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New 20" iMac Screens Show 98% Fewer Colors
Trintech points us to an AppleInsider article about another class-action lawsuit directed against Apple Inc. This one claims that the displays on new 20" iMacs are only capable of 6-bit-per-pixel color, 98% fewer colors than Apple advertises. Rather than the 8-bit, in-plane switching (IPS) screens used in 24" iMacs and earlier 20" models, "[t]he new 20-inch iMac features a 6-bit twisted nematic film (TN) LCD screen," according to the article, "which the [law] firm claims is the 'least expensive of its type,' sporting a narrower viewing angle than the display of the 24-inch model, less color depth, less color accuracy, and greater susceptibility to washout." Apple recently settled a very similar class-action suit about the displays on MacBook and MacBook Pro models.
Good job slashdot, I think you successfully managed to show that reality is stranger than fiction by holding back on the fake articles this year. And you've thoroughly confused everyone.
Mac Fanboys converging in 3... 2... 1...
...the new OSX interface has shown us that we don't need so many colours. Colours in a computer eat up the memory bits and distract us from our reverence. Personally, I'm going to take Steve's advice and go get my eyes chromed.
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
the Windows Guy could retaliate in one of those commercials.
But cutting costs is part of innovation, so Apple is still the best, OBVIOUSLY.
I don't have a Mac, but I do sometimes buy computer monitors. I can understand specifications like the physical size, resolution, viewing angle and (just about) contrast ratio. But do manufacturers publish specs on what colour depth is supported? Is there some quantitative measure of how well a display shows different colours and how wide the gamut is? How can I avoid getting caught out like these hapless iMac buyers?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Strange, the first case that was "settled out of court under undisclosed terms" seems to have been just two guys. Surely there are more than two photographers who bought macs thinking they would get 8-bit color and later realized it was only 6-bit. I wonder why no class-action was initiated? Since it wasn't though, it seems like Apple is still open to potentially thousands or more lawsuits for this false advertising.
That's what it is, right? They say "millions of colors" when it's really 262k colors. Or is there some precedent that lets a company claim dithering = unique color?
everything in moderation
I work at an Apple shop, I love Apple products, but I'd be happy to tell you how shitty the 20" Aluminum iMac screens are. They really, really suck, and here's hoping Apple finally gets their head out of their ass and puts a quality screen on what should be a quality product.
Apple is just trying to bring back the glory days of black and white screens.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
640 colors ought to be enough for anyone.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Hasn't apple prided itself in that mac's are for "fun and artistic purposes" rather than business purposes? It seems to me that apple is shooting itself in the foot here, and then pouring lemon juice on the wound just for good measure.
Quick, ban this guy for posting something that might be construed as anti-apple... We all know they can't do wrong. Someone change Apple -> Microsoft and all will be well...
If you are really into photography, you wouldn't buy the non IPS monitors regardless. These guys are idiots for buying a product clearly labeled as having a cheap screen and then being surprised when the screen was, well, cheap!
It's not like dithering is not used in plenty of other applications to produce more colors than the device can physically output - I assume they are going after printer makers next?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
6-bit colors? In 2008? What were they thinking? The trend is towards 10 bits. At 6 bits, gradients look awful; false edges appear. Go into Photoshop, generate a single color gradient, and then "posterize" to 64 colors to see what this looks like. Yuck.
Dithering won't help; it puts noise into a nice, smooth gradient.
I'm going to be madder then Hell if I take a monitor home, and look at the connector, and it has a 9-pin RS-232 Connector (Thats not a serial connector, the Serial ones are Female.)
Apple uses octal.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Just a reminder this is 6 Bits per pixel not the Bit depth that you set on your OS. Having 64 Colors per Pixel and combination of hardware dithering makes a decent screen for most people. However for true videophobes that would get in the way 8 bit would be prefered. But for most people they wouldn't know the difference betwen 8 bit and 6 bit displays.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
If it was advertised as an 18-bit screen we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
18 bits is plenty for many people, but it's not plenty for graphic artists - the very people who buy Macs.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I'd call this 98% color reduction a healthy, green approach, great for the environment... except that green was one of the colors that was removed...
Mod parent up. This is absolutely true. I'd estimate that the vast majority of LCD panels on the market are 6-bit screens. Whether you are buying Benq, LG, Dell, Viewsonic, it doesn't matter. Most of them are 6 bit.
They are cheaper, and they have faster response times.
8-bit LCD panels are almost a niche specialty 'pro product' in today's market, and unless you went out of your way to buy an 8 bit screen odds are you took home a 6-bit TN panel, advertised as showing "16.2 million colours" without even knowing it.
Its not just Apple. Although they seem to have gone beyond marketing deceptiveness to outright lies and deserve to be taken to task about it.
But don't for a minute think all those free Dell monitors bundled with low end PCs are anything better. Hell, even the ones you can pay to upgrade to aren't often anything better than 6-bit.
Things like this make it more painful that Apple doesn't have a good performing display-less model. I don't need the power of the Mac Pro, but need more than a Mac mini. The iMac is about the right specs except I'd prefer something that had room for a couple of hard disks. Also more importantly I upgrade my machine more often than I want/need to upgrade my display. I could easily envision going that route getting a good display and then using it for 2~3 machines and buying a MacBook for my portable needs.
The lawsuit should be aimed at the manufacturer.
So Apple uses a TN panel for one of their consumer products. Just like it is used in a majority of all consumer-grade flat-screens on the market. Sure, it is a bit misleading stating "it's going to look stunning on an iMac", but TN is in my opinion a logical choice of panel for a product like the iMac. That makes the rant about all the ways TN is inferior to IPS feel a bit unnecessary.
This is the only post based on facts regarding color in the entire discussion.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Also who was the moderator who doesn't realise the LSBs of a word change at higher magnitudes too? These are not unary coded words ... idiots.
It looks like this is specifically for the new 20-inch iMac model. My bad for not RTFAing.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
No, they don't. Please read the article. (And no, I'm not new here. I just dislike inaccuracy.)
What Apple has claimed is that the screen can display millions of colours. Depending on which interpretation you use, this may or may not be true.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Actually, there were two 6-bit modes on the Amiga - EHB, as described, and HAM (Hold And Modify), which caused the pixels defined as colors 32-63 to be defined as "the color of the pixel to the left, but with its (R|G|B) value replaced with ...", thus allowing for all 4096 colors on-screen at once, but usually with a slight fudge-factor, depending on your image and how you arranged your 32-color palette.
