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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.'
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
I like muppets.
Let's take it to the extreme: there are only tree colors (R,G and B). And there is no spoon.
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.
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.
This guy's the limit!
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.
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".
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.
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.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
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.
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?
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
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.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
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.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
mod parent -1 "whiney".
just post your comment and take your negative mod points like a man!
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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.
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.
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...
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).
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.
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.
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