Behind the Apple MacBook Class Action Suit

The complaint -- filed in a California superior court -- reads like a long, angry comment thread on an Apple forum, which is largely what it is.

Two MacBook owners, Fred Greaves and Dave Gately, have filed a class action lawsuit against Apple (AAPL), charging the company with deceptive advertising, 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.

But as Charles Jade puts it in Ars Technica Infinite Loop, the legal filing tells ...

"a story ...  that will sound familiar to longtime Mac users. It begins with a perceived problem, the discovery that others have this problem, a refutation by Apple of that problem, and the ensuing legal action." (link; see also Ryan Block at Engadget)

At the heart of the case is plaintiff's claim that rather than delivering 16,777,216 colors with an 8-bit LCD, Apple chose a cheaper route, delivering the illusion of millions of colors using a 6-bit LCD and dithering.

What makes the complaint sound especially familiar to longtime Mac users, is that to buttress their case, Greaves and Gately have copied and pasted long stretches of exchanges from discussion threads on apple.com support and other online fora. They tell stories of dismissive Apple geniuses telling them they are being "too picky," of off-the-street tests performed at Best Buy and Tekserve, of ordering replacement computers and being afraid to open the box, of exhausted phone support reps encouraging users to "take the refund."

"I'm so tired of dealing with Apple at this point," writes one anonymous poster, "that I don't have the energy or time to continue even though they've done everything they possibly could."

What do you do when you run into a brick wall at tech support? Greaves and Gately sued. They've requested a jury trial, which means a half dozen of their peers could be trying to sort out the kinds of meandering arguments we slog through every day. You want in on the case, which Techmeme has filed with a Netflix suit under the heading "from the who-to-root-for dept"? You can read the complaint as a PDF here or here at a mirror site.

 

Comments

[Whaa Whaa]

Well, this is especially interesting.

I've never noticed how terrible my screen looked till NOW. The COLORS. They're missing!

8 bits x 3 = 24 bits = 16,777,216 colors.

6 bits x 3 = 18 bits = 32768 colors.

We're missing 16,744,448 colors!

That's 99.8% of our colors are missing.

Whoa, where do we sue?

Let's be generous and settle for a 50% refund on those 99.8% colors Apple tricked us into 'seeing'. The mere idea of it curdles my tummy.

[Adrian]

Great post 'Whaa Whaa'! :)

As a recent re-convert to Mac I read these 'complaints' with a bit of disbelief.

Having to still spend a lot of my time dealing with the frustration of PC's I have no trouble remembering how much better things are with a Mac!

I worry that some day I will forget and become as obsessively picky as these poor people. When you remove things to complain about, people just decrease their threshold for being picky!

I suppose if I needed colour accuracy for sake of my work I might have more issues, but then again, I probably would use a calibrated external monitor anyway.

[Normal]

HEY - LOSERS GET A LIFE!!!! DON'T YOU HAVE ANYTHING BETTER TO DO THEN COUNT COLORS? WHAT A JOKE!!!!

[AJ]

I dont believe this.

[AJ]

Is this calculation of colors 8&6 and the big diference right?

[DCD]

2^18=244122, not 32768. Thinking different, 2^18/2^24=1/2^6=1/64, so you're getting somewhat less than 2% (1/50) of your colors with no dithering, effectively more with dithering, and even more with temporal dithering.

And yet, while remaining a fanboy for Apple products, I completely agree with the lawsuit. How can this be any more false in advertising? Apple clearly knew the displays were not capable of displaying millions of colors, and they apparently never documented the actual (lower) display quality even while advertising "support" for millions of colors and taking down clarifications put up on their support boards by others. Yes, I can understand Apple being put in a bind by not finding suppliers for the parts they might have wished to use, but heck, it's like selling my gasoline-powered car with a false claim that it can go 0-to-60 in 2 seconds, and justifying it later by saying "Well, I really wanted to sell a car like that but nobody makes one". The efficacy of the "It's no big deal" defense clearly depends on how big of a deal it is in light of a specific customer's requirements -- and if I recall, that style of defense didn't go far with Intel's FDIV problem.