And that's not getting into the later chipsets, which mostly just added bits... (:
Go to Newegg and try to buy a flat panel that actually has 8 bit color. Even ones advertised as the full 16.7M colors don't - there are a number of websites out that either have or show you how to make a proper test pattern in PS - a non-dithered screen will produce smooth gradients, while a dithered screen will show 'steps' of color. Final test - watch a cutscene in a 3D game like NWN2 on a flat screen - dithering GALORE.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
They made a deal with Micro$haft to port M$Paint. I actually have a 20" iMac coming today. (Oh great..)
Let's start with, it's multiplicative, not additive. That's 255^3, not 255*3. This is because, as you mentition later, the eye combines all three subpixels into a new color.
If you interpert color as a wavelenght of light as opposed to relative excitment of the three colored cones in your eye, then yes. But no one thinks of that definition. Instead, the obvious usage is 'colors preceived'. Even when you talk about color of a pure wavelength, you can only interpert it as combinations of your three cones.
So, even if one were to concede all your points, these aren't really 1920x1280x24 displays are they then. Because that 1920x1280 resolution has to get shortchanged for the dithering. So you can say that Apple lied about the resolution instead of the color if you like, but it's awful pedantic.
I know people who paid a lot more to get a camera with a Foveon sensor, actually. While I might be unable to notice the quality, they (and their clients) can. And you better believe they would be pissed if they ended up with a Bayer filter instead.
If you want to say that the difference is small, and unnoticible to most people, so that is the optimal thing to make, fine. I respect that, and agree with you. But this is flagrant false advertising. A 1920x1280x24 screen was advertised and not delivered. Bitch about Apple's behavior just like any other major company's.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
I just don't see what all the hubbub is about.
Of course, I also don't see red dots on a green background, green dots on a red background, nor any discernible difference between many colors my wife swears exist, either. (Of course, I think I share that particular feature with most men as is.)
This is how some technologies, such as CRT and plasma, work.
This is not how LCD screens work.
A pixel on an LCD monitor emits a single color. There is no dithering involved. The pixel filters out a set of wavelengths from a white light source to produce a single pixel with a single, even color.
The pixels on Apple's new 6-bit iMac displays are only capable of about 262,000 individual color states. The 24-inch iMacs are capable of over 16 million color states.
90%+ LCD monitors are TN screens like the low end iMacs. They all claim 16+Million colors. The Panel itself is a LG.Philips LM201WE3(teardowns online). The manufacture web says it is 16.7million colors with FRC.
This would only affect the clueless. It was widely complained about that apple switched to TN panel on the 20" as soon as the Aluminum iMacs came out. It is not a hidden fact, you can tell by the viewing angle specs.
Apple will probably fight this one, because there is a chance the laptops did not have FRC dithering (many laptop screens don't) and thus did not have millions of colors, OTOH the FRC dithering panels are classed as having millions of colors industry wide, and the viewing angles were quoted to industry standards in the spec that would make it clear to anyone who knew or cared about display or even asked anyone for advice that these were TN panels.
In fact you would have to be living under a rock to not know, but that won't stop some people for trying for a small cash grab and lawyers from trying for a big one.
I'm the guy that you'd find arguing over how much LCDs suck and how much better CRTs are a couple years ago. But my CRT died last month (Mitsubishi 19" Aperture Grille, it was about the best monitor you could get short of the 22" version of the same), and I picked up a Samsung 226CW. There are only two things it doesn't do as well as the CRT:
Absolute black level.
Off-axis viewing degradation.
The color is actually BETTER, DESPITE the 6 bit panel. The reason why 6 bit is not a big deal is because the panel response is so fast that it can temporally dither two colors into one, and you don't even notice that its doing it. For photography, its actually better color reproduction because its more consistent than CRT. On top of that, the "C" model in particular (as opposed to the 226BW) has a 95 CRI backlight, which means the spectrum the backlight produces is much less peaky and closer to natural sunlight. Altogether, the result is more accurate color than I'd get on a CRT. Plus I get 2ms response time so gaming is fine too.
The 226CW may be TN, but its one of the best panels out there. I thought I was going to be more disappointed than I actually was. In fact, I wasn't disappointed at all because it turned out better in most regards, not just "almost as good." It can produce smooth color because spatial and temporal dithering on fast monitors is surprisingly effective, and its actually more accurate because of the better quality back light.
Not that this was an article about CRT vs LCD, but I'm saying that TN panels have become common not just BECAUSE they're cheap but because the good ones (as cheap as they are) are SURPRISINGLY good. Apple may have used a shitty 6 bit panel instead of, say, Samsung's 6 bit panel, but the number of native colors is surprisingly not that big a deal, even if you're a picture-accuracy freak.
(It doesn't excuse them from not clarifying whether it was TN or IPS though, and in fact it pisses me off that no manufacturers are clear on what overall technology goes into their LCDs)
With sufficient resolution that noise is averaged out by the eye, but LCD displays don't have near the resolution necessary for that. It is "really possible" to tell the difference,
...for professionals. It's absolutely true. Nevermind the the awful, glossy displays. For any kind of serious work you'd be better of getting a $30 CRT if you own a 20" iMac.
24" iMac displays are sourced from a different part and are much much superior, but the gloss ruins it again for any kind of real photography or print work.
Then again, if you're serious about the picture quality and pixel accuracy, what the hell are you doing with an obvious consumer machine?
Try the following exercise:
1. Find a new 20" iMac (or laptop, or other machine with a crap TN panel). Find a good IPS panel such as the one on a 24" iMac. Put them side by side.
2. Open your favorite image editor.
3. Create a diagonal gradient starting with black and ending with 50% pure blue or green
4. The hard part: tell me with a straight face that you can't see the dithering.
At typical viewing distances, subpixels are small enough to dither with reasonable effectiveness. Full pixels aren't, at least where the color transitions are subtle.
*This in-betweening process is what knocks down the available number of colors on 6-bit displays to 16.2 million instead of 16.7 million.
Even a screen with an 8-bit DAC is only capable of displaying 766 colours - each subpixel can show 255 brightnesses of three distinct wavelengths of light (as each subpixel can show the same black this makes 766, not 768).
Just an FYI, these kinds of trolls work better if you save the obvious nonsense for later rather than starting right off the bat.
But you got some mods to bite, that was good at least.
The enemies of Democracy are
Make me hug my 19" CRTs.
would have been Vista Service Pack 2 will support 486 computers. Service Pack 3 will be backwardly compatible to 8086 machines.
