Apple Sued Over 'Lacking' Macbook Display

qu1j0t3 writes "Business 2.0 reports that two MacBook owners have filed a class action lawsuit charging Apple with deceptive advertising, as well as misrepresentation and unfair competition over the use of the phrase 'millions of colors' to describe the capability of the LCD displays in MacBook and MacBook Pro computers. The article likens the complaint to an an angry forum thread, and is more than a little bit skeptical of the plaintiff's motives. Perhaps it's their uncanny attention to detail. From the filing: 'The reality is that notwithstanding Apple's misrepresentations and suggestions that its MacBook and MacBook Pro display millions of colors, the displays are only capable of displaying 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.'

Comments

Macs for artists

[Turn-X Alphonse]

It sounds dodgy but I can see some logic in this. If macs are sold as artistic machines (Apple sure tries to pull this off with the PC and Mac adverts) then shouldn't the monitors be as high quality and accurate as possible? I mean illusions are fun and all but you want the real thing if you're working on important art peices or photos

Re:Macs for artists

[noewun]

Since your eyes can only detect about 16,000 colors, it's a moot point, made all the mooter that even the best calibrated monitor can't show you low percentages of cyan or yellow. A well-calibrated monitor's best aspect is good gray balance, which tells you at a glance how much contrast is in your shot and whether or not you're losing detail in the highlights. Other than that, it's all about Photoshop's info palette, boys and girls.

Hmm. . . maybe I should sue God for making these substandard eyes!

Re:Macs for artists

[aussie_a]

Hmm. . . maybe I should sue God for making these substandard eyes! Make sure its new testament god (or a non-christian/judaic/islamic god) otherwise you'll be smited!

Re:Macs for artists

[antifoidulus]

Yes, but Pat Robertson will fire back saying that you were intelligently designed not to see those colors. I mean, if you see too many shades of pink, it might inflame the passions, and we cannot have that happening(unless it creates more spawn)!

Re:Macs for artists

[noewun]

Maybe I should sue in India. All those gods. . .

Re:Macs for artists

[simm1701]

Would even, really, want to meet an angel?

*perch*

*steeples fingers*

Re:Macs for artists

[Lumpy]

really? funny how I can see color banding when you look at photographs of blue skies on a 16,000 color display but you dont see the color banding when you go to a 24 bit color display.

you eye CAN see more than 16,000 colors. espically when it is looking at 3-4 colors all next to each other to show off color banding.

Re:Macs for artists

[cosmocain]

if you're working on important art peices or photos

actually, you won't be using a MacPro-display, then...

Re:Macs for artists

[jellomizer]

As a MacBook Pro owner, and not a graphic artest (well kinda of an amature) I can see the dithering on the screen. For the most part it is not a problem. But sometimes when an image is complex the picture seems a little scratchy or sparklilly, kinda like when you sneeze on a CRT. This happends mostly on the top quarter of the display because that is where the light is slightly darker. Normally the fix is to adjust the display angle so I can see it. But still for my next system I hope they have that resolved. (Which I hope so in 5 years)

Re:Macs for artists

[LordPhantom]

I mean illusions are fun and all but you want the real thing if you're working on important art peices or photos

I'm no MAC defender (my skin burns when I go into an Apple store), but don't you see the irony in that statement?

A computer monitor -is- an illusion of "the real thing". Any display is simply a representation of reality - yes, I think the lawsuit has a point, but you have to admit that -any- computer monitor, no matter how great is still displaying an "illusion".

Furthermore, how much of it is an illusion if the human eye is physically incapable of telling the difference? Are the people filing the lawsuit taking high-quality pictures of their monitors in order to edit the photos? Are the colors being stored any less real? I just don't see the impact, even to higher end artists, if the monitor communicates the information to the human brain.

Re:Macs for artists

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe I should sue God for making these substandard eyes!

That's the whole point. Isn't Steve Jobs God?

Re:Macs for artists

[pytheron]

Careful.. with all those hands, Ganesh could give you a good slapping !

Re:Macs for artists

[CrackedButter]

The human eye is capable of seeing a far wider range of colours than 16,000. I think its millions but I don't have or found anything to back that up.

Re:Macs for artists

[noewun]

D'oh! I got teh numbers wrong: the human eye can discern about 350,000 colors (warning: MS Word file).

My point, though, was that it's a silly lawsuit. As someone who spends hours in Photoshop doing color correction I know the monitor is, at best, a blunt instrument. That's why we have matchprints and digital color proofs and the like.

Re:Macs for artists

[kalirion]

As far as I'm concerned, a different shade of a color is a different color.

Re:Macs for artists

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi,

Ph.D. Neuroscientist here. I've done lots of work on the eye. You are entirely wrong. It's in the millions.

Re:Macs for artists

[UbuntuDupe]

Uh oh...

I have an LCD monitor at home and work with a 24-bit display and I see color banding in pictures (including of the sky). I could never see such banding on my CRT for the same pictures. That's what originally bothered me about it.

Re:Macs for artists

[gravis777]

I work in a Fortune 500 advertising company, and we use Macs almost exclusively for creative work. Now, you do need to calibrate the display if you are doing something that intensive, and chances are, in our company at least, you will not be doing creative work on a laptop. But when you are creating 40 foot by 10 foot billboards, you want to be sure that your colors are exact. The majority of Apple's clients are creatives, and if you are marketing your product to this market, you better be sure you can deliver what you are advertising

Re:Macs for artists

[erroneus]

Actually, that's not entirely true. Part of the value of having a range of values beyond the discrete perception of the human eye is that it leaves much room for enhancement and tweaking of images. Consider that it is possible to take a very large image and scale it down to something smaller. You don't notice any decrease in quality, usually, and sometimes it even seems to improve. However, if you attempt to scale up an image, you will definitely notice a decrease in image quality.

The same effect happens when manipulating and shifting colors in an image. You have seen images with "oil painting" or even "water color" splotches of color. Often this is the unintentional consequence of reducing colors in an attempt to get more compression out of the image. This is also caused by other activities as well. But these effects can be controlled by a skilled and experienced user when manipulating and shifting colors in an image. This ability is hampered, however, when a display that is purported to be capable of something upon which a user depends, is actually incapable of that quality.

I'd say they have a case. Interlacing and blending are no substitute.

And the bottom line is if the user cannot duplicate the image quality of what appears on the screen onto print, which does maintain those standards, then there's a mismatch in quality that the user does not expect to experience when he has been assured [lied to, deceived] that a display is capable of faithfully rendering. If there is an effective fix, then Apple is responsible for delivering such a fix not withstanding exclusions in their EULA that a judge might rule as acceptable.

Re:Macs for artists

[Anonymous Coward]

unless you are color blind :)

Re:Macs for artists

[joeytmann]

Any person that is a pro graphic artist more than likely isn't going to be using a tiny screened laptop to do their work. Odds are they will have a one huge display, 24" or greater, and a palette display, 17", and a desktop machine with more RAM than any laptop could handle. While this is probably nit picking at its best, I can sort of see their point of view.

Re:Macs for artists

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, bother. Here I am making quality digital photos with my macbook when in reality I'm only *perceiving* them as quality. I guess I should sue because my photos aren't actually worth a thousand words.

Re:Macs for artists

[GundamFan]

Mis-perception of the founding fathers not withstanding...

I for one would rather have a government that does not feel the need to hide from anyone or use any issue as a distraction from issues that are uncomfortable for the current political leaders. For me there are a few issues I would like to see addressed before we worry about legislating medical care and denial of civil rights as examples.

Re:Macs for artists

[bynary]

I'm not sure what a sparklilly is, but it sounds intriguing. Is it some sort of incendiary variety of flower?

Re:Macs for artists

[somersault]

I think you'll find the past tense is 'smote'

Re:Macs for artists

[MrNaz]

Since your eyes can only detect about 16,000 colors

No, that's not correct. The dynamic range of the human eye has not yet been determined, and at the moment is still considered pretty much to be an analog continuum rather with pretty much infinite sensitivity. 16,000 colours you say? I can tell you now that I most certainly can tell a 16bit colour image (about 65,000 colours) from a 32bit colour image. For reference, 16,000 colours is about 14 bits, so about 1/4 the colours of a 16bit image.

I can also guarantee you that I can tell the difference between a 16bit dithered image and a true 32bit image.

I think the only moot points here are the moot facts you have pulled out of your moot backside.

Re:Macs for artists

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod Down. Wrong.

What nimrod modded this insightful after even the original poster came back and said it was wrong and the human eye can see many many more than 16,000 colors?

Re:Macs for artists

[Yetihehe]

So how do you explain i CAN see difference between 64K(16bit) colors and 16M(32bit) colors? For me, 64K colors images have too much visible bands.

Re:Macs for artists

[somersault]

It's an amature artestec term... but anyway I'd tend to give lower SIDs the benefit of the doubt and assume that they have dyslexia rather than that they're dumb :P

Re:Macs for artists

[FRiC]

One of the easiest ways to see banding if you run Windows is the blue shaded screen that many install programs use. It should be completely smooth shaded and has no banding. I'm a little disappointed that my new ThinkPad with SXGA+ screen shows banding while the previous one with regular XGA didn't.

Re:Macs for artists

[Reverend528]

If macs are sold as artistic machines (Apple sure tries to pull this off with the PC and Mac adverts) then shouldn't the monitors be as high quality and accurate as possible?

You'd think so, but CRTs don't look nearly as impressive from behind.

Re:Macs for artists

[springbox]

It would be better if they had made the exact specs of the panels available, then people would have known it was 6-bit + dithering instead of 8-bit. Viewsonic does the same thing. Take a look at their web site (the US one anyway) claims most of their displays, which happen to use cheap 6-bit panels with FRC, can display "16.7 million colors." This gives the impression of an 8-bit panel.

Take a look at the huge difference between the specs on the same displays from their US site and European site. The European site has the actual specs listed. Apparently something about false advertising was preventing from misrepresenting what they were trying to sell. (The European site doesn't even attempt to mention "16.7 million colors" for some of the displays!)

Re:Macs for artists

[UbuntuDupe]

So there's a setting I can change to fix this?

Like, some menu that's like:

(X) Crappy color
( ) NCC (non-crappy color)

Re:Macs for artists

[iangoldby]

Parent poster describes how with a restricted number of colours, though the human eye can't see banding in the original, if you then process that image the quantisation of colours in the original can lead to banding in the processed version.

Yes, but that has nothing at all to do with this story.

There would be an issue if a 24-bit image was downsampled to 16-bit (for example) in order to display it on a 16-bit screen and then resaved (or processed) at the lower bit-depth. But it's not. Any transformations done in the image editing program are at the bit depth of the image, not of the display.

So if the eye can't see the deficiencies of the display before manipulating the image, it won't see them afterwards either.

Re:Macs for artists

[Bandman]

As a photographer who edits images with 12 bits of color depth, let me just say, you're full of shit. Dithering will never take the place of a properly calibrated monitor, and with literally half the color depth of my images, the Apple monitors would be counterproductive at best.

This is not a "moot point".

Re:Macs for artists

[drhlx]

Yes but the past participle as used in the passive is 'smitten', as the poster above you states.

Re:Macs for artists

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah that doesn't mean that each of the monitor's colors corresponds to colors my eye can see it also doesn't mean apple isn't falsely advertising their screens

Re:Macs for artists

[ROMRIX]

Hmm. . . maybe I should sue God for making these substandard eyes!

If God had sold you those eyes under the premise that you could see "millions of colors" with them then you might have a case.

Re:Macs for artists

[PopeRatzo]

Since your eyes can only detect about 16,000 colors, it's a moot point,

I recall reading an article in nature about trained visual artists being able to detect many times that number. I wouldn't be surprised at all.

Re:Macs for artists

[Anonymous Coward]

A computer monitor -is- an illusion of "the real thing".

Not necessarily. If the artwork is created on a computer and intended to be displayed on a computer, then what's being displayed on the monitor is "the real thing". It's the only "thing", in fact.

Furthermore, when digital processing is applied, I would have to argue that sometimes the digital image is far enough removed from its source that it is the image which really should be called "the real thing". One example would be images created from several sources. What exactly is "the real thing" when you cut-and-paste twenty people from twenty different photos into one digital image? What if you then digitally transform the photo to have a Pointilist style (more irony), or a Warholian style? Another example would be HDR images which add a lot to what is "actually there" via processing on a computer. The resulting image is supposed to have a certain "hyperreal" look, not just be a representation of the subject mater. Again, it is only the computerized image which is the "real thing".

Re:Macs for artists

[gfxguy]

But what kind of monitor are you using? I work in a TV production facility, the monitors that the artists get are a lot more than what they give me. No $200 LCDs for them, their monitors cost nearly as much as their computers. Moreover, they then have Ikegami monitors sitting next to them so they can verify the output is what they want.

So I don't expect Mac displays to be anywhere near that quality, but on the other hand, Macs DO cost more, and are advertised as being better suited for these purposes.

That's not to say I agree with the lawsuit, but they do, technically, have a point.

Re:Macs for artists

[Anonymous Coward]

But your parents made your eyes, so you should be suing them.

Re:Macs for artists

[ColdWetDog]

Spending hours in front of PhotoShop removing red eye from your family pics doth not make a professional.

True, but understanding that you have to look at the info pallette as opposed to drooling over the screen gives the OP several "Photoshop Pro" gold stars. It's a point that most PS users don't seem to understand.

Long Live LAB!

Re:Macs for artists

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hmm. . . maybe I should sue God for making these substandard eyes!"

You'd have a good case. While there are many wonderful things about the human visual system, color perception isn't one of them. Birds, insects, and many other creatures are sensitive to a wider spectral range, and some see aspects of color even in the human visual range that we can not detect (e.g., polarization, and the ability of some organisms to tell the difference between mixtures of color, like a yellow made from a combination of red-green versus a spectrally pure yellow -- we would only see yellow, birds would see two different colours).

On the whole, our color perception isn't all that great, although along with other primates it is better than many other mammals.

Re:Macs for artists

[Rhipf]

You may want to revise your numbers again.
http://ask.yahoo.com/20041227.html
http://www.hhmi.org/cgi-bin/askascientist/highligh t.pl?kw=&file=answers%2Fstructure%2Fans_011.html

Re:Macs for artists

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Color itself is an illusion--a mere trick of the light. Extending the plaintiff's questionable token of logic, the sky isn't "really" blue and grass isn't "really" green: it just reflects that way. Nature is a sham, so sue god.

Color being what we call "color"--what we perceive, a trick of the light--Apple's displays display millions of colors.

If the plaintiff wins, we'll be seeing all sorts of silly copycat lawsuits pop up. Folders aren't really made of paper and don't really have creases, what a swindle. Subtraction uses inversion and not real subtraction of real quantities, what a swindle. Music doesn't really capture emotion, it's just lots of vibrations flying about through the air all willy nilly, what a swindle. All art is a swindle, all math is a swindle (some of these irrational numbers don't even really exist, and what's the square root of minus one really), all science is a swindle (there's no such force as gravity, it's just the effect of conniving trickery). If the plaintiff wins, society as we know it will crumble apart and anarchy will reign by 2011. We cannot allow this to happen. Supporting Apple Inc. in this case is the only way to ensure the survival of humanity and all the life it shares a home with.

Re:Macs for artists

[Qamelian]

Actually, it's more in the neighbourhood of 11, 000, 000 colours. Which still makes 24 and 32 bit colour over-kill, but explains why there is a noticeable difference in quality / colour when viewing a 24-bit image on a 16-bit colour display.

Re:Macs for artists

[somersault]

Good point. I'm not good with grammatical definitions, though I did think that smote was correct on that occasion... I guess I'm as bad as the original poster.. doh! XD

Re:Macs for artists

[heffeque]

Just for everyones information: The problem is with 15 inch MacBook Pros, not with the 17 inch ones.

Re:Macs for artists

[Mister Whirly]

Jerry Falwell tried that arugment and look what happened to him...

Re:Macs for artists

[Anonymous Coward]

>>Since your eyes can only detect about 16,000 colors, it's a moot point

Then why the fuck Apple advertises a display capable of over a million colors? Oh yes, I can see. If they do it, its not a moot point, if somebody discovers the problem with it, then its a non-issue. Get down from your high Apple horses.

Re:Macs for artists

[monomania]

If it's pink that inflames your passions I doubt you'll be spawning....

Re:Macs for artists

[Anonymous Coward]

amature artestec ? dyslexia!

Re:Macs for artists

[hostyle]

Probably not related, but Safari does have colour display problems

Re:Macs for artists

[noewun]

but if you were a true professional

Look, if you want to get all big-dick-swinging about this, send me your client list, a link to your portfolio (including samples from all of the international ad campaigns you've worked on and the awards you've won) and your fee list and we can see who's the biggest, baddest, most calibratingest knowingest motherfucker of them all. If you don't want to do that, just try to be less of a dick when you post.

I've been doing this since Photoshop 1.0 (and PageMaker and Illustrator 88. . .) so I am sure of where I speak. Am I the bestest retoucher in the universe? No, because no matter how good you are, there's always someone better. The best guy I've ever worked with was a portrait painter in a former life (he painted the portrait of Reagan which hangs in the White House) and working next to him was a revelation: he could paint photorealistic images in Photoshop with the same effort I take to tie my shoes.

That aside, no monitor in the world will accurately show you low values of yellow and cyan. Sure, something will be on the screen, but to really check and make sure your whitest areas are 2/2/2/0 (or 5/5/5/0 or whatever standard the shop you work in uses for non-specular highlights) you need to use both the info palette and a matchprint/high end digital color proof. That's just the way it is, and all of the people I've worked with in all of the years will say the same thing. Trusting the monitor--any monitor--is asking for a surprise when things come off the press. It's just the nature of conversion from additive to subtractive color models.

Re:Macs for artists

[somersault]

My ID is pretty high though, surely I'm just dumb? ;) I was in fact just trying to be funny, it doesn't always work.

Re:Macs for artists

[noewun]

TV production is NOT the same as print production: you're using two completely different color models and two different methods of color reproduction. TV color isn't nearly as critical as color for print production because there's no readily discernible standard for the end product. That is to say, while there are standards, you have no control what people will see on their own TVs or monitors, which are relatively low resolution devices compared to a 2,400 dpi/175 line screen printing job.

Print production, on the other hand, has very exacting specs, and when the client asks for a particular four (or five or six) color mix, the client expects (with good reason) that the specified color will be exact over the length of the print run. Matching and reproducing color for print is a much harder job, which is why we have $1,800 monitors and $250,000 digital matchprint machines.

Re:Macs for artists

[drinkypoo]

Furthermore, how much of it is an illusion if the human eye is physically incapable of telling the difference?

The human eye is not physically incapable of this.

Some people can see it, some people can't.

Regardless, it's false advertising.

Re:Macs for artists

[sydres]

"It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not by religionists but by Christians, not on religion but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We shall not fight alone. God presides over the destinies of nations." - Patrick Henry
and again
  " You do well to wish to learn our arts and our ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. Congress will do everything they can to assist you in this wise intention." George Washington
further
  "History will also afford frequent opportunities of showing the necessity of a public religion...and the excellency of the Christian religion above all others, ancient or modern." Benjamin Franklin
continuing
  "Only one adequate plan has ever appeared in the world, and that is the Christian dispensation." John Jay, ORIGINAL CHIEF-JUSTICE U.S. SUPREME COURT
and again
  "The United States of America were no longer Colonies. They were an independent nation of Christians." John Quincy Adams
irregardless of whether they were practicing christians or not the
founding fathers were predominately God believing men perhaps God fearing was too strong a word

Re:Macs for artists

[__aapspi39]

those gods were/are not thought to have more than one pair of hands; the depictions portray them as multi-limbed to convey their different aspects.
namaste.

Re:Macs for artists

[noewun]

The more I look, the more values I find. I think we can agree on three things:

1) My original quote of 16,000 was wrong;

2) The human eye can see many more colors, between a range of 350,000 and several million;

3) Only the Flying Spaghetti Monster knows what the real number is.

Re:Macs for artists

[jellomizer]

aixelsyd and the fact I am at work and forced to use IE without a spellcheck

Re:Macs for artists

[cultrhetor]

Apologies: I had to teach freshman composition for two years while working on my M.A. I have since moved on, and teach documentation technology methods to tech writers. I seem to still notice mistakes in almost everything.

Re:Macs for artists

[gfxguy]

I don't understand your reply. What difference does it make? I RTFA, I didn't see where it said they were "professional" anything; we were having a discussion about how "professionals" require a different standard of monitor; it doesn't matter whether we're talking about print or video.

Re:Macs for artists

[Lars T.]

Since your eyes can only detect about 16,000 colors, it's a moot point,

I recall reading an article in nature about trained visual artists being able to detect many times that number. I wouldn't be surprised at all. Hell, women can already see 7428 different shades of white.

Re:Macs for artists

[loganrapp]

Basically, what you're saying is that trusting the monitor for photography/illustrations is the equivalent of trusting the LCD monitor on your DVX-100B camera to be white balanced exactly the way it'll be on the television.

Even more extreme, really, since you're translating from monitor to physical document, as opposed to me trusting from monitor to... well... another monitor.

Re:Macs for artists

[jcgf]

This link is interesting:

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2006/JenniferLeong. shtml

Re:Macs for artists

[billcopc]

Sure, we can only distinguish 16 thousand unique colors, but we can clearly see banding in the gradients that are present in the great bulk of digital art. I may not be able to accurately spot the RGB values of 16 million colors, but I can easily trace the contrasting demarcation when two neighboring shades of red have a more than 3% difference in luminance, which is the smallest gradient possible when trying to cram the entire visible light spectrum in a mere 16 bits. I don't care if blue #17 in 16-bit isn't as "accurate" as blue #139, but I do care that any untrained eye can see nasty contrasts between #16 and #17.

Even 24-bit color shows its weaknesses at at very high or very low brightness. That's why some people work with even higher precision color spaces. I wouldn't expect a portable display to go beyond the standard 24-bit color, simply because environmental factors would probably negate any further improvement, but I find it perfectly reasonable to hold Apple to their advertised specs. They are Apple, after all. They didn't build their reputation by selling washed-out low-resolution displays to near-sighted spreadsheet mongrels.

Re:Macs for artists

[somersault]

What moron forced you to use IE? Ouch.. I'm glad I'm the IT admin here :D I recommend to most users to use Firefox, though I don't force it upon them because some sites aren't fully standards compliant.

Re:Macs for artists

[igny]

Being color blind is a number of known disorders. I wonder if there are not-so-known much rarer disorders which allow people to distinguish more colors than a regular person. To me some objects could be just two different shades of green, but to some aborigen of some island in Pacific they could be two principally different colors, grellow and grownish.

Re:Macs for artists

[cnettel]

I would actually suspect that my disappointment with sub-pixel rendering in MacOS X might be in part related to the MacBook display. (Think about it: if you need to dither away the neighboring pixels to get the anti-aliasing up to spec, you certainly lose something. Getting that right was always a thin balance.)

To be fair, I noticed the same thing on a cheapo new Inspiron used by a friend (both are 1280x800 displays, for that matter). I would be really disappointed if my next 1920x1200 machine turns out in any way like it.

Re:Macs for artists

[Anonymous Coward]

funny how I can see color banding when you look at photographs

Really??? you see color banding when I look at photographs? That's just scary!

Re:Macs for artists

[The Great Pretender]

...but M$ are probably behind this!

Re:Macs for artists

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't you just learn correct spelling? It's not that difficult.

It's spelled "armature".

Re:Macs for artists

[JonLatane]

16,000 colors? I'm sorry, but I have to call bullshit on that. If I set my computer to 16-bit color (65,536 colors), I can see banding on, for example, gradients in the title bar of a window that are not visible to me at all in 24 or 32-bit color.

I'm still not saying these guys are justified trying to sue Apple over this since I don't know the details. I'm just saying our eyes can definitely detect a lot more color than you seem to think.

Re:Macs for artists

[syphax]

You win.

Re:Macs for artists

[fosterNutrition]

funny how I can see color banding when you look at photographs
I'm sorry, I'll shield my vision circuits a bit more to prevent that kind of interference in the future. The FCC now mandates tinfoil hats for all!

Re:Macs for artists

[dfghjk]

The backlighting on the 17 is so bad no one can really notice. Otherwise, the 6 bit panel on the 17 is no different.

Re:Macs for artists

[Stephen H-B]

Although the condition is not universally acknowledged, some women are reported to have four colour receptors in their retina, rather than the regular three. The condition is analogous to male colour blindness (now called colour deficiency since you can be colour deficient and 20/20). Since women have a backup of the gene (the allele is X-linked, thus why males predominate colour blindness), they can see blue, green, reddish-orange and red.

Search Wikipedia for 'tetrachromatism' for more info.

Re:Macs for artists

[Anonymous Coward]

You got it wrong yet again. It's about 10 million. I study the eye for a living.

Re:Macs for artists

[TechnicolourSquirrel]

The parent post should definitely NOT be scored as informative. It betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the distinction between colour as it is displayed on a computer monitor and colour as it is stored in the host file. Unless Adobe and others just spontaneously decided to cripple their file formats, all of the things mentioned above about the impact of LCD characteristics on the manipulability of digital photos are complete nonsense.

Re:Macs for artists

[Zak3056]

As a photographer who edits images with 12 bits of color depth, let me just say, you're full of shit. Dithering will never take the place of a properly calibrated monitor, and with literally half the color depth of my images, the Apple monitors would be counterproductive at best.

Actually, "half the color depth" would be 11-bit, not 6-bit...

Just sayin.

Re:Macs for artists

[Ngarrang]

"Since your eyes can only detect about 16,000 colors..."

Maybe your eyes, but according to actual medical research -- not unsubstantiated mythological numbers -- we can see millions of colors.

For more information, here is a handy link to site with all sorts of nifty data:
http://www.cis.rit.edu/mcsl/outreach/faq.php#q11

Though, if the poster would prefer to stick with "well, that is what we grew up knowing", then continue to also believe we only 10% of our brain and that leeches help with "issues of the blood."

*shrug*

Apple lied in their ad. In America, you get punished for false advertisement (if you get caught, that is). Apple should suck it up, pay a fine and correct their ads with an end note explaining only simulate millions of colors.

Re:Macs for artists

[matfud]

quite possibly

http://www.ryansutherland.com/media/tetrachromats. pdf

matfud

Re:Macs for artists

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm. . . maybe I should sue God for making these substandard eyes!

You could always ask Him to exchange them. An eye for an eye.

Re:Macs for artists

[anaesthetica]

Thanks, Essjay.

Re:Macs for artists

[Silas is back]

It is estimated that the human eye can perceive about 10 million different colors, not only some 16'000, but this has not yet been definitively resolved. ;)

Concerning the lawsuit - seems that the suers failed to notice that the same displays (TN-Film 6-bit) were already present in iBooks and PowerBooks, and they are present in Acer Aspires, Acer TravelMates, Dell Inspirons, HP Omnibooks, HP Pavilions, Fujitsu-Siemens LifeBooks, IBM Thinkpads, Compaq Presarios, Sony VAIOs, Toshiba Satellites and so on... (List courtesy of Rixstep).

Re:Macs for artists

[Achromatic1978]

The biggest issue with banding I saw described thusly. "If you put the color, say, 127/152/198 next to 127/152/199, you would not discern a difference. If you had a gradient 127/152/198 through 127/152/208, and you yanked one of those from the middle, you would."

Re:Macs for artists

[tigheig]

Actually, while there seems to be differences in opinion, the lowest number I've found quoted is 100,000 and the highest is 10 million:

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2006/JenniferLeong. shtml

Re:Macs for artists

[Hobbled Grubs]

Actually at 16million colours you still only have 256 levels of gray and black and white photography suffers from some ugly banding with so few grays.

Re:Macs for artists

[Achromatic1978]

What is the actual point of your post? Other than a circlejerk of Apple? I cannot see one single word in your comment relevant to the discussion that Apple uses 6 bit LCDs, even in its flagship 30" monitor that people here love to drool over. I use a Westinghouse 24" L2410NM now as my primary display. 1920x1200, and 8 bit color. The difference? It is /far/ better working in Lightroom and PS CS3 than the comparable Apple 24" display.

Re:Macs for artists

[gobbo]

TV color isn't nearly as critical as color for print production because there's no readily discernible standard for the end product. That is to say, while there are standards, you have no control what people will see on their own TVs or monitors, which are relatively low resolution devices compared to a 2,400 dpi/175 line screen printing job.

Took me a while to figure this out, moving from print to video production. Sure, it was nice to work on a $8K well-calibrated reference video monitor doing colour correction, but after editing in the field with a laptop and a crappy portable LCD monitor, and on low-end workstations with old commodore64 thrift-shop specials for reference, I realized that having both a nice reference and a worst-case-scenario monitor is valuable. People's TV sets vary hugely; if it looks good on a crappy monitor, you're halfway there. Now I always watch a rough cut on the portable DVD player and a cheap TV before sending it off, as a reality check. Colour correcting for just the high-end isn't enough.

Re:Macs for artists

[stewbacca]

If macs are sold as artistic machines (Apple sure tries to pull this off with the PC and Mac adverts) then shouldn't the monitors be as high quality and accurate as possible?

Um, no? Apple has the right to make it as good or bad as they want to. Somewhere in the middle is a price/performance balance, and Apple uses business models to determine what quality of screen to put on their entry-level portable computer. Let the consumer decide. Don't buy it if you don't like it.

Re:Macs for artists

[eclectic4]

"the Apple monitors would be counterproductive at best."

You mean the notebook monitors, right? Because the Apple Cinema Displays are quite good and are even SWOP certified for your soft proofing needs. For LCD's this is pretty damned good, but you do pay for it...

Re:Macs for artists

[enharmonix]

The human eye can distinguish about 3,000,000 distinct shades (Wikipedia pegs the estimate at closer to 10,000,000). 24-bit color is 16,777,216 distinct shades, which is why 32-bit color gives the 8 extra bits it has over 24-bit color exclusively to alpha blending. That's also why when we hit 16-bit color, we kept going. If you can't tell the difference between 16-bit and 24-bit color, you need to hand in your driver's license and have somebody take you to an optometrist, because your vision is going. But 16,000 colors? That's just flat out wrong.

Re:Macs for artists

[arminw]

......Macs DO cost more, and are advertised as being better suited for these purposes..........

Anyone who needs to have such perfect color should not be using a laptop computer in the first place, with its necessarily limited hardware, including the display. Apple sells professional desktop systems with high quality monitors for the truly picky. There are also a number of expensive suitable monitors available from others. Apple laptops are not really significantly more expensive than equivalent offerings from other name brand computer makers. Little touches, such as the magsafe connector and the sudden motion sensor are special Apple touches that are only appreciated, like a sort of insurance, when the calamity these are provided against actually happens. Other manufacturers do not supply these 'superfluous' extra cost niceties. Many people do appreciate the attention to details which Apple alone provides.

This appears to be another effort by a bunch of hungry lawyers to get a piece of the handsome profits Apple has been making lately. If the present trends continue, litigation will be the next biggest percentage of the US GDP growth, coming in right after Government and health care.

Re:Macs for artists

[edwdig]

Furthermore, how much of it is an illusion if the human eye is physically incapable of telling the difference? Are the people filing the lawsuit taking high-quality pictures of their monitors in order to edit the photos? Are the colors being stored any less real? I just don't see the impact, even to higher end artists, if the monitor communicates the information to the human brain.

I did 3D graphics work for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) work about 4 years ago. One of the projects I did was drawing a line to trace the flow of particles through a model. The line changed color to indicate the change in velocity of the particle. Over the course of the run the color change would be significant, but from pixel to pixel the change was very small (but important). I started on a crappy CRT, but mid project was given a decent (not great) LCD. Even when staring from 2 inches away, I simply could not see the small color changes that were easily visible on the CRT.

So that's one case where the difference is visible and important.

Oh, btw, I have some mild form of color blindness, so I'm sure the difference is even more noticable to other people.

Re:Macs for artists

[poopdeville]

Spoken like a true virgin.

Re:Macs for artists

[frp001]

Insteresting... I thought it was to demonstrate their almightiness ?
I should be more careful to these details, it's bad for my Karma.

Re:Macs for artists

[navyjeff]

One of the easiest ways to see banding if you run Windows is the blue shaded screen that many install programs use.

You mean the BSOD? I thought they took that out of Windows Vista and XP...

Re:Macs for artists

[janap]

So what's the point in fixing up and editing your photos with regards to details that no human eye can ever appreciate?

Re:Macs for artists

[Bandman]

touche :-)

Re:Macs for artists

[Anonymous Coward]

It is NOT moot because the software believes there are millions of colors, and there arent, so it displays images with an unaesthetic dither. a proper millions of colors unit wouldnt be 100% correct, either, but at least it wouldnt so visibly dither.

Re:Macs for artists

[controlguy]

"Since your eyes can only detect about 16,000 colors, it's a moot point..."

Did you simply make that up? From http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/events/courses/1996/cmwh/ Stills/basics.html

"The human eye can discern between roughly 2^24 different colors (this number obviously varies greatly from person to person and depends a lot on viewing conditions), so a 24-bit image is needed to represent the full range of colors that we can perceive."

2^24 = 16,777,216 colors, which is just slightly bigger than 16,000.

Re:Macs for artists

[malexgreen]

If God had promised that we should see millions of colors.

Re:Macs for artists

[gravis777]

The post and the article focus on the marketing and advertising involved in the MacBook. The advertise milions of colors, they do not deliver. The cause is that they use a 6 bit display, but the technical aspects of using a 6 bit over an 8 bit is not what the article is about, its about a lawsuit being issued over Apple not being able to deliver on something in their marketing.

Re:Macs for artists

[slackmaster2000]

It can be very difficult to tell if an LCD monitor has a 6 or 8 bit panel, and there are several variations of each. Often times 6 bit panels are labeled as "16.2" million colors, so that's one indication. Otherwise they often use some kind of fishy wording, like "16.7 million color support" which simply means that you can set your display settings to 16.7, even though you're not seeing 8 bit color. Another sign of a 6 bit panel is a super fast response time, like 2ms. Finally, the most important thing to look at is price. On the low side an 8 bit panel is going to start at around $250-300 (19 - 20.1"). A good LCD monitor for graphics work is still going to set a person back a fair amount.