[CB]

There are a few big problems with this court case: First, Apple nowhere makes the claim that any Apple computer or monitor can display 16.7 million colors. Apple has _always_ used the term "millions of colors", even at times when they actually _did_ achieve 16.7 million colors.

Second, it is customary in the industry to sell 8 bit displays as having 16.7 million colors and 6 bit LCD displays as 16.2 million colors. So whatever Apple claims, it is exactly what the whole industry does.

Third, 8 bit displays tend to be slower, which causes lots of problems playing videos or action video games. These problems are not there with a 6 bit display. Photographers obviously would like higher precision instead of higher update speed, but they are not the only ones.

[DrEthernet]

What I don't understand is why nobody has sued Apple yet for stating that the 20' iMac has the Radeon X1600 video card, when in fact it has the Radeon Mobility X1600. The abilities of the two cards are the same but the Mobility card has lower clock speeds. Apple has clocked the GPU even lower in order to avoid overheating making it even slower. Clock speed is not essential to every user, but those who are interested in gaming and want high FPS will be very dissapointed to find out the truth.

[DCD]

OK, I retract most of my earlier comment about advertising "millions of colors" being misleading. It truly is apparently standard to advertise 3*6 bit dithered as 16.2 million colors. In addition, browsing the web, I've seen the same sorts of complaints made against 3*8 bit displays as I've seen against Apple's 3*6 bit ones. For at least most of these issues, these guys should be directing their complaints against the industry at large and not Apple -- except that wouldn't be as lucrative.

(And, for the record, 2^24=262144.)

[Adam Chandler]

Pffft. Class action suits. I'd rather Apple had the money than the lawyers.

[Bill]

Apple would probably spend less money if they refunded the buyers and sold the units as refurbs. Otherwise, the lawyer scum make millions while the buyer gets $100.

[@ Webster Phreaky]

Speaking of denial and fantasy land, where did all your rancor come from? It's a company being sued - or is this a religious thing for you?

[decastroharry]

people can never be happy with what they have they always want more and more this is call greed and these people who are in a lawsuit are color hungry big deal apple promised a million colors and they only got 900999,999 colors may be they are color blind and as far as apple tech people i have nothing but praise for they way they conduct apple bussiness and apple affairs over the phone ....they the techies of apple are very helpful and deserve to be rewarded.. the tech support from apple is the best i just purchased a new mac desk top and i was on a old windows 95 with a dail up telephone line now i have a roadrunner high speed modem and you know what it was the best investment i ever made to go from windows to apple

[false advertising]

It is same as hard drive, etc standards...they promise something, but you get different...for example, they might advertize you are getting a 160 G Byte hard drive, but, when you really see it is just 145 G Byte (ofcourse, when you multiply with 1024x1024x1024, you might get something near in terms of bytes). I would expect if somebody says 160G Byte hard drive, then it has 160G space available...

[prjct]

wow....can the general public who own MacBook and MacBook Pro's hop on board this suit? Anyone know?

As a former Apple employee I am dismayed by what does seem like deceptive advertising and marketing. Print, pubishing and production folks rely upon color and it'd appear they have been relying on secondary color at best.

it'll be entertaining to watch this develop over the next many months....

[henk]

Most displays on notebook computers -if not all- are 6-bits. Same goes for most commercial LCD screens. Go find a notebook with a 8 bit screen.

[Martin]

I’m extremely disappointed to learn today the false advertisement from Apple, my friends and I always wonder why all the recommendations from the nice apple tech support did not solve the MacBook colors issue, now we are wondering why the computers are extremely slow, crush when you play games or get online, is there something else?.

For now I will hold until next year my interest in a new Mac and the Iphone I wanted for June, they have to give me the best or else.

