Apple has settled out of court on a 10-month old lawsuit over its displays and the number of colors it can/can’t display.
Two California-based professional photographers (Fred Greaves and Dave Gatley) filed a class-action back in May, saying they were tricked into buying some MacBook Pros because of the claim that they would display millions of colors.
The lawsuit noted:
“The displays are only capable of displaying the illusion of millions of colors through the use of a software technique referred to as ‘dithering’ “
According to the photographers’ attorney Peter Polischuk:
“They made a misrepresentation…They have a drop-down menu [in the Mac operating system] that lets you choose to display millions of colors.”
A clerk at the San Diego County Superior Court has said that Polischuk had called to say the suit has been settled. The plaintiffs decided not to pursue further because it was difficult to find other people that were ‘wronged’ for the same reason.
Another frivolous lawsuit draws to an end… Super!
[via Chicago Tribune]
written by Mr. Mayor \\ tags: Dave Gatley, Fred Greaves, Millions of Colors, Peter Polischuk
March 26th, 2008 at 10:08 am
What is with everyone suing Apple these days?!
March 27th, 2008 at 4:50 am
This is another instance where I have to say, if you replaced Microsoft for Apple in each sentence, there would be a cheering squad for the photographers.
The fact is, they are right… there is a difference between “millions of colors” and a dithered representation of millions of colors. It parallels the HD claims that Cable companies, Satelite companies, and Apple makes on their products. People have come to accept highly compressed video as HD simply if it has 720 lines of resolution giving it the 720p label. Everyone forgets the fact that most of our HD solutions offer pathetically low bitrate and is so compressed that it only looks good when our monitors process the image even further to minimize the digital artifacts.
In the end it is nitpicking… but the point is that if Microsoft did it, this class action lawsuit would have been huge.
May 18th, 2008 at 7:54 am
As pointed out in other articles I’ve seen on the subject, Apple is being sued only because they are uniquely vulnerable in this case since they produce all of the components involved. They manufacture the video card, monitor, drivers, and other software.
Fact is, many WIntel system have exactly the same issue, but you would have to sue Dell, Microsoft, AND ViewSonic (for example) versus just Apple. In a way, when you say “if Microsoft did it”, they do!
See: http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/05/apple_lcd_lawsu.html
I agree that for most of us this is nitpicking, but what about those who rely heavily on color matching video systems?
SB