If ANYONE could even 'see' the differences? Seriously, I'm challenged to see some differences in paint chips at Home Depot and a certain range only has 15-20 chips!

Lastly I have heard that the 8-bit display's necessary to achieve 16+ million colors aren't as smooth for video playback. Can anyone corroborate?

I think the most important result in this course of action is that we all know that there's software emulation running on 'some' macbooks - which macbooks, and exactly how much dithering is going on (what the real color output is) is still unknown (to me, after reading this thread) afaic we need more information before we start jumping to conclusions of effect.

I'm a working graphics pro and have used powerbooks for primary workstations at various times - color depth has never been as much of a problem as viewing angle.

I hope these guys were doing this just to expose the information, because I seriously doubt that this was actually affecting their bottom line.

Agreed.

"I hope these guys were doing this just to expose the information"

I am sure it did affect the bottom line...for their lawyers.

Any "Pro" photographer worth their skills would NOT edit for color accuracy on a 6bit laptop lcd . PERIOD!

Creative professionals once were the lifeblood of Apple Computers - and they still are their core enthusiasts.

Despite the practicality of using a MacBook Pro for color accuracy, it is a good slap to Apple to remind them where they came from. Apple didn't add the label "Pro" to their laptop line by accident. They need to do right by the creative professionals that expect better of them and expect at the very least accuracy and honesty.

... if you don't want to pay a settlement in the future.

So what do other laptop manufacturers claim? From my understand, most LCDs are 6-bit displays. Obviously the color is better than "thousands" (65k colors, 4-bit), it's just not the "millions" as defined by 8-bit color (1.67 million).

Apple's tech specs for both the MacBook and MacBook Pro still lists "support for millions of colors". However, nowhere do they claim their displays are 8-bit displays, and I don't think they ever did.

This sounds to me similar to the old lawsuits about hard drive space where they wanted to apply standards for how RAM capacity was measured to how hard drive capacity was measured, based on the popular misconception that they were measured the same way (they aren't and never have been). People are applying the notion that "millions of colors" means 8-bit displays. But that's under the old method of controlling the display at the pixel level. If you can achieve more color variation by controlling it at the sub-pixel level, and that allows you to achieve at least 1,000,000 colors, then their statement is true. Even if it's not the traditional 8-bit, 1.67 million colors.

As a point of reference, my WinXP laptop allows me to set my display to "32-bit". This implies 8-bit color over 4 sub-pixels per pixel. A clear lie on both counts as I'm fairly certain my laptop does not support 4 billion colors!

Any "Pro" photographer worth their skills would NOT edit for color accuracy on a 6bit laptop lcd . PERIOD!

Well, how would you know it's a 6-bit display? Apple doesn't say this, they tell you it supports 32-bit color. I guess you'd be happy if you spent a bunch of money on an HD TV, only to find out that it wasn't truly HD, but they did some tricks so it could kind of look it?

And what if he isn't worth his skills? Does that invalidate the case?

And how come you can't do color correction on a laptop display? Is it all LCDs that suck, or just the ones that get stuck in laptops?

If ANYONE could even 'see' the differences? Seriously, I'm challenged to see some differences in paint chips at Home Depot and a certain range only has 15-20 chips!

I'm sure there are people who can. Just like there are people who can tell the tonal differences between 128kbps AAC, 160kbps AAC (or AAC vs MP3 vs AppleLossless, or iPod vs. CD).

I wonder why. Perhaps no one else had this issue or was bothered enough to file a stupid lawsuit?

No, because they had to find people who bought their computer specifically because of the color range (as it states).

Maybe this shows that photographers aren't buying Macs, but using their Zunes to do their color correction work...

while no serious photographer final-proofs on a laptop, it was indeed misleading for Apple to lead users to believe that the MB/MBP produced 'millions of colors' when it did not do that.

