurant? It should be a no-brainer to let users customize the device the way they want and install useful applications to unlock the real power of the device.
It never ceases to amaze me how Apple continues to survive on their image alone while constantly depriving themselves of their potential ability to penetrate various markets. The solution should be simple. Unlock your iPhones and iPods, get rid of DRM with iTunes, and license Mac OS X to OEMs and enthusiast system builders. Every method you've used to try and control your customers has been hacked and broken. Since there's nothing you can do to stop them, why not just give them what they want to begin with?
display but on it's own screen which is 6 bit. It still quotes
millions of colors, but changed the wording with Support of
millions of colors.
APPLE Specs. state- (15.4-inch (diagonal) antiglare widescreen
TFT LED backlit display with support for millions of colours;
optional glossy widescreen display)
Which is correct, just a change of a few words.
By the way the iPhone and iPod Touch are very good value compared with what's out there.
end, and then you find out just how crippled the devices are in
terms of functionality. This can be seen with the MacBook Air
(no optical drive, no ethernet, no removable battery, and one
USB port?), the iPhone and iPod Touch (no decent customization,
no apps, again no removal battery, iPhone locked to one lousy
network) Mac OS X itself (can't legally run on PC hardware?
you're only hurting yourself) and so on."
None of the product you mention above were ever marketed to
be anything other than what you state. The MBA doesn't have
those items so it is ultra portable and light. They didn't trick
anyone into believing that it contained any of those items you
mention.
Again, the iPhone and iPod Touch were never marketed telling
you that you could add 3rd party apps, and they are going to be
able to soon anyway. Also, the lock to AT&T was not hidden
either.
As far as OS X goes, they don't have to let you run it on another
platform. They have every right to limit it, and again; never
marketed it to you telling you that you could.
with a G4 PowerPC laptop.
The use of 6 bit displays is common because of the need for fast
switching of the pixels so you don't get ghosting during motion. (See http://compreviews.about.com/od/multimedia/a/LCDColor.htm
for a clear unbiased discussion.) It is a trade off - more colors
per pixel means slower switching.
If Apple were the only one using this nomenclature, then you'd
see Lenovo, Dell, and the rest capitalizing on it.
Puffery in sales of anything is annoying (drink this soda to live a
better life; top speed of this car is 145 mph; this suit will make
you look successful) but accepted.
Chill
there are 24 and 32 bit displays that boast a 2ms response time. better yet, they are affordable. samsung makes one that is 22" for 350.00
Mac's 6 bit display doesn't even have a response time that fast, so your point really isn;t valid. maybe if this argument was occuring 8 years ago it would hold water, but not today.
"there are 24 and 32 bit displays that boast a 2ms response
time. better yet, they are affordable. samsung makes one that is
22" for 350.00"
Samsung makes a 22" display on a LAPTOP now and only for
$350?? Are you sure about that, mind quoting a source? Or did
you miss that we're talking about laptops here?
The 'normal' dithering goes across space. To get gray, you need to do one black, one white, one black, one white, across each row and column. This needs your eye to blend the colors across space. The pattern stays constant across time (every "frame" is the same every time the monitor draws it), so it's easy to spot the difference in color by just looking closely at the screen. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Dithering_example_red_blue.png .
Temporal dithering adds another similar trick: it changes the dithering after each frame, blending colors across both time and space. So imagine you needed the 8-bit color that's just barely darker than white (let's call this A). 6-bit is less precise, so the 6-bit color that's barely darker than white would be too dark (let's call this color B). To get A, you need to mix 3 parts white with one part B - so on different drawing passes, the monitor goes "white, white, white, B, white, white, white, B". (It's a bit more complicated than that - if all the pixels flickered simultaneously, it would become too obvious, so you have to do some randomization or staggering.)
This is a much better way of dithering. A great example of when it works: a florescent bulb's light looks like it's a constant brightness, but it actually flickers on and off 120 times a second. Monitors aren't actually this fast, though. A monitor typically draws 70 frames a second. The "white white white B" pattern flickers the "B" about 17.5 times a second for a duration of about 1/70 of a second.
I can't tell the difference between temporal dithering and true 8-bit, personally. Maybe the photographers could.
OR the graphics chip for their laptops.
ALL screens use "dithering"...idiots!
joe CAN'T TELL. The slight hue variant is so small you need to
first of all have your monitor CALIBRATED. I'd estimate the
majority of the computer users (90% or more) have NEVER
calibrated their displays. Only users like me who work with DTP
and photos will take the time and effort to make sure everything
is matching. Even if you only have to do slight adjustments.
If you need a display that shows hues that are spot on you first
of all won't buy a portable to show them. You will purchase a
high end monitor that has the spectrum so you can do your
editing without worry.
The other part not mentioned, why didn't they (the money
grabbers) go after the screen makers. They claim the screen can
display X number of colors as well.
I never have purchased my computer based on what they claim
it can display. I do a lot of picture editing on the Mac. It gets to
be a headache when you have to bring them into Photoshop and
fine tune some parts, compared to general editing. However
after a few hours in front of the screen you need to give your
eyes a break.
- Breaking news !!
- by AppleSuxLeo March 27, 2008 3:09 PM PDT
- Gone in 2 minutes: Mac gets hacked first in contest
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(25 Comments)Jobs should stop lying about Mac security. They are as secure as a Big Mac left alone.