You’ve probably heard about the iMac lawsuit by now. You know, the one where Apple is being sued for claiming that the 20in model displays ‘millions of colors’ when in reality it displays 262,000 colors and uses either dithering or frame rate control to fool the human eye into thinking that it’s seeing millions of colours.
This issue first arose when the iMacs shipped last summer, but the lawsuit was launched only on Monday. Why? Because Apple recently settled out of court with MacBook Pro owners for whom, as professional photographers, the distinction is critical. One of the reasons, according to reports, that a settlement was reached in that case is that the plaintiffs’ legal representative had trouble finding other disgruntled MacBook Pro owners to join a class action suit.
As I made clear in this post, this isn’t an Apple issue. It arises from the fact that the company, like every other manufacturer of consumer TFT dislays uses panels which are only capable of displaying 6-bits per channel, rather than the 8-bits needed for true millions of colours. And I defy any iMac owner to tell the different between an image on a 6-bit display and one on an 8-bit display.
The only logical conclusion is that this iMac lawsuit is a crude attempt to cash in on the settlement of the MacBook Pro dispute. The key difference is that the MacBook Pro is a professional machine aimed at people who might reasonably be expected to do colour critical work on it. The iMac is a consumer machine designed for watching movies and surfing the web. Can any iMac owner really claim to have suffered because their display only pretends to show millions of colours?
What next? Can I sue the maker of my inkjet printer because it only prints three pages a minute rather than their claimed 20? And if I did, would the story make it onto the front page of The Guardian website as the iMac story did this morning.
Popularity: 100% [?]
Thanks for visiting Random Inactivity. If you're new here, why not take some time to look around and please subscribe to my RSS feed
3 responses so far ↓
1 william // Apr 2, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I wonder if you inkjet printer or mine really makes millions of colors out of those 4 cartridges? Hey friend, do you think the two of us make a “class?”
Another thought: does the new formulation of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum really last longer? I’m not so sure, and millions of people are affected.
2 bud // Apr 2, 2008 at 6:33 pm
I’m sorry, these days, there is absolutely no reason for a DESKTOP machine to have a 6 bit display. It really should have been a thing of the past for all notebooks as well. The problem is when a company tosses a laptop machine into a desktop case.
Apple just failed to notice when a supplier downgraded their displays. In other ways, such as brightness contrast, the displays are probably better so the true color gamut may still appear wider generally.
3 Kenny // Apr 2, 2008 at 10:53 pm
@bud
It has nothing to do with it being a laptop in a desktop case. ALL 19in and 20in consumer TFT displays are TN displays and so are only 6-bit. And all monitor manufacturers use dithering or frame rate control to mimic millions of colours. I’ll wager that the monitor you are using right now is a TN display.
Leave a Comment