[alex]

Duh, what do you guys expect. The company is out to make money not produce the best product. Profit first before service. How can they make millions if they have to support developers and hardware assembly line at the same time and still provide competitive products if they don't cut corners. How can the company be competitive with the other boxmakers that does not have added software developers to write their own os? There's got to be some apple magic.

[engrish]

As alleged in the complaint on page 10: "If you check all major manufacturers (AU optronics, Chimei, Samsung, LG-Philips) you'll find that none of them have 8-bit laptop displays available for any amount of money."

http://mirrors.e42.us/apple_macbook_lawsuit.pdf

Or, say, this is exceedingly rare. Out of 28 notebook LCDs manufactured by Samsung, only 2 can display 16.7M colors natively, a 15.4-inch panel with a lowish resolution of 1,280 x 800 (part number LTN154X5) and a 19-inch panel (part number LTN190W1). The rest, 26 LCDs, are 6-bit and can display 262,144 colors natively, without dithering, and millions of colors with dithering.

http://samsung.com/Products/TFTLCD/common/product_list.aspx?family_cd=LCD02

At LG.Philips, all of the 15 notebook LCDs are 6-bit and can display 262,144 colors natively, without dithering, and millions of colors with dithering.

http://www.lgphilips-lcd.com/homeContain/jsp/eng/prd/prd300_j_e.jsp

This is an industry wide problem, pretty much every notebook has a 6-bit LCD and there is nothing anyone can do about this. On the other hand Apple's marketing is way over the top: "Enjoy a nuanced view simply unavailable on other portables." Whaaa? I'd be glad if they are forced to remove these silly claims.

[Simon Bailey]

All this is is a couple of low lifes out to make a buck at apples expense.

I'm a graphic artist running a MacPro and Macbook and have no problem with the macbook display at all.

And its disgusting to see people who probably never had a problem with their Macbooks want to "Hop on board".

[luke255]

I love the fact that people are coming on here saying "who cares?" and calling us "sheeple" (?!) but if they're not intrested and don't like the comments why did they read them in the first place - infact if they don't care about Apple then why did they load this page at all? Who are the real losers? lol

As for the actual purpose of this page my opinion is that if Apple's use of 6 bit screens dramatically reduces the amount of distinguishable colours then something should be done.

[jimmy]

i love to see them be forced, in court , to give an examples of the colors that they can't see on the displays.

but alas that's not how it works. they'll use math as the proof. I makes no difference if it's something one can actually see or not.

[Rand]

I have to express my opinion. I have been a Mac user since the days of the Apple II series. I have for the first time crumbled under the pressure of pricing and program availability and bought a PC. What a mistake. I have been in contact with Tech support no less than 6 times. Yes, they have helped and I was a again up and running. The irony is I still have 2 older Macs running in a dedicated situation and guess what they have never needed servicing. Not one Tech support call needed, I have never used a virus protection and have never had a problem. My only problem now is I wish I had never bought a PC. The savings in money for the PC is not worth the frustration with its lack of consistent performance.

[Apple Magnate]

Shh! My Apple stock is going through the roof and I would rather you guys didn't make me poorer!

[AAPLover]

Dont even try to hurt my rising stock with this foolishness. Apple may pay millions of dollars but it wont even dent their earnings, so please get rid of this stupid story that will only cause doubt among investors about a great company.

[Nick Alexander]

CRT tubes display three colours. Red, green and blue. The other colours are AN ILLUSION. The whole world can file a lawsuit.

[zafar]

if dithering is the only issue, that could be resolved by fixing the firmware of the video card. Can it be done without doing a recall?

[Alex]

Nick Alexander...

"CRT tubes display three colours. Red, green and blue."

Some do Pr, Pb, Cr, which is FAR from Red, Blue, and Green, and is used by REAL professional graphics artists with a real budget, instead of a cheap RGB CRT or LCD.

[zomg]

Thats all well and good, but who do I sue for this one though?

My eyes only perceive three different colors, and variations of intensity and hue for each, but I perceive others by blending them.

In all seriousness though, I don't believe the human eye can even perceive 17 million colors, except for those women with the fourth color receptor...