I went through the nightmare of trying to find a low cost 8 bit panel recently. I'm very familiar with the Viewsonic documents you posted, and I remember being quite frustrated with their literature. I'm not sure that they're trying to pull a fast one though. I've never seen so much contradictory literature, from a variety of companies!

For instance, I ended up getting a pair of Samsung SyncMaster 204BW monitors. Check this out:

- According to the *manual* that came with the monitor, it is a 16.7 M Colors (8bit + RGB) a-si TFT active matrix panel. It specifically says "8bit + RGB" in the manual.

- According to most online stores currently selling it, it is a 6 bit panel supporting 16.2M colorand is thus a 6 bit panel. (this has actually changed since I bought it. the store I bought it from at the time listed it as 16.7, and has since changed the spec to 16.2)

- According to some guy in a forum who claims to have called Samsung about this monitor, it is 8 bit.

- According to Samsung online, it is an 6 bit panel.

- According to Samsung online in canada, it is an 8 bit panel.

I think it's very possible that manufacturers choose different components for their models over time, even critical components like the panel in an LCD monitor. Perhaps the 204BW monitors I'm running are 8 bit, and the ones for sale now are 6 bit. I honestly don't know for sure.

The good news is that even if these are 6 bit panels, I think that they look great. I use them for quite a bit of work in Photoshop and Illustrator. No complaints whatsoever. They outperform my old CRTs in terms of color accuracy and contrast, which surprised me (although viewing angle is important with an LCD...which can either be a hindrance or be used as an advantage).

As far as TFA goes, I on one hand don't think these guys have a chance. Cheap LCD panels are nothing new, and they've gotten so good that the average user is none the wiser about them being 6 bit. If the eye is fooled then the eye is fooled. Macintosh certainly didn't invent 6 bit panels, nor do I believe that they intentionally use them to dupe customers. The reason that LCDs have gotten so cheap is not because manufacturing high quality panels has become that much cheaper, it's because the new cheap LCDs use cheaper 6 bit panels! Plus it cracks me up that guys who spend $2500 for Macbooks actually think they're getting the highest quality hardware. (is there a notebook offered today with an 8 bit panel?)

On the other hand, it would be nice if this thing could lead to manufacturers being more consistent in their labeling.

Re:Macs for artists

[EndlessNameless]

I believe the essential point is that this monitor *MUST* use dithering, which is a comparable reduction in quality when the specs implied otherwise.

Re:Macs for artists

[Anonymous Coward]

had you bothered to take a look at the latest MacBooks you'd immediately realize the truth: Apple's displays are substandard pieces of crap. Holding up my brother's macbook next to my THinkpad, you'd be forgiven for thinking the Apple is made with an old dual-scan junker recycled from the last century. They are seriously that bad. I guess it's because Apple cheaped out and went with TN instead of S-IPS like Dell and the Thinkpads.

Re:Macs for artists

[slangeberg]

Make sure its new testament god (or a non-christian/judaic/islamic god)... Wouldn't a new testament god be the same as the Christian God? Not sure whether judaic / islamic people believe in a new testament god for that matter... ;)

Re:Macs for artists

[zenpickle]

The original post seems to suggest that knowledge of details like dithering made the complaint suspicious. In fact most people in the graphics arts world know what dithering is. Dithering itself isn't bad. Almost all printers dither including ones that print high quality glossy magazines. However good quality color from dithering requires higher pixel resolution (more pixels per inch) or it degrades the sharpness of details. Dithered Dithering is a trick that gets more apparent color at the cost of degrading apparent resolution. If you sell the benefits without mentioning the downside you are practicing deceitful marketing. On the other hand so much advertising is equally sleazy so I'm not sure there is a legal cause for action.

Re:Macs for artists

[117]

what I want to know is: who was the guy/gal that counted all 350,000 colours, and just how bored were they? ;)

Re:Macs for artists

[twistedcubic]

"Since your eyes can only detect about 16,000 colors.."

Not true. You've misunderstood/misquoted the science.

Re:Macs for artists

[apocalysque]

and that would be no problem if they were using a GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE to VISUALLY assess and change their subjects. it has everything to do with this story. these people aren't reading bits and bytes to determine what a picture looks like, they're relying on the computer's representation of those bits and bytes as an image to be accurate. not that i RTFA but from what i gather, you could have 2 images on this monitor that looked exactly the same but are different in data and would be displayed differently/more accurately on a different display.

Re:Macs for artists

[GundamFan]

I would generally agree with your last statement and retract my first.

I stand by the rest of my post. Our current executive branch would have no need to hide behind so called "social issues" if it was acting justly and in good faith with the American people. Even now the leadership of this country is spending much money and effort attempting to maintain the status quo for the benefit of themselves and there cooperate masters and frankly damning the future for short term benefit.

Re:Macs for artists

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to check for real-world scenarios, you'll need to:

- make sure the scart/peritel cable is hanging half-out of the TV, so there's no red in the picture
- make sure the aspect ratio of the player and the TV are different, or amplify eachother, so 16:9 is either squished in a 4:3 frame, or double squeezed vertically to create faux-cinescope
- place the TV near a really bright window
- make sure the screen is covered in years of grime

Sigh... no wonder scopes are such a rare sight in edit suites nowadays!

Ooh, forgot one - Do all your editing and graphics on a computer monitor that doesn't show fields, then wonder why the final programme looks all flickery on a TV.

Re:Macs for artists

[Watts Martin]

Yeah, that's the point about this suit I find a bit on the bogus side. Given that notebook displays have been showing us "only" 262K colors for years now, one has to wonder whether this is actually something these people would have noticed if it hadn't been pointed out to them. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have. And, no, I'm not a professional photographer -- but if I were, I'm pretty sure I'd have a big external (and well-calibrated) monitor that didn't have this issue around for my real work.

Is it misleading of Apple to claim "support for millions of colors" on MacBook displays? Yeah, probably. Does the fact that just about everyone else misleads you in the same way excuse that? Probably not. But is there an air of "this sounds like a good way to get money out of everyone's favorite tech target" about this whole thing? Yeah, pretty much.

Re:Macs for artists

[adisakp]

Since your eyes can only detect about 16,000 colors

Maybe your eyes only see 2^14 colors but I have absolutely terrible vision and I can still see the difference very easily between a 16-bit (65536 colors) display and a 24-bit display (16.7M). With 16,000 colors you would only be able to see about 25 steps each in R, G, and B. The human eye is capable of perceiving a much wider range than most monitors can display - in fact, it's ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE greater... from dimmer blacks (when your eyes have adjusted to night vision an all black display LCD monitor looks positively "glowing") to the harsh glare of a sunny day (your monitor doesn't get nearly this bright).

Re:Macs for artists

[BiOFH]

I don't think it's silly, because I can see it (and since it's already been established how precise the human eye can be, I don't expect anyone to jump in and say I can't - I don't claim to be a tetrachromat, but I do see very rich colour and detail). I have both a Powerbook and a Macbook Pro and my Macbook Pro definitely has the 'sparkly' screen. I noticed it straight away. My Powerbook does not. It's crisp and deep.

My MBP screen shits me to no end when I'm in photoshop or some other app where even subtle differences are an issue. Sure, consumer LCDs may not be a model of chromatical precision, but my eyes are and the LCD on my Macbook is not up to snuff when compared to my Powerbook, iMacs or LCDs. Of them all, it has by far the worst display. But... it was sold as being on par with all of the above. So "silly" is in the eyes of the beholder, so to speak.

As a 'true believer', I often cringe at Apple lawsuits because I know the right one could spell doom. But this time... I got an inferior LCD and nowhere was I led to believe it would be anything of the sort. That sucks comeplete ass.

Re:Macs for artists

[osu-neko]

The number I usually see quoted is two million (21 bits), but I have no idea of the source of that, and frankly I'd be astounded if the actual number doesn't vary from person to person.

Re:Macs for artists

[dreamlax]

It's not uncommon at all for branded products to use a wide range of parts, for either localisation reasons or costs of production.

I used to work in a retail store, and people would quite often ask if I could get "this particular model" or "one made in March" etc. Of course I had no control over what one our warehouse would send us, it was always luck of the draw. Generally, it is the [dare I say it] substandard brands that do it most often. Here in NZ where Teac does not have a very decent reputation, they quite often go through a lot of internal parts but use the same SKU/model number. The Teac sales rep would tell me that they've changed something inside to make it cheaper, but they've lost this feature or whatever. That's when people would ask "have you got the Teac panel from March? I heard all the new ones don't have this feature".

Re:Macs for artists

[BiOFH]

"... I got an inferior LCD..."

Or to correct myself, as some have noted, it may not be the LCD, but a screwup by Apple in the driver or dithering method.

Re:Macs for artists

[neersign]

the 204bw, i am 99% positive, is a 6bit panel. I have the 205bw and I bought it knowing full well that it was 6bit, but I didn't want to spend $100 more for the Viewsonic that was 8bit. I've been told that you can distinguish the a-si TFT/TN 6bit panel from the better 8bit panel by looking at the Viewing Angle. the a-si TFT/TN 6bit panel has a 160/160 viewing angle, while the better 8bit panel has 178/178 i believe. The funny thing is that if you go to a site like newegg.com and view all of the 20" samsung models, the majority of them say 16.7m colors while having the 160/160 viewing angle. That might not be the most scientific way of deciphering which panel is used in what monitor, but it sure does illustrate how bad the information can be.

Re:Macs for artists

[djcatnip]

"Look, if you want to get all big-dick-swinging about this, send me your client list, a link to your portfolio (including samples from all of the international ad campaigns you've worked on and the awards you've won) and your fee list and we can see who's the biggest, baddest, most calibratingest knowingest motherfucker of them all. If you don't want to do that, just try to be less of a dick when you post."

Winner! Best slashdot response I've seen all month.

Re:Macs for artists

[Anonymous Coward]

Cue the usual rash of GIMP-loving wannabes trying to tell him that he can't be a professional because professionals don't need CMYK... ;)

Re:Macs for artists

[Silas is back]

I don't think that it is misleading of Apple to claim that those displays "support [for] millions of colors"; they can do that in practice, and be it through dithering or frame rate control. Otherwise one could argue that all CRT monitors had to be declared as being capable of displaying three different colors, red, blue and green. =)

Re:Macs for artists

[Wicko]

I am actually saying multiple sources that are saying it is in the millions.

http://www.diycalculator.com/sp-cvision.shtml#A9b

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2006/JenniferLeong. shtml

Am I missing something here? Maybe misreading or something, 350 000 just seemed really low.

Re:Macs for artists

[Wicko]

Typo, *seeing*, not saying. Heh.

Re:Macs for artists

[RobertLTux]

so the difference is between output for viewing on a Never The Same Color twice monitor and a PanTone(r) HexaChrome(r) i want all my crayons!! printout

(but neither of them get their glass from walmart)

Re:Macs for artists

[LordPhantom]

Query:

If you're colorblind how did you monitor the changes for your very precise graphics program?
This isn't intended to be a troll, I'm just not sure I'm following you.

Re:Macs for artists

[slackmaster2000]

Interesting. Do you have the manual CD for your 205BW?

The manual disc that came with my 204BW has specs for both the 204BW and the 205BW. I looked at the 205BW specs just now and they read:

Type: a-si TFT active matrix
Display Color: 16.7 M Colors (8bit + RGB)

No viewing angle mentioned. Online they claim 16.7 million color support, and a viewing angle of 160/160.

Re:Macs for artists

[DM9290]

"Since your eyes can only detect about 16,000 colors, it's a moot point, made all the mooter that even the best calibrated monitor can't show you low percentages of cyan or yellow. A well-calibrated monitor's best aspect is good gray balance, which tells you at a glance how much contrast is in your shot and whether or not you're losing detail in the highlights. Other than that, it's all about Photoshop's info palette, boys and girls."

I'd like to know where that figure comes from because whoever made it was not talking about computer graphics (or they were simply wrong). In computer graphics intensity is an aspect of colour, and the same colour with a higher intensity is defined as a completely seperate colour. Consequently what may normally be called 1 colour "white", can actually be easily distinguished into 256 seperate shades, and probably well over 1000 shades by most people. So take your 16,000 colours and multiply that by 1000 intensities and you get about 16 million colours in computer graphics terminology.

Although the end of the day its also irrelevant. Maybe I'm buying the monitor to entertain an octopus. Maybe I'm using it to test an optics system?

You can't promise millions of colours unless the monitor delivers. I could be blind and its still fraud.

The perpetrators assumption of the victim inability to detect the fraud is not a mitigating factor.

"even the best calibrated monitor can't show you low percentages of cyan or yellow"

that is especially irrelevant. No one is talking about what the best calibrated monitors deliver. We are talking about what was promised and not delivered on specific monitors.

Re:Macs for artists

[blootooth]

My macbook Pro has a 32bit screen.

Color LCD:

Display Type: LCD

Resolution:1440 x 900

Depth:32-bit Color

Built-In:Yes

Core Image:Supported

Main Display: Yes

Mirror:Off

Online:Yes

Quartz Extreme:Supported

From the Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_depth /

32-bit color "32-bit color" is a misnomer when regarding display color depth. A common misconception is that 32-bit color produces 4,294,967,296 distinct colors. In reality, 32-bit color actually refers to 24-bit color (Truecolor) with an additional 8 bits, either as empty padding space or to represent an alpha channel. Considering red, green, and blue use the same amount of bits for their respective color (with the exception of 16-bit color), the total bits used will be a multiple of 3: like 15-bit color (5 bits each) and 24-bit color (8 bits each). The reason for using empty space is that all but the newest modern computers process data internally in units of 32 bits; as such, using this amount for each pixel can allow speed optimizations, but increasing the installed video memory.

Would I be pissed if I found it was 6-bit? Yes. Would I sue Apple because of it? No. I find your litigation tedious.

Re:Macs for artists

[Old Benjamin]

No. I mean if Apple had said that they're LCD's had 1,048,576 colors then yes, you could sue them. However the term 'millions' is often used even when there aren't. There are millions of articles online to this affect.

Re:Macs for artists

[bluephone]

Only a small subset of women would have this ability, and their male children will always be color blind, as noted here and here. The second article (from my hometown paper, so it must be infallible) quotes a researcher that there might be about 99 million women who can actually see the full tetrachromatic spectrum, or about 3 in a hundred women.

Re:Macs for artists

[snarkbot]

Something that has been bothering me about your post (which I found otherwise informative): 6-bit panels do not show 16.2 million colors, they show 262,144 colors (that's 2^18). Dropping even 1 bit from 24 would bring you down to roughly 8.4 million. 16.2 million colors just doesn't make any sense numerically, and I've always assumed that it was just a common mistake, and they really meant 16.7 million. Is that not the case?

-snarkbot

Re:Macs for artists

[dcam]

OT but...

I was thinking of picking up a macbook for work, but one of the issues I've run across is they just don't have docking stations. To me this is a bit of a let down for a business environment. Any thoughts?

Re:Macs for artists

[Tale Surovi]

May God have mercy on NCSU freshmen, for they had a composition instructor that had no clue about passives, objects and other intricacies of English grammar. And yet he noticed mistakes in almost everything.

Re:Macs for artists

[sjames]

It's not such a silly lawsuit. No dithering can make up for the lack of color depth without reducing the effective resolution. There ARE 24 bit capable (millions of colors) LCD displays available. I'm looking at one right now. Though not perfect, especially for art, it's a lot closer to perfect than an 18 bit LCD with dithering.

That is, there is a quantifiable difference between an 18bit and a 24 bit display and that difference is typically reflected in the price. A factually incorrect ad that induces people to pay more than they would otherwise is reason enough for a lawsuit.

By your reasoning, since a hammer is a blunt instrument, If I sell you a framing hammer and ship you a rock tied to a stick, that's fine.

Re:Macs for artists

[Anonymous Coward]

While it may be true that we can perceive only 16,000 colours, the dithering artifacts are readily apparent in the detail in dark tones. These artifacts can't be seen on older PowerBook monitors.

Re:Macs for artists

[sjames]

The whole point of the suit is that the human eye CAN discern the difference. If you look at a smooth gradient image done in 24 bit color on a 16 bit monitor, you will see the color bands. If you use dithering to make the color bands go away, fine detail in the image will also go away.

If nobosy could see the difference, how would they have known to sue?

Re:Macs for artists

[neersign]

i do have the cd somewhere, tho i've never used it. I've always known the 204bw to be an "updated" version of the 205bw, and I find it pretty interesting that your cd says the 205bw is a 8bit panel. Every review I've read of the 205bw online has said the only downside is that it is a 6bit panel. Tell you the truth, it doesn't bother me at all. I've always been in to digital photography and digital art and games, and this panel looks just as good as the viewsonic 19" pro series CRT that it replaced. Every once in a while I notice a color that looks like it might be off, but I also use 4 different screens at various times throughout the day, and really I just tell myself that any one of these screens could be right or could be wrong, so why sweat it.

Re:Macs for artists

[mr_matticus]

The "16 million" or "16.2 million" are a result of dithering. It is therefore not related to binary powers directly--that's just per pixel depth. Dithering involves either spatial methods (e.g. "nearest neighbor") or temporal methods (changing a pixel's colors every x ms to alternate between shades, producing in effect a "new" color). Some displays use a combination of both.

You have 6-bit subpixels, for 262,144 colors. You then have dithering, which is a linear multiplier, because each of those 262,144 colors can be changed x number of times per "frame" (per response cycle, roughly speaking) or it can be combined in a pattern.

In the case of dithering, most methods can produce roughly 50-60 variations through combination of two or more of the 262,144 colors on the display (which gets you to about 16 million colors--what the exact methodology for "16.2M" is, I do not know). The math is complicated because simply combining two pixels does not ALWAYS produce a color that is outside those that already exist. For example, alternating between color A and color B will produce "effective color C" but that color might already be in the 262K inventory.

Re:Macs for artists

[earthbound kid]

I know you're just joking around, but actually in the Old Testament's Book of Job, Job all but "sues" God for his terrible treatment by the hand of fate. In the end of the book, God comes down, tells Job that it isn't his place to judge God, but nevertheless forgives him and gives him back his health and wealth.

There are a lot of different interpretations of the moral of the book, but the one I prefer is that we have every right to be upset with God for the miseries of life, but we also have to remember that God has His own particular concerns in running the world such that while He will set things right eventually we cannot expect this life to be without its trials or pain...

Anyhow, so sometimes you can get away with suing the OT God.

Re:Macs for artists

[zobier]

I wonder if colour e-ink can help with this. It could actually present an electronic CMYK display.

Re:Macs for artists

[StikyPad]

illusions are fun and all but you want the real thing if you're working on important art peices or photos

The irony, of course, is that it's ALL an illusion. You might as well sue because pixels are actually varying amounts of red, green, and blue rather than the actual perceived color.

Re:Macs for artists

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see color banding in the sky.

Re:Macs for artists

[TheNetAvenger]

Since your eyes can only detect about 16,000 colors, it's a moot point, made all the mooter that even the best calibrated monitor can't show you low percentages of cyan or yellow. A well-calibrated monitor's best aspect is good gray balance, which tells you at a glance how much contrast is in your shot and whether or not you're losing detail in the highlights. Other than that, it's all about Photoshop's info palette, boys and girls.

This was supposed to be a joke, right?

First, lets take the Apple displays in question, bring up a linear gradient, and if you can see stair steps, then your eye can perceive more colors than the display can produce.

I have heard lots of people argue that with dithering, blah blah blah, no one can tell the difference. Well I must be a Graphic Designer with god like eyes, as I can just look at a laptop display (running in 24bit/32bit mode) and still tell you approximately what bit the LCD itself natively supports.

The last 18bit LCD display I bought, was on a laptop in 1998. (Mainly because that is all that was available.) For Apple to be providing comparable or lower quality displays today is not only insane, but dishonest when they market them as a graphic platform.

As for the number of colors a human eye can see and distinguish, let me summarize this for you.

It is technically not clear because of what people classify as distinctive colors and other complexities like lighting sources, variances, reflection, and how the brain and eye work together to form the perceived image.

However, even conservative estimates put human vision in the Millions of colors at the very least, with agreed variance between individuals where some areas of color are non-distinct to some individuals and clearly apparent to others. (i.e. We all see some colors better than others.)

So if you eyes can only see 16,000 colors, you are very color blind or just uninformed.

PS Your argument about variance between CMYK and RGB is relatively moot when it comes to this issue. This argument is better suited for print matching to output devices like ink-jet printer from the screen

Re:Macs for artists

[edwdig]

If you're colorblind how did you monitor the changes for your very precise graphics program?
This isn't intended to be a troll, I'm just not sure I'm following you.

First, the colors in use weren't in a color range that I have trouble with. Second, printing debug info to a console helps a lot, colorblind or not.

Re:Macs for artists

[Brandybuck]

True enough, but still no excuse to sue. Take it back for a refund, but don't sue. That's stupid.

Re:Macs for artists

[mrraven]

You are talking out of your ass, I just dealt with this problem with an HP Wide screen monitor that used a poor dithering algorithm it created severe and obvious banding problems where there were any subtle color transition to the point where is it was impossible to edit my photos and I had to return it.

Cheap TN film LCD screens that display 6 bits of color information per RGB channel are not adequate for graphic design work. If you don't believe me go to a big box store and look at a photo on a cheap LCD screen, then look at background out of focus areas, the cheap screens with bad dithering WILL have bands that make it impossible to see detail, they will also have over saturated colors, and blown out highlights. That may be find for an 3lite gaming 13 year old who also loves a giant sub woofer, but it's not even in the ball park for professional design work. I'd be pissed if I paid over a thousand bucks for a MacBook and it had obvious dithering patterns.

And I am typing on a dual G5 tower here so not hating on Apple in general but in this case they failed and badly.

Re:Macs for artists

[dodobh]

Ganesh isn't the one you want to worry about. You really want to worry about Shiva, also named maha-kaal.

Re:Macs for artists

[snuf23]

In a 24bit color scheme there are shades where your eye can easily detect differences. You may have a 256 color gradient of red, green, blue and grays but you don't for none primary shades. You can still get banding within these areas even with a 24bit display. If the display is using dithering and can't even properly display 24bit color your banding will be worse.

Re:Macs for artists

[snuf23]

Yes when you're doing color correction for print (CMYK or other ink makeup reflected pigment color) on a direct light monitor. BUT this isn't about using it for proofing. If the monitor can't display as many colors as it should (say proper 24bit) is isn't going to be as good a display for watching videos, enjoying your digital photos, playing games etc.

Re:Macs for artists

[iangoldby]

If nobosy could see the difference, how would they have known to sue?

If only 'twere so. There is a whole audiophile industry built upon the notion that people will pay large amounts just so that they 'know' that they are getting perfect fidelity in playback (whether they could actually hear the difference in a blind A/B test or not...)

Re:Macs for artists

[MojoStan]

Plus it cracks me up that guys who spend $2500 for Macbooks actually think they're getting the highest quality hardware. (is there a notebook offered today with an 8 bit panel?) Lenovo/IBM ThinkPads with FlexView panels (like this T60p) have 8-bit IPS LCDs. Most notebooks are 6-bit, though.
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/TFT_display#Flexview _.28IPS.29

Re:Macs for artists

[sjames]

While I can understand how "out there" the audiophile industry gets (and no, I don't see why $200 wooden knobs improve a decent amplifier), this is different. Compared side by side there is a clear difference between 24 bit and 18 bit dithered displays that most anyone can see. Even without a side by side, many will notice.

A 27 bit LCD OTOH would be audiophile like. Even there, however silly, if it claims that's what it is, it had better be.

The real shame is that things like this are left to lawsuits at all. It SHOULD be handled by a vigillant FTC looking outr for consumers by enforcing truth in advertising. Why is it so hard to understand that if confusingly similar trade names are bad, then advertisements full of weasel terms are much worse and ads that baldly lie are intolerable in a market economy?

Re:Macs for artists

[CTho9305]

You can't see banding in 24-bit? I sure can.

Re:Macs for artists

[Stephen H-B]

Actually, with one 'normal' and one 'deviant' allele, the tetrachromatic woman's sons would have a 50/50 chance of being colour blind. A woman with two deficient alleles would actually be colour blind; her sons would be colour blind and her daughters tetrachromats.

Re:Macs for artists

[Criton]

Umm you are wrong the average human eye can detect about 16 million different shades.

Re:Macs for artists

[Criton]

yah I can easily tell a 15 bit 32,000 color display from a 24bit one when viewing some pictures.

Re:Macs for artists

[Criton]

The numbers I seen were 350,000 to over 16,000,000 likely varies with their test sample some people have better vision then others such as fighter pilots and sharp shooters tend to be selected for good vision and the lighting conditions. In the case of the crappy display it can be an issue when trying to make something look right for print also yes it is false advertising because dithered colors do not count. In the case of 16000 colors even a bi chromic animal such as a lemur or cat can see more distinct colors then that yes most mammals including dogs can see color the being completely color blind is a myth they only see red and blue but no green. Also it's common knowledge in graphic design 6bit LCDs don't display many shades of blue or green correctly.

Err...

[aussie_a]

I'm not Apple's biggest fan (like it more then Microsoft, less then Windows), and I hate false advertising. However.....

The reality is that notwithstanding Apple's misrepresentations and suggestions that its MacBook and MacBook Pro display millions of colors, the displays are only capable of displaying 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. Isn't that going to get laughed right out of the courtroom? I mean sure that level of pedanticism is tolerated in some forums, but this is a court of law. Surely the judge is going to say a dignified version of "What the fuck are you on? Get the fuck out of here."

Re:Err...

[cs02rm0]

Surely the judge is going to say a dignified version of "What the fuck are you on? Get the fuck out of here."

And stop dithering!

Re:Err...

[WarlockD]

After reading the article, its more about a "wall of tech support" than the screen problem.

"I'm so tired of dealing with Apple at this point," writes one anonymous poster, "that I don't have the energy or time to continue even though they've done everything they possibly could."

I mean, what else CAN you do when even support tells you to "take the refund":P

Re:Err...

[Short Circuit]

Surely the judge is going to say a dignified version of "What the fuck are you on? Get the fuck out of here." Sadly, you know a hell of a lot more abot monitors than the judge likely will.

Re:Err...

[mdwh2]

I mean sure that level of pedanticism is tolerated in some forums, but this is a court of law.

I'd say the other way round - being pedantic is more important in legal matters and advertising, than it is on a forum.

And this isn't being pedantic - surely it's long established that "number of colours" refers to the number of possible colours an individual pixel can display, and not using tricks like dithering? Otherwise, back in the 80s/90s when computers only had 256 colours or less, why didn't we see manufacturers claiming they could actually display thousands of colours? Why weren't the computers which could display thousands of colours back then advertised as displaying millions? And maybe the original black and white classic Macs should actually be greyscale, because you could dither the black and white pixels?

I'm curious, as I thought 24 bit displays had been standard on computers for well over a decade now - is it common for laptops to have an 18 bit display, or is it only Apple that have decided to take us back to the 1990s?

Re:Err...

[Just Some Guy]

History, repeat thyself. Honestly, there's a legitimate point to that. If the advertised specs say that it can display "millions of colors", then there's a reasonable expectation that a given pixel will be able to represent over 1 million colors (most likely 16MiColors, but who's counting?). Yeah, this might seem a little silly, but if you can't deliver then don't promise it.

I can imagine a graphics geek being pretty legitimately pissed about seeing gradients where he shouldn't, in the same way that if they advertised a 128-bit FPU, a programmer might be a little annoyed to find that it was really "32-bit but we cleverly fake the rest".

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you think it's going to be laughed out of court? Apple have, according to the suit, marketed their machines as suitable for graphic designers and photographers etc., and that their monitors can display "millions of colors". If it turns out that "millions of colors" is really "thousands of colors that are made to appear like millions with dithering techniques", he very much has a case. Apple must not advertise that a product is suitable for purpose X when it is obvious that it is lacking in the most fundamental ways. The questions are: what does "millions of colors" imply, why is it misleading to Apple's target customers, and why does this cause harm Apple's target customers? And: can Apple be blamed for this?
 
I don't think this is going to get "laughed out of court".

Re:Err...

[aussie_a]

Which is sad as I know next to nothing. Hopefully they'll get the right expert and the judge will listen.

Re:Err...

[dave420]

Hmm... dithered images are not true-colour, so they don't display millions of colours any more than a newspaper displays more than 4 (CMYK). It gives the illusion of more, but it's not actually giving more. This is far from a laughable claim. The whole 10^6/2^20 discrepancy is laughable, this is clearly a case of false advertising. And, fyi, courts of law are by definition the most pedantic out there, as they're dealing with really important things, and so have to get to the bottom of even the most ridiculous claim. The American Idol panel is the least pedantic example I can think of :)

Re:Err...

[cyphercell]

Most manufacturers do not list the color depth of their display. Even fewer will list the actual per-color depth. If the manufacturer lists the color as 16.7 million colors, it should be assumed that the display is 8-bit per-color. If the colors are listed as being 16.2 million or 16 million, consumers should assume that it uses a 6-bit per-color depth. If no color depths is listed, it should be assumed that monitors of 12ms or faster will be 6-bit and the 20ms and slower panels are 8-bit. http://compreviews.about.com/od/multimedia/a/LCDCo lor.htm

I would think so considering Apple offers their Macbooks as "millions of colors" rather than 16.7 million, who knows though if the color/response time is a big enough issue they may be required to state whether theirs is 6-bit or 8-bit. Then again, if your producing videos or print, you damn well ought to understand the problems inherent in selecting your tools.

Re:Err...

[aussie_a]

But it didn't say a particular pixel can display millions of colors, it said the screen can. If the human eye thinks its getting shown millions of colors, it is.

Re:Err...

[jimstapleton]

Laptop LCDs tend to be a *lot* lower quality in display than other monitors.

If I remember correctly, from a coupld of years ago, the number was 10 12 bit, but I could easily be wrong.

Re:Err...

[XxtraLarGe]

I can imagine a graphics geek being pretty legitimately pissed about seeing gradients where he shouldn't, in the same way that if they advertised a 128-bit FPU, a programmer might be a little annoyed to find that it was really "32-bit but we cleverly fake the rest". Maybe they should buy a Linux or Windows computer then. Those can display millions of colors, right? Oh, wait. They can't either. Do they claim to display millions of colors? Yes. So why are they singling out Apple?

Re:Err...

[Scarblac]

Otherwise, back in the 80s/90s when computers only had 256 colours or less, why didn't we see manufacturers claiming they could actually display thousands of colours?

Well, they couldn't even display 256 - by this logic, a CRT monitor can only display red, blue and green, the rest is dithering.

Re:Err...

[jimstapleton]

But dithering only works well at minimum distances, and it can still create problems with gradient lines, if the algorithm is of sub-par quality or the picture happens to have something in it's nature that doesn't quite dither properly.

Dithering can add a 'blur' factor, since it's not an exact representation, which also causes a loss in image accuracy.

and as a counter point to all my previous points...
Aren't all images on computers dithered anyway, since each "pixel" is actually 3 sub-pixels, each with a different color?

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, what else CAN you do when even support tells you to "take the refund":P

Support didn't give him a refund, they ignored his complaints, and when he posted them on the forum, they edited half his posts to put Apple in a better light, and deleted the other half. They did this with many other people as well.

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

in the same way that if they advertised a 128-bit FPU, a programmer might be a little annoyed to find that it was really "32-bit but we cleverly fake the rest".

Intel, you're going down!

Re:Err...

[ronadams]

So, do we sue HP, Cannon, Brother, Epson, etc. next for selling us scanners that scan at "2400x2400", when they really only do so through dithering?

Re:Err...

[beavis88]

6-bit LCD panels are VERY common, especially those advertised as having especially low response times. Usually if there is any way to tell, it is because they're listed as displaying 16.2 million colors (vs 16.7 million for an 8-bit panel).

Re:Err...

[CastrTroy]

Because these people happened to buy an Apple laptop. They have nothing to sue anybody else for, because they never bought a computer from them. If they win, maybe those who bought displays from other manufacturers could bring up their own lawsuit.

Re:Err...

[UnknowingFool]

Apple is not the only manufacturer to do this. All other laptop manufacturers do it too as the issue is with the LCD itself. Apple like Lenovo, HP, etc, do not directly manufacture their own LCD screens like they don't make their own HDs, memory, CPUs, batteries, etc.

Re:Err...

[falcon5768]

this is clearly a case of false advertising

But what is not so clear is by whom. If Apple is just following the industry standard, that people who know technology understand and have respected for years (like who a hard drive isnt EXACTLY the size thats claimed) then how can you fault one manufacturer and give a pass to the hundreds of others out there.

Now take into account that courts ruled that such things in the past are NOT false advertising (again the Hard Drive issue) and you get to the point where there is obviously little chance at even being heard, forget about winning.

What would you say if Apple actually didnt follow the industry and said the truth that their montiors where 6bit. Everyone would jump on them saying their monitors where of a lower quality than other laptop monitors despite the fact that the entire industry uses 6bit monitors too.

Re:Err...

[cyphercell]

This is what I really have trouble with, they were offered a refund, then reparations have been made. What is there to sue for, I mean no harm no foul, right?

Re:Err...

[suv4x4]

The displays are only capable of displaying 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.

Isn't that going to get laughed right out of the courtroom? I mean sure that level of pedanticism is tolerated in some forums, but this is a court of law. Surely the judge is going to say a dignified version of "What the fuck are you on? Get the fuck out of here."

Check this image:

squares

Imagine you're told your new expensive laptop, by *Apple* (a brand mostly known as going for component quality since designers work with it), will have have display quality like the second square.

But instead you see display quality like the first square.

If you think it's a laughing matter, I want to see you persuade those unfortunate Mac owners join the laugh.

Re:Err...

[Aphrika]

True, but when you're trying to do subtle gradients and stuff, it's really bloody obvious that there's dithering going on, even when it's calibrated.

In this respect, I always make sure I have a full 16M colour-capable monitor attached via DVI to my Inspiron 9400 if I'm doing any graphics work.

It's quite strange actually, because I've always been aware that laptop panels were 6-bit and this was the reason why people virtually never ever did graphics work on laptops. Why on earth Apple users should kick up a fuss now is rather amusing. I guess there'll be two outcomes; a) Apple will trumpet a 8-bit screen as the next big thing on a future MacBook release, or b) they'll change their advertising and hoep it'll go away. Having said that, with the hordes of designers that use Macs, I don't think that b's going to happen...