Anyone who works in any color-critical business knows to NEVER-EVER buy any apple branded monitor if color quality is your goal. They are the worst bang for your buck on all fronts. Even a cheap panasonic (sub $400) after calibration will yield better color than its apple counterpart with the same calibration. The only reason people buy the apple monitor is so their setup "matches" like you match your shoes to your belt.
It's sad but very true. As a professional in digital photography we carry 30in cinema displays and take note that the people who rent them only do so for 3 reasons.
They are big and honestly are a great gimmick to impress clients who work on shitty setups at their offices.
Their shooting style is such that color accuracy is not relevant at the time of capture.
They are ignorant to the nature of color and how it can potentially screw up their workflow. Both during and after capture.
And the forth ( I know I said 3 ) In the business of digital capture you have to offer what the other guys offer or you risk losing clients who don't want to pay for the top of the line
( ie any EIZO monitor )
Ad hominem. And I thought everyone was reading Paul Graham nowadays.
What, precisely, is incorrect about the following statement:
A single pixel on an LCD screen is made of three subpixels, each of which can be lit at a particular brightness; the number of distinct brightnesses is dependant on the width of the DAC.
... Apple's market segment are probably the people who would most notice the difference between 18 bit color and 24 bit color. This is one reason I don't like to shop for displays online -- specs are nice, but I want to SEE it. Personally, IANA graphic artist, and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to tell the difference, but I found this page that has an 18 bit and 24 bit test pattern. Apparently, the difference is quite noticeable.
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
I'd tend to agree with you on all of this (not arguing the technical aspects), people tend to nitpick based on a technical difference they do not actually perceive. Unfortunately I've purchased one of these machines (from my understanding the 20" was using the better display panel and people were having problems with the 24", I seem to have been wrong), and while most of the time it's not noticeable, in any sort of design work (I do a bit of web design on the side, formerly as a day job) it really starts becoming apparent that the displays are incapable of displaying color (especially in gradients) even accurately enough for web work. Oh I still get by, but I get annoyed and end up playing around with calibration when I should be working trying to get rid of banding etc. I've been pretty frustrated with Apple's lack of a mid range headless system for a while now. A workstation class Mac Pro is really overkill for most graphic and web designers, in both specification and price. I finally gave in and purchased an iMac as it's specs met my needs (aside from the GPU, and now apparently the display). The news of this disappoints me a bit, as I didn't think I needed to be this concerned with researching the components used in Apple hardware. My next machine will still more than likely be a Mac, but I will be doing a lot more research components to make sure this doesn't happen to me again.
A Mac mini with a MXM-module slot would be really nice. For unknown reasons Apple has always used subpar GPUs in their non-pro products.
- Raynet --> .
I just got a 20" iMac and just installed Windows through Bootcamp. One of the first things that I noticed is that there is visual artifacts (looks like dot crawl) on solid blocks of color. I tried to resolve the issue by installing ATIs drivers but it didn't help.
Now I'm beginning to wonder if the issue I'm experiencing may be due to the display and it's attempt to dither the 32bpp color on Windows. Perhaps Apple worked side-stepped the issue on the OS X side by limiting color depth in either the OS or driver.
This just in: dimmer switches simulate a range of brightnesses from on to off by "temporal dithering" of the electric current supplying the bulb.... that is, they send longer or shorter pulses of electricity, which correspond to more or less light. These pulses "smoothed out" to some extent by the lightbulb itself, but any remaining flicker is smoothed out by the human eye.
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
What the hell is the complaint about? Even a screen with an 8-bit DAC is only capable of displaying 766 colours - each subpixel can show 255 brightnesses of three distinct wavelengths of light (as each subpixel can show the same black this makes 766, not 768). ... This whole thing is stupid. It sounds like people nitpicking advertising, without actually being aware of the technical concepts involved the image display process.
... you pass judgement with authority, but nowhere in your post do you indicate that you've actually looked at a new 20" iMac. So I'm gonna call you out and say that you're full of bullshit.
Interesting
If there is no visual difference between a good 18-bpp display and a 24- or 36-bpp display, then why are they dirt cheap and considered inferior by everyone who has ever owned or used one for image processing work?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, that part is fine. It's the part where you conclude that having three distinct wavelengths which can each individually be shone at 256 levels of brightness results in 766 unique permutations. That's hilariously wrong. So much so I assumed it was intentional. If not, I'm sorry for overestimating your intelligence. I won't make the same mistake again.
The enemies of Democracy are
Hmmm.....
What is the particular wavelength of "pink" or "brown" or "mauve" (any pink, any brown, any mauve, whatever)? I may be accused of nit-picking, but let's not forget that many colors are actually composite colors.
If you look closely enough you will see THREE pixels, one red, one green, one blue. Each of these (on an actual 8-bit screen) can display 255 different shades of their color, plus black. 255red + 255green + 255blue + 1black = 766 different colors.
This in fact is the only way to count the colors if you want to claim that dithering does not count. (Conversely if you do count dithering you could claim that the screen can display an astronomical number of colors, if viewed from so far away that the entire display looks like a single dot)
However the 6-bit screen only puts out 63+63+63+1 = 190 different colors. Thus you could still claim the number of colors is 75% less.
Whether you are buying Benq, LG, Dell, Viewsonic, it doesn't matter. Most of them are 6 bit. ... But don't for a minute think all those free Dell monitors bundled with low end PCs are anything better. Hell, even the ones you can pay to upgrade to aren't often anything better than 6-bit.
For those interested in looking up the monitors, here is a handy guide that gives you the inside scoop on most of the Dell flat panels. Also why the the 200x, 240x, and 300x series monitors get the loving they do and were worth the extra dollars.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
"Shaved off a little cost" is probably not a good way to characterize it if the comparisons between IPS and TN screens I've seen hold true. Apple probably saved quite a bundle on those displays.
I read the internet for the articles.
Don't do digital publishing on an iMac and buy a third-party monitor. Not only will you save money but you'll get better color fidelity. The Mac pro is still a great machine for publishing for a variety of reasons.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
Ah! So if I consider my 8-bit 20" monitor as being one giant pixel (with 1680*1050*3 sub-pixels), then it is capable of displaying 1,351,224,000 colors. We could advertise monitors as being capable of displaying "billions" of colors. Neat!
A 6 bit chip can only produce 190 colors per pixel.
