So you know…Apple class action lawsuit.

So you know…Apple class action lawsuit.

So there’s this idea that is going around that any system that Apple can put together is all a photographer needs for flow and processing. Why? I can’t figure that out, but at any rate…it’s not true. Apparently you don’t get all your colors.

Apple settles “millions of colors” class-action lawsuit

By Slash Lane

Published: 09:00 AM EST

Apple has settled with two professional photographers who had charged the company with falsely advertising the quality and capabilities of its MacBook and MacBook Pro notebook displays.
The out-of-court settlement, for which terms were not disclosed, brings to a close a 10-month old class-action lawsuit filed by San Diego, Calif. residents Fred Greaves and Dave Gatley.
In the suit, first reported by AppleInsider last May, the pair cried foul on the part of Apple’s marketing lingo, which advertised that both the MacBook and MacBook Pro included displays capable of supporting “millions of colors” and offering views “simply unavailable on other portables.”
Instead, they charge that the Intel-based notebooks were only suited to display the “illusion of millions of colors through the use of a software technique referred to as ‘dithering,’ which causes nearby pixels on the display to use slightly varying shades of colors that trick the human eye into perceiving the desired color even though it is not truly that color.”
Greaves and Gatley, both professional photographers, argued that the misrepresentation was critical given that members of their profession rely on the accuracy of the displays for properly editing imagery. They asserted that, even at their highest resolutions, the notebook displays are unreliable for post-production purposes.
In addition to false advertising and misrepresentation, the photographers also charged Apple with violating the Unfair Competition Law and the Consumer Legal Remedies Act for its failure to properly address and rectify the situation.
There’s no word yet on the steps necessary for other proposed class members to take advantage of the settlement.

March 26, 2008
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3 comments

While the details of the story you quoted are true, I think you might have biased your headline a bit. Generally speaking, all laptops use the same techniques on their LCD displays. No one actually gets 16.7m colors from a laptop display. I remember when this story first broke that Gruber cried “FFS” on the lawsuit for that very reason.

Thu, 03/27/08 :: 1:26 AM
by Billifer

You make a great point–many laptops have this issue. However, there are different LCD technologies (IPS, 8-bit S-IPS, PVA, 6-bit TI panels) and different backlights (LED, CFC). From those, there are some that actually output more colors than others.

Thu, 03/27/08 :: 1:37 AM
by spencer

True enough… But I also like the way TUAW put it: “[P]resumably Apple didn’t have to pay much: the plaintiffs apparently had trouble finding other people who had purchased the laptops solely for the ‘millions of colors’ claim. Which makes sense — why would you need any more than a few hundred thousand colors on a single screen?”

Thu, 03/27/08 :: 6:17 PM
by Billifer

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