MacBook owners file class action suit over displays

Apple has been hit with a class action lawsuit filed by MacBook and MacBook Pro owners unhappy with the quality of the displays on those notebooks.

A few owners of MacBook Pros, like this 17-inch model, have filed suit claiming Apple's display advertising was misleading.

(Credit: Apple)

The suit, spotted by Engadget, accuses Apple of improperly playing up the capabilities of the displays for the MacBook Pros and MacBooks launched in the first part of last year. For example, it notes that Apple advertised the MacBooks as capable of displaying "millions of colors" when they can only do that using a technique called "dithering." Also, it points to complaints lodged by MacBook users on various Apple discussion boards about the "grainy" or "shiny" quality of their displays.

The plaintiffs claim that these display problems are not visible when they boot Windows XP on their Intel-based MacBooks and MacBook Pros, suggesting that Apple's operating system is to blame. The suit was filed in San Diego County in the State Court of California.

[pdxstoney]

Most likely dithering

I did a little snooping on the net and found a spec for a LCD module that looks to be pretty close the 17" power book.

http://www.lgphilips-lcd.com/homeContain/jsp/eng/prd/prd301_j_e.jsp


While this probably isn't the exact same display used in the Powerbook, its probably pretty close. Most laptop manufacturers used multiple vendors for their LCD modules. They all tend to have similar interface requirements. This display is 6 bits per color so it has a maximum color depth of 262144, without external processing.

One of the problems with dithering or frame rate modulation is that they are very dependent on the optical properties of the LCD modules. Variations in response time and gamma curves can cause problems.

Technically it can display millions of colors with dithering, the question is are they millions of useable colors?

[Scott Gardener]

Everybody vs. everybody

I'm had tech products that had some disappointments. But, I don't sue every manufacturer for every smeg-up. I could understand a class action suit against Microsoft for Windows Millennium Edition--now that was a buggy product with false claims of improved stability. (Note that I'm not an "I hate Microsoft" guy. I'm the only person I know with two copies of Vista.) But, if we sued for every "promised 10 Mbps but delivers 2.3 Mbps," then the lawyers could never get around to charring car crashes or screwing over physicians, because they'd never keep up with all the tech industry's shortcomings.

[DMBoricua]

Not to sound childish, but..

OWNED! just goes to show how people could blame big people for the littlest things. But then again, they're being hit on by many customers (as the article says), so they could be going somewhere. Or this could be another soon-to-be-ignored incident that will never be brought up in the future again.

[joythemechanicalboy]

what if vista made this claim?

then people would only be citing this as another example of microsoft abusing the power of marketing at the expense of their users. this is not a vague claim such as "more stable" or "improved user interface." it's a spec claim that turned out to be patently false. the system cannot display millions of colors, period; it can only trick your eye into thinking it displays millions of colors. and from pretty much any way you look at it, that's false advertising, and the only surprise here should be that the lawyers filing the case couldn't find more people who were genuinely harmed by the display, which is odd since macs are commonly held to be superior for commercial image work.