Right. But then it rapidly switches between two of those colors to simulate interim colors. This is called temporal dithering; see more here. To most people (even graphic designers, of which I am one) this dithering is virtually undetectable, and still achieves millions of colors. (Some sensitive people can see the difference -- the same people who can detect the flicker in old flourescent lighting.) You cannot discuss 6-bit pixels separately from temporal dithering, because the latter makes the former commercially possible.
Apple may still be doing it badly, of course, but there are still millions of percieved colors.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
MDA, CGA, TDA/Tandy and EGA adapters used an inverted 9-pin port that looked like a female serial port but wasn't. That connected to the respective monitor that was male. Was supposed to be an April Fools joke but nobody got it.
I don't expect them to produce a decent headless Mac, but then a month before the Mini came out I bought a Radeon 9200 for my "Beige G4" because I wasn't expecting them to ever produce a headless Mac again, decent or not.
But I agree, they need a "Mini pro" with a 3.5" drive, a real GPU, audio in, and full power USB ports.
For one, there are laptop screens that use other panel types. For example LG Display makes the LP201WE1 which is a full 8-bit laptop LCD panel.
Also it is easy to get non-TN panels for desktop displays, you just have to be willing to pay more. For example the LG L1910S is a 19" S-IPS monitor. However, it's going to run you like $350, not the $150 you may be accustomed to for monitors that size. Same deal with larger panels. Yep, you can get 24" TN panels, and you can get them for an extremely good deal. Just $350 will get you a cheap KDS 24" TN panel. However, you can get a nicer panel if you like. $600 gets you a BenQ FP241VW which has an A-MVA panel. Need even better? Ok the NEC 2490WUXi has an amazing LG H-IPS panel in it, and tons of professional features (like hardware calibration with 12-bit per channel look up tables), however it'll run you about $1100.
So it isn't that you can't get good displays, it is that most people don't chose to. For them, they'll take the cheap TN panels.
The reason Apple is getting in trouble is twofunavaliable
1) They DO charge a hefty premium for their devices.
2) All the dick waving they do about things looking better. They talk about the "rich vivid color" and in the case of the Macbook talked about how much better of a display it was. Ok, fair enough, but if you are going to tell people you are giving them a quality display, it'd better actually back that up.
So if Dell wants to sell crap screens, it works out ok because they don't ever seem to indicate anything about them. Even their better screens are only marketed as "extra bright". However if they started talking about how much better color they gave, well then they'd better actually do that, or there'd be trouble.
Thank you, you seem to be the only person on this entire thread to get my point. Perhaps I should have explained myself better?
No. The post in question is a train wreck. Combinatorial math does not work like that. Nor is that the reason that video recording is historically done in YUV. The human eye is very much capable of perceiving millions of distinguishable colors.
Bringing in the mechanics of color perception is irrelevant, not to mention that the post is using misleading and incorrect terminology (it's nothing to do with "dithering") and that it is conveniently overlooking the fact that the three wavelengths that the cones in the eye are sensitive to are red, green, and blue.
Punctuation inside parentheses should be used if the content of the parenthesis is a full sentence or (It should not be used if it is a mere phrase, unless the phrase requires a ? or !.).
Punctuation for the main sentence should be used outside the parentheses, typically after the closing parenthesis (as above and as follows).
We now resume our regular slashdot April Fools edit wars (oh please make it stop!).
I learned American English. Real English may be different.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Unfortunately, that isn't a good indicator anymore. This is in part because companies are deceptive, but mostly because retailers don't know what they are talking about. At any rate, just do a little searching around and you'll find 6-bit TN panels that are listed on a site as "16.7 million colours". The reason is that the site isn't even checking, they just put that for ALL monitors.
It also goes the other way too. I am thinking about getting an NEC 2690WUXi which is a pro monitor. It is, of course, an 8-bit panel. NEC verifies this, you can check the specs on the LG panel it uses too. Ok, one would expect this for the price. However, it seems not all the resellers know this. One lists it as "more than 16 million" and another as 16.2 million. Again, it isn't that they think it is a 6-bit panel, it is that they just list that for all monitors.
So really the only way to be sure is to find out what panel a monitor uses, then look up that panel. Thus far, I've never seen a panel manufacturer lie about it. For 6-bit panels, they even say 262k colours.
The only other guideline you ca use is price. If there's a big price jump, chances are you jumped panel quality. For example you find 24" monitors in the $350-400 range, and then they suddenly jump to $550+. Sure enough, you go from TN to VA when you do that, and thus also from 6 to 8 bit. This isn't foolproof, but generally if there is a big jump and the monitors are "expensive" all of a sudden for a given size, you are getting an 8-bit panel.
Ad hominem. Attack the argument, not the person.
Also, regarding the article, why the heck is Apple of all manufacturers using TN panels, everyone knows they suck! A supply issue perhaps? I know there was a panel factory that went up in flames a while ago, which caused the Lenovo L220X to be severely short in supply.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
So, how does one find out what type of panel their computer uses? I tried searching online but Dell doesn't seem to want to list the specs on my Vostro laptop. Does anybody know of a way to find this information out so that I can make a more informed decision next time I purchase a screen?
What next, suing Nikon for daring to include Bayer filters on their CCDs? Yes, it is possible to build CCDs where the R, G and B are cosited, nobody actually uses the Foveon sensor because the difference in the capture picture is not discernable.
That would only apply if Nikon claimed to use Foveon and really used Bayer. False advertising is false advertising; it depends not on whether you can really tell the difference. It's much like going to a bar and ordering Absolut vodka, and being given something much cheaper, only later being told (and only because you asked) you couldn't tell the difference anyways. "It gets you drunk, right?"
Whether an individual subpixel can display 256 levels is quite irrelevant since dithering is capable of producing a higher colour depth at the expense of colour resolution.
Then it seems you still can't simultaneously claim the listed resolution and the listed color depth. You don't get colors for nothing and your bits for free...
There's no army of Apple fan boys coming to their defense in this particular case. Come on, you can start posting defensive comments now, it's past noon.
I'm curious - and completely ignorant of how to find this information. What type of screen does the iPhone use? The WikiPedia entry doesn't give that much detail, or I don't know what I'm looking for. Thanks!
- Sometimes you're the pidgeon, sometimes you're the statue.
Well, on an LCD the colors don't get overlapped anyway, so what you're looking at is nothing but dithered red, green and blue (at different intensities).
So one could argue that a 6 bit LCD display can only display 2^6 + 2^6 + 2^6 (192) unique colors.
An 8 bit LCD display can only display 2^8 + 2^8 + 2^8 (768) unique colors.
The manufacturers used multiplication where they should have used addition.