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as color. It is an illusion See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

I quote:
Whether qualia exist is a hotly debated topic in contemporary philosophy of mind. The importance of qualia in philosophy of mind comes largely from the fact that they are often seen as being a possible refutation of physicalism. Much of the debate over their existence, however, hinges on the debate over the precise definition of the term, as various philosophers emphasize or deny the existence of certain properties.

Re:Err...

[Solandri]

And this isn't being pedantic - surely it's long established that "number of colours" refers to the number of possible colours an individual pixel can display, and not using tricks like dithering? Otherwise, back in the 80s/90s when computers only had 256 colours or less, why didn't we see manufacturers claiming they could actually display thousands of colours?

The dithering done on 6-bit LCD panels is in the time domain. A pixel will flicker between two different shades at a frequency high enough to be almost invisible, creating the illusion of a shade in between. (I say "almost" because some people can see the flickering, including me. It's easier to see if your eye is moving around the screen instead of staring at a point.) The 256-color displays of days gone by dithered in the spatial domain, so their dithering was always visible. The only way it created the illusion of continuity was if you sat far enough back that you couldn't see the individual pixels.

It's an interesting distinction that I'm not sure how it would hold up in court. I should point out however that many light sources we think of as continuous do the exact same thing to produce the illusion of continuous light output. Fluorescent lights, lights on some new cars, the backlights on many cell phones and PDAs, all of them flicker.

I'm curious, as I thought 24 bit displays had been standard on computers for well over a decade now - is it common for laptops to have an 18 bit display, or is it only Apple that have decided to take us back to the 1990s?

The vast majority of LCD panels are 6-bit, and use dithering to generate 16.2 million colors. True 8-bit panels are usually fairly expensive, and only used on high end LCDs designed for graphics work. The fact that you hadn't noticed this is a pretty good argument that this type of dithering isn't really false advertising.

Re:Err...

[elrous0]

I imagine the plantiff would find it fairly easy to blindside a judge with technical jargon and essentially win a "default" ruling (due to the judge's ignorance) if Apple doesn't show up and adequately defend itself. They're likely just hoping for an Apple settlement (figuring that Apple would rather just settle than bother with a legal defense). It's the classic class action ambulance-chaser settlement case.

Re:Err...

[gad_zuki!]

Naww, they have a case. In fact a couple enterprising lawyers could make a few billion dollars just by visiting the macbook page alone. I mean look at these ridiculous claims:

1. "New Lovable SPeed." I only love chocolate and backrubs, how dare the tell me I may love the speed of this new laptop. Lawsuit!

2. "MacBook supports up to 2GB of memory and plenty of storage." What?!?! Surely they mean 2048 megabytes of ram. How dare they not be specific. And who says what "plenty" really means. Lawsuit!

3. "If there's a wireless hot spot nearby, you can get online." Not true. There are many wireless networks I cant get on. Damn encryption. lawsuit!!

etc etc. Unfortunately, there is precendent with defining colors as being per pixel, but that doesnt mean its right. False advertising should take context, audience, and motive into account, but it wont and these guys are probably going to be millionares in a few months.

Re:Err...

[slughead]

Isn't that going to get laughed right out of the courtroom? I mean sure that level of pedanticism is tolerated in some forums, but this is a court of law. Surely the judge is going to say a dignified version of "What the fuck are you on? Get the fuck out of here."

The display can only show about a quarter million colors. This is not millions. Therefore, when Apple promised "millions", they were lying.

The reason dithering is bad is because many people (including myself) can see dithering quite easily and it looks, frankly, cheap and terrible.

By dithering the output on their displays, they have virtually assured graphics professionals cannot use their products for certain tasks without plugging in an external display. Again, they said they display 'millions' of colors, and therefore dithering shouldn't be present.

I was waiting for slashdot's take on this, obviously they've chosen to word the article in a very pro-Apple way. In other articles I've read, it points out that Apple makes no mention of dithering on their site, and suppresses the fact that their monitors are only 6bit, not 8bit. Also, the /. article doesn't mention that dithering can actually cause headaches in some people (like myself).

Again, 8 bit monitors do exist, and it's a reasonable expectation that if the monitor is said to display 'millions' of colors, it must be 8bit. 6bit displays, such as Apples, cannot display millions of colors, and as such, they must be advertised as such.

I've heard from others that most retailers selling laptops with 6bit displays offer them as having 'millions of colors'. My preemptive response is that others doing it doesn't make it right.

My girlfriend recently bought a macbook. Luckily, she doesn't notice the dithering. However, as I said before, the thing gives me a headache after a while.

Re:Err...

[aussie_a]

Right, so complain about getting a shitty monitor. Not because the advert says one thing while "technically" the monitor says another, even though no-one can tell one from the other.

Re:Err...

[Lehk228]

no, a CRT uses variable intensity for each of the three colors, and each pixel can be one of ~infinite colors on an analog display

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

But the human eye obviously doesn't think that, so what's your point?

Re:Err...

[bestinshow]

You'd notice temporal dithering between black and white pixels every 16.6ms in order to get 50% grey.

You don't notice temporal dithering between 23/64th red and 24/64th red in order to get 47/128th red.

Most people reading this article are assuming spatial dithering. 6-bit TN LCDs utilise temporal dithering. They can do this because TN displays are quick to react and have very low grey-grey transition times (10ms), so they can temporally dither in such a way that the eye will not notice.

C64 games used to temporally dither the sprite colours to create colours that weren't in the C64's limited palette, by the way. That was done in software back then, but LCD dithering is done in the LCD hardware itself.

To the people that say that the human eye can only see some 300,000 colours, they should take notice that that includes thousands of grey levels, and a 6-bit TN display can only have 64, and can temporally dither to get 128 (or 256 more recently as they can dither 25% 23/64ths and 75% 24/64s to get 93/256ths grey due to their fast response times).

Re:Err...

[suv4x4]

Right, so complain about getting a shitty monitor. Not because the advert says one thing while "technically" the monitor says another, even though no-one can tell one from the other.

Dude, it's quite easy to tell one from the other. Unless I suppose you have eye problem.

Re:Err...

[drinkypoo]

The fact that you hadn't noticed this is a pretty good argument that this type of dithering isn't really false advertising.

The MacBook Pro is a high-end machine and if they said it can do the job, it's reasonable to expect it to do the job. It doesn't do the job, so it's false advertising. Pretty cut and dried. Now let's see if it holds up in court. Maybe my buddy with the MBP can get a voucher for a free OSX update or something, and the satisfaction of knowing he helped a lawyer buy a second yacht.

Re:Err...

[Bob-taro]

Well, they couldn't even display 256 - by this logic, a CRT monitor can only display red, blue and green, the rest is dithering.

dithering: I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

use dithering to generate 16.2 million colors

:O What happened to the other 0.5 million colours?

Re:Err...

[DudeTheMath]

CMYK is analog, and "displays" a lot more than four colors. Saturation of each color is determined by ink dot size, which is continuously variable (at the macro scale, anyway; the print head is most likely digitally controlled these days), and the actual color on the paper is determined by the combination of overlaid colors. Take a look at the color bars on the end flap of a package of cereal, where the CMYK appears alongside the actual colors they use on the box, which are simply combinations of the four basic colors.

Re:Err...

[Bob-taro]

mod parent -1 "whiney".

just post your comment and take your negative mod points like a man!

Re:Err...

[j-turkey]

6-bit LCD panels are VERY common, especially those advertised as having especially low response times. Usually if there is any way to tell, it is because they're listed as displaying 16.2 million colors (vs 16.7 million for an 8-bit panel).

My math isn't very good, but 6-bit displays should produce about 262,144 colors, not 16.2 million. Assuming that 6-bit means that each subpixel can accept a 6-bit value for the shade/intensity, which means that it can display 64 shades of red, blue, or green (depending on the color of the subpixel). 64^3 (64 shades of red+blue+green) comes out to 262,144 colors.

An 8-bit panel, on the other hand, can accept 8-bit values for each of its three color registers. That's 256 shades for each red, blue, and green. Combining the values can be represented as 256^3 is 16,777,216 possible colors.

Re:Err...

[alienw]

Especially since every other PC manufacturer advertises 6-bit LCDs as "16.2 million colors" to distinguish them from 8-bit LCDs which are "16.7 million colors". Either one certainly qualifies as "millions of colors". Not to mention, I sure hope nobody tells these dumbasses that so-called 24-bit soundcards typically use 1-bit DACs and get those 24 bits by dithering.

Re:Err...

[bestinshow]

Honestly, there's a legitimate point to that. If the advertised specs say that it can display "millions of colors", then there's a reasonable expectation that a given pixel will be able to represent over 1 million colors (most likely 16MiColors, but who's counting?). Yeah, this might seem a little silly, but if you can't deliver then don't promise it.

Using your logic, even high quality LCD panels can only display 766 different colours, and all laptop panels are stuck with 190 colours.

8-bit: 255 red, 255 green, 255 blue + black.
6-bit: 63 red, 63 green, 63 blue + black.

These use spatial closeness to simulate the full colour spectrum.

By the same argument, I don't see the issue with using temporal dithering to simulate a greater colour spectrum. Unless the temporal dithering algorithm wasn't very good of course, or if the temporal dithering operated too slow. Neither of these should be an issue on a modern screen.

Re:Err...

[myxiplx]

Err... aren't apple dithering to get those quarter million colours you were talking about?

So you're happy with the spacial dithering effect that produces the quarter million colours, but unhappy with the temporal dithering effect to enhance that to several million?

Apple make no mention of dithering because *every monitor ever made* has used dithering. Everything, right back to the early days shows colours by various amounts of R, G and B, and because of that I really don't see how these guys have a case.

Sure, the quality may not be as good as you like, I can't argue with that. But trying to force this case through on a technicality, especially when it looks like Apple already offered them a refund just looks to me like they're being greedy.

Re:Err...

[mapmaker]

surely it's long established that "number of colours" refers to the number of possible colours an individual pixel can display

But if you want to be pedantic, then what is the definition of "display"? I would say that "display" means to present information in a form perceivable by the human eye. If the dithering technique used by these LCDs is perceived by the human eye as millions of colors, then it is in fact "displaying" millions of colors.

Re:Err...

[springbox]

I guess that means every monitor can only really display "3 colors." Every display is made up of some collection of red, green, and blue dots. (Much like the CMYK blobs on newspapers) The dots are small enough and closely packed together that your eyes mix them together to create the colors that you perceive. New colors are created by varying the intensity of each RGB component. In the context of this article, different displays can only display each color component (RGB) at a finite level of intensities. In the case of the 6-bit displays used in these laptops, dithering is used to give the illusion of more colors than the display can physically support.

Re:Err...

[ajs318]

No, 6 bits per pixel gives you 2**18 = 256Ki = 262 144 colours.

Re:Err...

[pla]

Most people reading this article are assuming spatial dithering

You make a good point, but I'd go even further - If most people assume this involves spatial dithering - So what? If we want to get really picky, without spatial dithering, the panel in question can only display 192 colors, and even a "true" 24-bit panel can only display 768 colors.

Color displays since before the dawn of color TV (keep in mind that even color printing uses the same basic technique) have depended on the fact that our eyes tend to see color as a sort of gaussian blur over a small area and a small time window. If Apple lied here, then so has every printer and monitor manufacturer who ever sold a color reproduction device.

Re:Err...

[springbox]

The dithering done on 6-bit LCD panels is in the time domain.

This is not the case of all 6-bit panels. Some use actual dithering while others use FRC (Frame Rate Control), which is what you described.

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

8-bit: 255 red, 255 green, 255 blue + black.
6-bit: 63 red, 63 green, 63 blue + black.

Where do people keep getting this same (bizarrely wrong) math? You get "black" in each of the three channels, so even in your incorrect interpretation of how pixels work, that's 256*3 and 64*3.

Re:Err...

[springbox]

You have your squares reversed. Download the image and open it with the GIMP or whatever. The first square uses dithering while the second square uses purely interpolated colors. Even without zooming in, I can see color banding on the first square on my LCD.

Re:Err...

[gfxguy]

Yeah, but do that advertise "millions of colors?"

I think there's two parts to this; the first is they advertise millions of colors when millions of colors cannot be displayed, and the second is that one of Apples target audiences are professional artists.

I think it's pretty weak, I'd think that no real professional would rely on an LCD screen, or anything below a $1000 monitor. Where I work they have very expensive monitors AND secondary Ikegami displays to see what the result [i]should[/i] look like on television (since everyone has their televisions set differently, it's merely the "ideal", not "expected" results).

On the other hand, if the display is adverstised as "millions of colors" and it isn't "millions of colors", that's a lawsuit.

Re:Err...

[beavis88]

Thanks for the math lesson, but I do understand the definitions ;)

The difference between 262,144 "actual" and 16.2 million via dithering is the crux of the lawsuit in TFA.

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

8-bit: 255 red, 255 green, 255 blue + black.
6-bit: 63 red, 63 green, 63 blue + black.
Where do people keep getting this same (bizarrely wrong) math? You get "black" in each of the three channels, so even in your incorrect interpretation of how pixels work, that's 256*3 and 64*3.

Oh, pray tell me how 0% red differs from 0% green, and how they differ from 0% blue - in the real world.

Black == Black == Black.

It's 255* 3 + Black, and 63*3 + Black. 766 different shades of colour and 190 different shades of colour.

Only a retard would go on about the difference in total blackness between different colour components. Maybe you could argue that backlight leakage through total black effectively means there are 768 colours, and NO black if you really really want to argue your case.

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

Read his reply, he said the first one's the worse, not the second.

Re:Err...

[Laur]

So, do we sue HP, Cannon, Brother, Epson, etc. next for selling us scanners that scan at "2400x2400", when they really only do so through dithering?

Are you confusing dithering with interpolation? Besides, these days pretty much every manufacturer lists the actual optical resolution of the scanner in the specs (I know , I just bought a new scanner).

Re:Err...

[vertinox]

Isn't that going to get laughed right out of the courtroom?

Actually, I think it would be a big deal if you were using a laptop for desktop publishing to high quality printers. Most publishing houses are pretty strict when it comes to true colors because what you see on the screen may not actually print out the expected color if this is the case.

Re:Err...

[JasonKChapman]

I'm curious, as I thought 24 bit displays had been standard on computers for well over a decade now - is it common for laptops to have an 18 bit display, or is it only Apple that have decided to take us back to the 1990s?

What the video card does, what the monitor interface understands, and what the actual LCD panel itself can do are not always the same thing. The difference arises in the choice of panel. The manufacturer can use an 8BPP panel on its 24 bit displays and produce 24 bit color. Or, the manufacturer can use a much less expensive 6BPP panel and have the circuitry take 24 bit input and approximate it in 18 bits.

Another consideration is that 6 bit panels are generally much faster than 8 bit panels. That's why you see faster TN panels on the displays advertising under-5ms response times. You can get more accurate color and put up with ghosting during motion, or you can get dithered color with really fast response times. Since video is a large part of Apple's push, it would make sense for them to use faster panels.

Having said that, some manufacturers are much better at doing the approximation than others. Samsung's x06BW series, for example, actually does predictive analysis to get 2ms grey-to-grey response times. Black-to-white is still 5ms, but their software makes all the difference. They do use 6 bit panels, but the better the dithering algorithm, the less apparent it is. For what it's worth, the Samsung's dithering is pretty darn good.

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, Apple killed some kittens and ate them, said it doesn't believe in fairies on no less than 318 consecutive occasions, and frequently kidnaps young children and sells them into slavery, and then it said it hadn't stolen any of the cookies and eaten them even though it had and we saw it had so it must have. Apple has done all this and more, and continues to perform such acts on an hourly basis. You can believe me because I told you so and some guy I met at a bus stop told me so and he said it's true, so it is, so there.

What's worse, Apple totally ignored me when I told it it did these things and they are wrong things to do, and then when I started posting messages about it on Apple's forums, Apple deleted the messages and told me I'm a silly person. Apple is naughty.

Re:Err...

[joshv]

Just checked out the Apple website. All of the MacBooks, even the high end, say "support for millions of colors". The iMacs say "Millions of colors at all resolutions". This is probably technically accurate but still quite misleading. The MacBooks support "millions of colors" mode, but Apple is not saying it displays millions of colors. The iMacs however have full 24bit LCDs thus Apple is free to say "Millions of colors at all resolutions".

I wish these guys luck, they'll need it trying to explain this to a jury. Technically, dithering does give the perception of millions of colors, in exactly the say way the composition of 3 pixels that have only 256 colors gives the perceptions of 2^24 colors. But you don't see manufacturers claiming each of the red, blue and green sub-pixels in their resolution now do you? Similarly, if Apple wants to claim millions of colors for these displays, they should note that this feature decreases the perceived resolution of the display. You can't have it both ways. If you are going to quote the perceived color space at me, you should also quote the perceived resolution. I am not sure how you'd put an absolute figure on the decreased resolution, but you are not getting the full resolution of the display when dithering.

All in all I am quite happy in my choice to purchase a ThinkPad. Apple has been pulling this crap for ages, putting substandard components in computers that are sold for a premium. I paid a premium for the ThinkPad, but I got a full 24 bit display.

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

>so they don't display millions of colours any more than a newspaper displays more than 4 (CMYK)

Any more than any lcd display shows more than 3 (RGB).

Re:Err...

[UnknowingFool]

Professional artists do make up Apple's customer base; however, there is a clear delineation of products. I don't think that the MacBooks should be part of the suit by that logic then. They are clearly part of Apple's consumer line. If someone bought a MacBook Pro, they may have more reason to gripe.

Re:Err...

[metamatic]

(like who a hard drive isnt EXACTLY the size thats claimed)

The hard drive thing is different, though. Hard drives are exactly the size claimed. The problem there was that the people complaining were using non-standard definitions of the units in question for historical reasons.

Re:Err...

[dorianh49]

If the human eye THINKS it sees a supermodel after the human gullet has downed several containers of a certain beverage while frequenting a certain establishment, waking up the next morning in a certain puddle of human regurgitation, does that mean that it ACTUALLY is?

Re:Err...

[aussie_a]

being pedantic is more important in legal matters and advertising Maybe in the current law, but I think the spirit of the law is more important then the letter, whereas pedantics will disagree.

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean sure that level of pedanticism is tolerated in some forums

I think you mean pedantry

Re:Err...

[aussie_a]

The reason dithering is bad is because many people (including myself) can see dithering quite easily Then TFA's wrong and my point is moot. My apologies :)

Re:Err...

[ronadams]

You just like ruining my fun, or what? :(

Yes, you're correct, of course. Interpolation is correct. I was being deceptive, and you caught me. Btw, I just recently noticed they've gone to listing the optical resolution now... good deal.

Re:Err...

[gnasher719]

'' And this isn't being pedantic - surely it's long established that "number of colours" refers to the number of possible colours an individual pixel can display, and not using tricks like dithering? ''

Doesn't make any sense. On an LCD screen, one third of the pixels is capable of displaying either 64 or 256 shades of red, another third of the pixels is capable of displaying either 64 or 256 shades of green, and the last third of the pixels is capable of displaying either 64 or 256 shades of blue. Fortunately, an LCD screen has three times as many pixels than the advertised number.

Re:Err...

[Penguin's Advocate]

...I can't tell the difference between the two pictures =(

Is this a dirty trick, are my eyes bad, or is it just my brand new Dell LCD is somehow incapable of displaying the better image correctly?

Re:Err...

[AwaxSlashdot]

Dithering can add a 'blur' factor, since it's not an exact representation, which also causes a loss in image accuracy. Except for temporal dithering.

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you forgot the full-stop (period for you 'merkins) '.' at the end of your sentence.

eg: I think you mean pedantry.

Re:Err...

[dave420]

Well, the "industry standard" doesn't really matter. If the screen manufacturers sold them to apple as true colour, then they're at fault as well. That doesn't clear apple of any blame of false advertising. No-one can say apple isn't aware of what they're selling, even if their suppliers aren't selling it accurately.

Re:Err...

[gfxguy]

I agree with you, but lawsuits are often very nit-picky. Adverstised as "millions of colors" is still advertised as "millions of colors".

It's not exactly like the "suit does not enable user to fly" labels on Batman costumes, these users aren't THAT dumb, but if I bought a $1000 car that said "450HP", I'd expect 450HP, even if you couldn't reasonably expect that much HP in a $1000 car... otherwise it's false adverstising.

It reminds me of the days when manufacturers didn't have to tell you the visible portion of the monitor. They could sell you what they called a 17" monitor and it would only have 15.5" visible because they counted what went under the bevel. No one reasonably bought a 17" CRT expecting to actually get 17" of screen space... on the other hand, someone obviously made an issue out of it, which is why they started saying "17 inches, X.X visisble."

And it was a good thing to inform the user.

If Apple (and others) need to start saying "262K colors enanced to appear as millions of colors", or something, I think it's beneficial to the consumer.

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that going to get laughed right out of the courtroom? I mean sure that level of pedanticism is tolerated in some forums, but this is a court of law. Surely the judge is going to say a dignified version of "What the fuck are you on? Get the fuck out of here." Pedantry, natch.

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine you're told your new expensive laptop, by *Apple* (a brand mostly known as going for component quality since designers work with it), will have have display quality like the second square.

But instead you see display quality like the first square.

If you think it's a laughing matter, I want to see you persuade those unfortunate Mac owners join the laugh.

Working at an Apple store, I can tell you exactly how many times I've been asked how many colors a display will show:

ZERO

And yes, I've sold to people who intend to do graphic work on their machines. This is a NON-ISSUE. Something that 99.999999% of people will never notice, unless it's called to their attention. If Apple wanted, I'm sure they could buy displays that can do true 24 bit color. But then people would piss and moan Apple's laptops are so expensive... what's so good about them? then, people who knew the difference would answer So you can see millions of colors properly. At this time, windows people would chime in and say Well, Windows has had a slider for years that would let me bring it up to 16.7 million colors. Apple must be inferior.

This is an industry standard practice. They were offered a refund, which they refused. This sounds like the idiot who bought a MacBook from us, then returned it "Because it wouldn't run SUSE." If you're going to buy a product, research it BEFORE you buy, not after.

Re:Err...

[SeaFox]

Apple is not the only manufacturer to do this. All other laptop manufacturers do it too as the issue is with the LCD itself.

I think part of the problem is all other manufacturers are not Apple. For the difference in price between PC laptops and Mac laptops, I think we [i]should[/i] get a full 8-bit display. Also, if I'm not happy Dell does not make a laptop with an 8-bit display, I can get a Lenovo or Toshiba or whatever that does. It's not like I can go to the [i]other[/i] Macintosh laptop maker and get the product Apple is not offering.

Re:Err...

[Ziwcam]

Is this a dirty trick, are my eyes bad, or is it just my brand new Dell LCD is somehow incapable of displaying the better image correctly?

Not a dirty trick. On my Apple display, I can see the difference quite well. Better call your lawyers...

Re:Err...

[mgabrys_sf]

re:"If the human eye thinks its getting shown millions of colors, it is."

Not so much. Depends on what you're looking at. If I use the gradient tool in Photoshop to create a smooth field of color - LCD screens (all LCD screens I've seen to date - including my Apple Cinema Display 22") I get banding (albiet less severe because of higher rez and better dithering) that I haven't seen since the early 90s. Now - if Apple were clever - they could translate "support for millions of colors" to tube-based external displays which the MacBook does. In fact I use mine closed (to preserve screenlife when it's not on my lap) hooked up to a tube monitor in offices that I do design work for. One client has one of my old monitors and others have piles of them that accumulated when they were replaced by LCDs.

So the big question is - if you're hot to trot on color - why aren't you lugging around a 60lb Sony Trinitron like I am?

Pussy.

Re:Err...

[Lars T.]

Honestly, there's a legitimate point to that. If the advertised specs say that it can display "millions of colors", then there's a reasonable expectation that a given pixel will be able to represent over 1 million colors (most likely 16MiColors, but who's counting?). Yeah, this might seem a little silly, but if you can't deliver then don't promise it. Well, the displays could never ever dispaly more than 1680 * 1050 = 1,764,000 colors (17" MacBook Pro) at the same time anyway.

Re:Err...

[tgibbs]

no, a CRT uses variable intensity for each of the three colors, and each pixel can be one of ~infinite colors on an analog display

Not when driven by a digital computer that uses a finite number of pixels in its frame buffer.

Re:Err...

[Penguin's Advocate]

In America I would call new lawyers to sue my lawyers for not notifying me of my ability to sue for this, and then I would sue for this. I guess I should probably sue the OP too for causing me stress by informing me of a problem I had not yet perceived. O O, and slashdot for posting it, and all of their advertisers for supporting a site that would post such things, and every maker of every component, hardware and software, that allowed me to view this website, thus interfering with my inner peace. If it weren't for the internet, I might go outside more and get exercise and live longer, I think I need to sue the internet.

Re:Err...

[TechnicolourSquirrel]

And this isn't being pedantic - surely it's long established that "number of colours" refers to the number of possible colours an individual pixel can display, and not using tricks like dithering? Actually, by that measure, these 6-bit LCDs might get a pass, since they dither through time not space. In other words, a single individual pixel can be responsible for both colours involved in the dither (by just flashing rapidly through two states). Thus that individual IS displaying a colour not strictly contained in the 6-bit colour space. I would say this is a grey area. But I do think the advertising on these LCDs led people to mistakenly equate this "flashing 18-bit pixel" with a "static 24-bit pixel", so I am in support of the lawsuit but only if it is widened to encompass the entire laptop industry. Bullshit advertising is, actually, bullshit. Who can say otherwise? Let there be consequences.

Re:Err...

[suv4x4]

Working at an Apple store, I can tell you exactly how many times I've been asked how many colors a display will show:

ZERO

And yes, I've sold to people who intend to do graphic work on their machines. This is a NON-ISSUE. Something that 99.999999% of people will never notice, unless it's called to their attention. Something that 99.999999% of people will never notice.

Thanks for jumping in to confirm the "arrogant Apple support guy" claim. So if they won't notice, let's just write millions of colors, right? I've said again and again Apple keeps getting bitten by their own marketing bs, and this just confirms it again.

I've seen lots of monitors, and I work with lots of graphics, and I'd never buy a 6-bit monitor for graphics work. Hell, half of the 8-bit TFT's use colors enhancing filters that skew colors, let alone the 6-bit.

The first thing I ask when I buy a monitor, that's colors depth and the dead pixel policy. Then I proceed to run a few test and confirm the monitor has good colors (and ALL of the colors). I really doubt I'm alone here.

Which puts me on my next point. Your stats seem off. There's 6.7 billion people on earth, if 99.999999% of them can't notice the difference, that's 67 who can. If I and some of the buddies I know (who use PC and care about colors) are subtracted, that makes, let's say, roughly 50 people.

I suppose it's those 50 people that crowded Apple's forums, and few of them started the lawsuit. My, my, how unlucky Apple has been with this story. 50 people in the world to know the difference, and all of them are pissed off Mac owners.

Re:Err...

[Lars T.]

8-bit: 255 red, 255 green, 255 blue + black.
6-bit: 63 red, 63 green, 63 blue + black.

Where do people keep getting this same (bizarrely wrong) math? You get "black" in each of the three channels, so even in your incorrect interpretation of how pixels work, that's 256*3 and 64*3.

Nice try, but a "blue" black is the same color as a "red" black. Actually, black isn't a color, so it's 255*3 and 63*3.

Re:Err...

[Lars T.]

Why do you think it's going to be laughed out of court? Apple have, according to the suit, marketed their machines as suitable for graphic designers and photographers etc., and that their monitors can display "millions of colors". If it turns out that "millions of colors" is really "thousands of colors that are made to appear like millions with dithering techniques", he very much has a case. Apple must not advertise that a product is suitable for purpose X when it is obvious that it is lacking in the most fundamental ways. The questions are: what does "millions of colors" imply, why is it misleading to Apple's target customers, and why does this cause harm Apple's target customers? And: can Apple be blamed for this?

I don't think this is going to get "laughed out of court". As soon as Apple shows that they just quoted the companies they bought the LCDs from, it will.

Re:Err...

[jimstapleton]

true, but if done improperly, that can instead add flicker.

Re:Err...

[Achromatic1978]

You are obviously unaware that it is very well known that Apple ROUTINELY deletes entire threads on the support forums about defective hardware?

Re:Err...

[Achromatic1978]

So what? The LCD manufacturer is not forcing Apple to misleadingly advertise the display built from their components as being able to display 16.7 million colors when they can only display 262,000 colors.

Re:Err...

[Pax00]

so then what you are saying is that since the eye can only see around 24 frames per second then there is no need to have anything higher then that on a first person shooter.

when it comes the graphics industry we need to know that a pixel is really a certain color, not the pixels around this area make a certain color. when transferring from screen to print we have to accept that there is going to be some color changes, these color changes are easier to predict and deal with if the screen is giving us an exact color, and thus possible to even print without any color change. but if the screen is telling us that that color is black and we print and it is really a green, then that can waste several hundred dollars or more, not just in our cost of inks but in the cost of time it will take to attempt to make sure that the color really is black.

those 16 million colors better be there.

Re:Err...

[Achromatic1978]

Unhappy clients because his editing work was suboptimal due to Apple's monitor not performing as advertised and expected?

Re:Err...

[stewbacca]

Obviously you are right, because no graphic designers or photographers are buying Macbooks. I mean, all those Macbook sales must be to teenagers with camera phones and myspace accounts for their "graphic design"? Or, more realistically, a LAPTOP computer used by a photographer for its PORTABILITY doesn't really need the best display. That's what all those huge 30" Cinema Displays on the desk are for. Either Apple is snowing the consumer, or the consumer doesn't care (my bet is don't care). The display on my Macbook is good enough for the price point and I really don't notice much difference compared to my other computers.

Re:Err...

[stewbacca]

If Apple (and others) need to start saying "262K colors enanced to appear as millions of colors", or something, I think it's beneficial to the consumer.

So YOU are the reason my McDonald's coffee warns me of hot contents! Can I thank you for the notice that cigarettes cause cancer? How about the notice that alchohol impairs my ability to operate machinery? Gee, thanks for looking out for me!

Re:Err...

[wass]

I'm no lawyer, but much of the original 26-page lawsuit is pretty ridiculous. Ie, the lawsuit does not only quote Wikipedia as evidence but also a French Mac rumor site as well. They claim that according to the French rumor site, Apple stopped display production for some time which implies it knew about the dithering issue, yet they continued to market the product.

The basis of the whole lawsuit seems pretty ridiculous to me. What I'd really like to know (and I didn't find it in the lawsuit itself, maybe I skimmed it too fast) is if the two guys that contacted the lawyers for this class action lawsuit contacted Apple directly and tried to get their money back first.

Hell, maybe 10 years ago I bought a Western Digital hard drive that was defective and obviously didn't work as advertised. Did I complain and launch a class action lawsuit against Western Digital? No, I got a refund and then bought a larger hard drive from another company.

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't read anything about this in the Apple forums.

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh what a bunch of pedantic bullshit.

If you wanted to get *really* technical, why not just point out that every last LCD panel ever made is only capable of displaying 3 colors? Red, green, and blue. Nobody bitches about that do they? Why? Because your eye blends them together to form a color picture. Same thing with dithering. Turns out you can do 6bit dithering in the temporal domain with an LCD that has 8bit registers. There isn't a human on this planet that can tell the difference between the two. By design. These displays can generate 16.7 million colors, within the limits of human vision, just fine.

These are just trial lawyer wanks. Carry on.

Re:Err...

[greg_barton]

Imagine you're told your new expensive laptop, by *Apple* (a brand mostly known as going for component quality since designers work with it), will have have display quality like the second square.

The left square has banding, the right square does not.

This is on my MacBook Pro display, btw.

Re:Err...

[slightly99]

I mean sure that level of pedanticism is tolerated in some forums

It's pedantry, actually...

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be such an ass. There's a huge difference between knowing that coffee is hot and how LCDs work.

Re:Err...

[Lehk228]

that is a limitation of the signal source, not the monitor.

Re:Err...

[noidentity]

"[...] the displays are only capable of displaying 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."

Isn't that going to get laughed right out of the courtroom?

I'm sorry, I don't understand the language. I don't really understand what a pixel is. Could you explain it again?

Re:Err...

[tgibbs]

that is a limitation of the signal source, not the monitor.

I don't think that the user much cares at what stage the limitation arises. There is no instance in which a computer display, whether implemented with digital or analog technology, provides other than a finite number of colors.

Re:Err...

[poot_rootbeer]

surely it's long established that "number of colours" refers to the number of possible colours an individual pixel can display, and not using tricks like dithering?

I don't know that it has.

Consider the classic tri-color cathode ray tube. It cannot actually display the color white, or orange or yellow or purple. The only colors that the phosphors can glow are red, blue, and green. It's only by illuminating tightly-packed adjacent phosphors that the perception of other colors is possible.

Perhaps Apple will offer a similar argument in defense of their LCDs. Perhaps it will be accepted, perhaps not. At this point I don't think it's obvious which way the suit should be decided.

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

dithered images are not true-colour, so they don't display millions of colours any more than a newspaper displays more than 4 (CMYK)

Same with LCDs and CRTs. Red, green, and blue are just three colors. The rest is created by illusion.

Re:Err...

[UnknowingFool]

I think your argument about the price difference still reflects that continuing myth that Apple machines are more expensive than PCs for no good reason. They are more expensive because they have more features. In most cases the PC laptop is cheaper because it uses a cheaper processor, has less RAM, has less HD, does not have Bluetooth, etc. Suggesting that Apple offer a more expensive display without increasing the price is like asking a Lexus dealership to through in a navigation system free because it so much more than a Toyota.

Re:Err...

[goldenratiophi]

"Here, judge, I'm going to show you a few screens and I want you to count the colours you see..."

Re:Err...

[legirons]

By that argument, a black and white monitor is capable of millions of colours, since each pixel can be black or white, so if you look at the whole screen through a blurry filter, you can adjust the apparent greyness of the entire screen by turning pixels on or off.