[Tim]

Nick, I do hope you're joking. Some displays accept Pr/Pb/Cr inputs, but the displays still generate red, green, and blue light. It's not possible to make additive color without RGB, as humans have only red, green, and blue sensors.

[tpjunkie]

Some do Pr, Pb, Cr, which is FAR from Red, Blue, and Green

Uh, you're a little confused - Pr, Pb, and Cr are component video signals, which is used for transmitting an image, not displaying it. Displaying the image is still done in the same way, whether a plasma screen, lcd, projection, or CRT: varying amounts of red, green, and blue. The complaint here is that a 6 bit LCD is incapable of the same amount of gradation per sub-pixel as an 8 bit LCD.

[Damien]

What is the big deal? That some people have finaly had enough with arrogance and "bend forward and grab your ancles aproach"?

Macintosh used to be quality, now Macs are basically a glossy surface with ordinary PC gear inside. Between Apple's and Dell's support in Sweden to replace exactly the same harddrive there is about 72hour longer wait for Apple to get their ass in gear.

Best of luck to them and I hope Apple will go back to delivering the quality and service we got used to.

[Joe]

It doesn't matter if "it's no big deal." It doesn't matter if you can make it LOOK like it's displaying those colors, or if your eyes can barely see the difference.

The fact REMAINS: The displays are not capable of living up to Apple's claims. They do not offer a disclaimer. They don't put a little * next to "Millions." They remove posts about it when people ask about it. They refuse to acknowledge that there's any problem with what they're doing.

Personally, I usually can't tell much difference between 6 and 8-bit LCD screens, so it's not a big deal to me. But what IS a big deal, is how the company lies and censors these types of thing. If they pull shit about something minor that they could have fixed with a single *, then what other shit are they pulling?

[RonB]

Whaa Whaa, semi-funny post. And I mean your maths.

18 bits is not 32,768 (32k), it is 256k (262,144). 32768 would be 15 bits.

[Bob]

Adrian wrote:
"8 bits x 3 = 24 bits = 16,777,216 colors.

6 bits x 3 = 18 bits = 32768 colors.

We're missing 16,744,448 colors!"

Um, 6 bits x 3 = 18 bits = 262,144 colors.

So you're only missing 16,515,072, or 98.4% of your colors.

[JD]

umm....Display = what you see, if what you see is millions of colors whether a result of dithering or not then are you not still seeing a display of millions of colors due to hardware/software techonology?

remove yourselves from the soap boxes, step out of your white worlds, and grow up a bit...or start paying more attention to Microsoft's Monopolization of the industry as opposed to a couple of "perceived" color differences?

[logiclust]

give me the money and i'll use it to buy more apple products, just like i did with the ipod settlement. i bought my third ipod. i hate lawsuits like this. why don't these lawyers spend they're efforts on something a bit more consequential.

[Gustavo Vera]

(And, for the record, 2^24=262144.) !!!!

That's also funny!!!!! A very good correction!!!

[Rob Poole]

For the record, 2^18 = 262144 and 2^24 = 16777216 -- I just checked with a scientific calculator. Not sure what's worse, DCD saying that 2^24 = 262144 and nobody challenging him on it, or Gustavo Vera for then saying that was "A very good correction!" (unless he was being sarcastic).

[Jason Smith]

Displaying an image is NOT always done the same way. You RGB guys are overlooking the CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) color scheme used in comic books and newsprint.

[smike]

while you all are dithering on about the number of colors, i'm whipping back and forth between bbedit, photoshop, and various windows-only apps running in xp (using parallels) on my macbook, making my clients happy and raking in the dough.

it's a great machine, and there are more than enough colors to get the job(s) done.

[DCD]

"That's also funny!!!!! A very good correction!!!"

