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March 26, 2008 10:10 AM PDT

Apple settles the amazing multicolor lawsuit

Posted by Tom Krazit

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.

Topics:

Mac

Tags:

Apple,

MacBook Pro,

lawsuits

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Add a Comment (Log in or register) 25 comments (Page 1 of 1)
Similar issues seen on a cheap HP laptop
by j_a_s_p_e_r March 26, 2008 10:21 AM PDT
My Dad has a budget HP laptop and no matter what I tried I could not get his 32bit color setting to look right on his display. I finally figured out that the hardware dithered the display.I guess its a problem with cheap displays, because my Dell laptop does not have this issue. Shame on Apple!
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At the price Mac Book Pros are, this is unnaceptable ?!
by Francky B March 26, 2008 11:20 AM PDT
I must admit, I'm stunned by this. When I bought a Mac Book Pro, I did so because I wanted the best. Now it turns out I was ripped off. 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.
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Hmm...
by ivorycruncher March 26, 2008 11:52 AM PDT
I find it hard to believe that somebody would buy a Mac solely on the basis of being able to display millions of colors. And honestly, I've never been all that impressed with the quality of any laptop LCD panel. I just have never thought about it, because first of all you have no choice in the matter (what the OEM gives you is what you get, period) and also because I've never tried to use a laptop as a primary computer, at least not without a docking station and external display for most of the work. 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?
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MacBook Pro uses only a 6-bit display??
by huttarl March 26, 2008 12:07 PM PDT
Seems really strange that MacBooks would use only a 6-bit display. Most laptops nowadays have 24- or 32-bit displays, don't they? And Macs are supposed to be cutting-edge machines for creative graphical types...
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Get Real
by ReasonableGuy March 26, 2008 12:14 PM PDT
A lot of smoke being blown in these comments. 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
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not really accurate
by fgsdfgdsfgdsfg March 26, 2008 12:26 PM PDT
that isn't really accurate, and your information is dated. 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.
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Temporal dithering, not spacial
by AySz88 March 26, 2008 12:43 PM PDT
Most 8-bit displays these days use something called "temporal dithering". As an example, suppose you have only a calculator LCD, which only displays black and white. 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.
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ALL COMPUTER LAPTOPS DO THIS!
by Llib Setag March 26, 2008 1:15 PM PDT
Not just Apple, besides Apple does NOT make the laptop display OR the graphics chip for their laptops. ALL screens use "dithering"...idiots!
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Average person can't tell
by Travis Ernst March 26, 2008 3:51 PM PDT
If the LCD can display 250,000 or 1,000,000 colors, the average 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.
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Breaking news !!
by AppleSuxLeo March 27, 2008 3:09 PM PDT
Gone in 2 minutes: Mac gets hacked first in contest Jobs should stop lying about Mac security. They are as secure as a Big Mac left alone.
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  • At the start of the 21st century, there's no tech outfit more influential than Apple. CNET News.com's Tom Krazit will attempt to make sense of the rumors, hype, products, and people that will shape the future of the company. But Apple's not the only game in town, as the established cell phone companies strike back against the iPhone, and chipmakers try to figure out how to move past PCs and slip into a little something more comfortable.
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