Apple settles “millions of colors” lawsuit
When you’re a company as high profile and as rich as Apple, you get sued for a lot things, from patent infringement (eight cases since January alone, according to Barron’s) to “sexual harassments with Apple gadgets” (see here). But one suit that was widely derided as frivolous when it was filed last year has been quietly settled out of court, the Chicago Tribune reports.
The terms were not disclosed, and Apple as usual won’t comment, but “settled” usually means that the company paid the plaintiffs something to make their case go away.
At issue is that pull-down menu in the Mac OS that lets users choose between 256, thousands and “millions of colors.”
Here’s how we reported on the case last May (link):
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.
Well, Greaves and Gately didn’t get their jury trial. Their lawyer told the Tribune that they weren’t able to pursue the case as a class action because it was difficult to find other people who bought Macs solely based on the “millions of colors” claim.
The plaintiffs did get the satisfaction of a hearing with Apple lawyers and a settlement — albeit one they’ve agreed not to talk about. That pull-down menu, meanwhile, still says “millions.”
Thanks to Daring Fireball for the tip.
Hi I am in Australia.
I got the Mac laptop after many happy years as a PC based LT user.
I bought and paid the extra for a mac because it had superior colour management but it could not show me half the colours i needed to work with greens would be blue yellows red’s it was shocking i sold it after the dealer i bought it from stated there was nothing wrong with it but did offer to buy it back at 50% of the prchase price.
I sold it to someone in the US at a $900 AUD loss.
i wont buy a apple anything ever nor anyone from my family.
I contacted apple and they just got nasty and told me i could always choose legal action, like i could fight apple.
I’m glad these people took em. it might make em say the truth in future.
Lies are lies even when you work for the liars..
Whining about color rendition on laptop LCDs… I do professional photographic work and would never dream of doing finish work on any laptop screen. I use a MacBook, which is great for field checking, but my final color work is always done on a calibrated display. Anybody who considers themselves a serious photographer wouldn’t be without one. Also, what about viewing angle and color rendition based upon that. Are we going to see a class action on behalf of photographers who got their colors wrong because they were viewing their laptop screen from a non-optimal angle. Come on… Stop clogging the courts with frivolous crap. Whatever happened to common sense. Use the right tool for the job and stop whining.
Hummm sounds like lottery jackpots too!!! Lumpsum after taxes, you only see maybe 1/2 of the priz if you’re lucky …
I understand the issues professional photographers may have with Apple. I am myself, preparing to sue the cereal company Post, over their alleged “two” scoops of raisins practices.
It simply says “Millions”, not “The appearance of millions”, “Simulation of Millions”, or “Dithered to look like millions”. In a professions such as art or photography (who are strongly marketed to by Apple) depends on accurate color reproduction for their job, they should get what’s advertised and what they ‘thought’ they paid for.
The average user might think this is frivolous, but not a professional photographer or artist who depends on precise color matching as the specifications for their job require.
I have emailed Apple support and ran cicles with the support rep. I still don’t have an answer to my seemingly easy question and they just stoped responding to me when they could not find the answer to my problem.
This is not just an Apple problem. I think most, if not all of the display manufactures are “mis-labeling” their LCD displays. The technology that gives you the fastest refresh rates at the lowest cost tends to use 6-bits per color channel rather than 8-bit. More lawsuits to follow…
If you read the article, you would have seen that they are PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHERS. If your job is to take pictures and sell them to news agencies like reuters, you have a right to be picky about your equipment. Out in the field, you can’t afford to lug around a external monitor to see the “million” of colors, all you have is your laptop screen.
Man I don’t know how some of these greedy people sleep at night. I would of awarded them 75 cents each…just enough to buy themselves a soda for their troubles on the way out. I guess some people just hate on any ‘big’ corporation that makes lots of money.
I would not assume that Apple has chosen its laptop displays to “skimp out on costs…”. The “twisted nematic” LCD technology used for laptop displays has a faster refresh rate and does not need as bright a backlight. So there is a benefit for gaming and battery life. The big external displays use “in plane switching” LCD technology. It is a bit slower in refresh rate and needs a brighter backlight. But it is possible of millions of colors. IMHO it’s a balancing act. These laptops are capable of millions of colors when you use an external display using “in plane switching” LCD technology.
I’m glad that case was settled. I’ll sleep better tonight knowing the world is a better place.
You people that are defending Apple are rediculous. Its a rightful case. Its false advertising and apple is trying to skimp out on costs to increase the profit for the company. Would you be mad if you went to a gas station and only got 9/10ths of a gallon of gas instead of that full gallon you are entiltled to? Your eye didnt discern it so what the big deal? How about when you go to the store and buy a 34oz box of cereal but only got 32oz of the stuff….you couldnt discern it could you? That doesnt matter. They are ripping people off, whether is discernable or not.
Hmm… How did they manage to prove that they could not count more than a million colors? If they bought the Mac to use the 1000002nd color, why is Mac not asking them to demostrate how they reached the 240002nd color? These kind of lawsuits should be thrown out of the court and the plaintiffs should be charged for all the court expenses and also for the time of people like us who add comments to this silly story!
What insanity. Experts tell us the human eye can discern 10 million colors, but my design clients are usually happy with about 30 (dark blue, blue, light blue, etc). And don’t tell me, the next suit will be that MacBook speakers don’t deliver the full frequency range of human hearing.
to Drew from San Deigo: Umm, no this isn’t not why everyone hates our country and HELL NO, this isn’t why our country is in a recession!
If you connect a 30 inch monitor to the MacBook and MacBook Pro. You get millions of colors. Perhaps it is the technical limitations of the built in display on the laptops that is keeping it to thousands of colors. So Apple’s claim is not really wrong.
Unfortunately this is how our country operates. These types of lawsuits and Billions of dollars to the cost of our products. They rarely if ever lead to any improvements in products or safer products. And we wonder why India, China and every other industrialized country can have universal healthcare, growing enconomies, less violent crime and drug use, etc.. These types of frivilous lawsuits are a symptom of the problems facing this (once great) country.
Gimme a break, if its not 8bit/channel, then give it another name… Seems clear to me that there ought to be some disclosure that its not full 24bit color, but 18bit color.
Hang on, nobody can reasonably claim that 262,144 colors is actually “millions” and claim honesty in advertising, can they?
This is why everyone hates our country and why we are on the edge of a recession right now
Hopefully the settlement was something along the lines of, “We’ll pay 1/4-1/2 of your court fees, on the condition that you NEVER USE A MAC AGAIN!”.
Greaves and Gately are Maggots They are bottom feeders. No sense of shame whatsoever.
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Silicon Valley veterans like to joke that Steve Jobs must be surrounded by a reality distortion field; if you get too close to him, you start to believe what he's saying. Thanks to the success of the iPod, the launch of the iPhone and the renewed interest in the Mac, Apple has made believers out of millions of customers - and made a lot of investors rich. But Philip Elmer-DeWitt believes that an ounce of skepticism never hurts when writing about the company. He should know. He's been covering Apple - and watching Steve Jobs operate - since 1982, first for Time Magazine, then for Business 2.0, and now for Fortune.
There are several more issues here:
* The injured parties aren’t just the pro user purchases. The real injured parties are the competing laptop manufacturers who must either mis-label their product or make it more expensive for true high-color.
* Regardless of right and wrong, the user interface, giving the choice of “millions” is ok. Because; this is the perceived amount of colors, and what makes sense for a user dialog to display.