Apple iMac: ‘New and inferior,’ lawsuit says
Two complaints about Apple’s popular aluminum iMac line — the “washed out” look of the 20-inch iMac that surfaced on Apple’s discussion boards last summer (see here) and the “millions of colors” issue that was recently settled by the company — were rolled into one class-action lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in San Jose.
The plaintiff — a Texan named Chandra Sanders — claims to represent tens of thousands of customers who purchased the smaller of the two iMacs introduced last August. She is demanding a jury trial.
At the center of her complaint is the allegation that while 24-inch iMacs are capable of displaying 16,777,216 colors on 8-bit, in-plane switching (IPS) screens, the 20-inch iMac have 6-bit twisted nematic film (TN) LCD screens that can display only 262,144 colors.
Much of the 15-page complaint is taken up repeating statements made by Steve Jobs at the product introduction and by marketing messages issued later by Apple (AAPL) that describe the two displays as if they were interchangeable.
Apple’s website, for example, says that “No matter what you like to do on your computer — watch movies, edit photos, play games, even just view a screen saver — it’s going to look stunning on an iMac.”
In fact, say the plaintiff’s representatives, “the inferior technology of the 20-inch iMac is particularly ill-suited to editing photographs because of the display’s limited color potential and the distorting effect of the color simulation processes… Apple deceptively marketed its new 20-inch iMac in a way that grossly inflated the capabilities of its monitor, which is vastly inferior to the previous generation it replaced.”
“Apple is duping its customers into thinking they’re buying ‘new and improved’ when, in fact, they’re getting stuck with ‘new and inferior,’” said Brian Kabateck of Kabateck Brown Kellner, the Los Angeles firm that is handling case. “Beneath Apple’s ‘good guy’ image is a corporation that takes advantage of its customers. Our goal is to help those customers who were deceived and make sure Apple tells the truth in the future.”
Ms. Sanders claims to have lost “money or property” as a result of Apple’s “unfair, unlawful and fraudulent” actions, although no dollar figure is provide.
It its press release, Kabateck Brown Kellner LLD describes itself as “one of the nation’s foremost consumer law firms.” The firm claims that its clients have won more than $750 million against Google (GOOG), Farmer’s Insurance, Eli Lilly (LLY) and other major corporations.
I read thru this string, more or less.. seems to me that what’s lacking is some mention that Apple is being deceptive, at least. I shopped the iMacs some, read the Apple web site, looked at the monitor tech specs there, went to the stores, talked to the guys.. from all that, I was led, by Apple, to believe that the ONLY difference between the 20 and 24″ monitors was size. The sales guys wearing Apple shirts flat said that and it’s simply not true. It’s not just the #of colors that are different, it’s the screen technology. That info should be in the tech specs on their site, plain and simple. The deception is what I don’t like. # of colors is just one aspect of it. It’s easier for people to do their homework, as you all say, when the company isn’t being deceptive about it to the point of outright lying.
btw, do the newest 20″ iMacs have the IPS screens now? If not, then the distinction still isn’t being made clear on their website.
http://www.apple.com/imac/specs.html
Right there, in the tech specs, it claims for all models (not broken down by screen size, like other bullet points are) “Millions of colors at all resolutions” While it is true that the graphics card generating the images creates them and is capable of sending them to a display in millions of colors, the display itself cannot display them. Unfortunately for apple, the section title of this spec is “display” not “graphics card”.
I love my macs, and I had read about this, and wouldn’t have bought the 20″.. Reading the tech specs, and not reading forums, one would not know about the difference.
I think the monetary damage claim is a bit much, but their photo edits would have looked inferior to competitors using better equipment, losing future business… then again, if you want the best, buy the best. Honestly, what is a designer doing with an iMac at all? Mac Pro, ’nuff said.
But its hard to dig your gold in that way. I am sure apple wil not let it unless you have a really solid case that 100% on your side. But to me this is like scamming apple if you where to do it the way you wanted.
This is a known issue look at the Apple forums iMac intel threads that are filled with these complaints. What has Apple done? Nothing…. until maybe now.
For you clown that down know the difference between 16.7 million colors and 0.3 million colors it is 16.4 millions colors.
So this is a lawsuit that Apple’s already lost.
zman, get real, I do editing of photographs on the macs and mac display are the most reliable and the accuracy is very close to the print out. I am using the old generation powerbook G4 to do my job.
You sounded like the jokers who need to watch TV at 6 inches away from the screen to tell whether it is HD or just plain old fashion TV.
Cut the crap that you can tell the difference between million s of colour and 262,144 since we are at it do tell. You B&W analogy do not tell the story and what has it git to do with cut edge technology being used in the monitors of today.
Another thing I was disappointed at Apple was that they are not open for new ideas from customers as I read in the fotune website. how arrogant position is tha thinking nobody but them have all the good ideas.
Nobody likes lawsuits. But, it takes a lawsuit to change a big company’s behaviors. It is ironic, but true.
I am an Apple Fanboy. I have converted all my family to Apple.