That would never work though, people would just say "yeah it has more colours, but you only have one effective pixel therefore your pixel count in the brochure is misleading"

Same thing here. If you need more than one pixel to display the advertised number of colours, then the advertised number of pixels is false.

Re:Err...

[edwdig]

I think part of the problem is that Apple makes the OS and the hardware. You've got the OS telling you it's displaying millions of colors when Apple knows the hardware isn't really doing it.

With other manufacturers, they don't have much control over the OS, so there isn't as much integration, therefore, lower expectations.

Re:Err...

[edwdig]

The red, green, and blue components are subpixels. Combined, they make a pixel. It's taken advantage of in subpixel text antialiasing.

Re:Err...

[nbritton]

Dude, it's quite easy to tell one from the other. Unless I suppose you have eye problem.

It's near impossible to tell the difference on a CRT (19", 1280x1024, 32-bit) without zooming in.

Re:Err...

[iangoldby]

On my MacBook Pro, both squares initially looked smooth.
But when I started dragging the window around, I noticed that there was clear banding on the left square, and very slight banding on the right square. The banding on the left square flickered while I was moving the window. The right square did not flicker.

Well, on blowing up the images, I see that the first one is dithered with a crude regular spatial dither. The second uses no dithering. I guess that means that my MacBook Pro display is doing some dithering though much less noticable than that on the left image. The flickering when I move the image is due to interference as the image's dithering and the screen's dithering going into and out of registration with each other.

Re:Err...

[Midnight Thunder]

I think part of the problem is that Apple makes the OS and the hardware. You've got the OS telling you it's displaying millions of colors when Apple knows the hardware isn't really doing it.

The hardware might not really be doing it, but the hardware is telling the system it is really doing it. The systems tells the user what the hardware is telling it. Certainly this is not an excuse, but is the approach of dithering any more different that three different coloured sub-pixels (RGB) creating the illusion of a single colour any more different?

Re:Err...

[jsebrech]

It's near impossible to tell the difference on a CRT (19", 1280x1024, 32-bit) without zooming in.

It's dead-easy for me to see the difference on my 17' CRT monitor (1184x878, 32-bit). Your retina are probably not sensitive enough to color variations, or your monitor is calibrated poorly.

Just because you can't see it doesn't mean no one else can. I am convinced that a lot of people do find the 6-bit dithering to be a major visual annoyance, and that this is not a matter of being picky. Back in the days that all screens were CRT and all refresh rates 70 hz or below I had the same issue with flicker, where it was a major annoyance for me that all screens flickered like crazy, and other people just couldn't tell.

Re:Err...

[suv4x4]

It's near impossible to tell the difference on a CRT (19", 1280x1024, 32-bit) without zooming in.

It's expected. A CRT will blur the adjacent pixels and create a smoother images. This is also the reason why when I moved to a TFT and browsed the sites I've done, I noticed I've set the JPG compression on plenty of the images too low, which used to look good on a CRT. On TFT though.. the artifacts were painfully obvious.

Re:Err...

[z-j-y]

if the FPU in your example is advertised as supporting "hundreds of bits", a programmer might be a little cautious before buying it.

Re:Err...

[mdwh2]

So YOU are the reason my McDonald's coffee warns me of hot contents! Can I thank you for the notice that cigarettes cause cancer? How about the notice that alchohol impairs my ability to operate machinery? Gee, thanks for looking out for me!

As well as the point that the anonymous coward made, there is also the point that these are warnings, and not to do with informing the customer what they are getting.

Would it be okay for me to sell you coffee that was cold? After all, it's still coffee.

Re:Err...

[mdwh2]

Thanks for the information, I hadn't realised it was dithering with respect to time.

If the outcome of this case is that manufacturers have to inform customers whether it's 6 bit with dithering, or 8 bit, I don't think that's a bad thing.

The fact that you hadn't noticed this is a pretty good argument that this type of dithering isn't really false advertising.

But I'm not the one suing them - I've never used a laptop for any graphics work. But that doesn't mean that someone else, perhaps someone doing professional graphics work, won't notice.

Re:Err...

[mdwh2]

Fortunately, an LCD screen has three times as many pixels than the advertised number.

And this is the important point - if a manufacturer wants to advertise thousands/millions of colours rather than 3*64 or 3*256, then when it comes to advertising the resolution, they have to count 3 sub-pixels as being 1 pixel. They can't have it both ways, and claim thousands/millions of colours, as well as a resolution three times greater.

Similarly, it would be fair to take into account dithering when advertising the numbers of colours, if the advertised screen resolution was reduced accordingly.

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you get from "millions of colors" (the advertisement) to "16.7 million colors"?

Re:Err...

[toddestan]

Exactly. Just look at the higher quality screens that Apple puts in their laptops. Oh wait...

And if you haven't noticed, Apple laptops generally don't have more ram, CPU, etc. than their PC counterparts. The main justification for the higher price is gimmicky stuff like a built in camera, backlit keyboard, magnetic power connector, and stuff like that.

Re:Err...

[j-turkey]

Thanks for the math lesson, but I do understand the definitions ;)

The difference between 262,144 "actual" and 16.2 million via dithering is the crux of the lawsuit in TFA.

Right on. I missed that dithering boosts claims up to 16.2 million. My bad. :)

Re:Err...

[Cocoshimmy]

I completely agree with your argument. Stripping the last 2 bits of every colour results in very noticable banding and can produce unexpected visual results. Instead of being able to display 8-bits for each of RGB it's now 8-bits so instead of 16.7million colours its 262k. Big difference especially if you just dropped $2000 on a 32" panel or a similar amount on a macbook.

I just don't agree with first analogy. The human eye can see closer to 60fps if not more. If you play a FPS at 24fps then the same one at 60fps, you'll definately notice a difference in terms of smoothness. Additionally, flickering of fluorescent lights is noticable at 60hz and when on crt's around 75hz which makes me think that one can notice the difference even at higher frame rates.

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that "gimicky stuff" still costs money to put in, so you're still not going to get an 8 bit screen without either paying more, or sacrificing other features.

Also, PC to Mac comparisons usually go like this.

PC Fanboi: Macs are expensive!
Apple Fainboi: No they're not, they about the same as an equivalent PC.
PF: Yes they are - see, I can get a $400 Dell, where's the $400 Apple?
AF: But that Dell doesn't have all the features the Apple does.
PF: But Apples suck, this Dell (not the $400 one), has a $1000 video card in it, do apples have $1000 video cards? No? Then Apples suck.
AF: *headdesk*

Re:Err...

[toddestan]

Well that "gimicky stuff" still costs money to put in, so you're still not going to get an 8 bit screen without either paying more, or sacrificing other features.

It's not like Apple's laptops are using high DPI displays. You would think that they could spend a few more dollars and give the users a better display for the money they are spending, but whatever. But if they don't that's fine too. They just shouldn't claim that they do.

By the way, I've seen PC to Mac comparisons more like this:

PC Fanboi: Macs are expensive!
Apple Fainboi: No they're not, they about the same as an equivalent PC.
PF: Well, I can get a PC with this W, X, Y, and Z for $xxxx. I'd pay hundreds more for the Mac that has that, and I'd still be giving up Z.
AF: But does that PC have useless features A, B, and C? The cheapest PC I see with useless features A, B, and C is more expensive than the Mac!
PF: ....

Re:Err...

[edwdig]

The hardware might not really be doing it, but the hardware is telling the system it is really doing it. The systems tells the user what the hardware is telling it.

The OS knows what the video card is capable of and operates based on that. In these cases, the monitor is asking the video card for a 24 bit signal and then dithering it. Only the monitor circuitry knows that it's happening.

Certainly this is not an excuse, but is the approach of dithering any more different that three different coloured sub-pixels (RGB) creating the illusion of a single colour any more different?

Yes, it is. The 3 subpixel approach works because that's how your high works. Your eye has receptors in the red, green, and blue wavelengths. Unless you're a female with a pair of the right recessive genes, in which case you have a 4th receptor somewhere between the others...

BTW, I've used similar techniques on the GBA & DS, turning sprites on and off each video frame, to get a semi-transparent effect. It works well enough, but it's noticeably inferior to actually displaying the proper colors.

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for jumping in to confirm the "arrogant Apple support guy" claim. So if they won't notice, let's just write millions of colors, right? I've said again and again Apple keeps getting bitten by their own marketing bs, and this just confirms it again.

Glad I could help confirm your stereotype of an Apple employee. It's not "marketing BS". I was unaware of the fact that laptop screens have 6-bit displays (18-bit?). But, I can tell you honestly that if someone were to ask me tomorrow, I'd answer honestly. The intent with claiming millions of colors isn't to deceive. But it seems you've already made your mind up about this subject. You think what Apple did is wrong, and what for every other laptop manufacturer? Conveniently ignored in your post.

The first thing I ask when I buy a monitor, that's colors depth and the dead pixel policy. Then I proceed to run a few test and confirm the monitor has good colors (and ALL of the colors). I really doubt I'm alone here.

If you walked into my store and asked about the dead pixel policy, you wouldn't be the first. But if you walked in asking "Is this laptop display 18 or 24 bit?" then you most certainly WOULD be the first. But, I would do my best to answer your question honestly.

Which puts me on my next point. Your stats seem off. There's 6.7 billion people on earth, if 99.999999% of them can't notice the difference, that's 67 who can. If I and some of the buddies I know (who use PC and care about colors) are subtracted, that makes, let's say, roughly 50 people.

I suppose it's those 50 people that crowded Apple's forums, and few of them started the lawsuit. My, my, how unlucky Apple has been with this story. 50 people in the world to know the difference, and all of them are pissed off Mac owners.

You're right. My numbers are off. There's a reason for that. I pulled them out of my behind to illustrate a point. But you're choosing to ignore the point I'm trying to make, and instead pick apart a number. You want a little more ammunition? Let's change that number to 99%.

My point was that the majority of people buying these machines are NOT going to notice, and wouldn't care enough to pay extra for a laptop with a true 24 bit display. Of the small percentage of people who WOULD notice the difference, I'm willing to bet that many of them still would not be willing to pay the extra amount of money for a true 24 bit display.

Re:Err...

[mibus]

A pixel will flicker between two different shades at a frequency high enough to be almost invisible, creating the illusion of a shade in between.

Some older PalmPilots could do this to fake greyscale support on a B&W LCD, too. Very nifty, but prone to making the screen "shimmer" with the lighter shades.

Re:Err...

[stewbacca]

Sell me cold coffee, claiming it is hot when it is not, and I stop buying your coffee. The same thing would happen to Apple if this lawsuit were legitimate. Considering Mac portables make up 50% of all Apple sales, and Mac portables outgrew the market by 30%, I would guess people aren't too disappointed with the displays.

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

> So YOU are the reason my McDonald's coffee warns me of hot contents!

No, this is the reason:

``Before trial, McDonald's gave the opposing lawyer its operations and training
    manual, which says its coffee must be brewed at 195 to 205 degrees and held
    at 180 to 190 degrees for optimal taste. ''

Re:Err...

[UnknowingFool]

And if you haven't noticed, Apple laptops generally don't have more ram, CPU, etc. than their similarly priced PC counterparts.

There I fixed your statement for you. Without all the "gimmicky stuff" the price differential is maybe $100. Can someone list a PC with similar specifications to a Mac that is substantially cheaper? I could be wrong but all the laptop pricing I've done says no. Remember, sales do not count.

Re:Err...

[toddestan]

There I fixed your statement for you. Without all the "gimmicky stuff" the price differential is maybe $100. Can someone list a PC with similar specifications to a Mac that is substantially cheaper?

Thinkpad (Lenovo) R61
14.1" Widescreen @ 1440x900
2.2Ghz Core 2 Duo
1GB Memory
120GB 5400RPM drive
nVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M
DVD-RW
Vista Ultimate
Wi-Fi & Bluetooth
Even includes a camera (can be removed if you want, it's a $23 option)
$1414.92

Macbook Pro:
15" Widescreen @ 1440x900
2.16Ghz Core 2 Duo
1GB Memory
120GB 5400RPM drive
ATI Mobility Radeon X1600
DVD-RW
OSX 10.4
Wi-Fi & Bluetooth
Camera
$1999

I would call over $550 savings substantial.

Remember, sales do not count.

Sales certainly can count, as ultimately the important thing is how much you pay for it. Apple may almost never run a sale, but that's their problem.

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine you're told your new expensive laptop, by *Apple* (a brand mostly known as going for component quality since designers work with it), will have have display quality like the second square.

Funny. I just opened that page on my MacBook, and I spotted the difference immediately.

Re:Err...

[Criton]

Yes you could trick an OCS/ECS amiga into representing more then 4096 colors or an apple II or C64 more then 16 if you used dithering but they didn't advertised it could display more because dithering is not the same as truly have x number of shades and doesn't look as good. Heck they were even truthful in the AGA chipset having only 256,000 colors since that was the number of pixels available in the high color depth. I can only see their advertisement of the 6bit per channel display being 24bit because of dithering as truthful only when displaying a resolution lower then the LCD's native resolution such as 800x600 or 640x480. The dithering will tend to make things look blocky and banded this is esp bad in production work.

Re:Err...

[UnknowingFool]

1) The Lenovo is cheaper but it's got a smaller smaller so I don't think that's a fair comparison. The screen is 14.1" and I don't think it was a widescreen.

2) Sales prices don't count because it's not a fair baseline comparison. Apple do have sales and discounts. I can argue that a Porche is cheaper than a Toyota because I happen to get one that some guy was liqudating in a divorce but that doesn't make the statement generally true. If you don't count the sales price, the Lenovo is $1,654.

3) A better assessment is the Lenovo Thinkpad T60 Widescreen as it has almost identical specs:
Intel® Core(TM) 2 Duo processor T7400 (2.16GHz, 4MB L2, 667MHz FSB)
Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium
15.4 WSXGA+ TFT
ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 128M
1 GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz SODIMM Memory (2 DIMM)
120GB Hard Disk Drive, 5400rpm
DVD Recordable 8x Max Dual Layer, Ultrabay Slim
2,018.00 base price

But there's no bluetooth or camera option mentioned.

Re:Err...

[toddestan]

1) The Lenovo is cheaper but it's got a smaller smaller so I don't think that's a fair comparison. The screen is 14.1" and I don't think it was a widescreen.

They are both 1440x900 resolution widescreens. Sure, the Lenovo screen is smaller, but that means a smaller laptop, which is a good thing in my opinion.

2) Sales prices don't count because it's not a fair baseline comparison. Apple do have sales and discounts. I can argue that a Porche is cheaper than a Toyota because I happen to get one that some guy was liqudating in a divorce but that doesn't make the statement generally true. If you don't count the sales price, the Lenovo is $1,654.

Well, that would be like going to eBay, I didn't do that. In this case, we are both at their respective manufacturer's web store. The comparison is totally fair.

3) A better assessment is the Lenovo Thinkpad T60 Widescreen as it has almost identical specs:
Intel® Core(TM) 2 Duo processor T7400 (2.16GHz, 4MB L2, 667MHz FSB)
Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium
15.4 WSXGA+ TFT
ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 128M
1 GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz SODIMM Memory (2 DIMM)
120GB Hard Disk Drive, 5400rpm
DVD Recordable 8x Max Dual Layer, Ultrabay Slim
2,018.00 base price

Well, if I wanted to buy that computer, I wouldn't pay $2018, I would pay $1513, an almost $500 savings. And I would have a higher resolution screen at 1680x1050 (what's with Apple and low DPI screens anyway?). I'm kind of surprised that there is no camera and bluetooth, but I guess that may be because the R61 is a newer model, and I would guess that the next version of the T series will have those options.

Well great

[cyphercell]

Now all we will have is three color displays, and we won't have any numbers to guage them with.

Re:Well great

[mdwh2]

Now all we will have is three color displays, and we won't have any numbers to guage them with.

But if this is thrown out, we'll have every manufacturer advertising "billions of colours", with no way of measuring how they actually compare.

Knowing the number of colours each pixel can display, together with the screen resolution, is a standard way of comparing graphics displays. But if Apple can get away with this, we'll no longer have a way to compare them.

(Actually, it would be interesting to know what resolution they advertised - the point is that grouping pixels together does gain you more colours, but it effectively does so at the expense of screen resolution. If they advertised millions of colours, but also reduced the advertised resolution, that would be reasonable. But if they didn't, that's an outright lie.)

What next? Perhaps we can start including hard disk sizes in the memory advertised, because of virtual memory?

Re:Well great

[gEvil (beta)]

Now all we will have is three color displays, and we won't have any numbers to guage them with.

That's why I prefer print. At least there you get FOUR colors!

Re:Well great

[rbanffy]

Playing the Devil's advocate, any given pixel on a MacBook display can show 2 ^ 18 distinct colours, which is to say about 262 thousand or a little less than what a human eye can distinguish, but any given _contiguous_screen_region_of_sufficient_size_ can display a lot more dithered colours, so, the display has that advertised number of pixels _and_ is capable of displaying several million colours _at_the_same_time_.

Not that I find it pretty that Apple and the rest of the industry (I doubt my HP notebook has a much better display) keep doing it.

They got Al Capone for tax evasion

[darien]

While this sounds like a ridiculous lawsuit, I have some hope it'll cause Apple to be generally a bit less cavalier with their advertising claims in future. It's one thing to emphasise your product's strengths, but I don't think it's on to mislead punters by going around making implications like "PCs are attacked by 114,000 viruses a year."

Re:They got Al Capone for tax evasion

[Short Circuit]

Your monitor is capable of producing 16,777,216 unique color triads, each approximating a different color. Apple did nothing wrong here.

Re:They got Al Capone for tax evasion

[Anonymous Coward]

NO it's not, because the apple display this lawsuit is about
are 6-bit per component, not 8-bit!

Re:They got Al Capone for tax evasion

[fatphil]

Did you miss the bit where it was explained that the monitors in question were only capable of producing 262,144 unique colour triads, each approximating a different colour? Apple did wrong. It knew it was doing wrong, so it used deliberately inexact weasel wording so they could try and wiggle out of trouble if this kind of objection was raised.

Re:They got Al Capone for tax evasion

[johndesmarais]

(Self professed Mac fan) Well, maybe they did. The suit is partially over advertising claims. http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/graphics.html

"Promote your ideas on the MacBook Pro's dazzling display. An aggressive ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics processor under the hood coupled with up to 256MB of GDDR3 SDRAM powers the mobile visual studio you've been waiting for. Retouch color, edit on location, video conference with colleagues: Do it all, anywhere. MacBook Pro makes your ideas more enlightening, with a sharp, high-resolution screen. See blacker blacks, whiter whites, and many more colors in between on a brilliant 15.4-inch, 1440-by-900-pixel or 17-inch, 1680-by-1050-pixel digital display. Enjoy a nuanced view simply unavailable on other portables." (Emphasis mine) This could well be considered false advertising. JD

Re:They got Al Capone for tax evasion

[Short Circuit]

Actually, I did miss that bit. Thanks for pointing it out.

Dirty lies!

[Romwell]

Let's take it to the extreme: there are only tree colors (R,G and B). And there is no spoon.

Re:Dirty lies!

[Capt James McCarthy]

"Let's take it to the extreme: there are only tree colors (R,G and B). And there is no spoon."

There are only three PRIMARY colors according to the human eye. There are still infinate number of colors between them.

Re:Dirty lies!

[Romwell]

Yeah, my comment doesn't make much sense after actually reading the details of the article =)

Re:Dirty lies!

[myyrk]

Let's take it to the extreme: there are only tree colors (R,G and B). And there is no spoon.

If there are only tree colors would that be Red, Green and Brown?

Re:Dirty lies!

[Romwell]

more like yellow, brown and green - depending on the region and time of the year. I have an excuse of being underslept =)

Re:Dirty lies!

[Anonymous Coward]

there are only tree colors (R,G and B)

I'm going to sue you for implying there are blue trees but not delivering on them.

Re:Dirty lies!

[Xesdeeni]

LCDs have three distinct elements of light for each "pixel." A "24 bit" display assigns 8 bits to each. So there can be no more than 256 levels for each of these three elements.

Yet, I don't see an argument that such a display does not show "millions of colors" when the three elements are viewed together. I don't see anyone making the argument that they can't advertise more than 768 (256 x 3) colors.

So why couldn't the same be said for side-by-side pixels with a dither pattern?

Xesdeeni

Re:Dirty lies!

[C3c6e6]

Errr... Am I missing something in your post? I think you'll find that 3 channels of 256 levels each allows you to create 256^3 (to the 3rd power) = 16777216 different colors!

Re:Dirty lies!

[Anonymous Coward]

it's not 256*3. It's 256*256*256. (16.7M) And that's only with 8 bits per colour.

Re:Dirty lies!

[jae471]

Wood is brown; Tress, OTOH, tend to be gray.

Re:Dirty lies!

[Xesdeeni]

That's my point. If it's accepted that three elements emitting three colors out of 256 combine to give 16M colors, then why isn't it acceptable for six elements (two pixels) emitting six colors out of 64 (256K) to give 2M? Or twelve pixels (4 pixels) giving twelve colors out of 64 (256K) to give 16M?

Xesdeeni

Re:Dirty lies!

[Klinky]

Yes, but the display can physically create that many colors at any instant. With dithering a display has to switch between the lesser color set rapidly to give the impression that there are more colors. The facts are with a 6bit display the most "true-colors" you could ever display at one instant is 262,144. I agree that it's deceptive to tell customer's that their display will show "millions" of colors, when actually it's using dithering which can produce artifacts & flickering. Though Apple isn't the only one to do this, every 6-bit panel maker advertises their panels as being able to display "millions & millions". Sometimes you can tell it's a 6-bit display by them listing 16.2 Million colors instead of 16.7 Million, while others blatantly lie & say they can do 16.7 Million.

Re:Dirty lies!

[Xesdeeni]

I think you are confusing temporal and spatial dithering.

Temporal dithering changes the color between refreshes.

Spatial dithering changes the color of adjacent pixels.

Depending on the display, temporal dithering can indeed claim to be displaying colors between those that are actually being sent to the screen. It's effectively a pulse code modulation scheme that relies on the decay characteristics of the panel. It's the visual equivalent of a 1 bit DAC for audio. And just like audio does indeed move the speaker cone to all of the positions between the 0 and 1 positions, the display really does display the colors between the discrete values.

Even for displays that cannot actually reproduce the colors themselves (e.g. TI's DLP technology), they claim the higher number of colors because they rely on the characteristics of the human eye in the perception of the color on the part of the viewer.

However, for direct-view computer displays, temporal dithering is usually only used with CSTN displays, not TFT. CSTN displays used to be common in laptops for their lower power, but pretty much only TFT LCDs are sold today.

Spatial dithering is the technique used for TFT displays. It uses different colors near one another to produce colors between.

Say you have a 6-bit monochrome display. You can display color intensities from 0% to 100% in steps of about 1.59% (there are 63 steps from 0 to 63).

Say you wanted to display 50% intensity. The closest you could come with 6 bits would be either a value of 31 (49.20%) or 32 (50.79%), both of which have about .80% error. But, if you make every odd pixel 31 and every even pixel 32, you can produce an average color over the display of effectively 31.5 or exactly 50%.

One question is whether the pattern will be noticeable. If you alternated on every other column of the screen, you may find you can see the vertical stripes. But if you shift every other line by one pixel, creating a checkerboard pattern, this usually (in the specific case of the 64 intensities of 6 bits) makes the pattern unnoticeable.

But then you get the objection of this article.

However, what I'm trying to point out is to consider the three elements that make up what we call a pixel. The red, green, and blue elements each can produce 64 intensities. But our eye combines them for an effective 265K colors.

So let's say we call a "pixel" 6 such elements, two red, two green, and two blue. Why is this combination any less valid than just a set of 3? Or what if I combine 12 elements?

The only argument I can see is that we arbitrarily treat a triplet as a "pixel," so the three elements are always together. But even that isn't always the case. Microsoft's (controversial) ClearType breaks up these three elements and uses them to increase the apparent resolution of the screen.

Spatial dithering attempts to go the other way, by combining more sub-elements to create more colors. There is some other precedent in decreasing the color resolution in images (color subsampling) to take advantage of the characteristics of the human visual system. I'm wondering why this is any different.

Xesdeeni

if this goes through

[gEvil (beta)]

If this goes through then it opens the door to lawsuits against nearly all LCD manufacturers, since most displays these days (except for the highest end ones) are 6-bit with dithering...

Re:if this goes through

[simm1701]

I hope it would - when I'm looking at the spec of a screen I'd actually like to know if its 6bit or 8bit - otherwise how can I realistically compare them?

Even a "millions of colours* ...

* Millions of colours are displayed using 6bit per colour and dithering"

would be perfectly acceptable

Implying 24 bit colour when its not is false advertising

Re:if this goes through

[gEvil (beta)]

There is a way to tell by looking at the spec sheet of a monitor. If it says 16.7 million, it's an 8-bit display. If it says 16.2 million, it's 6-bits with dithering.

Re:if this goes through

[simm1701]

So two questions...

Did apple actually give one of these two numbers (they are notorious for giving specs in soft and fluffy terms unless you really really dig)?

Will that stand up in court as a defense if they did?

(and thanks for the info I didn't realise they'd quote 6 bits with dithering as that)

Re:if this goes through

[Jeff DeMaagd]

It's not that simple. I've seen this discussed in other forums, most monitors that are 6-bit are usually not advertised using such stretched language as Apple did. Apple even claims that their displays are higher in quality than can be found in any competing product, which is simply not true.

Re:if this goes through

[alexhs]

You can also argue it's only 3 colors : red, green, and blue (plus black ?).
G=1 and G=255 are actually the same color, but with a different luminosity.

CIE diagrams show colors, at max luminosity. A color being a combination of hue and saturation. This is also this definition of color another poster is suggesting when he writes that the human eye can only see 16000 colors, the eye being able to see millions of shades.
(If you're using 16-bit color on your screen, you should be able to differentiate colors that differ of a unit in some luminosities)

Re:if this goes through

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a way to tell by looking at the spec sheet of a monitor. If it says 16.7 million, it's an 8-bit display. If it says 16.2 million, it's 6-bits with dithering.

That's not a hard and fast rule. Some monitors advertised as 16.7 million colours still use 6-bit panels.

This is definitely a 6-bit panel, yet the spec sheet says 16.7 million colours:
http://www.hyundaiq.com/pro_spec_l90d+.asp

Re:if this goes through

[postmortem]

Yes, makers don't bother to put anything but 16.7mil colors in specs. 8-bit panels are recognized by wider viewing angle (176-178 degrees), or by looking up at the LCD databases that contain mapping model to particular panel.

Re:if this goes through

[Anonymous Coward]

See for instance http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/graphics.html :

Promote your ideas on the MacBook Pro's dazzling display. An aggressive ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics processor under the hood coupled with up to 256MB of GDDR3 SDRAM powers the mobile visual studio you've been waiting for. Retouch color, edit on location, video conference with colleagues: Do it all, anywhere. 15.4 and 17 inch display Everything is illuminated

MacBook Pro makes your ideas more enlightening, with a sharp, high-resolution screen. See blacker blacks, whiter whites, and many more colors in between on a brilliant 15.4-inch, 1440-by-900-pixel or 17-inch, 1680-by-1050-pixel digital display. Enjoy a nuanced view simply unavailable on other portables.

Re:if this goes through

[Just Some Guy]

If it says 16.7 million, it's an 8-bit display. If it says 16.2 million, it's 6-bits with dithering.

Out of curiosity, how did they come up with 16.2 million? That's close enough to 16.7 million that I can't figure which numbers they must be multiplying to get it.

Yeah, I know I could look it up, but I imagine other people are also wondering.

Re:if this goes through

[Knuckles]

Apple even claims that their displays are higher in quality than can be found in any competing product, which is simply not true.

Call me weird, but it seems to me that most advertisements claim that the product they want to sell is better as the competitors, and this very often is not true.

Re:if this goes through

[Jeff DeMaagd]

That's true to an extent, but most of the other marketing I see don't stretch the truth as much as Apple's marketing does.

Re:if this goes through

[Nowhere.Men]

Note that they are not talking about the number of color available.

Re:if this goes through

[Anonymous Coward]

(63*4+1)^3 vs 256^3

Re:if this goes through

[stewbacca]

Man, I can't live without those other .5 million pixels!

Re:if this goes through

[Lars T.]

You forgot question three: how did they come up wit the .5 million colors difference.

Re:if this goes through

[bluephone]

Someone else said this, but I still don't get it. How the hell do you get 16.2 million from 6 bits per channel?it's 262k colors, not 16.2, so even claiming 16.2 is still a lie. Does the math with dithering using 6 bits somehow work out to 16.2, which just happens to be close to 16.7? Seriously, I don't get it, I'm not trolling. I want someone to educate me here.

Re:if this goes through

[gnasher719]

'' Out of curiosity, how did they come up with 16.2 million? That's close enough to 16.7 million that I can't figure which numbers they must be multiplying to get it. ''

Six bit with dithering gives you values from 0 to 63 with 1/4 resolution in each component, that is 253 different levels. 253 x 253 x 253 = 16.2 million.

Re:if this goes through

[Anonymous Coward]

But Intel told me it was a 64-bit computer!

Wait what?

[WarlockD]

So...they going to sue Paramount because its not "moving pictures" but 24 still images a second?

Why aren't they going after LCD manufactures?

Re:Wait what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Never Ending Story. I ask you!

Lionel Hutz

This would be like....

[aussie_a]

Sueing a car dealership who says they have "hundreds of cars to choose from" when it turns out they only have a hundred cars to choose from and a hundred SUV's to choose from, as SUV's aren't cars but vehicles. It'd also get thrown out I think.

Re:This would be like....

[El_Muerte_TDS]

That sounds like a plot for an 80s b-movie. I think "Used Cars" would be a suitable title, staring Kurt Russell.

Re:This would be like....

[DJCacophony]

I think you are confusing cars with sedans. SUVs are indeed cars.

Re:This would be like....

[fatphil]

No it's more like suing a car dealership that says they have hundreds of models of car to chose from, but in reality has only 64 cars to chose from but you can buy them pre-owned or new, and you can pay up front or get a credit deal.

This may be industry-wide, as it appears 6-bit displays are very common, but it certainly appears to be to be false advertising. 'millions of colours' has always implied 24-bit in the PC world.

Re:This would be like....

[penp]

If you really need a car analogy, it's more like suing a car dealer that told you that the v6 car you bought will drive as good as a v8 as long as you wear racing gloves.

Re:This would be like....

[jae471]

But the federal government says they're "light trucks," and therefore have less stringent mpg requirements.

Re:This would be like....

[DJCacophony]

Light trucks are also cars. Car is synonymous with simply "automobile".

Technically, they're right.

[Short Circuit]

Your average display can only show 768 unique colors. However, our eyes blend them so that you see white instead of a combination of red, green and blue. Some displays support 16-bit shading, but I don't know if that's available in an RGB format or just a black-and-white format.

And while "dithering" is usually used to refer to pixels, as opposed to subpixels, the same principle applies.

This result of this case will have less to do with the technical merits of the display, and more to do with common practice and practical use.

Re:Technically, they're right.

[mwvdlee]

768 unique colors... wait... are you just adding together three 256-level RGB subpixels?
So I guess eight (a byte) 2-levels (a bit) make for only 16 possible combinations?

Re:Technically, they're right.

[Just Some Guy]

Your average display can only show 768 unique colors.

Assuming a worst-case scenario of 6-bit R, G, and B values, you're off by a factor of about 340. An old Amiga could display 4096 colors onscreen at once, and I assure you it looked nothing like today's 24-bit (or 18-bit LCD) displays.

Re:Technically, they're right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please tell me you didn't come up with 768 by adding 256 three times!
That doesn't make any sense, that's not how you calculate the
number of combinations

the issue of dithering makes a HUGE difference, it lowers the effective resolution of your screen

Re:Technically, they're right.

[Sparr0]

Your parent is referring to the fact that the R, G, and B elements on a LCD are distinct. Each one can show 256 different shades. Sub-pixel rendering in software actually takes advantage of this, stealing 1/3 of a pixel off the sides of adjacent pixels to get better rendering. Mixing 3 elements of different colors to get a white spot is no different than what Apple is doing... EXCEPT that LCD's arent advertised with R+G+B resolution, each group of 3 elements is counted as a single pixel. Apple combined elements WITHOUT decreasing the resolution.

Re:Technically, they're right.

[Short Circuit]

If you don't blend the color triads, you get 256 shades of red, 256 shades of blue and 256 shades of green. 768 shades in total.

However, blending the color triads allows those 768 shades to approximate 16.7 million colors. That's how modern displays work, to my knowledge.

Re:Technically, they're right.

[Short Circuit]

That doesn't make any sense, that's not how you calculate the
number of combinations I didn't say "combinations", I said "colors". If the plaintiffs wanted to argue about actual colors displayed, they could take the same approach.

Re:Technically, they're right.

[Just Some Guy]

Your parent is referring to the fact that the R, G, and B elements on a LCD are distinct. Each one can show 256 different shades.

Well, I've heard (but can't verify) that LCDs more typically have 6 bits (64 shades) of each. Forgetting subpixel trickery, that's 256KiColors of pixels, which is several hundred times more than the 768 he claimed.

Re:Technically, they're right.

[egomaniac]

That "whoosh" you just heard was the comment going over your head.

To be absolutely precise, it's not even 768 colors, it's 766. 255 shades of red, 255 shades of green, 255 shades of blue, and black. Everything else is accomplished via dithering. White is really a dithered pattern of red, green, and blue sub-pixels.

So really, the only difference between subpixel dithering and pixel dithering is the fact that pixels are bigger than subpixels.

Re:Technically, they're right.

[mwvdlee]

That's pretty much how CRT works too.
That's actually pretty much how your eyes register color.

Re:Technically, they're right.

[Just Some Guy]

To be absolutely precise, it's not even 768 colors, it's 766. 255 shades of red, 255 shades of green, 255 shades of blue, and black.

Or, more accurately, 768 (256 of each, including black). But since the basic unit of a display is the pixel, you can't just add them together; they're taken as a whole and you have to multiply them.

Re:Technically, they're right.