Lets sue EVERY LCD manufacturer!
Saying Millions of colors is wrong.
Hell, only 10 bit displays can even say thousands of colors.
Typically, 24" screens and greater are not TN. This article claims that the first 24" TN panel came out in mid 2007.
I can't imagine that there are many larger LCD TVs with TN panels, even among the cheap ones; the viewing angles would be unacceptable.
I use one of these exact machines on the weekend and in the last few weeks I've been having serious eye strain. When I come home during the week and use generic 17" LCDs or my 19" CRT the need to rest my eyes constantly goes away by about Wednesday, but it comes back every weekend when I use that 20" iMac. Seems like a pretty direct correlation. It could be something else like the lighting in the room there, but I'm wondering if anybody else who has used one of these had noticed unusual eye troubles after prolonged usage.
Who, in the name of all that is holy, modded the above informative?
766 factors to 2 * 383, so not much chance of that. Besides, it's clearly wrong. Your claim is that R:2 G:2 B:0 is equivalent to R:1 G:2 B:1 which is equivalent to R:0 G:0 B:4. Yes, each of three sub pixels can produce one of 255 different colors. But that means there are 255^3 combinations. As an analog, use base 10 digits, XYZ. Each can clearly have one of ten values (0-9). However, there are 1000 (10^3) numbers that can be produced, in spite of the fact that if each digit is looked at in isolation there are only 30 possible values. Subpixels combine to form one color value.
Two reasons. One, the red and blue subpixels excite different physical cones in your eye. The two red pixels both excite the same cone. Second, even if it were true that you could have your eye bleed between them and get unique values (if you were at the proper distance, etc.) you would lose resolution. Because, instead of using two different pixels to reflect values of red, you have to use two pixels to represent one 'dithered' color.
No, something in the above statement is a lie. Just like if you claimed to achieve a lossless compression algorithm that worked for all inputs, one would not need to check to call you a liar. Mathematically creating data where none can exist is impossible.
I suppose the OS could have lied to you, if that makes you feel better. Or maybe you don't have a screen that dithers.
How do you know you got millions of colors as opposed to 282,000ish?
At a specific resolution. Even if you buy that dithering is equal to color depth, you cannot deny that it requireds combining neighboring pixels. Which means that the 1920x1280 resolution (which is in pixels, not subpixels) is a lie.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
You only get to multiply colours together if you take multiple subpixels to form one colour. You can do that on a rgb-triplet basis, or any arbitrary block of red, green and blue subpixels. cf Bayer pattern.
Since the human eye is less sensitive to colour resolution, the fact that colour is dithered is irrelevant - you still get full brightness resolution - or you do dispute that 1080p YUV422 is actually 1920x1080 pixels?
This is simply not true. Apple have always said "millions of colours" and never gone into detail as to how those colours are arrived at.
The resolution of my screen is measured in pixels. Even if dithering did work as well (it doesn't), that would mean that I have less resolution than promised. Apple didn't sell a "millions of colors" screen. They sold one that was 1920x1280. And that was measured in pixels, not dithered pixels.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
However, human eyesight blurs the individual red, green, and blue dots together to give the impression of more than 766 colors. And that's what matters--what you actually see, not what's being generated by the display.
Yes, exactly, so to say that the LCD only can display 766 colors you have to ignore the fundamental nature of color and human vision. The three colored subpixels correspond to the three color receptors in our eyes. Would say that we can only see red, green, and blue?
I mean take the color brown. There is no "wavelength" for brown. So you must claim that either the color "brown" doesn't exist, or you acknowledge that color is necessarily about a combination of components, and thus the argument that the LCD is "only" displaying shades of red, blue, and green becomes nonsensical.
A pixel with its green subpixel fully on, its blue subpixel fully on, and its red subpixel off is displaying cyan for any meaningful definition of the term. There is no way to "generate" cyan without using a combination of green and blue, so saying that the LCD can't display cyan because it can only display green and blue is laughably foolish.
Sorry, I got the OP's point, which was to use an invalid concept of color to incorrectly calculate the number of displayable colors in an attempt to make this not look like a big deal.
Also, the LCD in question can't use pulse generation to generate more colors, it uses dithering, and pixel-level dithering looks terrible.
The enemies of Democracy are
(Shameless plug) Rather than creating the image yourself, you can also try The Lagom LCD test pages (and try lots of other monitor tests as well).
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Notebook panels are universally 6-bit. They are *all* 262K panels, with the exception of some desktop replacements using 17" panels.
What you mean by "real screen" is not clear.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I did not say that three 8-bit subpixels produce 766 permutations - clearly there are ~16 million. I said there are 766 colours, and that it is the combination of multiple subpixels to produce the illusion of more than that.
What is a color, if not a permutation of components? Our own eyes work by combining the components red, green, and blue. When you combine green and blue light, you get cyan. There is no other way to get cyan, there is no frequency for cyan. So either you're arguing that cyan is not a color and in fact RGB are the ONLY colors, or you accept that a color is necessarily a combination of components. A pixel with its green subpixel fully on, its blue subpixel fully on, and its red pixel fully off is displaying cyan for any meaningful definition of the term. And therefore an 8-bit display is capable of displaying 16 million colors at its native resolution.
Dithering is simply the process of producing more colours using more than three subpixels.
And thus necessarily throwing away visual information, since in the frame buffer every pixel is specified. And also necessarily looking much worse than supporting the full color depth, since while sub-pixels are indistinguishable without having your nose on the glass, individual pixels are much easier to see at normal viewing distances. Any LCD that claimed to support millions of colors, but is only 6-bit and thus must use dithering, should also commensurately advertise with a lower resolution based on the number of pixels needed to display an arbitrary color. To both claim 16million colors and full resolution is a blatant lie. Your attempt to support this lie is ill-conceived and a failure.
Ad hominem. Attack the argument, not the person.
First, you don't have to point out that I'm insulting you personally. I'm aware.
Second, ad hominem is used in reference to a fallacious argument. "I overestimated your intelligence" is not an argument, it is a conclusion.
The enemies of Democracy are
No, I'm arguing that RGB are in fact the only colours produced by a tristimulus-based display. The eye combines the separate wavelengths with a weighted response to produce something that we in our own perceptually encumbered heads call "cyan".