Yeah, I caught it right after posting, but figured it wasn't worth correcting my correction, since I'd probably just screw it up again anyway. :-)

But I stand by the rest of the post. I think Apple did the right thing by their customers by *not* differentiating between 16.2 an 16.7 colors, and just saying "Millions". The point is ease of use, rather than nitpicking. If someone wants to argue about Apple pulling posts from their message boards, fine, but to say they can't display millions of colors is to claim that the dithering hardware isn't living up to its specs, and I'm not sure anybody is claiming that. The RGB observations are right on -- all display technology is about fooling the eye, so who's eyes aren't being fooled?

[Jason Smith]

Almost forgot!

Straight-up RGB is completely different from HSV (Hue, Saturation, Value) and HSL (Hue, Saturation, Light) color spaces - both are said to render color scenes that are much closer to what the human eye actually perceives. Ever wonder why colors look different on TV and in movies than they do on a computer screen? Video standards use a different color model called YUV, which defines colors in terms of luma (the signal without the color) and the chrominance (the color to go with the signal).

This is just the tip of the iceberg... there are hundreds, if not thousands, of different color models corresponding to hundreds, if not thousands, of different color spaces, which are used for various things all over the world...

RGB is not the only way to display an image. FAR from it.

/soapbox

[David G.]

I don't think Apple are in the wrong here, the problem is that the users are nitpicking. Sure, the LCD module cannot natively display millions of colours, but the eye cannot even distinguish between anywhere near a million colours. Probably not even half a million. A lot of what you see is interpolated by your brain. The plaintiff knows the maths doesn't add up, and that's why he's nitpicking.

While you're doing that, why not measure the notebook with a Vernier calliper, and see if the dimensions that Apple provided were precise enough for you? Would you really sue if your measurements showed your notebook was 0.2 mm shorter?

[Jason Smith]

David G.:
The human eye can most definitely distinguish between more than 1 million colors. I have seen estimates range from 7 million to 16 million colors, but the fact of the matter is, all anyone can really say for sure is that the number of different colors the human eye can perceive is in the millions. Once you try to get precise, things get really difficult.

Google it, you'll see what I mean. ;)

[David G.]

@ Jason Smith:

Cheers for the info. I was always under the impression that human eyes were very poor (when compared to other mammals, at least). I'm not sure where I got my figures from but now I know for the future.

So, that is probably why displays have not gone much more than 24-bit, as well!

[David Caldwell]

"RGB is not the only way to display an image. FAR from it."

Um. In the context of the discussion, yes it is! We're talking about displays here. Every* display, be it LCD, Plasma, CRT, DLP, or even Jumbotron, uses red, green and blue lights to make the image. HSL, YUV, XYZ, are all different ways to encode color into numbers, they have *nothing* to do with displaying them. Every color display on the planet uses RGB to physically display the colors. You're tv at home might take YUV off the composite signal, but it runs it though a little hardware matrix and gets out RGB which it feeds to the actual tube.

* I've heard of exotic displays that augment the RGB with other colors to help improve the color gamut, but these are experimental style things and not consumer displays.

[Pakk9p]

While we're at it, maybe we should file a lawsuit against the printing industry, too. I don't know about you folks, but I've seen an endless number of brochures, magazines, and posters that claim to have been printed in "full-color". It turns out, they actually only print in FOUR colors...cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (and black isn't even a color, its a brightness factor). Apparently, they print the colors in tightly-packed arrays of tiny little dots at different angles to trick the eye into believing that they are printing in "full color". Can you believe it? I want a refund! I want my money back! I want a lawsuit!

And after we're finished with the printing industry, we need to deal with the printer industry next. After all, most six-color printers really only use four colors to print (one of the being black, which isn't really a color, as we determined earlier). Colors five and six are actually just lighter shades of two of the other colors (yellow and blue). How can this be? Where is our government when we need them?

Someone needs to put a stop to the deception!

(Please note that this post is chocked full of sarcasm. I'm making fun of the nitwits filing this lawsuit.)