[Sparr0]

No, 6 bits per element would give you only 190 different colors. 64 shades of red, including black, and 63 shades of green and blue, not including the presumably identical black. To get 256Ki colors you have to dither those 190 colors. That is what *ALL* color monitors do. The issue here is that if I have a monitor with 1 red element, 1 blue element, and 1 green element, all 8-bit, I can advertise it as a 3 element display with 766 colors, or a 1 element display with 16Mi colors. What I can't do is advertise it as a 3 element display with "millions of colors", which is what Apple did. They claimed the base 18-bit resolution, but then made color claims based on combining adjacent elements to make more colors.

Re:Technically, they're right.

[egomaniac]

Again, it's 766, not 768. Zero-intensity red, zero-intensity green, and zero-intensity blue are all the same color - black. You don't get to count it three times.

And the "basic unit of a display" is arguable. Under a magnifying glass, you'll only find red, green, and blue.

Re:Technically, they're right.

[toddestan]

Actually, you get 766 colors. The 0 shade of red, the 0 shade of green, and the 0 shade of blue are all actually the same color, better known as black.

Sounds like...

[monkeyboythom]

a dithering blonde to me.

I'd Be Mad

[MBCook]

I've got a PowerBook G4. I can tell you that I expect it has millions of colors on the screen (it was advertized as such). If I upgraded and spent $2-$3k on new MacBook Pro and found it could only display 262k colors, I would be REALLY mad. I'd jump on this suit. I really like Apple, but this really surprises me if it's true. I'd be surprised if it was Dell or Lenovo or Gateway, but I'd never guess Apple would do this.

I hope they get cleared, or get whats comming to them for this.

Re:I'd Be Mad

[mosch]

I have bad news for you. Your Powerbook has 262k colors.

The MacBook displays weren't a regression in quality, they were a continuation of an exceptionally long-standing practice.

Maybe we'll see 8-bit displays in some future revision, but until now, it's been a cost issue, and Apple was smart enough to realize that if the entire industry is using 6-bit displays, they can do it too.

Re:I'd Be Mad

[FlyingSquidStudios]

I know exactly what you mean. Sometimes it looks like my monitor is showing R:254 B:36 G:112 but it's actually R:255 B:36 G:112. You can so totally tell. Someone get my lawyer! I want $12 million in punitive damages!

Re:I'd Be Mad

[Thumper_SVX]

Bad news, mate... it's true. I've tested my Macbook Pro display using a nice little tool called LCDTest (google it). If you do the gradient test, there's a distinct "banding" effect caused by the dithering, and for all the colors there's a large section of the gradient that doesn't display (i.e. it shows one single shade). This is most apparent on red for me, but that will depend no your own visual acuity in specific color bands.

I'd jump in on this suit, too... but for right now I'll monitor and email my support to those filing the lawsuit. Thankfully if I have to do color-sensitive stuff I have a high-end 8-bit LCD that I can hook up to my MBP, but it would be nice to be able to do some of that work on the road. At the moment I have to wait to do the color-sensitive stuff until I get home. I'm just an amateur photographer and videographer... if I were doing it professionally then I'd be cheesed off at having bought my MBP... but I have to say that as a general purpose computer this MBP is still the best laptop I've ever owned.

Now, for those who are saying it's not a big deal because everyone else in the industry does it; well that's just dandy. However, not everyone else in the industry deliberately targets the photography, layout and videography markets like Apple does. Their product is specifically (and aggressively) marketed to exactly those markets who would be most sensitive to the lack of color on their laptop displays. However, having said that the professionals I know in the market (I work with them a lot) all tend to use external CRTs attached to Mac Pros because their color gamut is so much better than any LCD, even 8-bit. They also tend to pitch those monitors after 6 months because they do degrade over time. The oldest monitor I've seen in any of these places is about 2 years old. You'll also find that most of the time these people work in deliberately darkened offices where they can focus on the colors on the screen, the environment also plays a big part in doing this work. As a result, laptops are not common with the high-end professionals unless they're a second computer for "office tasks".

It sounds like these people are really "needy", but that's not necessarily true. They really do need the high end stuff to do their jobs effectively. In IT and in offices we often say that the needs of the users have been significantly surpassed by the capabilities of their computers years ago. The only place where there's an exception is in precisely this market; the technology still hasn't caught up with the needs of these people.

I love Apple stuff... my current laptop is a Mac... my wife's next laptop will be a Mac... and my kids will probably get an iMac for Christmas. However, given their target market I think using 6-bit displays is short sighted and I do agree this is false advertising. Dithering does not equal true color... if you advertise that you can display millions of colors then every pixel on your screen should be able to display millions of colors. Not 262,144 colors and give the impression of millions of colors using software techniques. Yes, the rest of the industry uses 6-bit displays... but Apple is in a unique and fragile position as regards its target market. This could be VERY bad for Apple unless they do something about it.

Ummmm....

[morgan_greywolf]

Ummmm....What???

Okay, great, you win! We all have 3-color displays!

What's next? Are they going to sue Taco Bell because they don't actually sell Mexican food?

Re:Ummmm....

[aicrules]

A single pixel (composed of three sub-pixels) and the number of colors it can display by itself are the issue. Now, they could just come back and say "we have millions of colors at lower resolutions" and that would end that because it's pretty common knowledge that at resolutions lower than the natural resolution of the monitor pixels are combined and therefore can be used together to create more color. I remember back in the earlier days of graphical programming, you typically had a choice between 640X480 16 color, or 320X240 256 color. Yes at 640X480 you could simulate more colors but not without sacrificing resolution in the area that you were simulating it.

Re:Ummmm....

[PygmySurfer]

What's next? Are they going to sue Taco Bell because they don't actually sell Mexican food?

Taco Bell should be sued for not actually selling FOOD

TrueColor

[koh]

I don't get it. Surely the Mac uses a TrueColor visual for rendering, i.e. 8 bit per RGB component per pixel plus 8 bit alpha. Assuming differences in the alpha channel do not pertain to the number of colors, it nonetheless leaves 2^24 (16777216) different displayable colors. 16777216 > 1000000 and 16777216/1000000 = 16.78, so it really is millions of colors...

Re:TrueColor

[gEvil (beta)]

You're focusing on the software end. It's the hardware that isn't capable of displaying 16.7 million colors, although you'd be very hard-pressed to tell (I can only see slight banding in very specific cases on my 6-bit LG monitor).

Re:TrueColor

[fatphil]

Except that it's a 6-bit display. 2^(3*6) is a quarter of a million.

Slashdot = old news

[moseman]

Old news - move along please.

More lawyer bullshit

[Electric Eye]

As always, the only ones who will benefit from any ruling against Apple will be for the scumbag attorneys who make a killing of filing these bullshit class action lawsuits. These douchebags try to find the smallest things to generate millions of dollars through manipulating the legal system. I got a letter for a class action suit against some consumer products company a few months ago. In the letter, it stated that I agreed with the legal fees the attorneys were charging which amounted to roughly $10 million. How much did I stand to make? About $5, if that.

This is just another in a lonnnnnnnnnng line of legal extortion that our court systems propagate.

Re:More lawyer bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

If it makes the advertising clearer, I'll benifit. I always assumed 16 million colors was 24 bits per pixel. If one a**hole screws another, I don't mind.

Re:More lawyer bullshit

[Lehk228]

so it's the lawyers fault Apple doesn't know the difference between a quarter million and "millions"

Re:More lawyer bullshit

[Electric Eye]

That's not the point. The point is, this doesn't warrant a lawsuit. No one was harmed by this. Yet, who will benefit from it? The two retards who got lawyers will get what exactly? Another laptop that displays "more" colors that they will never be able to see or use? This is such a load. This type of rabid entitlement is disgusting, ties up our court system and makes millionaires out of manipulative, opportunistic shitheads who don't deserve a dime for supposedly being "harmed" or representiving people claiming to be "victims."

Re:More lawyer bullshit

[Subtle Matter]

You are complaining because you only made $5 for sitting on your ass. This passes for insightful on slashdot?

Class action lawsuits make a lot of sense in cases where a company inflicts small amounts of damage on large amounts of people. Let's say that a printer manufacturer advertised that their product came with a USB connecting cable but never included it in the box. Collectively the impact is huge, but nobody is going to sue to get the cost of a $10 cable. Without the threat of class actions, companies could make millions by pulling this kind of shit all of the time.

And you don't have to go along with class actions if you are a member of the class. If you don't feel that a $5 settlement is sufficient, you can opt-out and sue on your own behalf. You didn't, because you don't care enough. Would you have preferred that the company got to screw you over for free? The benefit to class action lawsuits is not that individual plaintiffs get rich, but rather that the defendant companies think twice before releasing a defective product or contaminating groundwater.

People throw out the idea that "frivolous lawsuits are clogging the court system" and "undeserving plaintiffs are making millions" because they've heard it repeated frequently by people who sound like they know what they're talking about. But it's just not so. BS lawsuits get filed, but they don't go anywhere. The reason that public perception of litigiousness is high is because it suits the interests of companies lobbying for "tort reform." They absolutely want to curtail class actions and cap damages because doing so will make them virtually immune to suit. I'm sure that you'd like to be limited to "wig expenses" if your shampoo made you permanently bald, but the rest of us would prefer a tort system that actually works.

I know that slashdot is one big circle jerk by computer nerds who pretend to understand everything from quantum physics to constitutional law, but please don't just repeat things that you heard on Fox. It's bad for America.

Re:More lawyer bullshit

[ChrisBush]

And I'd add, that 10 million pays the lawyers, and their expenses, and for their risk, and for the time value of money. Regarding expenses - do you have any idea how much time, effort, man-hours (in lawyer, paralegal, and secretary time, and expert witness fees) and paper it costs to run a class action lawsuit with thousands of potential plaintiffs? These costs need to be paid as they come up, and hopefully will be covered at the end of the suit (see risk and time, below). Regarding risk, the lawyers only get paid if they win or settle the suit - there is always a chance that they will lose, or "win" a paltry sum - fees in cases like this are usually subject to approval by the judge. Regarding the time value of money - a dollar tomorrow is, for all practical purposes, worth less than a dollar today. These cases take years, and the lawyers don't get paid until after the whole process is over. How much are you paid to do your job? How much more would you require if your employer wasn't going to pay you a dime until three or five years after you completed the project? How about if you were also responsible for the costs of your materials?

Re:More lawyer bullshit

[Achromatic1978]

How about "any editor who relied on Apple not falsely advertising a product that was incapable of rendering color to the specified level and as a result may have given a client incorrect color proofs, etc"?

Re:More lawyer bullshit

[Lehk228]

It isn't far outside the ability of the human eye. the human eye can see ~300k colors, while 18bit monitors only can show ~250k.

everyone who paid for a 24bit monitor was harmed because they were defrauded.

Re:More lawyer bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's why professionals in the graphics industry still use CRTs.

Re:More lawyer bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet! You didn't sign up? That means I'm getting $5.02!

Re:More lawyer bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just another in a lonnnnnnnnnng line of legal extortion that our court systems propagate.

Funny, since Apple is usually the instigator.

That's what mac fanboys get...

[Anonymous Coward]

... there are so many people willing to worship at the altar of Steve Jobs, and buy whatever he sells, even if it is crap.

Re:That's what mac fanboys get...

[b0s0z0ku]

... there are so many people willing to worship at the altar of Steve Jobs, and buy whatever he sells, even if it is crap.

You think that Dell or HP laptops are that much better? At least MacBooks are slim enough to be portable and pretty rugged, unlike the above mentioned brands.

-b.

Re:That's what mac fanboys get...

[dave420]

Why yes, actually Dell laptops *are* better, if you want better hardware that is. They have faster hard disks (160GB SATA 7200rpm vs 5400rpm), more memory (4GBs vs. 3GBs), better graphics cards (512MB nVidia versus 256MB ATI), better screens (1920x1200 vs 1680x1050), more display outputs (DVI, VGA & s-video), more USB (6 ports vs. 3). Oh, and their support lasts longer, is cheaper, and covers nearly everything you can do to your notebook. But please don't let me keep you from your kool-aid ;)

Re:That's what mac fanboys get...

[b0s0z0ku]

Why yes, actually Dell laptops *are* better, if you want better hardware that is.

I've had atrocious experience with the reliability of Dell's laptops. First of all, the cheaper ones come pre-loaded with crap, necessitating a long software removal process after purchase if you want a computer that isn't dog-slow. Time is worth something too, remember.

My sister's Dell laptop had to go back to Dell 5x for repair. Nipple mouse went crazy, then it was freezing randomly, then the DVD drive broke, then it needed a new HDD, finally it just died. After the fifth time and after she screamed at their support morons for 1/2 hour, they finally sent her a new $4000 high-end Dell. So far this one has been working fine.

A client had a similar experience, though without the free laptop (yet).

-b.

Re:That's what mac fanboys get...

[Anonymous Coward]

You think that Dell or HP laptops are that much better? At least MacBooks are slim enough to be portable and pretty rugged, unlike the above mentioned brands.

I never said they were better. Although the Dell D420 is a nice little laptop.

Re:That's what mac fanboys get...

[dave420]

I got an XPS M1710 for my wife, and I know what you mean about the bundled software. I just re-installed windows, which took all of 30 minutes, and it was blazing fast. No reliability issues, great hardware. I guess when they ship as many units as they do, someone's bound to get a dodgy one. I've yet to hear about a manufacturer who doesn't have such issues, even the almight Apple! :)

Re:That's what mac fanboys get...

[ZX-3]

If you buy from the "Small Business" section, instead of the "Home" section of the Dell site, you'll get a machine with no bundled crap, and often more customization options. They run different sales/rebates, too.

Re:That's what mac fanboys get...

[Lars T.]

Why yes, actually Dell laptops *are* better, if you want better hardware that is. They have faster hard disks (160GB SATA 7200rpm vs 5400rpm), more memory (4GBs vs. 3GBs), better graphics cards (512MB nVidia versus 256MB ATI), better screens (1920x1200 vs 1680x1050), more display outputs (DVI, VGA & s-video), more USB (6 ports vs. 3). Oh, and their support lasts longer, is cheaper, and covers nearly everything you can do to your notebook. But please don't let me keep you from your kool-aid ;) Ignoring that they also only have 6-bit displays (but obviously no colours at all, at least Dell doesn't mention it) - Do all Dell laptops have this? Some? One of them?

The Inspiron 1501 doesn't have one of the better feature you claim. Maybe the high-end does? XPS M2010: 256MB ATI® MobilityTM RADEONTM X1800 Graphics Card for multimedia intensive applications - ouch. Up to 1/2 Terabyte (500GB*) of storage across two hard drives lets you store and access abundant data - no mention of speed again, aren't theses supposed to be the Tech Specs?. Up to 4GB* of Dual Channel DDR2 memory - the odd thing is, that page also misses to tell us what all the "*" are supposed to mean. PS: starts at $200 more than the most expensive MacBook Pro.

Re:That's what mac fanboys get...

[dave420]

I'm talking about the XPS M1710. It mentions the specs of all the hardware components. As I said, nVidia 7950 512MB cards, 7200rpm SATA 160GB hard disk, WUXGA screen (better than the top-of-the-line Apple screen at 1920x1200, even the 17"-er mac). Of course they start at more, as you get more for your money. They're not even comparable when it comes to specs, as the Dell doesn't have to wait for Apple to support the hardware with drivers - the manufacturers do, and do as soon as the hardware is on the market, so Dells get newer hardware than Apples. Apple has to wait for their boys to get driver support ready before the parts can hit the Mac shelves. I'm not being a Dell whore here, or trying to piss on the Apple parade - I'm just a technologist looking for as much bang for my buck as possible. And that ain't coming from Apple at the moment. Oh, and the asterisk on the memory means it's 2x2048GB SODIMMS, as opposed to the 2GB option which is 2x1024GB SODIMMS (as it's DDR, it has matched pairs of chips, as opposed to just one chip). As I said before, I'm not looking for an argument, just to show the other side of the story.

The point

[Z0mb1eman]

How about providing the IMPORTANT part from the article in the summary, hmmm?

"At the heart of the case is plaintiff's claim that rather than delivering 16,777,216 colors with an 8-bit LCD, Apple chose a cheaper route, delivering the illusion of millions of colors using a 6-bit LCD and dithering."

2^24 = 16,777,216
2^18 = 262,144

Nothing wrong with 6-bit LCDs, but they shouldn't be advertised as 8-bit...

*gets ready to be torn apart by rabid mac fans*

Re:The point

[gnasher719]

6 bit panels are in fact not advertised as 8 bit.

What most of the industry does is quite sneaky: If it is an 8 bit panel, then each pixel can display 256 x 256 x 256 different colors, that is about 16.7 million colors.

If it is a 6 bit panel, then you can use dithering with four pixels to achieve 253 different values in each color component (that is 253, not 256), so you can display 253 x 253 x 253 different colors using dithering, that makes 16.2 million colors. 16.2 million, not 16.7 million. Check the specs on any LCD monitor that you see, and you won't find any advertising 262,000 colors but plenty advertising 16.2 millions.

Well, Apple claims "millions" which is completely in line with industry practice both for 6 bit and 8 bit panels.

Re:The point

[cortana]

Wait, run that by me again?

If each channel is represented by a number in the range 0 to 2^6 - 1 then I don't see how they get round the fact that each pixel can only have 2^18 possible values.

By the same logic, they could claim that a 1024x768 pixel display can show 2^(1024*768*2^18) different colours, as long as you squint hard enough, or stand far enough away, and only want to display one "pixel" at a time.

Re:The point

[Pyrroc]

Time to learn binary my friend. A 6 bit binary number can only represent the values 0 through 63.

Re:The point

[djmurdoch]

If you read the actual complaint, paragraphs 9 and 21.k, you'll see that part of it is that MacOSX isn't even doing the dithering as well as it should: the same laptop running Windows does a better job of displaying the colours.

Re:The point

[fatphil]

If they do that, then they ought to halve the horizontal and vertical resolutions.
Either claim 1280*1024 at 260K colours, or 640*512 at 16.2M colours.

Re:The point

[acidrain]

If it is a 6 bit panel, then you can use dithering with four pixels to achieve 253 different values in each color component

But under certain conditions I can *see* the artifacts that result from that kind of dithering and it is annoying. If these guys were using the monitors for professional applications, any kind of image distortion is unacceptable. Sure you might not know better if you weren't looking for it, but it is some people's jobs to care about image quality. And even if they don't know what's wrong, at least subconsciously, the lay person will perceive a loss in quality.

To me this is like being sold a high end sports car that should go 200mph but finding out that it only goes 100mph and when it tops out it plays canned audio recordings of a race car motor running really fast. Sure 100mph is just fine for most applications, but thats not what you paid for.

Re:The point

[leonem]

What about the 'temporal dithering' mentioned? I assume this means rapidly moving between two different 6-bit values in certain colour channels. If it's fast enough, there's no way the human eye could distinguish between this and a 'true' colour (inverted commas because any RGB representation isn't really the colour it seems anyway, our eyes just can't distinguish actual wavelengths). I think this might relate to the 'sparkle' someone mentioned earlier - it's not just noise-dithering, it's dynamic-noise-dithering.

Can someone who knows lots about LCD screens (dis)confirm this?

Re:The point

[Goobermunch]

Here's the interesting legal twist, though:

One of the factors courts look at in determining whether you got what you paid for is "usage in the trade." Thus, if the entire LCD manufacturing industry's custom is to refer to 6-bit LCDs as "capable of displaying millions of colors," then Apple has provided what they've promised to provide. The law assumes that the public will go out and do a little research to determine what they're buying.

--AC

Re:The point

[IkeTo]

> Time to learn binary my friend. A 6 bit binary number can only represent the
> values 0 through 63.

Time to learn counting my friend. Counting from 0 through 63 in steps of 0.25 (because each pixel is created by 4 sub-pixels), you get 0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, ..., 62.75, 63; which are 253 different levels of intensity.

Re:The point

[Altus]

I wish I could sue Microsoft for everything its software claims to do that other software does better.

Re:The point

[bestinshow]

This is a veritable miracle given that the dithering is done by the LCD panel, not the operating system. On a laptop it might be the combination of graphics chip + LCD panel as it is driven directly, but it's still not the OS.

Sounds like a graphics driver issue to me. Apple should sort that out.

Re:The point

[springbox]

6 bit panels are in fact not advertised as 8 bit.

Apparently you have not tried evaluating Viewsonic displays. Check these spec sheets out: one from their US site and one from their European site. Notice that the same displays which claim to support, according to the specs from the US site, "16.7 million colors" are shown to be 6-bit panels with FRC on the specs from the European site.

Re:The point

[hankwang]

If it is a 6 bit panel, then you can use dithering with four pixels to achieve 253 different values in each color component (that is 253, not 256)

I have heard this many times, but last time I bought an LCD screen, about half a year ago, I brought a couple of home-brewn test images to the computer store and basically all of them (price range up to EUR 350) seem to do time-domain dithering, which is especially visible in the darker areas. Also, the better screens in this price range (I ended up picking a Samsung 203B, 1400x1050) can display all shades from 0 to 255 without chopping off the lower or higher three.

Physically, this makes sense. The luminosity is supposed to be a nonlinear function of the pixel value (L = n^2.2), and the luminosity of a pixel is some other nonlinear function of the applied voltage, so in order to come anywhere close to the desired gamma of 2.2, the hardware in the monitor has to do more complex dithering than in 4-pixel blocks.

So can anybody provide a reliable reference for this 253-shade claim? I mean, from somebody who actually knows how the hardware is wired?

Re:The point

[Penguin's Advocate]

The dithering is done entirely by the LCD itself. It is not done by the graphics chip and it is certainly not done by the OS. Any disparity in the appearance of different OS on the same LCD cannot, by reality, be a result of this issue.

Re:The point

[taskiss]

Take a 8.5 X 11 inch white sheet of paper.

Divide it horizontally into 3 panels, separated by a black line.

In the first, leave the section white, in the second, intersperse 1/300" red toner dots every square inch in a 50% distribution pattern. In the last, coat the panel 100% with red toner.

Give this paper to a lawyer and ask him or her to show it to the jury and ask "How many colors are on this paper?"

When the jury says "3", have the lawyer thank them and announce that he rests his case.

Re:The point

[djmurdoch]

I just tried one of the test images from http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/6bit_8bit.htm on
a year-old Macbook, and the smooth gradients looked equally ugly in OSX and in WinXP running under Parallels. I couldn't see any difference running XP in a window or running it full screen. So I suspect the claim that XP is better is just BS.

There's really only three colours

[Dr. Evil]

Red, Green and Blue. Everything else is dithering. It's just how exactly the dithering is performed.

Re:There's really only three colours

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

There are billions of colors. We see only three. A few see four.

Technically speaking, the color of light is basically the frequency of the EM radiation. Since there are billions of frequencies at which light could be emitted between ultraviolet and infrared band, there are billions of color.

We humans, however, have just three kinds of photo receptor cells in our retina. The rods. They respond to just three frequencies Red, Blue and Yellow. Other frequencies excite these receptors at different strengths and we percieve them as that color. You could blend Red, Blue and Yellow in such a way you can fool the brain into thinking it is gettig the light of some frequency X, instead of a blend of y,b and r.

A few humans, almost always female, are tetrachromes who have a fourth type of cone that responds to another color. And many humands have color blindness where they lack cones of one or two types.

If the law suit goes through we can see some more interesting law suits. Like pulse-code-modulated sound cards produce a digital sound that "sounds like" a continuous wave but it is really not. Or the flourescent lights produce no light 60 times a second! Or clothing only produces a "peception of opaqueness" while in reality they are full of holes and thus they are not really opaque!

Re:There's really only three colours

[phasm42]

We see only three. A few see four.

Technically, we have peak sensitivity at three or four colors. A nice illustration of this can be found here.

Re:There's really only three colours

[tb()ne]

There are billions of colors. We see only three. A few see four.

Technically speaking, the color of light is basically the frequency of the EM radiation. Since there are billions of frequencies at which light could be emitted between ultraviolet and infrared band, there are billions of color.

While most of your post is accurate, the second paragraph quoted above is misleading. Color, in this context, is phenomenological. It is not simply the frequency of light. We see many more than 3 colors. While your statement that there are "billions of frequencies at which light could be emitted" is technically correct, those billions of frequencies do not correspond to all the colors we can perceive. There is no single frequency of light that corresponds to the color brown.

Re:There's really only three colours

[egomaniac]

Your "technical" definition of color is incorrect -- color is not the frequency of the light. Pink is a color, but there is no frequency of light which is pink. What you are referring to is hue, not color.

Also, our eyes most certainly do not respond to just three wavelengths. We have three different color receptors which have three different sensitivity ranges, but each of them is sensitive to a broad range of frequencies.

Re:There's really only three colours

[fatphil]

Nope, there's dark red, medium red, bright red, etc. The monitors are capable of displaying 64 levels of each (including black).

Re:There's really only three colours

[petermgreen]

you are wrong in a number of ways.

the rods are what see brightness with high resoloution and sensitivity. The reason why you can't see color in dim light is because only the rods are working.

The cones come in three types each with a different frequency response curve, they detect the color of the light.

Color as most humans see it can be represented acceptablly by three values. if we fix apparent brightness we can get that down to two values and we can plot a 2D curve of the effects of different frequencies (known as the pure spectral colors) on our axis and join together the ends. Colors inside the loop can be made by mixing the pure spectal colors. Colors outside it can't exist.

In practice many colors are very rare in the real world and so we can reproduce the colors normally seen with reasonable accuracy using only three primaries.

Infinite color displays!

[flux]

I shall declare that the displays in question are in fact capable of displaying infinitely many colors!

I seriously doubt the color displayed by two adjacent pixels is _exactly_ the same, even if the computer thinks they are. In fact I doubt the a pixel will be able to continuously output the exact same color at all times, even if it is desired!

So maybe Apple can just revise their advertisement to "They can display billions of shades of colors, randomly"..

(Maybe the 'infinite'-statement doesn't hold true, with quantum mechanics and all..)

More realistically, maybe the advertisement should go like "Displays many, many colors".

Re:Infinite color displays!

[Txiasaeia]

More realistically, maybe the advertisement should go like "Displays many, many colors".

MacBook Pro 2008:
-Goes pretty fast
-Can hold stuff in memory
-Average sized hard drive
-Displays many, many colors
-Some type of media drive
-Available for more than a couple hundred dollars
Apple: Computer Specifications for the Rest of Us

Sue your eyes

[Bullfish]

Even your eyes process colours through a small spectrum into what we see as a full vibrant spectrum. Functionally, for a computer display (don't get all philosophical on me), what is the difference between dithered and actually displayed if all the colours are present and rendered faithfully. All monitors do this, or rather all monitors and video cards. Do they sue the video card manufacturers as that's the other half of the equation...

This is just another symptom of an overly-litigious society with an over-population of lawyers.

Re:Sue your eyes

[muellerr1]

All the colors are NOT present and rendered faithfully. You can see the dithering (on gradients, for example) on the built-in monitor. As a matter of fact, the video card of the MacBook CAN process millions of colors, which you can clearly see if you hook up an external monitor. The legal case here is that they advertised that their built-in monitor could display millions of colors, which it can't. That's false advertising, and the proper response to a giant corporation engaging in fraudulent practices is to start a class-action suit.

Re:Sue your eyes

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's one of the differences between 8-bit displays (16.7 million actual colours) and 6-bit displays (262144 colours + dithering = 16.2 million colours): you can see noticeable "banding" when you look at a colour gradient.

The problem here is false advertising and deceptive marketing. The LCD industry uses 6-bit displays to save money, but they try to deceive the customer into thinking 6-bit is "just as good as" 8-bit. If 6-bit really is just as good as 8-bit, then be honest and upfront about it, so the customer can make an informed decision.

Bad colours

[tsa]

I was always surprised how bad the colours on my MBP look compared to the same colours on my 19" CRT. Now I know why they look so bad. Here is a better article about this case. Both articles don't mention iBooks and Powerbooks. Do they use 'normal' screens? I had an iBook once and I always thought the iBook had a (much) better screen than the MBP.

Re:Bad colours

[falcon5768]

they all use the same 6bit displays the rest of the industry use. Reason being, better displays would drive the cost of laptops up 500-1000 dollars over what they do now. I actually feel the opposite BTW. My macbook pro has a screen far superior to my iBook G4.

Re:Bad colours

[WMD_88]

If your iBook G4 had a better screen than an MBP, then um...you should get that MBP checked out. :o The iBook G4s I've seen have the lousiest screens I've seen since the 90s.

Re:Bad colours

[bestinshow]

The MacBook's screen is better than the iBook's screen. Shame really, as I have an iBook, but on the other hand I'm not using it to do professional graphics work (and anyone who does their entire graphics pipeline on any laptop is barking mad IMO).

As for CRTs, they usually have better colour spectrum and brightness, especially compared to laptop screens that have very low brightnesses in order to save power. LED backlit LCD screens have better colour reproduction than traditional LCDs by the way, and some displays are getting better than 100% NTSC colour gamut reproduction now (although not in the laptop screen arena I guess).

Re:Bad colours

[Anonymous Coward]

Try using another ColorSync Profile (System Preferences - Displays - Colors).

Re:Bad colours

[mgabrys_sf]

Oh hell I've been doing battle with this since people have been switching to LCDs in general. I still do design on tubes half the time and I now have to make adjustments for how people see color on LCDs which are becoming the majority. Gamma shift - color shift - you name it. I'd render something that looks great on a tube and watch it fall apart at the client's desk. All LCDs not just laptops are using 6bit from what I can tell (no I haven't seen any 8 bit screens yet) and I'm forced to compensate for it.

Not as big a deal as I'd always made compensations for screen-to-print when printed material was my cash-generator, but it's a whole new twist. The solution for me was to go LCD as much as possible (at my home studio and save the hastle of compensating. Or at least part of it. I still have to make changes for Windows color vs Mac color - but geez I don't want to get into THAT can of worms. Here's hoping Vista's color model isn't as terrible as XP (gamma gamma gamma blech).

Movie and Video people must be going nuts between tubes, hdtv tubes, DLP rear-projection, DLP projection, LCD projection (rear and otherwise), Plasma, and flat LCD. No wonder they have been putting THX calibration tests on their DVDs. Then of course there's theatre screens - jeez that stuff changes by the year.

Hmmm ...

[boccaccio's hamster]

Isn't this the equivalent of suing Lens Crafters for claiming to make your eyesight better when in fact, glasses give your brain the "illusion" that your eyesight is better.

Re:Hmmm ...

[black_lbi]

You're twisting this in the wrong way. If I'm buying glasses or contact lenses I know why I buy them. To correct my eyesight as long as I wear them. What kind of lens manufacturer says that i will see better then the rest of the people? Or that in time the glasses will cure my short-sightedness and I won't have to wear them anymore? All I want is the real specs from a product. Not some marketing BS. Maybe some folks are not bothered by dithering and would like to pay less. Maybe I want something of a better quality. How can I know for sure what I am buying if they keep talking nonsense?

Design

[simpl3x]

I'd like to say, that getting accurate color is really important in my job. Approximate is not really good enough. I had thought that my display was not correct with a lot of Pantone colors, and this makes me wonder about the part in my machine. People pay for what they consider to be the best displays, and Apple's have aways been very good.

When you've got over $15K in your laptop and software, $10 or $20 on screen is really the last place to compromise. Well, that and your chair.

Somebody's losing a job over this one, IMHO. Nothing like pissing off your most devoted market!

Re:Design

[Short Circuit]

You've fallen victim to FUD. VGA (and DVI) displays have always operated in the way Apple's being accused of.

If your job requires that you deal accurately in color, you should already know that such displays operate by means of RGB color triads which approximate 16,777,216 unique colors.

The RGB comes from the human eye's particular sensitivity to those three colors. The chemicals in our eye's cones are primarily sensitive to those hues, combinations of which grant us perception of other colors.

Therefore, to approximate the vast majority of the color range we can perceive, we only need displays that operate by way of those three hues.

Re:Design

[statusbar]

All the print and advertising professionals that I know still use calibrated CRT's for their colour work and still do not trust any LCD's for colour correctness...

--jeffk++

Re:Design

[AvitarX]

Apple (LCD) displays have typically been on the high end of mediocre and not "very good".

They have their ups and downs, but never have been consistently amongst the best.

Re:Design

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF? How is that even remotely relevant?

Re:Design

[Anonymous Coward]

$15K of software and hardware on a laptop? You are absolutely crazy - I don't care who you are or what you do. I'm a programmer and have a total of $7.5k invested in hardware/software for the actual laptop ($3k for hardware and the rest in software, not counting all the accessories) and I use it as a desktop replacement. I'm careful as hell with it and usually don't take it everywhere like I did with my other, older, laptop.

But 15k in a laptop? Crazy. If you're a graphic artist or something, I would carry a laptop for "working" on the road and at home with extra monitors and my primary box would be a full blown desktop.

Then again, I know people that do training and run multiple OS's for server related stuff (ie: SharePoint, MSSQL, etc installed on a virtual machine for dev work). ..still think you're crazy..

Re:Design

[BigLug]

WTF? Pantone (and all printing) is about ink colors .. subtractive color, not additive like your monitor. Your screen was never and will never (with ANY current technology) show you printed colors accurately, it just approximates. What's more, 99% of Pantone colors are out of both RGB and CMY(K) gammut. Products such as Photoshop and Illustrator have RGB conversion libraries supplied with them to approximate Pantone colors in RGB on your monitor.

Printing in spot color is all about ink recipes. Your printer will have a Pantone book that tells him exactly what weight of what ink he needs to _add_ together to create the color you asked for. And that requires a LOT more than just cyan, magenta and yellow.

Feel free to complain about Apple, or anyone else's LCD monitors, but don't get additive and subtractive confused. And never expect to see Pantone colors accurately on your monitor. Buy a Pantone color chip book if you need something to show your clients.

Re:Design

[somersault]

I really hope everyone on /. knows how a pixel works..
I think the point of this case is that the displays aren't using a full 24 bits for each colour (8 each for R, G and B.. haven't RTFA but I'd guess the displays only use 6 bits for each individual colour), so the displays have to approximate/dither colours like some crappy jpeg or gif (as opposed to a bitmap).. I haven't done much graphics work on my Pro yet, and at work I have an external monitor anyway, but it would be interesting to see if anything comes of this. I doubt anything useful will of course..