You seem to believe that a single group of rgb subpixels is a distict entity. In fact most monitors are laid out in the pattern
RGBRGBRGBRGB
A colour cyan would be displayed by turning off some of the subpixels
_GB_GB_GB_GB
Now, there is absolutely no difference in a cyan pixel produced by the group of pixels
_GB
and the group of pixels
GB_
or even the group of pixels
B_G
The distinction of where one pixel ends and another begins is arbitrary, and so to claim that an 8-bit display is capable of displaying 16 million colors at its native resolution is wrong because the native resolution is not 1920x1080 pixels, but 5760x1080 subpixels, and it is irrelevant which source subpixels make up a single visual entity which we call "cyan".
Then sue Nikon for using Bayer patterns and stating full (interpolated) resolution.
You are wrong. Look at an apple display and see if you can see streaking and banding. You won't be able to find any. That's because the screen "dithers" the color over several screen refreshes to achieve more colors. The refreshes happen so fast and are so subtle that your eyes can't see them. People keep saying that "graphics professionals" will be affected, but they don't have super-human eyes, and they won't be affected. Adding more colors to a LCD display is non-trivial, and there's no good reason to do it if you can achieve the same color quality with a cheaper display. You can call it false advertising if you want to, but if no human on earth can tell the difference it's hard to say there really is one.
Even better!
No, I'm arguing that RGB are in fact the only colours produced by a tristimulus-based display. The eye combines the separate wavelengths with a weighted response to produce something that we in our own perceptually encumbered heads call "cyan".
Which is the same as arguing that RGB are the only colors that exist outside our "perceptually encumbered heads". It is impossible to "produce" cyan without combining components. So like I said, either you're arguing that RGB are the only colors that exist, or you acknowledge that cyan is in fact a color and therefore an RGB display can produce cyan for any meaningful definition of the term.
The statement that the LCD can only display the colors RGB is only true for a useless and limited definition of color.
The distinction of where one pixel ends and another begins is arbitrary
As long as they consist of adjacent red, green, and blue sub-pixels, yes, only not really, because the screen has an edge. A red subpixel orphaned on the side is not a pixel. So in reality there is exactly one valid definition of pixel in an LCD arranged as above.
so to claim that an 8-bit display is capable of displaying 16 million colors at its native resolution is wrong because the native resolution is not 1920x1080 pixels, but 5760x1080 subpixels, and it is irrelevant which source subpixels make up a single visual entity which we call "cyan".
It's not wrong at all. Regardless of how you define pixel boundaries, there are 1920x1080 of them, and each one is capable of displaying one of 16 million colors. If you were to adjust the pixel boundaries and keep the subpixels the same (and lets say it's a cylindrical or spherical display to avoid the edge issue), then there would still be 1920x1080 pixels, they'd still be capable of displaying 16 million colors each, and you'd just say the color of the new pixels was different but still producing the same image. And if all those pixels were set to 0x00ffff, it'd be cyan as sure as salmon is pink, bees are yellow, and Labradors are brown.
Then sue Nikon for using Bayer patterns and stating full (interpolated) resolution.
If they're lying about their resolution and color depth, then they should be sued. I don't own a Nikon (or a Mac for that matter), so I wouldn't have standing. But I agree that all cases of false advertising should be. What was your point?
The enemies of Democracy are
The kind of gradient test you quote is commonly cited but it's not always effective. There are good quality 6-bit LCDs which can display most gradients flawlessly. And there are also lower quality 8-bit screens (such as my LG L2012P) which have problems with many gradients. I don't know whether the 20" iMac uses the good quality 6-bit panels or not.
I've seen many mid-range 8-bit screens fail the smooth gradient test. A typical high-end 8-bit LCD which hasn't failed is the EIZO L997, which I use at work.
As others have mentioned, the best way to tell 6-bit vs. 8-bit is to look at the viewing angles. Narrow viewing angles with significant colour distortion means 6-bit.
My point is that colours which are not pure red, green or blue can only be produced by combinations of subpixels, as a tristimulus display can only produce shades of these three colours. We are in agreement about this.
Further, since the above, it is necessary to dither subpixels to get anything close to "millions" of colours (or even anything higher than my original hyperbolic claim of 766 colours). I believe we are in agreement about this.
Finally, since dithering between subpixels is a necessary artifact of colour reproduction, arguing about whether one method of dithering is "right" and produces "true 16 million colours" and another is "wrong" and produces "only 200 thousand colours" is pointless. An LCD screen could easily use a Bayer pattern and be no less "wrong" about its colour production capabilities.
I did not say Nikon are lying about their resolution, I was pointing out that the rgb-triplet method is not the only valid way of dithering to produce more than the very limited range of colours which n-bit RGB can produce or capture.
In conclusion: dithering between arbitrary subpixels is a valid method of colour reproduction, and it is not false advertising to state full resolution when an arbitrary block of subpixels is required to produce an arbitrary colour.
For those interested in how they come up with that 16.2 million number, it works like this.
A true 8-bit display has (2^8)^3 = 16,777,216 colors/pixel.
A true 6-bit display has (2^6)^3 = 262,144 colors/pixel.
Now consider dithering four pixels in a single channel (say red), where each of the four pixels has an intensity of either V or V+1. If half of the pixel are V and half are V+1, the dithered value will appear to have an intensity of V+1/2, same for 1/4 or 3/4 - effectively giving three more intensities between V and V+1. So there are (2^6-1)*3 dithered values that each channel can represent in addition to the (2^6) real intensities. This gives a grand total of:
Dithered 6-bit display has ((2^6-1)*3 + 2^6)^3 = 16,194,277 colors/(4 pixels).
Since all the colors you see on a monitor are dithered (r,g,b) anyway, the 16.2 million colors wouldn't be lie by itself - if they claimed 16.2 million colors at 1/4 the resolution and 4 times the dot pitch, but of course they don't bother to mention that fact. What is par
Seems like using a good calibrated CRT or a nice Truecolor LCD as the iMac's second monitor would be the best hack around using it for colour-sensitive work.
Not sure if the dvi-analog conversion will cause problems with calibration, but the imac supports an extra monitor.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Except that Apple never advertised a 1920x1280x24 screen; they merely stated 'millions of colors', which according to your second argument, should be what the observer "perceives" with a 1920x1280x18 resolution dithered color display. If the color perception is the only relevant criterion to measure against Apple's claim of color display, then their dithered 6BPP monitors should qualify. The millions of perceived colors ARE displayed, just not at the same resolution as a 24BPP display; but as you point out, it was never made clear in Apple marketing literature that you get the "millions of colors" at any particular resolution, and so technically, Apple didn't make any false statements about their displays, but merely left it ambiguous enough that people might be confused. This is pretty different from saying that Apple falsely advertised their displays' capabilities. It's unfortunate that people misinterpreted the product specs, but I don't think it's reasonable to claim that the specs were inaccurate, merely uninformative.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
My point is that colours which are not pure red, green or blue can only be produced by combinations of subpixels, as a tristimulus display can only produce shades of these three colours. We are in agreement about this.
