Apple settles the amazing multicolor lawsuit

C|Net ^ | Mar 26th 2008 | C|Net

[CarrotAndStick]

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.

[CarrotAndStick]

Apple quietly settles MacBook 6-bit LCD screen lawsuit

Posted Mar 26th 2008 1:56PM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: Displays, Laptops

It looks like that would-be class action lawsuit over the quality of MacBook and Macbook Pro screens has fizzled out to nothing, as the plaintiffs have quietly settled. Although it's technically true that the 6-bit screens can't actually display millions of colors at the same time, apparently the two photographers who filed the suit had a difficult time finding other people who had bought MacBooks based on the advertised color depth of the display -- and from what we're told, you just can't have a "class action" without a "class." Even still, we hope someone at Apple was paying attention to how much interest the case generated at the outset -- although MacBook Pro screens generally look fine to us, we've seen some truly awful MacBook screens.

Tags: 18-bit, 6-bit, apple, dithering, lcd, macbook, macbook pro, MacbookPro, screen

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http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/26/apple-quietly-settles-macbook-6-bit-lcd-screen-lawsuit/

 

 

[bamahead]

ping...

[domenad]

I don’t get how 6 bits translates to 200k+ colors. 8 bit color is only 256 colors.

[OSHA]

I thought it was only 3 colors actually!

[VeniVidiVici]

Why in the world would they only use 6-bit color?

[Petronski]

Six bits for red, six bits for green, six bits for blue.

64*64*64

262,144

[Petronski]

Save money?

[JZelle]

So the guy that mixes paint at Lowes is a ditherer?

[HAL9000]

It’s six bits per color plane, 18 bits total for three planes (red, green, blue), 2 ^ 18 = 262144

[Yossarian]

Why in the world would they only use 6-bit color?

It was the doing of many display makers. The panels themselves have good contrast ratios, and fast response times - but each RBG sub-pixel only has 2^6 levels of brightness.

No, I'm not sure why, either. I just remember that when this first hit, some laptops had 8 bit screens, and some had 6-bit screens.

[HAL9000]

Why in the world would they only use 6-bit color?

25% less power consumption, longer battery life.

[dan1123]

8-bit color is for the total indexed color spectrum per pixel for a video card. Since we are talking about screens, 6 bit is per channel, 6 bits for red, 6 for green, and 6 for blue.

In 8-bit indexed color, the color palate for video cards may be changed to a different set of colors depending on the application. The screen can obviously display many more than 256 colors, but the video card would limit it to 256 at a time.

[pabianice]

What a waste. It’s long established that men see only nine colors: red, orange, green, blue, yellow, purple, brown, black, and white.

[CarrotAndStick]

How does the allocated bits per colour pixel affect the battery life? It’s the backlighting of the LCD that consumes a majority of the power. Are you referring to the graphics processor?

[N. Theknow]

What a waste. It’s long established that men see only nine colors: red, orange, green, blue, yellow, purple, brown, black, and white.

I only see three.

Blonde, brunette and redhead.

[HKMk23]

Yeah, okay, so why are they calling it “6 bit” color instead of going with the naming convention that’s been around since before the advent of VGA and calling it “18 bit” color, which is what it really is??

I’d think the boys in Marketing would like to tout as many bits as they can.

[dan1123]

The funny thing is, I don’t think LCD monitors have a very wide color gamut in the first place. They tend to stop far short of the level of greens your eyes are capable of seeing. A color gamut shows for all consumer-level displays, it can only represent 30% to 40% of the colors your eye can see.

[Proud_USA_Republican]

I suffer from the same issue. Although, I wouldn’t really use the term suffer. That is, unless I’m dating one of them. Then suffering comes into play sometimes.

[ROP_RIP]

Apple shouldn’t be lying about the product’s capabilities, but any competent “professional” who really needs 8-bit color is going to read the specs before he buys. So this case still seems a bit frivolous.

[N. Theknow]

I suffer from the same issue. Although, I wouldn’t really use the term suffer. That is, unless I’m dating one of them. Then suffering comes into play sometimes.

My wife also only sees in three colors.

Green, Gold and Chocolate.

[domenad]

Ahh, I thought they meant six bits per pixel, not per color plane. Makes sense. THanks to you and the others who answered me.

[CarrotAndStick]

LCD colour monitor gamut is a function of the backlighting that it is equipped with. Newer laptops use LEDs, whose emitted spectrum is better suited to display a wider range of colours than the ones equipped with a fluorescent tube-based backlighting.

[SeaHawkFan]

Isn’t it red, blue and yellow?

[HAL9000]

I was referring to the screen buffer memory circuits - but I may have made a couple of incorrect assumptions.

The MacBooks screen buffer may use shared memory in the main RAM rather than separate memory. And the screen buffer probably stores the data as 24 or 32 bits per pixel anyway, and the screen circuitry just ignores the two least-significant-bits per sub-pixel. Six-bit subpixels cannot be packed in memory very efficiently, so the screen buffer might as well use a full byte for each subpixel, especially since memory is so cheap nowadays.

[CarrotAndStick]

Ahh, thanks!

[Behind Liberal Lines]

What a waste. It’s long established that men see only nine colors: red, orange, green, blue, yellow, purple, brown, black, and white.

I only see three.

Blonde, brunette and redhead.

For the life of me, that sounds like something that would come out of Dean Martin's mouth in a roast. Good show, my friend, good show.

[vollmond]

I only see three.
Blonde, brunette and redhead.

You're not hitting the right clubs ...

[dan1123]

Isn’t it red, blue and yellow?

Only in a subtractive color palette--and even then, it is more common to use magenta instead of red, and cyan instead of blue.

[Hazwaste]

I wonder how many angels dancing on the head of a pin an Apple could display.

[SeaHawkFan]

Thanks for the info.

[Red Badger]

Can’t we all just move on past this “color” thing?.........

[thulldud]

Blonde, brunette and redhead.

And they only see one color: green....

[N. Theknow]

And they only see one color: green....

...and gold....and chocolate.

[rond]

Isn’t it red, blue and yellow?

Red, green, blue.

[Mariebl]

Isn’t it red, blue and yellow?

Red, blue, and yellow when you're mixing paint. Magenta, cyan, and yellow, when you're running a printing press. Red, blue, green, when you're checking out a computer screen. Somehow, it all works out.

[TexanByBirth]

So this case still seems a bit frivolous.

Seems that way to me too!

[Leroy S. Mort]

Where's MY piece of the (Apple) pie?

[Thoramir]

6 bits per color channel (6 bits for red, 6 bits for green, and 6 bits for blue). In the digital photography world color depth is almost always referred to in this manner. It can get a bit confusing for anyone used to the idea that an 8-bit display can only show 256 colors.

[scrabblehack]

What about the video cards that have luminance and chrominance rather than RGB? The color looked washed out compared to true 24-bit color, although they used to advertise them as 24-bit color. Dang, I forget — I want to say it was 8 bits of luminance and no more than 8 bits of chrominance.

[Bob]

So the guy that mixes paint at Lowes is a ditherer?

<Seinfeld mode>

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

</Seinfeld mode>