Re:Design

[TheGavster]

VGA and DVI claim to deliver 8 bits of precision per channel; these Apple LCDs are only capable of displaying 6 bits of precision. Yes, there is loss in any computer display due to the nature of color triad-based pixels. This problem goes beyond that, and introduces unexpected dithering artifacts into the image. It is entirely possible to create images that look great at 6 bits per channel, but since the downsampling is done at the display rather than by the system, and because the user was not expecting the reduced precision, it oftentimes looks like crap (quick example I've seen is the top toolbar in Firefox; the slight gradient doesn't look pretty when it gets dithered).

Re:Design

[bkr1_2k]

You obviously haven't priced out many graphics software suites, or video editing suites lately, have you? Let's not even get into the engineering suites like OrCad or AutoCAD etc.

15k is very easy to accomplish on a high end laptop and software.

Re:Design

[jaypeg]

He might have a 17" MacBookPro with maxed out specs and a 30" display (5K+). A multimedia designer, audio engineer or video producer's laptop can easily hold well over 10K in pro software titles. Programmers don't really need that kind of horse power or range of software. Most development work is text based and they're not pushing nearly as many bits around until they compile something like a major app or an OS.

Re:Design

[simpl3x]

Adobe font library: around $10k (I'm legal)
CS 3: $1000
Office: $300-ish
Macbook: $2000-ish
Various software like BBEdit: $500-ish
Back up drive: $500

The upgrade to CS 3 kitchen sink will add a grand. Crazy I may be. But I also make decent money, and am not going to complain about how much my tools cost. Your mileage may vary...

eyeballs

[CheeseTroll]

I'd like to sue the manufacturer of my retinas and/or brain, because my retinas are only capable of Trichromatic vision, but my brain keeps tricking me into thinking I'm seeing millions of variations.

And don't get me started on those so-called "color printer" things. I only see 3 colors of ink/toner going into those.

Re:eyeballs

[dogmatixpsych]

I know you're just being humorous but our eyes don't have "trichromatic vision;" We (most people anyway) have three main types of photosensitive cones in our eyes. These cones are most sensitive to different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation that correspond with red, green, and blue. However, each cone responds to a range of wavelengths (see http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/vision6.gif), so we view different colors because of the differential reaction to "visible light." Anyway and again, I know you weren't serious but I just had to clear up your whole "trichromatic vision" statement.

Re:eyeballs

[Garabito]

I'd like to sue the manufacturer of my retinas.
In other news, in order to avoid forthcoming liabilities, God and Evolution denied any involvement with the current configuration of the human body and blame each other for any defect on it.

Re:eyeballs

[blueturffan]

And don't get me started on those so-called "color printer" things. I only see 3 colors of ink/toner going into those.

The first so-called color printer things I used were daisy-wheel devices that had both a black and red (or other color) ribbon to create text in another color.

Early inkjet type so-called color-printer things used CMY (Cyan Magenta Yellow) to recreate all colors. Black text was printed using a combination of CMY, and came out looking more brown than black.

Many so-called color-printer things today use CMYK (Cyan Magenta Yellow Black - yes, "K" is black in printing, just like K is potassium on a periodic table -- don't ask why). CMYK printers use a dedicated black cartridge for text and/or grayscale, and CMY for the other colors

An increasing number of so-called color-printer things today use more than the 4 CMYK colors. Some use Light Cyan and Light Magenta in a 6-color process (CMYK LC LM). I've also seen CMYKOV (Orange and Violet). Still others use Light Cyan, Light Magenta, Gray and who-knows-what-else in 8-color (or higher) printers.

If you only see 3 colors of ink/toner going into these, you must be using a 1992-era inkjet printer.

Re:eyeballs

[CheeseTroll]

I wasn't thinking of black as being a color, but you are correct that most printers now include a separate black toner/ink cartridge.

As for why Black is referred to as 'K', I'll quote Wikipedia:
"Black is referred to using the letter K (rather than the expected B) for key - a shorthand for the printing term key plate. This plate impressed the artistic detail of an image, usually in black ink. This use of the letter K also helped avoid confusion with the letter B as used in the acronym RGB."

Obscure reference, anyone?

[psicic]

There are FIVE lights.

Re:Obscure reference, anyone?

[Deinhard]

ST: TNG - Chain of Command - David Warner was great as the Cardassian, Gul Madred.

Re:Obscure reference, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

ST:TNG
Captain Picard's response to a Cardassian's question of how many light he could see.
I'm sure there's someone else out there who knows what episode. ;)

Re:Obscure reference, anyone?

[yabos]

But it was FOUR lights
http://www.pierce.ctc.edu/tlink/social/theme1/pica rd_cog_diss.html

Re:Obscure reference, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

"There... are... FOUR... lights!"

Re:Obscure reference, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

As I had to tell someone else the other day, any reference to any Science Fiction book, TV series, game, movie or radio series can never, ever, be considered obscure on Slashdot.

A discussion of how that particular episode so blatantly ripped off George Orwell is left as an exercise for other posters.

Re:Obscure reference, anyone?

[Tack]

Captain Picard's response to a Cardassian's question of how many light he could see.

Actually, his response was that there were four lights. However I don't know what the episode name is, so there's still a chance that I might get laid some day.

Re:Obscure reference, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never watched Star Trek (hence posting as AC, learned that one the hard way), but even *I* knew what he was referring to, because it's come up in comments here before. :)

Re:Obscure reference, anyone?

[sharkey]

But only 3 seashells.

Re:Obscure reference, anyone?

[BlastQuake]

Episode 137: Chain of Command, Part II

Re:Obscure reference, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try, Cardassian scum.

There. Are. FOUR! LIGHTS!

Re:Obscure reference, anyone?

[theArtificial]

That is pure gold! /. commentary at it's finest!

Nuisance

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has used a technique that they developed (and possibly patented) twenty-five years ago to increase the resolution (and color of a screen). I believe it is called dithering and has to do with writing a partial pixle.

This technique (which I once understood but no longer do) could be similar to interlacing (the eye sees quickly written multiple images as a single image and therefore sees more dots).

What happens is that a lower resolution screen appears (or looks) like a higher resolution screen.

In my opinion it is how the screen looks that is important and the MAC display is outstanding. These poeple are just quibbling over a technique that Apple has made public for over twenty years.

Tom

Next up

[raddan]

NASA sued for false color images. Dichromats sue trichromats. Red sues green. News at 11.

Re:Next up

[Drathos]

Green goes to war with Purple, get it right.

It's about time!

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes some serious investigation to even get close to the story on LCD monitors. I wish there was a simple way from specs to tell if I'm looking at a true 24 bit display or some trickery. I mean, if people found out that their CD players only had 12 bit DACs, wouldn't they get upset that they paid for a CD with 16 bit information? Aren't you upset you paid for a video card with a 512 bit engine with 1G of RAM with 24 bit color, only to have it chopped down at the monitor end?

Now don't get me started on 1366x768 "HD" displays and all the other weird non-1920 resolutions.

For those of you who think this is ridiculous...

[mhazen]

Imagine choosing a vehicle to purchase because the manufacturer claims it gets 40MPG (17km/l), and finding out later that it only manages 30MPG (12km/l). The manufacturer simply tells you "drive downhill all of the time".

Imagine buying a 500 gig hard drive, but once it's out of the box you discover the company has shipped you a 375 gig drive. The company tells you "Well, if you compress all of your files it will seem like 500 gigs".

Advertisers must be held to the strictest ethical behaviors in courts by consumers, because they won't do it themselves, nor will most governments interfere with business until the offenses become egregious. I can most certainly see why someone who has paid their hard earned cash for a notebook display that is advertised with a 'millions of colors' capability would expect to get just that, instead of a display that uses tricknology to make thousands of colors seem more presentable.

And imagine your significant other promising to be faithful, but upon further investigation discovering they only meant 3/4 of the time.

6 vs 8

[AkumaKuruma]

i think what most people arent getting is that 8 bit color supports 256 shades or levels of each color. 256Red*256Green*256Blue=16777216colors. 6 bit color only supports 64 shades for each color 64R*64G*64B=262114 colors. using dithering is a cheapo way to fix the problem like they said with an illusion by screwing up the surrounding pixels to make it blend better and turning them more into macro pixels, in essence, lowering the total color resolution. the 8 bit alpha blending doesnt really play a part in the number of colors the monitor can display. what i like is my videocards support of 10 bit colors for 1073741824 possible colors with DVI stemming from the 1024 levels of color shading. if yer gonna dither, do it on a 8 bit display.

What's "Support" mean?

[dschuetz]

I just checked the MacBook specs, and saw this under display: "13.3-inch (diagonal) glossy widescreen TFT display with support for millions of colors"

What exactly does "support for millions of colors" mean, anyway? In the world of (E|H)DTV monitors, "supports 1080i" generally means "can display a 1080 image, but only at 768" or somesuch. I look for words like "native resolution" to figure out what something is technically, actually, capable of.

And if Apple can show that EVERYONE in the industry is doing exactly the same thing, with similar advertising language, then it's probably not going to go anywhere. It's sort of a visual equivalent to the silly GB vs GiB argument, though at least in that case hard drive manufacturers have started better explaining their side of the equation....

Far more interesting: Better under Windows?

[Animaether]

From the PDF ( http://www.engadget.com/videos/PDF/apple_macbook_l awsuit.pdf ) :

''The extent to which a particular make of computer is capable of "dithering" is a function of the sophistication of the programming of the software. For example, in the case of the MacBook and MacBook Pro, because of the uniqueness of these computers to be able to run both Apple's OS operating system, and the PC's Microsoft Windows operating system, it is possible to compare the quality of the display between the two operating systems. In the case of the display that the MacBook and the MacBook Pro produces using the Microsoft Windows operating system at all resolution levels is superior to the display that those same computers display using Apple's OS operating system.''

Some nasty grammar in there, but in summary: no such problem when running Windows on the same machine?

If that is true, then it is indeed an Apple software problem. Note that software shouldn't be in charge of this sort of thing in the first place. LCD displays themselves handle incoming 8bit values on a 6bit displays in one of three ways:
A. 'as is', 91 becomes 92.
B. 'dither', 3 out of 4 pixels are 92, the other one is 88, averaging to 91
C. 'frame rate control', 3 out of 4 refreshes it draws the pixel as 92, the other one is 88, averaging to 91.

B&C are both common, and both have pros/cons. But either way, the software shouldn't be doing anything there (arguably, a driver might - i.e. if the monitor specifically allows you to specify which method to use, what dithering pattern, etc. by means of driver control).

Re:Far more interesting: Better under Windows?

[bestinshow]

I'd hazard a guess that the LCD panels can be told which of A, B and C to do by the OS.

In that case I expect that Windows is telling it to do C, and Mac OS X is telling it to do B, which would explain the 'grainier' appearance.

Or the grainier appearance is caused completely externally to the display (this is what I think is most likely), maybe by the OpenGL driven interface rendering the interface slightly incorrectly and barely noticeably.

The problem is theremore most likely solveable with an updated driver. Hopefully Apple are working on this instead of refusing to do anything because the complaint is technically incorrect.

Re:Far more interesting: Better under Windows?

[skia]

Doesn't it seem more likely to anyone that this is just a gamma issue? Unless both Windows and OS X are calibrated to use the same color profile (I don't know if this is even possible in Winodows without third party software) then the same image on the same machine is going to display with different brightness and color cast when loaded in the different OSes. This could easily reveal more or less banding, and is not a fault in the OS or the hardware. It's the loose nut behind the keyboard.

Re:Far more interesting: Better under Windows?

[Pinky3]

The plaintiffs have just defeated their own case. The macbook and macbook pro do display millions of colors as advertised, just not running OS X. They should be complaining about OS X being advertised falsely, not the macbooks.

not "smited"

[DJCacophony]

Today's conjugation of the day: smite.

God is a smiter.
God is about to smite Bob.
God is smiting Bob.
God has smote Bob.
Bob has been smitten.

Re:not "smited"

[inca34]

+1 Informative and funny, where are my mod points?

Re:not "smited"

[cultrhetor]

To demonstrate a conjugation, you should use the active sense of the verb in nonconditional cases, rather than the passive form for each case. Let's go through the post, Mr. Grammar Nazi: 1. God is a smiter. - You aren't using "smite" as a verb, you're using it as a direct object (noun - person, place, thing, idea): the subject (God) is something: a "smiter." 2. God is about to smite Bob. - This is a conditional use, so at least your passive sense is correct; however, you shouldn't use two prepositions in a row (even if one is part of the verb "to smite"): try "God will smite Bob." 3. God is smiting Bob. - This is an action: the verb + participle makes it passive. If you're giving a conjugation lesson, conjugate the verb, don't turn it into a modifier: "God smites Bob." 4. God has smote Bob. - This is a passive use (technically, the verb consists of two words: "has smote"), which means that, again, you're not conjugating "smite." Try "God smote Bob." 5. Bob has been smitten. - This is acceptable; however, I might avoid the passive use altogether: you don't give an active agent: by whom was Bob smitten? In the future, please remember to ensure correct use when fixating upon the errors of others. I appreciate your time, and wish you a good day, sir.

Re:not "smited"

[cultrhetor]

In the future, I will be sure to employ line breaks when correcting the faults of others. My apologies. Karma's a bitch, isn't it?

Re:not "smited"

[Anonymous Coward]

haha myg0t fag got PWND...

Re:not "smited"

[Trails]

So you're telling me I've been making an ass out of myself by claiming that people should repent now or they are having had been to be smitified upon?

Re:not "smited"

[Haeleth]

I love ignorant people who try to correct others' grammar, and only end up displaying how bad their own is.

To demonstrate a conjugation, you should use the active sense of the verb in nonconditional cases, rather than the passive form for each case.

How fortunate that he only used one passive, and no conditionals.

(By the way, who made you king and gave you the power to decree how conjugations shall be demonstrated, yea, even unto the end of time?)

2. God is about to smite Bob. - This is a conditional use, so at least your passive sense is correct;

There is no conditional in "God is about to smite Bob". There is also no passive there.

however, you shouldn't use two prepositions in a row (even if one is part of the verb "to smite"): try "God will smite Bob."

There is nothing wrong with using two prepositions in a row. Furthermore, "God will smite Bob" does not mean the same thing as "God is about to smite Bob" - the latter implies that the smiting will happen in the very near future, while the former merely implies that it will happen at some point in the future.

3. God is smiting Bob. - This is an action: the verb + participle makes it passive.

Um, no, it doesn't. There is no passive involved. You don't actually know what a passive is, do you?

If you're giving a conjugation lesson, conjugate the verb, don't turn it into a modifier: "God smites Bob."

He did conjugate the verb, and he didn't turn it into a modifier. And "God smites Bob" does not mean the same thing as "God is smiting Bob": the latter emphasises the fact that the smiting is an ongoing action at the present moment, while the former merely specifies that it happens without making any real statement as to when (are you saying "God smites Bob every Thursday", or "Here is God. God smites Bob. See God smite"?)

4. God has smote Bob. - This is a passive use

No, it is not a passive.

which means that, again, you're not conjugating "smite."

Where do you get these ideas?

5. Bob has been smitten. - This is acceptable; however, I might avoid the passive use altogether: you don't give an active agent: by whom was Bob smitten?

Congratulations! You have successfully identified a real passive. That's one out of four, which I'm afraid is not a pass mark round here.

(BTW, the question of who smote Bob can generally be inferred from context: something like "God is on a rampage. Bob has been smitten, and so has Fred" is sometimes better style than "God is on a rampage. He has smitten Bob, and Fred too".)

In the future, please remember to ensure correct use when fixating upon the errors of others.

The irony is killing me.

(Cue half a dozen posts telling me that I'm misusing the word "irony". Come on, don't disappoint me here!)

Re:not "smited"

[Teilo]

If any of my children plan [subjunctive active] on becoming [copulative participle] a writer, I will [future auxiliary] definitely not allow [active] them to attend [active infinitive] NCSU.

Way to go, Cliff Clavin!

Re:not "smited"

[Anonymous Coward]

Today's conjugation of the day: smite.

God is a smiter.
God is about to smite Bob.
God is smiting Bob.
God has smote Bob.

Bob has been smitten.

Correction: God smote Bob, and God has smitten Bob.

It can do millions of colors!

[FatherOfONe]

Did they say at one time? :-)

My old Amiga could do 4096 colors, just as long as it was only 16 at a time. :-)

Yes I know it could do a lower resolution and get all of them at one time... It is a joke.

Re:It can do millions of colors!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Amiga used a trick called HAM, Hold and Modify. You can only change one colour channel per pixel. You could never go straight from black to white. Red to black, yes. Yellow to black, no. And using it for anything other than photos/scans was an effort in futility. Good times.

Re:It can do millions of colors!

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC you could either alter one of the primaries or pick the color from the palette.

Skeptical skepticism.

[delire]

more than a little bit skeptical of the plaintiff's motives

Eh? Why does anyone sue? To hurt the defendant's feelings? Would the plaintiffs be happy if the Judge said "fair enough" and somehow awarded them MBP's with better screens? Of course not.

Suing is an entrepreneurs game. It has nothing to do with fairness or seeking 'justice'; it's a legally endorsed playground for funny money using rhetoric, blackmail, stock-bruising and good old-fashioned acting to turn over a cool sum in a hurry. You 'build' a case, attract media attention to make the defendant hurt and sell it in court. The jury might as well be potential investors.

The fact that the MBP screens may be a bit shabby compared to some other portables is completely beside the point. I doubt the plaintiffs even care.

Re:Skeptical skepticism.

[Goobermunch]

Suing is the only option for redressing and resolving intractable differences of opinion between people that our system permits. It's no longer acceptable to slap your neighbor and demand satisfaction of an insult with blood--dueling is illegal. You can no longer go and grab your neighbors to deal with the local lascivious woman--stoning is illegal.

What you can do is take your conflict to a group of your neighbors and rationally explain what's wrong and how you would like it fixed. We also allow the judgment of your neighbors to be enforced by the State. Instead of executing thieves, cutting the hands off of doctors for malpractice, or cutting the tongues from liars, we permit compensation using the currency of the land.

Most cases never see any media attention.

The civil justice system works. It works now, and it has worked for the past 600 years. The only people who say otherwise are people who don't believe in personal responsibility and being personally accountable for their actions.

--AC

Re:Skeptical skepticism.

[thetagger]

It could be. But thanks to all that bullshit, I bet the newer MacBooks will have 8-bit displays or Apple will quit their deceptive advertising. So the system works.

Re:Skeptical skepticism.

[lambwolf]

You can no longer go and grab your neighbors to deal with the local lascivious woman

You can't?

Uh-oh.

Oh those Apple users....

[rueger]

Really, this is not a troll, but can you imagine anyone but a Mac user launching this lawsuit? Yeesh..... I see a new Mac/PC commercial coming. "Hey PC... what are all of those groovy colors?"

Obviously

[DJCacophony]

Because "Linux" and "Windows" don't sell LCD screens.

Re:Obviously

[XxtraLarGe]

Because "Linux" and "Windows" don't sell LCD screens. Obviously, I was referring to manufacturers of computers that have Linux or Windows loaded on them... :rolleyes:

Awesome... Sign me up for the lawsuit!

[sjmacko29]

I just bought a Macbook Pro, but I would sure love to have $12.33 off of my next Apple purchase. Isn't that the normal result of a class action suit? Steve

Re:Awesome... Sign me up for the lawsuit!

[Virtex]

In related news, Apple has quietly raised the price of their entire line of computers by $12.33.

Yea, lets sue them for physical defects too

[notquiteleet]

http://notquiteleet.com/2007/05/23/apple-refuses-t o-fix-macbook-pro/

6-bit? 7-bit? What bit don't you get?

[Dekortage]

I read something over at AppleInsider that I thought was salient. Rather than claiming it as my own, let me quote Hattig here:

Apple are stating the displays support millions of colours using a 6 bit per channel display in conjunction with dithering. This is how all budget LCD panels and laptop panels work. The dithering works pretty well, most people don't notice it. The graininess appears to be a graphics chip driver issue (someone above mentioned that rebooting into Windows fixed it) rather than a display issue, or it could be a problem with the Intel graphics hardware (there's enough problems there already, this wouldn't surprise me).

Imagine temporally dithering each component (R, G, B) in a 6-bit panel. Flickering between two adjectent values simulates the value midway between, effectively giving you a 7-bit panel. 2^21 = 2 million, which would meet Apple' definition. If you altered the timing you could simulate an 8-bit panel as well, which is probably what TN panels do to get 16m colours.

7-bit color via dithering 6-bit? Sounds like the math is right to claim "millions".

Re:6-bit? 7-bit? What bit don't you get?

[Dekortage]

And this explanation was helpful too.

Theoretically we're dealing with 24-bit video on all of today's Macs - 8 bits of red, green, and blue combine to create 16,777,216 colors. However, it seems that all of today's notebook LCDs only support 6 bits per color channel, which means that these 'Books can only display 262,144 colors.

However, there's a catch. An LCD pixel isn't a single spot. It's a square composed of three side-by-side red, blue, and green crystals. By using adjacent crystals on the right and/or left (sort of borrowing them from the pixel next door), we can effectively display 7 bits per channel. That's 21-bit color, which means that using clever programming these "6-bit" LCDs can actually display 2,097,152 colors.

Slightly more detailed.

Re:6-bit? 7-bit? What bit don't you get?

[sweaterface]

Fanboys and haters can disagree about how to interpret "millions of colors". But, in point of fact, Apple, in its "Video Developer Note" [http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Hardware /Conceptual/HWTech_Video/index.html#//apple_ref/do c/uid/TP40003504] claims that MacBook Pro monitors are capable of "display depths up to 24 bits per pixel at all supported screen resolutions." If this statement is false, it doesn't matter how we parse the phrase "millions of colors".

Re:6-bit? 7-bit? What bit don't you get?

[Andy Dodd]

Both your post and parent conflict quite a bit.

One claims temporal dithering (a variant of PWM, and potentially a variant of sigma-delta modulation) of a single pixel.

The other claims spatial dithering across multiple pixels.

Spatial dithering cannot be performed without sacrificing resolution. Temporal dithering can be performed without sacrificing resolution, as long as the monitor is fast enough.

For example, if the response time is 10 ms, then you could achieve effective 7-bit temporal dithering that gave you an effective refresh rate of 50 Hz. While this may seem low (50 Hz on a CRT is painful for many), keep the following in mind:

On a CRT, you have a pixel that is lit very brightly at a low duty cycle at the refresh rate. i.e. on for a fraction of the refresh rate, and more importantly completely off for the rest (other than the fact that phosphors do take some time to decay). The end result of this full-swing "on-off" behavior is that flicker can be quite noticeable and annoying. If, instead, the flicker is between values of 45/64 and 46/64 with no off timeto give an effective 91/128 brightness, the flicker will be far less noticeable.

It's just the same as common DACs in audio equipment - many of them are 1-bit sigma-delta modulators operating at an extremely high sampling rate (1 MHz+) and feeding an analog interpolation filter. Usually this results in superior performance to a true 16-bit DAC operating at 44.1 kHz. Temporal dithering is the same basic idea but instead of an analog filter in the output device, it depends on the inherent filtering of the eye.

Re:6-bit? 7-bit? What bit don't you get?

[Dekortage]

Here is the full quote from the technical note:

The MacBook computer announced in November 2006, based on the Intel Core 2 Duo, has a 13.3-inch, glossy, widescreen flat-panel display (measured diagonally). The display has a Low Reflection Glossy Polarizer (LRGP). Display depths up to 24 bits per pixel at all supported screen resolutions.

The MacBook supports an LCD display size of 1280x800 pixels at 114 dpi, 250 nits single bulb and shows up to millions of colors.

It is not clear (to me, anyway) that "up to 24 bits per pixel" specifically refers to the capabilities of the monitor or the video subsystem. The last sentence specifically refers to the LCD monitor; however, the "24 bits" sentence may refer to the subsystem, e.g. if you plug in an external monitor you can get up to 24 bits of color, but the internal LCD supports "millions". You may be quite right, but the specific verbiage is not completely clear.

However, in possible support of your point, the section about iMacs from January 2006 says this:

The iMac computers announced in January 2006, based on the Intel Core Duo microprocessor, include a built-in 17-inch widescreen or 20-inch widescreen flat-panel display (measured diagonally). Both displays use TFT (thin-film transistor) technology for high contrast and fast response, and they are backlit by a cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL). Both displays support 3D acceleration and display depths up to 24 bits per pixel at all supported screen resolutions. For more information, see "Graphics ICs."

The 17-inch model supports an LCD display size of 1440 x 900 pixels at 100 dpi. The graphics card temporally dithers the 6 bits per component to show up to millions of colors.

The 20-inch model supports an LCD display size of 1680 x 1050 pixels at 98 dpi and supports 8 bits per component to show up to millions of colors.

(Emphasis added by me.)

In other words, Apple specifies that one iMac model has 6 bits per component color that is dithered to achieve "millions," while another has 8 bits per component to achieve the same thing. They simply don't specify this in the MacBook Pro description; they limit it to "millions of colors."

Re:6-bit? 7-bit? What bit don't you get?

[sweaterface]

Regarding the MacBook, I grant that there is some ambiguity with respect to whether "display depths up to 24 bits per pixel" refers to the display or the video subsystem. But, that same ambiguity is not present in Apple's description of the MacBook Pro. Regarding that system (all releases and all screen sizes), they use virtually the same language:

"The MacBook Pro computer announced in April 2006, based on the Intel Core Duo microprocessor, has a 17-inch widescreen flat-panel display (measured diagonally). The TFT (thin-film transistor) technology provides high contrast and fast response. The display supports 3D acceleration and display depths up to 24 bits per pixel at all supported screen resolutions.

The 17-inch MacBook Pro supports an LCD display size of 1680 x 1050 pixels at 116 dpi and shows up to millions of colors."

Given the use of the definite article, "display" could only refer to the MacBook Pro's attached monitor (in this case, its "17-inch widescreen flat-panel display"). This product description unequivocally indicates that that monitor "supports...display depths up to 24 bits per pixel at all supported screen resolutions." The first use of "display" is the only word that could serve as the subject of that sentence and, as such, is the only thing that could "support...depths of up to 24 bits per pixel."

Re:6-bit? 7-bit? What bit don't you get?

[Dekortage]

You are right: the MacBook Pro specifies the display being capable of 24 bits per pixel. My apologies for quoting the MacBook section before (vs. the MacBook Pro section).

8-bit vs 6-bit LCD displays

[Trevin]

This got me wondering how many bpp my own Viewsonic Pro series monitor can display. I was surprised to find that it wasn't listed in the product specifications -- neither as bits nor total number of colors.

A little further digging brought me to this article which gave some good insight about the differences. Some highlights:

Since consumers were demanding faster screens, something needed to be done to improve response times. To facilitate this, many manufacturers turned to reducing the number of levels each color pixel render. This reduction in the number of intensity levels allows the response times to drop but has the drawback of reducing the overall number of colors that can be rendered.

High-speed LCD monitors typically reduce the number of bits for each color to 6 instead of the standard 8. ... This is far fewer than the true color display such that it would be noticeable to the human eye.

If no color depths is listed, it should be assumed that monitors of 12ms or faster will be 6-bit and the 20ms and slower panels are 8-bit.

This is very subjective to the actual user and what the computer is used for. The amount of color really matters to those that do professional work on graphics. For these people, the amount of color that is displayed on the screen is very important. The average consumer is not going to really need this level of color representation by their monitor. As a result, it probably doesn't matter. People using their displays for video games or watching video will likely not care about the number of colors rendered by the LCD but by the speed at which it can be displayed. As a result, it is best to determine your needs and base your purchase on those criteria.

Re:For those of you who think this is ridiculous..

[mrchaotica]

Imagine buying a 500 gig hard drive, but once it's out of the box you discover the company has shipped you a 375 gig drive.

This is what they do! They advertise (as per your 500 GB example) 500 * 2^40 = 549755813888000 bytes, but only deliver 500 * 10^12 = 500000000000000 bytes, so you're getting short-changed 45 gigabytes. Sure, 455 GB better than 375 GB, but it's still a huge difference from 500 GB!

Say what?

[tomstdenis]

This must be for older macs or something. Because most LCDs made in the last 5 years that I know of are capable of handling 24bpp resolutions just fine (via VGA or DVI or whatever). Certainly on my two LCDs I don't see any banding on gradients.

DNRTFA but I hope for Apple's sake these are old systems that have 16bpp resolutions...

Tom

My Dell produces 768 colors

[volpe]

256 shades of red, 256 shades of blue, 256 shades of green.

Everything else is dithered.

Re:My Dell produces 768 colors

[tomstdenis]

That's not dithering though. Dithering is randomizing quantization error to prevent large spatially related sections of banding.

Mixing three different wavelengths in varying intensities is called mixing, and produces signals of various perceived frequencies. I'm not a DSP engineer but there is an entire science behind what happens when you mix signals and the resulting perceived signal.

Tom

This just in!

[Dancindan84]

Satellite doesn't really have hundreds of channels, they have 50 from 4 different time zones.

ISPs oversell their bandwidth expecting that most people won't use 100% 24/7, and many will cut you off if you use too much despite advertising it as "unlimited"

Smoking Marlboro's will not turn you into a cowboy with a hot chick on your arm.

Stay tuned, more late breaking news at 6.

Re:This just in!

[Achromatic1978]

This just in, you can't sell a hard drive with DoubleSpace compression on it and claim it's an 80gig drive when it's only 40, and say "but you can fit 80 on there". Just ask some manufacturers from the 90s, who got slapped, HARD, for this.

A Mac-owner, but not a Macolyte here...

[jddj]

My Powerbook G4 is the nicest computer I've ever owned, bar none (going all the way back to my hand-assembled Sinclair ZX-81). It's not the fastest I have in the house, but it's been the most useful and the greatest pleasure to use.

It's time to upgrade, but I've had my checkbook put away waiting for Apple to fix the battery problems with the MacBook Pro. Now comes the screen thing - glad I waited.

It's not in any way trivial for a display to show only 6 bits per channel instead of 8 if you're a graphics pro. Any scanner that does less than 8 (and virtually all now do more) would wind up in the dumpster here.

Color management eats up a certain amount of the color resolution and gamut you get to use. Having the display eat up most of the rest is not a help. Even if you're not doing a color-managed workflow, this kind of trouble shows up when you make gentle gradients with subtle color shifts. a 6-bit display would look like ass in a case like this.

I'm apparently still waiting on Apple to build my next laptop. I guess now my Windows 3D workstation gets rebuilt first.

Re:A Mac-owner, but not a Macolyte here...

[b0s0z0ku]

My Powerbook G4 is the nicest computer I've ever owned

Powerbook G4's are 6-bit too :)

If you're ok with your G4's display, you'll likely be fine with a MacBook. For intensive graphics work, you may want to invest in a high-quality desktop LCD anyway.

-b.

Spatial and temporal dithering

[AlpineR]

I never heard of this LCD dithering before. A little bit of Googling found a simple explanation of what it is, a simple test to look for it, and a detailed explanation and test.

This seems to be a very common practice on LCD screens, not just a trick used by Apple. I'm still not clear whether most LCDs use spatial or temporal dithering. It seems like temporal dithering would work very well with an LCD. They're known for their sluggish response times, so sending "80-84-80-84" at 60 Hz should result in a nice smearing into "82-82-82-82" over time.

I didn't see any dithering artifacts on my MacBook Pro (Core 2 Duo). Either it doesn't dither (unlikely) or the dithering is better than my eyes can see.

We all know that screens are actually made of red, green, and blue (RGB) dots that combine to make the apparent color of each pixel. An 8-bit screen would have 256 levels of brighness for each of those subpixels, yielding 256 x 256 x 256 = 16.8 million mixed colors. But if you wanted to be really technical you could say that the screen can actually show only 256 + 256 + 256 = 768 colors; the mixed colors are an illusion. Likewise a 6-bit screen can generate only 262 thousand colors in a given pixel at a given instant, but it can simulate many more colors over time or space.

The argument depends on how many pixels the manufacturer claims to have. If they say their screen is 1024 x 768 with 16.8 million colors then we would expect to have 786,000 independently addressable pixels, each of which comprises three RGB subpixels. If in fact it takes four RGB subpixels (1-1/3 of each 6-bit subpixel to get 8 bits) to yield 16.8 million colors then they should really only claim a resolution of 768 x 576. If, however, they do the dithering temporally and the pulsation is unnoticeable then I think continuing to call the resolution 1024 x 768 is fair.

AlpineR

Re:Spatial and temporal dithering

[greg_barton]

They're known for their sluggish response times, so sending "80-84-80-84" at 60 Hz should result in a nice smearing into "82-82-82-82" over time.

Yeah, except when you're viewing under 60Hz fluorescent lighting. :)

Re:Spatial and temporal dithering

[666999]

Also didn't see any dithering artifacts on my MacBook Core Duo (first-gen), nor on the Xerox ProView LCD it's occasionally attached to.

Re:Spatial and temporal dithering

[iangoldby]

Had a look on my MacBook Pro. I could definitely see faint colour casts in some of the grey bars. As for dithering I was not convinced, but after staring at it for a while I thought I could perhaps see some regular speckled patterns in the shape of regularly sized diamonds. Might have been my imagination for staring for too long...

Re:Mac=emo

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, that is the gayest post I've ever seen. You are definitely gay.

Mod parent up for guts!

[elrous0]

Sir, if I had mod points I would give them to you just for the shear bravery of suggestion that Windows does ANYTHING better than Apple on /.

Really? Really really?

[palladiate]

As far as I can tell, being a massive hardware geek, that's a no. Most LCD monitors ARE 8 bit. Hell even cheapo LCD panels are 8 bit.

I'd say it's reasonable that a consumer would understand "Millions of colors" as 8 bit. I don't, but I get pissy when a sales clerk or website provide dick-all in terms of specifications. The bottom line is, don't buy something unless you know the specifications and understand them, even if you trust the manufacturer.