No, we're not. Because colors which are not red, green, or blue are necessarily produced by a combination of the primary colors, a tristimulus display can produce any color that is a combination of those primary shades, for any reasonable definition of the word "produce".
But since you changed definitions of produce mid-sentence from a reasonable one to a ludicrous one (because it would mean that NOTHING can "produce" any color but red green or blue), we don't agree.
Anyway, change your statement to "a tristimulus display produces non-RGB colors through a combination of subpixels" and let's move on.
Finally, since dithering between subpixels is a necessary artifact of colour reproduction, arguing about whether one method of dithering is "right" and produces "true 16 million colours" and another is "wrong" and produces "only 200 thousand colours" is pointless.
No, it's NOT. If your method of dithering requires using multiple pixels, then your effective resolution is lower and thus claiming full resolution and the ability to produce that many colors is a LIE. You CANNOT do both; you can do one or the other. You can -either- have full resolution with a lower color count, OR you can display more colors at the expense of image data. Just as it would be a lie to claim the total number of subpixels as your resolution, then claim 16 million colors at that resolution. That's blatantly wrong. If it takes 20 subpixels to produce the range of color you're claiming, then your stated resolution must be defined in terms of groups of 20 subpixels.
That's what resolution and color depth mean. It means that you have X many uniquely addressable color points, and you can assign any one of the available colors to that point.
If you have a 6-bit 1600x1200 display, can you give each of those 1.92 million pixels a unique color? NO! So claiming that you can is a LIE.
I did not say Nikon are lying about their resolution, I was pointing out that the rgb-triplet method is not the only valid way of dithering to produce more than the very limited range of colours which n-bit RGB can produce or capture.
If this method of dithering requires using additional pixels so as to produce the additional colors, but they advertise the full compliment of pixels, then yes they are lying. I don't know the specifics of the product you're talking about, but I do know that I don't take your statement that they aren't lying to mean anything.
In conclusion: dithering between arbitrary subpixels is a valid method of colour reproduction, and it is not false advertising to state full resolution when an arbitrary block of subpixels is required to produce an arbitrary colour.
If that "arbitrary block of subpixels" is larger than one pixel, but you claim your resolution is equivalent to the number of pixels, then yes that is false advertising.
It's like this: Apple is claiming 16 million colors, and claiming a resolution based on the "arbitrary" grouping of an RGB triplet as a pixel. However that "arbitrary" grouping is not the same as the "arbitrary" grouping that can produce 16 million colors. Thus they are lying. It couldn't be any more plain.
The enemies of Democracy are
Go to an Apple store and tell me the iMac displays aren't much nicer than most the crap on sale at Best Buy then I might listen. No, they aren't high-end monitors used for professional color management. Yes, they do look great to the rest of us.
because he is colorblind. That is why the original Macintosh and Lisa were in black and white with shades of gray. It wasn't that it was cheaper, it was that Steve Jobs is colorblind. 6-bit or 8-bit color, it all looks the same to Steve Jobs.
On the other hand, Windows and PCs are the way they are because Bill Gates has asperger syndrome.
Linux is the way it is because Linus Torvalds worked his way through college as a nude model for art students to paint or draw pictures of the human body. That is why Linux is open, totally naked.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
If anyone has a bias, it's you and your far-fetched story trying to defend Apple here. The Cinema displays have 16.7 million colors in their specs, which is correct for an 8-bit panel (which they are). The 20" iMac uses the more vague "Millions of colors" in the specs. Sorry, but Apple knows exactly what they are selling.
I guess most people wouldn't even know, at least not by reading the specs from Appels Website: Glass widescreen display. Display Whether youve got your eye on the 20-inch or breathtaking 24-inch iMac, youll enjoy a wondrous widescreen performance from every seat in the house. The big picture. All iMac models feature a display with a 16:10 wide aspect ratio perfect for watching movies, viewing photos, and using applications with lots of palettes. Display How do the displays compare? The 20-inch widescreen iMac offers a resolution of 1680 by 1050 pixels on its flat-panel LCD screen 36 percent more than the previous 17-inch iMac. The 24-inch iMac offers a panoramic resolution of 1920 by 1200 pixels 30 percent more screen real estate than the 20-inch model. Rich, vivid color. No matter what you like to do on your computer watch movies, edit photos, play games, even just view a screen saver its going to look stunning on an iMac. Thats because iMac now features a glossy display with glass cover that makes graphics, photos, and videos come alive with richer colors and deeper blacks. --------------- Note they don't mention the colour depth number, but they do say it has a nice glossy surface.
The people who really care probably run an external CRT monitor anyway. I do for video editing because my LCD panel though fine for just about everything, just does not look the same as the CRT. Most people will watch my vids on a TV.
I bought a macbook 13" for school and the viewing angle and color were so poor I couldn't get a consistent contrast from top to bottom.
TN screens are pieces of crap, period.
The color was washed out, so washed out the best I could do for calibration forced apple's colorsync tool to the edge of the charts. If I were able I would have dragged the controls off the charts, and perhaps attained a passable color accuracy. That said, the lack of consistent contrast from top to bottom of the screen is incurable.
Apple seems to have caved to the flow of the rest of the pc market, which is toward screens which are no longer built for fidelity, but for hyper-exaggerated flashiness on the salesfloor.
My cinema was the last generation before this shift, and now im stuck unserviced in the computing marketplace when i want to upgrade.
I like the OSX environment a LOT. I can't stand an interface which is not document centered, and column view is important to me, but I also want color fidelity! Whenever I see an improperly calibrated screen it grates at me like a thousand papercuts, and I've locked that macbook away in a dark corner because I want to cry whenever I look at that screen.
What has happened to apple's quality standards since 2002 can best be compared to BBC news devolving into MTV news.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
You're confusing colour perception with colour reproduction. It is true that to perceive cyan there must be at least two cones stimulated, but there are an infinite number of spectra consisiting of different wavelengths which can add up to produce the same colour of cyan. If this were not so, display colour calibration would be impossible.
Further it is not necessary to build a display from the red, green and blue primaries. One could just as easily build a display out of the primaries cyan, magenta and yellow, since these are just filters on a white spectrum. In this case cyan can be produced by a single subpixel while blue would probably need a whole pixel.
