I’m sure you all remember the ‘millions of colors’ lawsuit that was settled out of court not so long ago. The suit claimed that MacBook and MacBook Pros were ‘fooling’ Apple users into thinking the displays output millions of colors… When in reality a dithering technology was being used to simulate the promoted color depth. The suit never took off due to the plaintiffs having a tough time finding support for their views… And now it looks like we have another ‘copy cat’ case.

This latest lawsuit was filed in San Jose and is arguing basically the same thing, except this time it’s all about the 20-inch iMac. The issue remains that Apple claims the 20-inch iMac can display ‘millions of colors at all resolutions’ when in reality the plaintiffs are arguing that the dithering technology ‘tricks’ us into believing we have that color-depth.

The 24-inch model of the iMac has an 8-bit display and does indeed display millions of colors. Over 16 million in fact. However the 20-inch model is a 6-bit display and will only display slightly over 260,000 colors BD (before dithering)

We’ll have to see if this suit can drum up the support the previous ‘millions of colors’ case lacked. Time will tell what happens… If nothing else this is keeping Apple’s legal team on their toes.

[via arstechnica]

written by Mr. Mayor \\ tags: Dithering, iMac, Lawsuit, Millions of Colors