However, knowing everything about every product is impossible, and most of us approximate based on loose specifications. It's like a can of beans. I don't think too many of us would pick up a can that just had a label "beans." What kind of beans? However, if we bought "pinto beans" and what was inside was a really rare, weird variety of pinto beans that taste or look different than normal "pinto beans" we'd be justifiably angry. The court is just deciding in this case if the product labeling was deceptive. We just don't know what merit that may have, until the court is done. What I do know is that this was rather shady out of a company like Apple, who sells on trust as well as honest specifications, and of whom we generally expect better.

Tittaly dumf

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like going after someone for giving you 11 dollars in two 1 dollar bills. I mean, surely it's 11 if you put them next to each other and squint?

Re:Macs for artists, and paint!

[Casualposter]

Paint is based upon pigments which are chemical compounds having rather specific absorbances. Varying levels of these compounds are used when mixing one pigment with others to create the entire set of colors humans have to work with. So each pigment is a color, kinda like the pixels on the monitor, and they are mixed at varying levels to provide the illusion of a particular shade of color.

Quick! Sue the pigment makers and artists of the world! They are only giving us the ILLUSION of all those colors! EGADS! We've been CHEATED.

I hope quite sincerely that someone puts this class actions lawsuit in the recycle bin along with the greedy B*****ds who came up with this steaming pile of bovine excrement.

MOD PARENT DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

This is disinformation, not information. As noted by my sibling posts.

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN

[Short Circuit]

If you don't consider color combinations, you only get 256 shades from each of the three color channels. (Or, more accurately, as this comment pointed out, 766 colors) To make my point a bit clearer, take one each of red, green and blue LEDs, space them five inches apart, and allow controls to set each LED to each of 256 different shades. Would you still argue that you're seeing 16.7 million colors?

That's why I said, "Technically, they're correct." If you're pedantic enough.

2^72 colors.

[Pyrroc]

Additionally, if you were using 4 pixels each capable of rendering (2^6)^3 or 2^18 (262,144) colors and you used 4 of them to represent a color, wouldn't you have the capability to render (2^18)^4 or 2^72 colors? That would be 4,722,366,482,869,645,213,696 or 4 sextillion colors.

Re:2^72 colors.

[IkeTo]

I think so. All you do is to modify the intensity of the 4 sub-pixels to have carefully chosen relative intensity, so that the first one is of intensity 1 in each of its levels, the second intensity 64, the third intensity 64*64, and the last intensity 64*64*64. Of course, you will need to calibrate each of the pixels very exactly, so that, e.g., the 100th level of the brightest pixel of intensity 100*64*64*64, rather than 100*64*64*64+1. You also have to mix the sub-pixels good enough not to create really bad artifacts. You also have to make sure that you create bright enough pixels so that quantum effects do not run in. I wonder whether anybody in the industry will try such a thing, perhaps you rock every of us by doing so.

Virtually no laptop LCD can display 16.7M colors

[demon driver]

From one of the comments below TFA: "Out of 28 notebook LCDs manufactured by Samsung, only 2 can display 16.7M colors natively, a 15.4-inch panel with a lowish resolution of 1,280 x 800 (part number LTN154X5) and a 19-inch panel (part number LTN190W1). The rest, 26 LCDs, are 6-bit and can display 262,144 colors natively, without dithering, and millions of colors with dithering. [...] At LG.Philips, all of the 15 notebook LCDs are 6-bit and can display 262,144 colors natively, without dithering, and millions of colors with dithering."

So it seems virtually no laptop LCD can display 16.7M colors without dithering. It's a problem which affects the whole industry, and all laptop manufacturers seem to be, well, somewhat "optimistic" in their advertising claims.

Which doesn't make it better that Apple does so, too, and as far as I'm concerned, the suit is well justified.

That's a memory issue

[bill_mcgonigle]

I remember back in the earlier days of graphical programming, you typically had a choice between 640X480 16 color, or 320X240 256 color. Yes at 640X480 you could simulate more colors but not without sacrificing resolution in the area that you were simulating it.

That was a video memory issue. 640x480x4(bit) vs 320x240x8(bit) --- you probably had 1MB of VRAM.

Re:That's a memory issue

[the_greywolf]

I had 512kB of VRAM, and I was damned happy, thank you very much. And I could even push 800x600 at 4 bits!

(4-bit 640x480 is done in less than 256kB, FYI.)

Re:That's a memory issue

[bill_mcgonigle]

(4-bit 640x480 is done in less than 256kB, FYI.)

Ah, quite so. As usual (it seems, lately) I was doing math in bits and talking in bytes. No bone for me.

512KB? Oh, you had the fancy model, eh? ;)

(I'm still shocked how much paper route money I spent on a graphics card that could do 512x512 in 24-bit color or 1024x768x8-bit - cost-adjusted, you could probably buy two or three MacBooks for the cost of that card. There wasn't even any decent porn in those days - what was I thinking?)

Points

[UnknowingFool]

It looks like everyone is taking one of two sides:

What? That's outrageous! Apple sucks! or

This is so silly. Don't these guys know any better?

Some points to remember before you take sides:

The problem is that the LCD displays are 6-bit not 8-bit. To accomplish the millions of colors needed, a software technique called dithering is used to trick the human eye. That fact is not advertised nor mentioned by Apple. That is what the lawsuit is all about.

However, Apple is not alone in this issue as the problem is hardware not software derived. Apple like most other manufacturer of laptops do not directly manufacture their own displays like they do not manufacture their own batteries. Cost is the predominant reason why 6-bit displays are used instead of 8-bit. Higher end displays cost more and the gain is minimal considering most people cannot tell the difference.

If these guys win, then other laptop manufacturers could also be sued. I would think that the main reason most consumers aren't told the difference between 6 bit and 8 bit displays is that they really don't care as specifications confuse them. Heck, most can't tell the difference between RAM and HD space. Thus the display specs are advertised in "millions of colors" and not "6 bit" or "8 bit". Personally I think the outcome would be there will now be an "*" with the specs and fine print at the bottom disclaiming "Perceived number of colors is achieved through dithering. Actual number of colors is lower."

Re:For those of you who think this is ridiculous..

[Pyrroc]

Except that the true definition of giga is 1000^3, not 1024^3, hence the additional GiB definition to represent 1024^3 bytes.

Millions colors != 256k

[Potatomasher]

Bottom line is that Apple is advertising their LCDs as offering "millions of colors" when in reality they only have 256k. Its false advertising, plain and simple. And yes companies should be held accountable for that.

It's current models, but LAPTOP displays

[tpjunkie]

Laptop displays have always lagged behind standalone displays, which incidentally, are still by large 6 bit displays. Laptop displays are just about ALL 6 bit displays, and are temporally dithered to simulate additional colors.

Re:Mac=emo

[Anonymous Coward]

emo kidz are like a big bunch of gay homosexuals

As opposed to those straight homosexuals, right?

On Apple Terminology

[bill_mcgonigle]

Okay, great, you win! We all have 3-color displays!

You beat me to it. ;)

For the audience: Anybody who's been using Apple gear since the early 90's (late 80's?) knows that in Apple-speak, Thousands means 16-bit color and Millions means 24-bit color signal.

See, in the old days, your Monitors control panel had Black & White, 4, 16 and 256 Colors as your options. When they added 16, then 24-bit color support, instead of listing 2048 and 16,667,242 (or whatever), they did something very Apple and called them "Thousands" and "Millions".

Long time Mac users understand what what the terminology means, and people who care about color understand you don't use an LCD for it (except perhaps one that costs several times what a MacBook costs).

I rather see this like somebody complaining that their new F-150 cannot, in fact, pull as much as a team of 450 horses can.

Re:On Apple Terminology

[BandwidthHog]

I rather see this like somebody complaining that their new F-150 cannot, in fact, pull as much as a team of 450 horses can.

First decent car analogy I’ve seen on slashdot in years!

Not Ambitious Enough

[AnonymousRobin]

The man has a point, only it has not been taken far enough. He's targeted the wrong people. This needs to be taken higher up. We should all sue God because what we peceive as a color is really a combination of three types of cones of DIFFERENT COLORS firing off, which then lies to us and makes it seem like there is a single different color. This is clear misrepresentation of the facts and we should not let this kind of thing slide.

Not to sound stupid, but....

[plazman30]

Wouldn't this apply to ALL laptop displays by ANY manufacturer? Everyone claims millions of colors for their laptops. Why isn't there a class action lawsuit against Lenovo, HP, Sony and all the others.... Andy

Re:Not to sound stupid, but....

[Achromatic1978]

Uhhh, because the people involved only own Apple laptops?

Want to start a class action lawsuit against all the others? Find owners of the other disenfranchised enough to join your suit.

Base-10, no less

[bill_mcgonigle]

They advertise (as per your 500 GB example) 500 * 2^40 = 549755813888000 bytes, but only deliver 500 * 10^12 = 500000000000000 bytes,

And where do they get off basing their number on base 10 over base 2? I much prefer counting in base 12, so I'm only getting 1/9th the drive I was expecting. ;)

Yes, it is

[palladiate]

However, if LensCrafters went around saying that their glasses "made your eyesight better" they would be sued. They would probably lose too, as their glasses don't fix your eyesight. They correct your eyesight. The former statement is a lie, and if they advertised improving your eyesight, they could get in trouble. If it was a small ad that said it (like the Apple issue here) they will probably be told to stop doing it. If Lenscrafters had millions of ad dollars in promoting "eyeglasses that fix your vision," they should be prepared for a massive hellstorm from the courts.

You can do some crazy stuff in marketing, but you had better not make a substantively false statement.

I will defend Apple and say that only one notebook display manufacturer has 8-bit displays, Samsung, and only IBM/Lenovo used them.

Were there any damages claimed?

[foniksonik]

For a suit like this to hold water you should have to prove that you as plaintiff lost revenue because of this problem. SO... did they have to spend more time on a project than necessary, did their client reject their work and hold them accountable for the problem? What?

Why any color professional would rely on RGB to begin with is beyond me. It's great for web and digital display graphics as the color space is equivalent (still test your work on the deployment platform (screen model, projector, kiosk, etc.) before stating "it's done"... it's called Quality Control). For print work OTOH it sucks balls. Some other poster mentioned matchprints, color proofs... I'll add in press checks. These are what you use for color QC, not the monitor. Then you use absolute values from colorometric profiles to fix what's wrong.

Also it's really dumb to think that your laptop screen is good for this type of work. Get a laptop sure they're great, I use one. Then get a 2nd display... even a small one. Use that for doing your digital spot checks. A high quality 17in. monitor that has been perfectly fine for this type of work for at least a decade will cost you under $200.

The graphic card is 24bits, not the display

[AwaxSlashdot]

I'm curious, as I thought 24 bit displays had been standard on computers for well over a decade now

Well, the image sent to the display is handled internally as 24bits for well over a decade as you pointed it. With CRT displays, this was correctly handled since this is an analog display.

With LCD, another layer of digital conversion has been added. Even if the computer is handling the screen buffer in 24 bits internally, LCDs have starded from the good old 256 colors (8bits) then progressively switched to 4096 (10 bits) and 65k (16 bits).

Most LCDs are currently 18bits (6bits per channel) as stated in others comments. To display more than the 262k colors available, you can use temporal and spacial dithering. Spacial dithering is when you display a 50% gray next to a 52% gray when you want to display a 51% gray. Temporal dithering is when you display a 50% gray then a 52% gray then a 50% gray, etc... to display the same 51% gray.

This dithering can be handled at the application level, the OS level, the graphic card driver level, the graphic card hardware level or at the panel electronic level. In fact, this might be handled at all those places at the same time with varying results :-(

Never noticed

[WMD_88]

I have a Powerbook G4 12". I've never noticed any dithering before, and in fact, with some calibration, it has some of the best color I've personally seen. (It could stand to be a little brighter sometimes....) Yet it must be dithering because no $1500 laptop is going to actually have an 8-bit panel. In fact, that's even a stretch for the $2000 MBP.

Agreed

[purduephotog]

I'm in the same boat. We constantly test LCDs at work to recommend to various customers which ones to go with for their next massive purchase. Several displays have been 'hot' for doing temporal dithering. Problem is... I see the noise patterns it produces, and it gives me a rather nasty headache. Statistically we are under-represented, but the customer will more than likely have a greater percentage of these younger, well-visioned individuals, so this becomes a problem.

We also work with manufacturers to get new technologies based upon the HVS (Human Visual System) implemented. Supposedly there are new displays coming that address even some of the issues out there- but temporal dithering is here to stay until it's displaced by a more impulse-decay system.

And ... I'm of the personal opinion that temporal dithering messes with your heads. Several coworkers all have the same LCD panel. Each one notices they get headaches from the display, but none say anything about it to the others. At one point, another coworker gets the same LCD and gets diagnosed with Epilepsy 3 months afterwards, after getting increased headaches...

I hate temporal dithering.

OMG!!11one LAWSUITZ ARE TEH EVIL!

[SuperBanana]

Eh? Why does anyone sue? To hurt the defendant's feelings? Would the plaintiffs be happy if the Judge said "fair enough" and somehow awarded them MBP's with better screens? Of course not.

If Apple made $10M by using 6 bit screens instead of 8 bit screens *and* lied to customers, then a lawsuit for $10M can be viewed as confiscation of said profits. If they were particularly "evil" about doing it, punitive damages might be involved. Apple cares about profits above everything else, like any other publicly held company. If a 6 bit screen saves them $10M but costs them a $10M-plus-everyone's-legal-fees lawsuit, in theory, they'll either be more upfront next time, or use 8 bit screens.

Lawsuits are perfectly normal and necessary. This whole "OMG OMG, LAWSUITZ ARE TEH EVIL!" crap is really cliche.

Re:OMG!!11one LAWSUITZ ARE TEH EVIL!

[delire]

No one said they're evil. Where did you read that bit?

Also worth asking where does this "confiscation of said profits" go? Who gets it again? Cool, now you get it.

Does the hardware not do the dithering?

[blorg]

In the case of a 6-bit LCD panel, I would have presumed it was the panel hardware was doing the dithering, and certainly not the operating system.

Is it possible that what they think is a Windows superiority in this regard is due to ClearType, which is tangentially related (e.g. OS-based sub-pixel dithering of text only, with the aim of simulating a resoltion increase rather than a colour one.)

Re:Does the hardware not do the dithering?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or it might have something to do with the gamma (the "traditional" Mac gamma is 1.8, though I believe most people use 2.2 these days), or color management, which Macs tend to do better than Windows computers to begin with. (Oh, the irony.)

Or it could all just be blatant lies. Who knows.

Re:Does the hardware not do the dithering?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cleartype? The "technology" that makes black and white letters look nicely greenish and reddish?

Blah!

Re:Does the hardware not do the dithering?

[Lars T.]

In the case of a 6-bit LCD panel, I would have presumed it was the panel hardware was doing the dithering, and certainly not the operating system.

Is it possible that what they think is a Windows superiority in this regard is due to ClearType, which is tangentially related (e.g. OS-based sub-pixel dithering of text only, with the aim of simulating a resoltion increase rather than a colour one.) If they think ClearType's psychedelic colours are great, they shouldn't be complaining about the dithering.

Yes.

[Xocet_00]

That's a really good idea. Anyone know how to start a class-action suit?

Re:Yes.

[DohnJoe]

Anyone know how to start a class-action suit? sure, just click Start->Programs->Explorer->File->Class-action Lawsuit

(note that this is only available on the American version of XP)

they never said it...

[Down_in_the_Park]

I am certainly not an Apple fan, but the website says: TFT display with support for millions of colors. How they "support" the amount of colors will certainly be a joyful exercise of a lawyer in front of the court. Hint: the word dithering may appear in his explanation...

My 0.02

[Diocleciano Palma]

I have a C2D MacBook Pro and I clearly notice some grain in gradients like those in the window titles, but nothing that eye accomodation won't solve in seconds - not so much the case with the generally uneven lighting, which IMHO a much worse problem than the dithering... colors in the lower and center regions of my screen are noticeably different, and I believe that might mess things up for people who do photo editing when they're working with images that have similar colors. All PowerBooks I've come around seem great in this aspect (and they also seem to be more robust and better built than MBPs, but I digress.)

If the lawsuit has Apple trading my MBP's monitor for one that's marginally better, I'm all for it. But they really should concentrate on pragmatic stuff, rather than something that's more of a technically than anything else.

That being said, I have never found a monitor that could manage to put out such a bright and vibrant image as this one (having a consumer-grade external monitor connected to the Mac has always given me headaches since the MBPs monitor is so different,) so I could imagine the color output is still pretty good anyway.

Incorrect

[VirusEqualsVeryYes]

Nitpick, and you shall be nitpicked yourself:

God is a smiter.
God is about to smite Bob.
God is smiting Bob.
God smote Bob.
God has smitten Bob.
Bob has been smitten.

The adjective is always the past participle.

Re:Incorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

RONG, its "smote," lern 2 talk n00b

Re:Incorrect

[untaken_name]

Did you mean, "Learn to talk n00b," as in a command to go out and find out how to speak a language called n00b, or did you mean, "Learn to talk, n00b," as in a command to a n00b to learn how to talk?
Punctuation: the Rodney Dangerfield of grammar.

Re:Incorrect

[ookabooka]

Indeed, but you left out the nounified conjugation: smitification.

Re:Incorrect

[forkazoo]

God is a smiter.
God is about to smite Bob.
God is smiting Bob.
God smote Bob.
God has smitten Bob.
Bob has been smitten.

God had done gone smoted Bob, and he was pissed.

Re:Incorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

At least one exception: "proved" is the preferred past participle of "prove"

Re:Incorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

The adjective is always the past participle.

I don't think "adjective" is the word you're looking for.

My job could be at stake.

[BFaucet]

I create FX for films and sometimes do some print work. There is a HUGE difference between 16, 24 and 32 bit color. If I submit a shot to the colorist that has even a slight bit of banding, he's going to crank the color contrast and pull colors everywhere and that banding will become very noticable. If that happens the shot will need to be corrected and that can cost a lot of money. The end result: I get fired.

So yes, it is important.

Re:Macs for artists, and paint!

[PhilipMckrack]

I hope quite sincerely that someone puts this class actions lawsuit in the recycle bin along with the greedy B*****ds who came up with this steaming pile of bovine excrement.

I think it is a valid case. They advertised one thing and delivered something else. Seems pretty clear cut to me.

Aren't colors just visual impression?

[ionFreeman]

What's the difference between a color and the appearance of a color?

Re:Aren't colors just visual impression?

[badasscat]

What's the difference between a color and the appearance of a color?

Aren't Ferraris just cars? What's the difference between a real Ferrari and a replica Ferrari?

Same thing - the difference is accuracy. Graphic designers, photographers and those in the video/film industries need their on-screen colors to be exactly as real life, or at least as close to it as possible. If a monitor is showing you a Pantone green #359, and it instead looks like a #358 swatch that you're holding in your hand, that's a big problem.

People who don't need their computers to match colors this precisely probably don't care about dithering. But Apple has always marketed their computers towards these creative types for creative tasks. It's not a question of whether or not a computer monitor should dither - a lot of LCD's (most, actually) dither and nobody complains much about them, because they're "good enough" for most people. The difference is how Apple is marketing their machines and the kinds of claims they make about them in advertising.

That's not to say I think the plaintiffs have a case... I honestly don't know how Apple marketed MacBooks specifically, I only know their general marketing strategy, as most people do. Seems to me the case is going to hinge on the specific claims Apple made. "Millions of colors" is a claim that's basically industry standard for dithered displays, but that doesn't mean it's a legitimate defense.

By the way, I am happy if this case brings the dithering issue some more attention. A lot of people are focused so much on LCD response times that they don't realize it comes with a price. It's gotten to a point where I almost look for *higher* response times these days because those are generally the panels that don't dither - all panels with these 2ms or thereabouts response times are 6-bit per pixel panels, and they dither. Apple's other LCD monitors, along with a few from Dell and several from boutique manufacturers are 8 bit per pixel panels and they do not dither... but their response times are higher. You need 8 bits per pixel for the best color accuracy.

dithering

[proadventurer]

If dithering fools your eyes and your eyes are the only tool most humans have to precieve colors. Gosh, I don't even know how to finish that thought. Well, maybe I'll just paint a picture since a picture says a thousand words. Lawsuits are lame.

Same thing done with digital cameras

[Starker_Kull]

If these geniuses really want to start suing over their lack of research on how things work, I suggest they go after the folks who make digital cameras and advertise them as 12 megapixels or what have you. In your typical digitial camera, each pixel does NOT record the intensities of three different colors, but only ONE. See this for a more detailed explanation, but in summary, each pixel has either an red, a green, or a blue filter over it, and the camera then 'reconstructs' what a given pixel should see in the other two colors based on what its neighbors see. This is rather a big deal with RAW files - the RAW format actually preserves the fact that each pixel really only sees one color, and allows you the photograhper to make some decisions about how the software blends the information.

The point is, a pixel is NOT used in at least two different fields (camera sensors, and LCD displays) as the ultimate unit of color display, so they are going to have a hard time arging this silliness in court. If you really care about the difference between spatial dithering, temporial dithering, etc., you should have known this before you bought a tool to help you work with it.

At the same time?

[ajs318]

No ordinary monitor can display "millions of colours" at the same time. Even a 1280x1024 monitor can only ever be displaying 1 310 720 colours at the same time.

Re:At the same time?

[Anonymous Coward]

how about 1920x1200?

That would be at least 2 million.

What's the plural for million again?

Oh, that's right, millions.

Re:At the same time?

[ZX-3]

Doesn't it "really" only show ONE color at a time? It just uses the fact that the human eye cannot detect the phosphors fading before the beam refreshes them.

Re:At the same time?

[Anonymous Coward]

2 304 000.

Whether the human eye (especially the heterosexual male eye, which for instance can only perceive one shade of pink and two shades of brown) can actually distinguish between that many colours is anyone's guess.

But the squares look different on my MacBook...

[rickkas7]

On my MacBook, which should have a 6-bit display, the left and right squares look quite different to me. I believe that's a good indication that the time-based "dithering" used on the MacBook is not nearly as bad as space-based dithering, at least for people who are unable to see flicker significantly above 60 Hz.

Re:But the squares look different on my MacBook...

[suv4x4]

On my MacBook, which should have a 6-bit display, the left and right squares look quite different to me. I believe that's a good indication that the time-based "dithering" used on the MacBook is not nearly as bad as space-based dithering, at least for people who are unable to see flicker significantly above 60 Hz.

Truth be told, an image can't fit perfectly to the dithering of a monitor (the position of the image matters, color rounding etc etc.)

It's just an example that let's you see approximately what the diff might be side to side. In fact, on a poorly dithered monitor, a dithered image would look far worse, due to the interference patterns.

Re:But the squares look different on my MacBook...

[binary paladin]

Me too... I'm not quite sure what it is that I'm supposed to see or not see to prove what point.

Re:But the squares look different on my MacBook...

[Lodragandraoidh]

On my Macbook Pro - I can't tell the difference between the built-in and piping it off to a stand-alone monitor. The display is certainly better than the old Acer 486-66 machine with 256 color LCD it replaced.

Of course, I'm not a professional photographer, videographer/film maker, graphic artist, or the like, and my eyesight is beginning to go (over 40).

Re:But the squares look different on my MacBook...

[tigeba]

I can clearly see the banding in the left square on my MacBook Pro and on my terrible 19" analog LCD at work.

The majority of all LCD monitors do this.

[guidryp]

This looks like a frivolous lawsuit to me.

Nearly all TN based LCD screens (the majority sold) are 6bit depth displays with dithering. 8bit screens are even more rare in laptops than they are on desktops. I have never seen a laptop that didn't have a TN screen (as opposed to more expensive 8bit IPS/VA screens).

If you go directly to LCD manufacturer sites, they will list the spec as supporting 16.2 million colors. They list the true 8 bit screens as supporting 16.7 million colors.

If they want to go after anyone it should be the manufacturers of the panels. Frankly all the specs are essentially lies. 180 degree viewing angles??!! Geez the gamma start shifting if I move an inch. exactly what can anyone see when 90 degrees off axis from the screen??

By all means sue for some truth in advertising on LCD specs, but go after Samsung/LG et al...

Re:The majority of all LCD monitors do this.

[Achromatic1978]

I didn't buy the LCD from Samsung/LG, I bought it from Apple, so I'll sue Apple. If Ford advertises that their geartrain can survive you repeatedly shifting without a clutch with no ramifications, but this isn't possible, you bet your ass I'm going to sue Ford, not Xhensua Heavy Industries (fictional company). Even if Xhensua Heavy Industries advertises same on their site for manufacturers. And so would you.

Hauntingly familiar...

[Anonymous Coward]

Although their complaint does sound a bit picky, I actually discovered the same exact thing with a final-gen PowerPC G5 17" iMac. I was never really pleased with the display.. but I couldn't put my finger on why. (Actually, it reminded me of my Hitachi 19" LCD 6-bit display.)

Some guy in Japan did a teardown of an identical iMac and photographed the back panel of the LCD. It was a specific LG model, which according to LG's own website, had 6-bits per pixel color. This bothered me because for the price and reputation of an Apple computer, I expected no corner cutting. (And yes, even though the display only supported thousands of colors, the Apple iMac specs stated "millions of colors".)

In the case of the iMac or any Apple laptop, a large portion of your investment is tied to the screen... so it better live up to the specs.

Re:Better under Windows?

[spitzak]

Though it seems hard to believe, there is some chance that Apple does have a serious mistake. There is an explanation as to why it might be "better under Windows" and it is not good for Apple. A sure way to compare would be to take a screen shot from one system and display it on the other, so that differences in graphics and font rendering do not enter into it.

Apple has had a history of using a gamma correction table, which was always a mistake. I thought they eradicated this in OS/X but perhaps it lives on. Some ill-informed people actually think this makes the image better but it is always a bad idea on current hardware.

The reason is that the hardware interface to the monitor is 8 bits (per channel). If you have an 8-bit-per-channel image, and the gamma correction table is anything other than 1:1, then two or more different 8-bit shades are going to get mapped to the same 8 bit number sent to the monitor, due to the pigeonhole principle. It also means some possible 8-bit outputs are not going to get produced. It is possible the diterhing of the LCD is amplifying this effect. For instance if many of the "pure" values are the missing ones, then there is going to be far more dithering.

Both Windows and Linux just dump the 8 bit images you send to the graphics api to the screen buffer with no change. Though this sounds more primitive, it turns out it is the right thing to do. Color correction and profiling has to be done by software, not by hardware and drivers.

Re:Virtually no laptop LCD can display 16.7M color

[Anonymous Coward]

Then perhaps the class-action lawsuit should be directed against the entire industry. It could even become an anti-trust case: collusion in marketing.

Obviously

[DJCacophony]

Because those manufacturers of computers don't guarantee a color depth that the monitors can't achieve, whereas Apple did, in this case. In case you didn't read TFA, Apple said their screens had an 8 bit color depth, but they only had a 6 bit color depth.

Re:YUO FaIL IT?

[Anonymous Coward]

I got a mail from you the other day, I'm sure of it.

Now fuck off.

Old VGA days

[hsa]

I find it quite amusing that 6 bits per channel was the resolution of old VGA monitors. They were only capable of displaying 256 colors at the screen at any given time.

I remember going "Oooh!" when similar technological demonstration was made by Future Crew in 1992. It was so cool then. Might not be as cool down. Here is a link to their ground breaking demo:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_(demo)

So, should we have called our graphics adapters capable of displaying 16.7M colors 15 years ago?

Sue Texas Instruments

[CompMD]

For DLP technology. There's just a spinning color wheel that doesn't have millions of colors on it. This lawsuit is crap.

The good old days

[Overly Critical Guy]

Anyone remember the good old days when people simply returned or sold the products they weren't satisfied with, so that they could get a new one? You know, instead of filing a fucking file class-action lawsuit.

Re:The good old days

[drinkypoo]

Anyone remember the good old days when people simply returned or sold the products they weren't satisfied with, so that they could get a new one? You know, instead of filing a fucking file class-action lawsuit.

Well, I have two things to say about that.

One, most of the time they make it impossible to return anything any more unless it's broken. Finding out that it doesn't do what you need it to do (and reasonably expected it to based on advertising) or that it was sold to you under a bait-and-switch doesn't get you a return, it gets you laughed at.

Two, while I'm not a big fan of buying luxury items for lawyers, who collectively created the legal system-SNAFU that we currently all operate within (lawyers tending to be the ones that become politicians and end up writing the laws) there is something to be said for punishing companies who break the rules. Since we are apparently unwilling to just about ever invoke the corporate death penalty, I'm all for at least punishing Apple for their fraudulent advertising.

Re:The good old days

[b0s0z0ku]

One, most of the time they make it impossible to return anything any more unless it's broken.

That can always be arranged. 220V across the power adapter input contacts, among other methods....

-b.

Re:The good old days

[demi]

I suggest looking for companies with good return policies, and giving your business to them when you have a big purchase to make. Costco has always treated me very well with regard to returns, and I go back there. I have returned a digital camera, and received a replacement, because I broke it, and returned a printer, after some months of use, because I didn't like how it was feeding paper anymore. In the second instance they did ask for the manual that came with the printer, but arranged on their own for a replacement for it when I told them I didn't have it anymore.

If enough people make return policy and other consumer-friendly factors part of their purchase decisions, companies will support them.

As to your second point--I agree. Everyone is served by not having companies pass off goods by deceiving consumers. Lawsuits are part of the controls in place to help make sure that doesn't happen (as much). In fact, the alternative would be much larger regulatory bodies policing and enforcing every advertisisg claim, a model I like much less.

Re:The good old days

[Mr2001]

One, most of the time they make it impossible to return anything any more unless it's broken. Finding out that it doesn't do what you need it to do (and reasonably expected it to based on advertising) or that it was sold to you under a bait-and-switch doesn't get you a return, it gets you laughed at. That hasn't been my experience at CompUSA, Best Buy, Circuit City, Costco, or Wal-Mart. Where are you shopping that has such draconian return policies?

Dither like it's 1999!

[GanjaManja]

I wonder if this 'deception' of Apple's is the same as it was in 1998 or whenever I first saw that "millions" of colors option?
If that's the case, then I really wonder how much merit the case has.
    Did they have to go to extremes to even notice that each pixel did not have it's own millions of colors? Did they put the monitor under a 200x microscope to find out it was dithering?
Can't say I've heard this complaint before, and it's (theoretically) been like this for 9 years on every video card and monitor I've had from Apple.
    Do Windoze displays NOT dither? Do they give you a "256 (dithered)" option just to be more honest (and confusing)?

I guess this is what happens when you get famous and rich. I can't imagine someone caring at all back in 2000, back before it was decided by Windoze users that Apple may be an actual competitor to M$. Go get your American dream, sue somebody!

Apple does both the hardware AND the software

[AwaxSlashdot]

Apple might have developed its own spatial and temporal dithering algorithm, perfectly matched to its own hardware, drivers and OS. I know it does not manufacture the LCD panel but it might have spend quite a good time perfectly matching its driver and OS low level drawing algorithms to have a perfect picture. Other laptop manufacturers don't have access to the OS inner workings. So, technically, it CAN be true.

OH NOES!

[alisson]

That's not red, it only looks exactly like red! Hax!!!!

MacBooks = 6 bit, Cinema Displays = 8 bit ??

[Anonymous Coward]

If you truck on over to Apple's site you'll find this under the techspecs for MacBooks (and MacBook Pros):

    "glossy widescreen TFT display with support for millions of colors"

And for the iMac:

    "Millions of colors at all resolutions"

But under the techspecs for the desktop and cinema displays you find:

    "Display colors (maximum) 16.7 million"

The entry level cinema display costs $599 vs. the entry level MacBook at $1099 (ie. the display comes with a complete computer as well). You get what you pay for.

Re:For those of you who think this is ridiculous..

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually isn't it more like a hard drive manufacturer selling you a hard drive that can store 500 GB. When installed in your computer it shows up as 500 GB, but it turns out that it is actually a 300 GB hard drive with built in compression so that it can store 500 GB on a 300 GB drive.

It;'s even worse than we thought!

[TomRC]

I took a magnifying glass and looked at the display, and after a careful and thorough examination I came to this horrifying conclusion:

THERE WERE ONLY FOUR COLORS ON THE DISPLAY - AND THAT'S BEING GENEROUS AND COUNTING BLACK AS A COLOR!

There were only Red, Green and Blue colored pixels, and a more or less "black" color between the pixels. *ALL* the other apparent "colors" were generated by cleverly varying the intensity of the color pixels and dithering groups of at least four pixels!

Shame on you Apple!

*** Next up on my investigative quest: Just how many flavors ARE there, really? Watch for my scathing condemnation of FDA tolerance of food manufacturer claims for "flavors" like "Strawberry", "Apple" and even "Hey these don't taste like Apples!" Inquiring tongues want to know!

Gods are for smiting (or "gods smite"?)

[Gary W. Longsine]

> Hmm. . . maybe I should sue God for making these substandard eyes!
>>Make sure its new testament god (or a non-christian/judaic/islamic god) otherwise you'll be smited!

Oh, don't kid yourself. Those other gods are perfectly capable of smiting, too.

It's all dithering

[tgibbs]

History, repeat thyself. Honestly, there's a legitimate point to that. If the advertised specs say that it can display "millions of colors", then there's a reasonable expectation that a given pixel will be able to represent over 1 million colors (most likely 16MiColors, but who's counting?). Yeah, this might seem a little silly, but if you can't deliver then don't promise it.

However, even with an 8 bit panel, any give point on the screen can display only 256 colors. The appearance of any more colors than that is also dithering. So the question reduces to "What kinds of dithering are acceptable for a "millions if colors" display?

The verdict...

[Anonymous Coward]

Judge: "Faggots! Case Dismissed! NEXT!"

How RGB screen works, anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

"...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"

Actually, this is precisely the way _ANY_ RGB screen works - red, green and blue subpixels are placed closely together, to "trick the human eye into perceiving the desired color even though it is not truly that color" :)

The human eye works as a comb filter. It is the human brain, that perceives a combination of three peaks in the frequency domain in the same way as a peak it totally different place.

Color Calibration?

[PhotoGuy]

Perhaps part of the issue here is that OS X is capable of doing some quite advanced color, level, and white balance calibration on the display. (System Prefs, Display, Color, Calibrate.) I find that color calibration *really* tunes up things for a given monitor (including the built in one), and even for different ambient lighting conditions in which I work.