[Matt Rogers]

The problem is NOT the number of displayed colors per sae but that a bad dithering algorithm will producing banding effects that destroy detail in graphics and photos. I just had to return an HP wide screen LCD because the banding effects were so severe that it made my photos look like high contrast photocopies. I have a viewsonic monitor now and it's dithering is MUCH better.

And I ma not saying this to hate on Apple here I'm typing this on a dual G5 tower that I really like, but if they are targeting graphics professionals they have to get these things right, there is no point in paying extra for Apple equipment if they are going to get slipshod on us.

[Benny]

While most claims are valid there still remains the fact that the dithering is bad.

I am a designer, when I need to fill a background in a solid color I clearly can see a pattern of dots filling my screen. This makes it very hard to distinguish on color from another, let along the annoyance factor for the pixel-precise designer I am.

I admit it isn't very noticeable, I don't even think 50% of the users will ever be able to see this, or even care.
But reading claims from designers that are very happy about their screen-quality and offend people to be 'picky', I would really suggest getting your eyes examined.

3 colors are enough to make a cool and clean design, but where it stands now is that 1 of those 3 isn't a color.

[Don]

You know, the glossy screen on my HP notebook isn't as glare-y as some have suggested a glossy screen to be. Should I sue the nay-sayers? What kind of income... er,um... money can I make here?

[Pakk99 (corrected from Pakk9p)]

Benny, if you're really a graphic designer, then why in on Earth are you using an Apple display? Anyone with an ounce of experience knows to buy Eizo displays for the best color accuracy. Period.

[nate]

Honestly, this is a sad move on those individuals' parts. Why single out apple? Everyone makes these claims, i see it all the time. All i know is, if my macbook pro had a vagina, id f$&% it.... ill never buy a pc laptop again. macosx = BSD polished to all unholy hell. It truly is fantastic.

[Hg]

Oh, come on!

"Oh noes! They're tricking us into seeing colors!"

Does it really matter how many colors there are, as long as we think we're seeing millions of them? If we really were seeing millions of colors, the processor would probably blow up. Get a grip on life and be happy with the trick your eyes are playing on you.

[Ricardo]

this is just plain stupid. The display IS CAPABLE of displaying millions of colors. It uses "time dithering", and IT WORKS. You can see millions of colors, and that's all that matters, it's not false advertising. The claim for "uncomparable" graphic quality is about the glossy screen, that really is better and brighter than the competition.

And fuck, the dot pattern you see on solid colors is not dithering, is RGB! You never have colored pixels, stupid.

[applesucks]

The really funny thing is that the Apple marketing tards have rewritten the tech descriptions making them worse for Apple.

Current text:
TFT display with support for millions of colors

Former text:
TFT display, support for millions of colors; optional glossy widescreen display

The former text was lawyer crafted. The support for millions of colors phrase will be argued as describing the DVI port, not the screen. Included "support for" are meanignless weasel words. Marketing jerks could just as justifiably advertised "support for deep sea diving".

[another lie]

If using a 2x2 dither, the screen resolution of the 15" would correctly only be 720 by 450. Dithering effectively changes pixels into sub pixels. The real Apple lie is the resolution figure.

For sale G4 notebook - support for trillions of colors*

*resolution 1x1, 1152x768 dither, 2^14,843,406,974,976 colors

[Daniel Millar]

Well, isn't this fun. I haven't seen this much bad math and science since the Scopes Monkey Trial. This is just another case of not Reading The F@#$ing Manual or doing your homework! Maybe Apple should put a little disclaimer on their monitors, detailing which of the 16.7 million colours are missing? - these guys would have been stopped before they started. But honestly, that would be like having to put a caution on the side of a cup of hot coffee - "Caution - Hot!". What? They do that? Devolution at work....

dmz

[Jerone Anderson]

The most important thing to me is the way the display actually appears. Dithering when done properly can achieve millions of colors but on the Core Duo Macbook Pros like mine the dithering algorithm is poor and gradients are not smooth. The current line of Core 2 Duos draws very nice gradients. Both have 6 bit screens but the new dithering algorithms are better or so it seems to me.