Where have Apple stated "x by y pixels, where each individual pixel is capable of producing 2^24 colours"? Show me where and I will agree with you. However, Apple have never made such a claim. They give a specific pixel resolution, and a colour depth. There is not a one-to-one mapping between pixels (rgb-triplets) and colours, and Apple have never claimed there is. Would you dispute that a video encoded in YUV4:2:0 is not HD? You don't actually get individually addressable pixel colours; each colour refers to a 2x2 block of brightness pixels. And yet there is no-one suing Sony for Blue-ray video not being 1920x1080 pixels.
Look up the Bayer pattern, and find out how resolution is measured. It is equally valid to count individual sensor elements (each capable of red, green or blue), or 2x2 blocks of red, two greens and a blue. The reason this is valid is because the human eye is more sensitive to resolution in brightness than in colour. The output pixels are dithered to produced a full brightness-resolution image. This is why Foveon get away with claiming triple the resolution of their individual sensor elements.
If dithering is not allowed, then neither is YUV, Bayer patterns, or any method of picture compression which exploits the limitations of human perception. Let's sue the joint photographics expect group, since the JPEG format doesn't store individual pixels - my camera claims to produce pictures of 3072x2304 pixels, but not only is it captured from a Bayer pattern, but the colour planes are subsampled and individual pixels are not even stored, just an approximation of a 2d discrete cosine transform. It is about as far from 3072x2304 pixels as you can get. Shall I sue Sony for making a 7 megapixel camera which uses a Bayer pattern, or will I happily accept that not having to account for individual colours at the full resolution is what gives me those 7 million pixels in the first place?
But he didn't claim the eye can't see millions of colors. What he said was that the eye has a lower resolution for color than for intensity (spatial resolution), which, AFAIK is true.
Id like to see a software version of this trick used on real 24bit displays, ie. make a true 30bit RGB TIFF, or 48bit HDR TIFF.
So your code just has to generate 4 seperate internal memory bitmaps, and cycle through them in sequence, if your LCD is set to
75hz then it might just work, 100hz perhaps.
Sounds like a great trick. I feel like coding up a 30bit display test pattern.
Anyone done this already?? Im going to google this up, sounds like a great thing to write for summer of code thing.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I have a Santa Rosa 17" MBP and I didn't see any banding on that site. I guess that would mean my LCD is using the true 8 bits?
You have failed to point out where Apple are lying. I have demonstrated repeatedly that colour resolution is not necessarily the same as full resolution, in many places where we take it for granted. You have yet to show me where Apple have said their screens are "x by y pixels, where each individual pixel is capable of producing 2^24 colours". They give a pixel resolution. They also give a colour depth. Where do they say there is a one-to-one mapping between colour resolution and pixels? Sure they don't say the displays use a 6-bit DAC, but when have they ever claimed to have an 8-bit DAC? It is possible to produce millions of colours on these 6-bit displays by dithering, so their claim of producing "millions of colours", is absolutely correct.
Show me where Apple are lying.
obviously.
The resolution of the 20" iMac screen is 1680 by 1050 pixels.
So no matter how many colors it has, the limited of simultaneously displayed colors is 1,764,000
-- Boycott Shell
This is very true. The settlement that apple made on the macbook case WAS NOT a class action. In fact, the parties that were suing apple, or their lawyers, said it was "very difficult" to form a class because it was almost impossible to determine who purchased macbooks for the sole purpose of the millions of colors claim. I don't see how this would be any different on an iMac than on a macbook.
There was another mode called "Sliced HAM" which was invented by a software hacker. I'm not exactly sure how it worked, but I know it was very CPU intensive, because it was using standard 5-bit mode but with a constantly rotating color palette.
;-)
The benefit of Sliced HAM photos was 4096 colors, but without the HAM blur, because each pixel was entirely independent from the others. It created a crystal clear image and was fantastic for looking at porn..... er, SI Swimsuit Issues. Yeah, that's it.
It's a shame Amiga died.
It would have been cool to see it survive to the present day like the Macintosh has survived. It took the Macs and IBM until circa 1995 to achieve what Amiga was doing (near-CD quality sound, thousands of colors, true preemptive multitasking) ten years earlier. A machine truly ahead of its time, but squandered by mismanagement. I suspect if Jack Tramiel has been there, he would have made the Amiga 500 as popular as the Commodore 64 was (via aggressive price reduction to ~$200 per A500 unit & retail sales in place like Sears, Kmart).
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
I'd say the 6-8 bit thing is overrated, just as CPU clock speeds were a couple of things ago. What matters in the end is whether the display is able to show subtle shades, and that can be by means of a true 8-bit DAC or a time-domain dithered 6-bit DAC, just like the 16-bit audio is reproduced with 1-bit DACs and a lot of dithering.
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http://www.kodawarisan.com/k2007_02/archives/2007/08/aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa_3.html
An aluminum iMac dissassembled shortly after released. The model number of the LCD can be found on a sticker on the back. A quick Google search of the model number will reveal exactly what it is.
Fonts, and more specifically legacy fonts. Windows can generally ONLY use Windows fonts and OpenType/TrueType. Macs can USE ANY type of font (InDesign can even use Windows PostScript on a Mac). There are literally millions of PostScript binary fonts in the world. If you work in the prepress/printing business 95% of your jobs will be from Mac users. You would be unable to use many of their fonts in Windows.
Binary files. See above. Same reasons. Millions of files still exist.
How many windows users do you know who actually use color calibrated monitors? These are required in high-end publishing and it is extremely easy to achieve on a Mac. Not so in Windows.
Mac Pros come with dual ethernet built-in. These means that in Leopard you can marry the two for double the bandwidth and network redundancy, not to mention multi-homing. No farting around.
If needed you can run Windows on your Mac, but you can't run OS X on your PC (at least not easily).
Those reasons should suffice for now. The Mac OS really is easier to use for publishing that Windows is. It's just the way things are arranged and set up. Ask any professional publisher what kind of files they generally get from Windows users and you'll see what I'm talking about.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
Sliced HAM (also called many other names) worked by actually using the Blitter to swap what hardware address the palette was at every 64 pixels or so, so several times per scan line, based on a table that the programmer set up that pointed to them. The biggest problem with it was it had to be rewritten for each chipset, because the timing was (by necessity) hard-coded into the Blitter commands.
And actually, the Amiga is still around, just not in the same form. See their home page for details. (Full Disclosure: I worked for a time as their New OS Development Lead several years back.)