Maybe with all the advanced processing they're doing to manage all of this amazing color calibration, they use some dithering. Perhaps the defaults aren't as good as windows. (Hmmm, and who made the windows display driver for the MacBooks? Me thinks that would be Apple.) I bet if color calibration were done, the "OS X" display would be on par or surpass the equivalent windows display. Just a hunch.

That's pretty much the point

[Space cowboy]

EVERY manufacturer who advertises 16.2 million colours uses a 6-bit display and dithering. Apple has a setting of "millions of colours" in their preferences, and they stuck with that description when they used a 6-bit display.

The point is that this is temporal dithering, not spacial dithering. There's no point in saying "my eye can see the difference when there's dithering in an image" because that's not what's taking place.

Consider a nominally 1-bit system, a single red LED. Apply zero power, and it's black. Apply constant 5v (with appropriate resistors :-) and it's bright-red. Now apply a pulse-wave-modulation to that LED, and you will be able to *see* a smoothly-varying intensity between 0 and 1 (black and bright-red) even though the LED is only switching fully on or fully off. The pulse-train is controllable by a digital system, so you can electronically vary the effective brightness of this 1-bit system.

In this, the 1-bit output is temporally dithering its on/off state to give the illusion of a multi-bit system. Scale this up to a 6-bit system, and it's easy to generate the illusion of an 8-bit system. To the human eye there is no difference, we don't have the refresh-rate to catch the LED off or on, we just see the aggregated results of very fast controlled flickering.

Simon

Re:Virtually no laptop LCD can display 16.7M color

[Mattintosh]

It's not false advertising when you're basing your suit on the wording of a configuration option in a preference pane. It's false... configuration option naming? I guess.. maybe...

Is it "false advertising" when Windows says "True Color" in the Display control panel, too? No? Then someone is a whiny bitch and needs to shut their pie hole.

It may sound like a Yogi Berra-ism, but really, if it isn't advertising, it isn't advertising.

Epson, Canon, and HP are next!

[joe_n_bloe]

Did you know - inkjet printers actually print only 4 to 8 colors! Once people figure this out, lawsuits will end this deceptive practice, and the photo print market will be handed to Olympus (dye-sub) and Frontier/LightJet (laser photo process). I don't know about you but I'm buying the stock right now.

Apple is absolutely in the wrong.

[argent]

If it's an 18 bit display, then it's only capable of displaying 256k unique shades on every pixel. That's a quarter of a million unique colors.

I understand why they did it... Apple was trapped by their attempt to dumb down the user interface too much, to describe displays in rough terms instead of precise ones. Instead of "Thousands" they should have listed "16 bit" (or "65536 colors"), instead of millions "24 bits", instead of saving images with Alpha in Preview as "Millions of colors +" they should have listed "32 bit" or even "24 bit plus Alpha".

But claiming that an 18 bit LCD is really displaying "Millions of colors" is absolutely deceptive advertising. Apple needs to settle this, admit that it was a mistake, and move on. I don't expect them to, but anything else will only make things worse even if they win.

What would they have Apple do?

[tcampb01]

I see their point... but at the same time I'm wondering about the practicality of this. If you really are a professional graphics artist are you really doing your work on the built-in display? I have my MacBook Pro connected to an external 24" LCD when I'm not traveling (the laptop lid is closed in 'clamshell' mode).

So what should Apple have done?

You've got a graphics card that really does support 32-bit color depth. Connect a display that can support it and, to the extent that the human eye can detect it you get all the colors advertised. Internally any application running on the machine belives it has 32-bit color. The built-in display on these laptops creates the illusion to graphics card, application, and end-user.

Should Apple (who likes to use simple terminology that their end-users will understand) have listed it as "Millions of colors to your application but really only 8-bit with dithering on the built-in screen"? This would totally baffle most users. I suppose their specs sheet could have thrown in a disclaimer (maybe they did -- I'm not referencing any spec sheets as I write this).

To make my point, if these users had been Apple, what path would they have followed:

1. Put in a better display (even if this raises the price of the computer by a large amount)?
2. Change the 'Display Preferences' selection so that only 8-bit color depth is available when using the built-in display -- understanding what this would do to limit applications and also understanding that having done it the way Apple did it, the graphics card manages the dithering to create the illusion whereas with this option there would just be 256 flat color tones and no illusion?
3. Try to be more accurate about how to describe this color mode by explaining that the graphics card supports millions of colors, which means applications can leverage millions of colors, but the display will merely emulate these colors?

I don't see option #1 or #2 being very good options at all. This leaves option #3... but this isn't something easily described in the display preferences panel -- nor do I think it should be. I can only imagine putting some footnote in the technical specs which explain what they're really doing.

Again... I suspect that most serious professionals who need the color accuracy are not doing their serious fine-detail work on the built-in display.

While I understand their point... I think they're picking at nits. I OWN one of these machines they speak of and I really don't feel that I've been defrauded.

Re:Better under Windows?

[stewbacca]

I'm curious to what your explanation is for calling Apple's gamma correction "a mistake". Back in 1988-1993 I worked for a design firm that was all Mac based, solely for the way Macs correctly display images, colors and typefonts. It seems most creative industries still prefer the Mac platform (although Windows has improved), and most consider images to be "more correct" on a Mac than on a PC (without some serious calibration).

tetrachromat

[Gary W. Longsine]

for your clicking convenience...

The human is a blocked tetrachromat
Tetrachromacy

Or just mass-lawsuits

[phorm]

And if Apple can show that EVERYONE in the industry is doing exactly the same thing, with similar advertising language, then it's probably not going to go anywhere

Or it could just lead to a lot of companies getting sued over sneaky language... especially as precedents get set.

Obscure?!?

[naasking]

Please leave your geek badge at the desk. There's the door. ;-)

Advertising

[simpl3x]

But, increasingly laptops are in the hands of the Creative Directors. I have one. Sure we can attach other displays, but you get used to working on what you use continually. Callibrating a screen not capable of being relly calibrated is the issue.

Color is in the mind in my opinion, and I design with an understanding of the end result, but when colors look entirely different on a screen it can be frustrating.

Re:Dirty lies! (correction!)

[freaker_TuC]

let me correct this for you: Dithering lies!

At what resolution?

[tgibbs]

This is not the case of all 6-bit panels. Some use actual dithering while others use FRC (Frame Rate Control), which is what you described.

This could turn out to be a crucial point. Apple advertises millions of colors; they don't say how they do it, and it could reasonably be argued that no LCD panel is capable of producing more than 256 colors at a given point, anyway, so a combinatorial approach to producing a larger number of colors is an accepted practice.

But they also advertise a particular resolution. If they are using temporal dithering, then they are indeed achieving millions of colors at that resolution. But if they are using spacial dithering, then they may indeed be achieving millions of colors, but not at the claimed resolution.

Re:At what resolution?

[adolf]

Gee, thanks. I'd never thought of it that way. /me awaits onslaught of cheap, nasty Lexmark printers capable of printing with millions-of-colors by way of spacial dithering, in contrast to the competition's flagship slovenly 6-color models.

It's all about the shades

[anss123]

I duno about how many colors the eye can perceive, but a monitor with around 65 thousand colors only have 64 shades of gray, red, green and blue.

A "millions of colors" monitor has ~256 shades of gray/etc.

An artist probably wants 1024 shades, as some SGI workstation has/had?

So the "Thousands/Millions of colors" phrase is misleading, not that we ordinary mortals care.

Apple has arrived

[Anonymous Coward]

This proves that Apple is the next Microsoft.

How to tell

[Xofer D]

I don't guess based on the spec sheet, which often tells you precisely nothing. Instead I find out what the panel is by looking it up on sites like this one:

• http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/panelsearch.htm

You can read about the different kinds of panel on wikipedia:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TFT_LCD

wow, I had no idea..

[greywire]

I've actually been noticing some banding on my laptop's display and could not figure out why I was seeing this, not to mention some subtle colours being hardly visible on my computer and then I see it on a desktop machine and its way more visible.

It never even occurred to me that laptop LCD's were not generally using 8 bits per pixel. I actually am kinda pissed now that I know this.

There is something not right here

[Sycraft-fu]

In the document he claims that the human eye can only distinguish 128 levels of luminance. However gray scale is the place where our eyes are the most sensitive. In fact while 256 shades works pretty well for the colours, you find that only 256 grays does not. Medical LCDs are most often 10-bit gray scale to give the needed detail (http://www.imagesystemscorp.com/lcd_displays.asp) . Also there would seem to be other sites devoted to visual perception that contradict that (http://www.cis.rit.edu/mcsl/outreach/faq.php?catn um=1#219).

This is the complaint.

[arakis]

From the end of the end of the "Allegations" section of the PDF:

"Apple deliberately and wrongfully chose easy profits over responsibility to its purchasers."

I suppose you can "Think Different" and dismiss many facts of this case, but that single complaint is very obvious from the facts presented.

You probably didn't notice

[Sycraft-fu]

Because most LCDs do it and thus it is what you are used to. 6-bit TN panels are by far the most popular panels out there because they are cheap. However, when you see it side by side with a good panel, it is obvious how inferior the colour is. Some time ago I decided to buy an LCD and I opted for a good 8-bit P-MVA panel. When it arrived at work we took it out and had a look. The colour on it was amazingly better than the cheap LCDs we have (which are all 6-bit TNs). Everyone noticed immediately how good it looked, not just the colour picky people like me.

So it's not like the dithered LCDs are some horrible technology that you'll go "Ugh" when you see, but they just don't get the colour that non-dithered displays do. In fact at the high end, there's a push to go to 10-bit LCDs. While 8-bit is good, it isn't actually enough. If you look at a colour gradient on a good 8-bit display, you can often pick out the individual level transitions, especially with a gray scale. Ideally, the colours would appear continues because the steps would be smaller than your eye can see, thus the interest in better displays.

I can see why people might be a little miffed at Apple for their claims of a better display than in other portables when, in fact, that's not true.

I wish that were true

[Sycraft-fu]

However there are 6-bit LCDs being advertised as "16.7 million colours" now. I'm not sure if it is ignorance, out right lying, or if they've got some new dithering system, but whatever the case, you can't rely on that to tell.

At this point he best way generally is to check panel type. TN panels are almost always 6-bit. VA (P-MVA, S-PVA, A-MVA) and IPS (S-IPS, AS-TW-ISP) are 8-bit. Now this isn't 100%, as I understand there are some 8-bit TNs out there and apparently 6-bit PVAs are being worked on, but in general it is a good check.

Also price works well. 8-bit panels cost more. If there's a $300 and a $600 display that are the same size and otherwise similar features, you may want to dig a little deeper and see why that's the case. Could well be that one is 6-bit, one is 8-bit.

Just a 4-color display

[wiredlogic]

Conventional three-filter LCDs are actually only 4-color displays anyway: red, green, blue, and black. Everything else is produced by flickering the sub-pixel cells on and off and mixing with their neighbors. The only thing happening here with the Mac is that the temporal dithering is partially achieved in the video card rather than entirely within the drive electronics for the display.

It isn't the display folks..., it is software.

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, wish I hadn't moderated this already, have to post as AC.

Open the same image in Firefox, not Preview or Safari. The image looks fine.

It must be a software issue, most likely in Quartz.

Re:It isn't the display folks..., it is software.

[Anonymous Coward]

It might be gamut clipping from the ICC profile.

But *Which* colors - 350K HSV != 350K RGB

[billstewart]

That's a really cool paper. One point, though, is that the human eye can see about 350K colors if you express the colors in HSV space - but that space doesn't really match up with RGB space, so if you want to present those same colors in RGB, you'll need a lot more colors, so that you can get all the distinguishable HSV colors (plus a bunch you may not be able to tell apart.) The paper says we can see about 128-130 levels each of H and S (so you'd need 7 bits for each of those, and 23 levels of V (so 5 bits are enough.) So you'd probably need at least 7 bits/color of R, G, and B to get that range of H and S, which would be 21-bit color, as opposed to 18-bit.

And of course printing colors are an entirely different set of problems, and you'll probably need to dither to get the printed colors you want, especially if you've got ink-smearing going on.

Re:Better under Windows?

[wjsteele]

I agree. Quick, someone take a snapshot of both screens and post them to /.

Oh, wait... nevermind.

Bill

false advertising is false advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, false advertising in false advertising no matter which company does it. If a display is said support 24 bit color (8 bits per pixel), but in reality can't do that but only supports 6 bits per pixel, then that is false advertising even if "everyone else" does it.

To that poster who claimed the human eye can't tell the difference because it can't pick up that much color anyway: You don't know what you're talking about, at least not in a real-life sense... There is a *huge* visual difference between the 6-bit and 8-bit screens. The problem isn't the total number of colors so much as it is subtle shifts in grey values, which the human-eye is very good at catching (in fact, most of our detail is picked-up as greyscale by our eyes and kind-of "overlaid" by lower-resolution color image. One of the reasons our color vision doesn't work well, or at all, in low-light).

I happen to have an 8-bit screen and a 6 bit screen, and do both color and black & white art photography on a semi-professional basis. There is no way a professional photographer could make use of a 6 bit screen as a primary display...

What a BOGUS suit on its face!

[Archeopteryx]

NO computer screen displays more than THREE colors. Red, Green, and Blue. All colors on the display are made by three subpixels that vary in intensity of those colors. If I make a color on the screen by extending that technique into pixel space that is no different than the RGB subpixels.

I hate stupid people and their lawyers.

Re:What a BOGUS suit on its face!

[Anonymous Coward]

NO computer screen displays more than THREE colors. Red, Green, and Blue. All colors on the display are made by three subpixels that vary in intensity of those colors. If I make a color on the screen by extending that technique into pixel space that is no different than the RGB subpixels.
This may be true, but within a pixel, they are, for lack of a better word, mixed to form a distinct colour. In this article, it asserts that an illusion is used to make you think there's a colour between the pixels when there is not in reality... not really what an artist would like, unless it will be duplicated with all machines and/or in print.

Re:What a BOGUS suit on its face!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually they can light each color subpixels to 2 exp 6 meaning 64 levels, there is a big gap between 2 exp 8 bits (256) levels of intensity and only 64. It produce a much more posterize image and create color banding. To avoid that they have to use cheap trick like dithering, and since those new screen got really it DPI (129 dpi on a MacBook) they think that no one will care. But this is no way related with the gamut, I can got the same gamut with a 8bits clut depth mode then a 24Bits per pixels depth.

"White" lights?

[Bones3D_mac]

Since we're probably going to allow this pointless lawsuit, perhaps Apple should consider citing the need for a "white" light source in their displays as being justification enough for their underhanded use of dithering. (At least until the electromagnetic spectrum spontaneously decides to start including a "white light" frequency in it's line-up...)

"Marketing Engineers"

[IHC Navistar]

Electronics engineers are being replaced with marketing weasels. Plain and simple. It's about time that companies who try to dress up their product with phony specs have their feet held to the fire.

Does the transistor pixel have the ability to display millions of colors or not? That's not a difficult question to answer.

More baloney from "Marketing Engineers":

"180 degree viewing angle"
          - Nobody can see anything on any monitor. At 180 degrees, the viewing surface becomes a single plane and disappears. Most LCD monitors have a bezel that frames the monitor, so the viewing screen is hidden below the bezel. The only thing you can see from a 180 degree viewing angle is the side of the monitor, which is not very high on my list of Interesting Things.

"High image quality, even when viewed from any angle"
          - Even those screens look horrible when viewed at and angle,. The image darkens dramatically when viwed at an angle, and you still have the significant darkness, gamma errors, and color inversion when viewed from any angle.

"22 inch screen. 20 inches viewable."
          - How big is the damn screen? 20" or 22"?! Why do manufacturers measure the bezel AND the screen, and then give that measurement as the screen size? The bezel is NOT the screen and the screen is NOT the bezel. Screen size is the glass part and the bezel is the pastic part that surrounds the glass part. It's infuriatingly amazing how engineers get that part wrong when they write up the specs. SCREEN = GLASS PART THAT HAS SHOWS PICTURES. BEZEL = PLASTIC PART AROUND GLASS PART. If someone askes what the square footage of your house is, do you give them the area of your land contained within your property line, or the actual square footage of your house? Monitors are a little different, since the plastic bezel is pretty much useless in terms of function, yet land property can be used for a myriad of other things. Basically, what they are telling you is that you have an extra 2" of crap on the monitor.

Aha

[StreetStealth]

I'd wondered about this for some time--on my Powerbook and iMac, I've long noticed what appeared to be a very slight, grid-patterned noise apparent in large areas of smoothly transitioning color. I'd assumed it was in fact some sort of time-based dithering, but I hadn't put a name to it.

Where are my mod points when I need them?

[SpectreHiro]

(Cue half a dozen posts telling me that I'm misusing the word "irony". Come on, don't disappoint me here!)

Sorry to disappoint, but I've come to begrudgingly accept the modern usage of Irony. Any attempt to fight it would be like standing on the beach, beating the tides back with a stick.

However, I would like to say this... I'm all out of points, but I implore any mods out there to please mod the parent up. I can't describe how sick I am of seeing people utterly fail to recognize or understand "passive" constructions while chastising others for using them. Thanks bunches.

This reminds me of that old Steven Wright joke...

[punterjoe]

...about the 24 hour convenience store - the punchline being "not IN A ROW!".... I suspect Apple will finesse their way out of this :)

Hey look!

[Anonymous Coward]

Howdy! King of the Entire Fucking Universe here. Numbers above 10,000 are no longer officially recognized, so suck on that.

See, claiming credentials while posting AC is fun. Perhaps in the future you might consider linking to some references rather than whipping out your unverifiable degree as if it proves anything at all.

A few more colors than that

[ABasketOfPups]

Wikipedia's color article

Says "It has been estimated that humans can distinguish roughly 10 million different colors" which is more like what I recall about the average person's color perception. There are also (VERY rare) folks who have the ability to see even more colors than that... 100 million colors or so

I hate it break it to you: LCDs only show 3 colors

[voxel]

They show red, blue, and green. Really close to each other (E.G. DITHERING) to give you the appearance of a color to your brain.

All they are doing is dithering on a slightly bigger scale. In both cases it is an illusion, in both cases you get "millions" of colors, even though actually there are only a lousy THREE.

Thank you, law suit avoided. Pheww.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

Do me a favor, mod parent up - I'm going through a divorce.

posted from my MacBook where FTVGirls.com never looked *quite* right

The gloss keeps coming off Apple

[Zhe Mappel]

This isn't surprising to me at all. Speaking simply from personal experience:

-- a failed iBook G3 logic board, rendering the laptop useless soon after passing out of (extended) warranty

-- a relative's mooing Macbook; quoth the Apple store Genius, "I don't hear any problem"

-- a friend's overheating G5 iMac, repaired repeatedly with lots of annoyance to him

Now, balanced against that, we've all had considerably good experience with Apple since the OS 9 days. And we're all still customers (and I've sent them loads of business). But our days of unqualified praise for the company are over, buried in its declining competence and rising disregard for quality.

I need a new laptop, but a glance at www.appledefects.com or the Mac Rumors forums reminds me it's now a crapshoot when buying Apple. Will the device be bliss or bust? Who can tell any more?

Apple DOES advertise as 16.7 million colors

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out this post http://fukamachi.org/wp/2007/05/21/macbook-pro-6-b it-screens/

Examples of Apple advertising the display as the full 16.7 million colors in Japan. And the japanese MBP also has the 6-bit screen.

There is definitely a case here IMO

Here's how to tell if you have a 6bit LCD

[Anonymous Coward]

http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0 0GkGu

Cleartype

[blorg]

If they think ClearType's psychedelic colours are great, they shouldn't be complaining about the dithering.

If you're seeing psychedelic colours with ClearType you either have it configured wrong for your LCD (e.g. wrong RGB subpixel ordering) -or you're not using an LCD in the first place. It will indeed do the psychedelics on a CRT. In my experience it even looks great with LCDs connected through an analogue VGA, never mind a digital connection.

Nothing to see here

[bgspence]

Dithering is standard practice in both 6 and 8 bit displays. Even a high quality 8 bit display can only show 256 + 256 + 256 or 768 colors without tricking the eye by dithering the LCD subpixel elements.

Subpixel dithering is part of the magic. Its all dithered. Get over it.

Re:Nothing to see here

[DBMandrake]

Errrr, you mean 256 * 256 * 256 for a true 8 bit display, which equals 16777216 colours ;)

Re:Nothing to see here

[bgspence]

ERRR, you mean 16777216 DITHERED colours, but just less than 256+256+56 actual colors.

All that multiplicity is achieved by the eye dithering those three pixels.

LCD monitors suck

[Anonymous Coward]

No LCD will ever match a CRT. Any artist worth a damn knows that.

Matrox video cards using Nokia or Philips monitors produce the most accurate and precise colors possible (properly calibrated). I'm not even an artist and my Matrox/Nokia combo is unmatched by anything I have seen. 16bit? I only use it for compatibility when necessary, I have become too accustomed to the accuracy and range of color of my system at 32 bit (even 24 bit is unsatisfactory to me now).

Intel/Acer, ATI/LG or Nvidia/Samsung display combos just make me cringe when I look at them, especially LCDs.

And that's not even considering refresh rates. Anything less than 85Hz simply is not acceptable if you spend long amounts of time in front of your monitor.

Also, additive RGB of monitors will never look quite the same as subtractive CMYK of print. Any artist, spectroscopist or printer knows this, even psychologists know it. There is a future for high speed CMYK e-ink displays.

Non additive/subtractive colour schemes only exist in nature. (which includes oils and watercolors) Even so, additive and subtractive color systems do exist in nature as well. Blackbody radiation, blue sky Rayleigh scattering, photosynthetic pigments...

In summary, LCD monitors suck.

How 16.2M is determined

[ultor]

The method of arriving at 16.2 million colors is actually simple.

On a true 8-bit display, the value range for each component is from 0-255. Because the 6-bit display can only display 1/4 of those numbers (0-63), it must dither for the rest in the form of (0, 4, 8, 12, 16 ...). The interpolation method is usually capable of representing 3 values between each color, but because the numbers on the end (... 244, 248, 252) are missing the final value, 255, there is no final value to dither in. So those final 3 values (253, 254, 255) are missing. Thus, you only have 253 values for each dithered component (since we include 0). 253 * 253 * 253 = 16194277 ~= 16.2M.

It's really stupid. Just say 262144 colors.

Re:How 16.2M is determined

[snarkbot]

Ah! This makes perfect sense. Thanks! -snarkbot

Method to actually see temporal-spatial dithering

[Jamie Lokier]

Sweep your eye across the screen at a speed of one pixel per refresh, looking at a region of uniform colour such as a window's title bar. When you get the speed just right, on a colour which is not one of the 64-bit exact values, the dithering pattern becomes apparent, and seems to move across the screen at that speed, superimposed over the main image. At least, it does for me. (Or did. I haven't looked at low quality panels in a while). This is because the time part of the temporal-spatial dither pattern is effectively cancelled by the eye motion, and your eyes (if they are sensitive to it) then respond the spatial dither pattern. Even from a distance, although the average colour is the same, the spatial dither pattern adds a high frequency component to the image which is normally obscured by the temporal dithering. If you are close enough, a chess-board pattern may be visible - seeming to move across the screen. But even from a distance (or not as focused), the quality of the colour changes somehow. I found it quite hard to avoid, and quite disconcerting, in a shop selling cheap LCD monitors. One minute I was looking at a pretty picture on the screen. The next, I moved my eyes to look at something else, and from time to time the colours on the screen took on the quality associated with the dither pattern - only when sweeping my eyes at just the right speed. My old laptop did the same. My current laptop doesn't - if it's dithering, it's much subtler than the old one.

Re:Virtually no laptop LCD can display 16.7M color

[toddestan]

From the Macnook specifications page at: ahref=http://www.apple.com/macbook/specs.htmlrel=u rl2html-3727http://www.apple.com/macbook/specs.htm l>

"Extended desktop and video mirroring: Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 1920 by 1200 pixels on an external display, both at millions of colors."

So it's not like their whining is unjustified.

don't need CMYK

[r00t]

You need a well-defined color space. You need more than 8 bits per channel. For sanity, you need 3 additive channels.

CMYK is not in general well-defined. It's device-specific. CMYK on my printer will not match CMYK on your printer. That's crap for reliable editing.

CMYK belongs in your printer driver or in the device itself. There you convert from something well-defined and standard (sRGB, AdobeRGB, CIE-XYZ, etc.) to whatever your printer wants today. To get picky, CYMK even varies with the brand of paper you bought.

1-bit would be better (as with CD player DACs)

[r00t]

Use 1 bit per subpixel, for a total of 8 colors. Crank up the refresh rate. Do temporal (time based) dithering.

1-bit is going to be more reliable and accurate than 6-bit.

Because Windows doesn't claim "millions of colors"

[argent]

Windows doesn't call it "millions of colors" in their display adjustment dialog.

They call it "High Color" or "True Color".

Re:Then get mad now

[hudsucker]

You didn't say which particular model of PowerBook G4 you have, but the display in my Titanium PowerBook G4 (1 GHz) is an AU Optronics B152EW01, which the spec sheet says supports "Native 256K colors (RGB 6-bit data driver)".

Wrongness.

[adolf]

Even if we assume that your figures are correct: Your argument only makes sense if one assumes that the 16,000 colors being displayed by the computer monitor are perfectly aligned with the 16,000 colors capable of being seen by the eye.

This is, of course, most certainly not the case, as they're both nonlinear systems with completely different sets of limiting factors, and they overlap poorly.

Besides: I'm sure that I'm not the only one on Earth who is able to see visible banding in 15- and 16-bit color modes (which are of course 32 and 64k colors, respectively). It's not something I notice all the time, but it does show up occasionally with everything from photos, to movies, to stupid Powerpoint slides. In those instances, switching to the display to 24-bit ("millions of colors") mode has usually cured the problem, for me.

In conclusion: 16-bit banding is annoying and distracting and therefore inferior and plainly different to 24-bit color*.

[*]: I'd proceed with arguing for the need to move display devices beyond 24-bit color, which is also not without its own pitfalls, but I'm too tired to bother just now.

Mine too, but...

[RandyOo]

I've got a MacBook, too, and the squares look different to me as well. At first glance, the second one seems to be seemless, where the first one has obvious banding. However, you can see the banding on the second one as well, if you glance from one side of the screen to the other, while your eyes are moving, rather than stationary, fixed. I guess that's explained by the "time dithering" rather than "spacial dithering". Up until I read this story, I had no idea that such a thing even existed.

eye uses dithering

[Anonymous Coward]

While they're at it, they should sue God too for having put
only three color receptors in their eyes (one predominantly
sensitive to red, one to green, one to blue), which, using
a device called the "visual cortex" are tricking them into
seeing a single color..

Re: The bit size of the component color pixel CTL

[Douglas Goodall]

The number of colors is calculated from the number of bits in the color lookup table for any color number. For example if the CLT had 24 bit color, 8R 8G 8B, that is 2^24 colors. If it has a sixteen bit such as a 6-5-5, the number of colors would be 2^16. That is what the color count is about, not how many colors of pixels there are. Anyone that has written a color display driver knows this...

Time for some Monty Python

[Anonymous Coward]

Romanes Eunt Domus

'People called Romanes they go the house'?

Can we say "ridiculous"?

[rising_hope]

This has got to be the most absurd lawsuit in recent years. The Apple displays are some of the best and brightest on the market and look absolutely fantastic, and they're suing for something no human being can possibly differentiate, only because it might not technically be correct? What a crock. I hope Apple can somehow take some sort of legal recourse against the users. Apple controls fairly tightly where you can buy these things. I'm sure many people bought these from the Apple stores, where the laptops are displayed in all their glory. And, if not, there's always the return the product option. If they didn't like it, why not exercise one of those options instead of suing. Stupid users. MEH.

"All colors... are made by three subpixels"

[Anonymous Coward]

"All colors on the display are made by three subpixels" - tell me about these subpixels on my CRT?

I hate stupid people with keyboards....

Not laughed out of the courtroom

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would this be laughed out of the courtroom? Dithering was used in the 1980s to give the illusion of greyscale on 1-bit (that is, black & white -- not even greyscale) displays. No body went around claiming these were effectively 4 or 8-bit grayscale displays! They would have been sued if they had. 256 color display -- that is, 8 bits per pixel. Oh, wait, dithering.. that's a 16-bit display. Oh wait, no it's not, anyone who tried that would get sued.

          In fact, PDA makers WERE sued several years back for claiming they had 16-bit displays when in fact they had 12-bit displays (bits per pixel). These guys are claming an 18-bit per pixel display is 24-bit. And, in fact, a 24-bit panel would display 16777216 colors, while an 18-bit display would only display 262144.

          It's *possible* that if they are using the "temporal dithering" as described elsewhere, that they can get away with this -- but conventional dithering, that plain and simple cannot be claimed to increase color depth.

          It won't surprise me if it was either little known or unknown within apple that the LCD was doing this, in which case, Apple will likely lose the case, and they should then recover damages from the LCD panel makers if they were claiming 6-bit panels were 8-bit.

Re:Because Windows doesn't claim "millions of colo

[plazman30]

Windows used to display the actual number of colors and then they changed it to High Color And True Color. Overall, this is a frivolous lawsuit that should be thrown out of court. Millions of Colors on my PowerBoook looks way better that Thounds of Colors does. Andy

If someone REALLY should sue over Apple displays

[arfies]

...it should be these folks: http://www.crosspond.com/apple.php Over 180 G4 Powerbook owners received defective displays prone to getting mysterious cyan, yellow, and magenta vertical lines down the 17" screen. Unfortunately for most, the lines tend to appear conveniently after the warranty expires, and displays cost around $300-$800 to fix (you can get a new Windows laptop for that price). According to the website, all but seven of the machines begin with the serial number "W85" and were manufactured in the Shanghai factory around April of 2005. Apple refuses to address, recall, or even admit this problem, often deleting comment threads on their website asking how to fix it. I was lucky in getting it fixed, but that was an exception to the rule. Some of the pictures of people's laptops are just awful- the 17" G4 Powerbook, costing around $3,000, was supposed to be THE top-of-the-line portable Mac machine. I smell a cover-up.

Actual number of colors would be fine...

[argent]

Windows used to display the actual number of colors and then they changed it to High Color And True Color.

You're missing the point.

Windows didn't call it "Millions of colors". They displayed *the actual number of colors*.

If Apple listed the actual number of colors (262144) or used a term that didn't imply there were >1,000,000 colors available, then this wouldn't be an issue.

Re:Actual number of colors would be fine...

[plazman30]

The point is a cosmetic technicality. If should be thrown out of court. I believe True Color is in fact millions of colors and when they listed the actual number of colors, they showed a number greater than 1 million.

Re:Actual number of colors would be fine...

[argent]

The point is a cosmetic technicality.

It's a cosmetic stupidity.

* It's just asking for someone to go after you if you don't in fact provide millions of colors.
* It produces such absurdities as "Millions of colors +", when you've got something more than "millions of colors".

I believe True Color is in fact millions of colors

True Color is 32 bit. That's "millions of colors +" in Apple's terminology - the video card may use 6, 8, or even 10 bits per pixel (that's not limited to Wintel hardware, BTW, the Radius Thundercolor on the old Powermacs had 10-bit DACs) - but Microsoft isn't promising any number of colors, they're just promising they'll give yuo the best the video card and monitor can produce.

Whether it gets thrown out of court or not, the terminology is fundamentally bad and they deserve every skerrick of legal pain that results.

Re:Actual number of colors would be fine...

[plazman30]

I could easily turn this into a soapbox on why we sue people way to much in this country over the stupidest of things....

I'd like to meet someone who went out and bought a MacBook or MacBook Pro just because it did "Millions of Colors."

The suit specifically targets MacBook and MacBook Pro owners, which are Apple's most popular line of PCs. iMacs, Mac Minis and Mac Pros are excluded, even though they should, in theory, suffer from the "Millions of Colors" error.

Oh wait, the lawyers will wait for this lawsuit to be settled and then use this as legal precedent for the SECOND class action lawsuit.

From Wikipedia on Trucolor:

"Truecolor graphics is a method of storing image information in a computer's memory such that each pixel is represented by three or more bytes.

Generally one byte is used for each channel with the fourth byte (if present) being used either as an alpha channel data or simply ignored. Byte order is usually either RGB or BGR. However, systems do exist with more than 8 bits per channel, and these are often also referred to as truecolor (for example a 48-bit truecolor scanner).

One byte (eight bits) per channel gives 256 (28) intensites for each of the channels which gives 16,777,216 colors for each pixel (often approximated as 16 million despite the fact that it's closer to 17 million). The human eye is popularly believed to be capable of discriminating between as many as 10 million colors."

Seems Linux and Windows are just as guilty, since the very definition of Truecolor means almost 17 million colors. More lawsuits to follow... Andy

Indeed.

[Anonymous Coward]

"All colors on the display are made by three subpixels" - tell me about these subpixels on my CRT?

Do you even know how your CRT works? The vast majority of 'color' electronic displays have 'subpixels'. (Notable exotic exemptions used other techniques.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_ray_tube#Comp uter_displays

It gets truncated

[Solandri]

6-bit is values 0 to 63. If you map these into 8-bit by adding two more zero bits at the end, you get values 0 to 252 in increments of 4 (0, 4, 8, 12, ... , 248, 252). Dithering can only result in intermediate values, so 252 is the brightest a 6-bit panel can display. Values 253-255 have to be mapped to it. 253^3 = 16,194,277.

Uh, right...

[argent]

Apple: "Millions of colors, psyche!"

Microsoft: "Gobbledegook, which you can, if you believe Wikipedia, interpret as meaning millions of colors... but we didn't say that."

Re:Uh, right...

[plazman30]

I believe Wikipedia. True Color is defined as millions of colors here:

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gc i213224,00.html
http://www.scala.com/definition/true-color.html
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/T/true_color.html
http://www.sketchpad.net/basics6.htm

All of these sights say 16 million colors. I'm sure I could easily find a dozen more. True Color MEANS millions of colors. Microsoft is just disguising their guilt with another term. Let the lawyers converge on Redmond!

All I am trying to say is, if Apple is guilty, the WHOLE INDUSTRY is guilty.

Throw it out of court before it sets a precedent!

Andy