As stated above, whether one uses their laptop for color proofing isn't the issue. The issue is that the laptops do not natively produce the amount of colors they state. Even before I discovered this story I noticed display very noticeable issues on my MacBook. I also disagree with anyone claiming this suit affects only those who use their laptops for accurate color purposes; I believe we all paid the same piece of equipment and personally I’d like the issues corrected (yes updated displays). I’ve seen better color displays on cheap sub $800 Compaq laptops. It’s ridiculous that this ever happened and Apple’s arrogant stance towards its customers shows how out of touch they are becoming with them. The more people “switch” and are herded onto the apple farm, the less room there is to graze and everyone suffers….

It's not impossible to think that apple's 'pro' laptops would have screens that would be suitable for a photographer on the run.

The fact that they exaggerate that fact is lame.

All LCD do this, there are only 3 colors, expecting LCD to behave like CRT is pointless. LCD dither is a fact of life.

This is an interesting thread. I remember reading a similar debate a couple of years ago.

Another Apple fib and another host of Apple fanboys jump to it's defence. But, as mentioned earlier, the case had merits and the claim 'Millions of Colours' is a lie. To the technically uneducated (and i don't intend to be in the least disparaging with that remark) a claim of this type would be taken in good faith by the consumer. However, once discovered as lie the consumer would be miffed as they would've felt that they had been misled. I've been trawling this forum for years and the same tale has been told again and again. What worrries me is that here are more sycophants on the boards these days than ever before.

But I'm in need of education myself. To me an 8bit display would produce 2^8 colours or 256 colours/shades. Whilst 6 bit would produce 2^6 or 64 colours. I'm guessing that what is being discussed is related in concept to to the red/green/blue combination that created 'true colour' on a CRT. Tell you what I'll go and educate myself on a wiki somewhere.

Really though guys, Apple are just another corporate entity that will do anything to pump up their products in order to sell more and keep their shareholders happy (as I said, they're just another boring corporate entity). That is in no way a slight against their products. One could surmise that Apple does not need such exaggeration as the products are 'better than that' anyway.

I think the Pro can in fact display millions of colors. On an external display! So technically accurate.

Usually a 6 bit display will show color banding if you, for example have a blue sky that goes from one shade of blue to several shades. I can clearly see banding on many photos that have a good amount of sky in them. The banding is a result of the inability of the display to reproduce the number of colors need.

Yes, we'll watch how Apple will craft new advertising language. Best of all, this settlement might help Apple's zero-in on delivering true 1080p in updates of TV and Time Capsule — maybe the Swiss army knife is a new Mac mini with HDTV tuners.

While it's a good thing that Apple got reprimanded for no telling the whole truth about the actual color resolution of its laptop screen, my guess is this is hardly a unique case. Apple gets its displays from LG and Samsung. Every other laptop manufacturer does tell its consumers the same exact thing! Only their products are not targeted towards creative pros.

If other companies do it and don't get sued for it, why shouldn't you do it too?

It's an honest mistake, and this hardly hits Apple in the face for not being truthful.

That said, as yticolev mentioned above, the graphics cards *DOES* in fact support millions of colors on other displays, so it's also a matter of interpretation.

"I guess you'd be happy if you spent a bunch of money on an HD TV, only to find out that it wasn't truly HD, but they did some tricks so it could kind of look it? "

Lord knows no one out there is calling their TVs "HD Ready" even though they are not HD resolution. At least we can be happy that no one but Apple fudges things in advertising.

I have a 24 1Gen 2.8Ghz iMac. Overall, a great desktop. It really is, but I'm not so crazy about the screen. While I don't have some of the reported problems, it does seem overy bright, even with adjustment and, while there are no dead pixels, the uniformity of light and detail lack somewhat. I don't know how most people buy their hardware, but I took a good long look at this model at an apple store, deemed it acceptable and bought it. At 8 months with daily use, I have few complaints. I'm looking to upgrade my second monitor shortly and have my eye on a 22inch hp. The reviews for this particular monitor, give it the highest ratings. Being very similar to the iMac monitor in specs, it should be interesting to compare them.