BUT! Right on the Apple website it says: Millions of colors in all resolutions. Url: http://www.apple.com/imac/specs.html , read the second column, third bullet.
If that is not what is delivered, its fraud and deserves a lawsuit. As an Apple Believer and holder of couple hundred stocks I actually wish a number of this kind of suits so Apple gets back to what made them great and stops drifting into Microsoft-tactics.
If you drop 3 grand on a computer, you better do your homework. Period. If you don’t like Apple products, don’t buy them. Frivolous lawsuits like these make prices higher for the rest of us.
She edits photos professionally and bought the cheaper model? Bogus claim #1! Then supposedly lost money because she can’t edit photos with 200,000 + colors? Bogus claim #2. Get real!! Hahahaha!!!
It is interesting that this person claims to have suffered losses. I’ve looked at the difference between 16.7M colors and 252K. Not much, unless you look closely and have specialized training (I do.) For the ‘average Joe’ they would not notice. They would not notice if the were 64K colors, done right. However, if you have that type of training, called Pantone training, you notice immediately. However, one should NOT be working on professional grade photography on a low end machine. You have to spend the difference to get the difference, and the pros know this. As to this suit, gone. Apple should just tell the young lady, you got what you paid for and that’s life.
I’ve purchased BOTH a 20” AND a 24” iMac. The 20” looked great until I got the 24” just because bigger is better when it comes to monitors.
I honestly can’t tell a difference between the two. I mean REALLY if you could notice THAT much of a difference wouldn’t someone have noticed this in an Apple store looking at the demo machines?
Why don’t they sue MS for Vista taking 7 years and all of the KEY items Gates promised in his key notes DID NOT get put in?
Good luck suing MS. Bill’s dad was a lawyer which is why MS invented the EULA. :-)
Did Apple say it had 16 million colors when it in fact had 262,144?? I didn’t see that statement made by Apple. I did see a generic description of it’s product for marketing purposes.
Ridiculous lawsuit. This may be a close second place to the “McDonald’s hot coffee” case. Maybe I can make some money off Microsoft for under-delivering it’s snazzy new OS as they’ve marketed it……
If the decision goes to the plaintiff, we need to fix this system that rewards greed and legal loop-holes rather than encouraging the use of common sense.
So they are suing because the new low-end iMac has a a lower quality screen than the previous low-end iMac? Show me where Apple made a comment or marketing statement that shows they suggested otherwise. Show me the lawsuit against the makers of Zest soap for making their bars smaller than they used to. Show me the lawsuit against Dairy Queen. Their medium Blizzards are smaller than they used to be. They are cheating me out of ice cream! Why are there no lawsuits against the makers of the Slinky for making them out of plastic instead of metal. How come cans of Libby’s pumpkin are now 15.5 oz instead of the 16 oz they used to be. It’s messing up my pumpkin pie recipe!
I could go on and on. But it’s a simple matter of fact that as an items gets more and more commoditized in a competitive market, manufacturers will seek ways to make their products more affordable and to maintain their profit margins. Unless they misrepresent their products or intentionally mislead consumers, I see no grounds for a lawsuit. Apple never said it was an 8-bit monitor, so there should be no expectation that it was.
If this lawsuit is successful, the entire advertising industry will go bankrupt because nearly every ad will subject the company to a lawsuit for misrepresenting their products.
>And here come the Apple Fanboys slavishly defending all >of Apple’s idiocy. The fact of the matter is that a lot of >REAL people bought the new iMacs and found that the >screens are awful. All of them suffer from gradient >problems (the 20 inch models suffer from top to bottom, >while the 24s suffer from left to right). Apple’s response >to this? “Attach an external monitor to your iMac.” Bravo, >Apple. Barvo.
How about return the imac and get a refund .. only a moron would take home a computer that he or she believes to be “inadequate” and keep it
Hey.. but what am I saying 95% of the computers out there are miserable blobs of cheap 3rd party parts and yet people buy tat crap from Dell, Gateway, Sony and never bitch about it and on top of that they load it with Vista and thank Bill gates for that magnificent piece of software
the plaintiffs are a bunch of bloody retards after only one thing .. monetary compensation
plain and simple , You go to to the Apple store you play with all the imacs on display and you decide for yourself
in the event you buy mail order then you take the freaking thing home you see the colors are not up to your standards
and you return it .. we should starting to sue car companies for using too much gas or breaking sooner than expected..
That’s right, we’re all victims here. Clearly the customer had no recourse aside from a lawsuit. Obviously if the customer had not been satisfied with their purchase they had no way to return it. As we all know, Apple has no 14 day return policy whatsoever. There is no possible way that exchanged the computer that was causing loss to money or property for one that would serve her needs.
I’m sure that even if by some stretch of logic if Apple had a return policy of some sort, it was not communicated to the customer. It was probably left off the receipt.
Let’s round it up. I’m a customer who’s purchased a big ticket item. I am not happy with the item, as it’s obviously defective and costing me money and/or property. I fancy myself a savvy customer. Let’s just say that I had a way of “returning” or “exchanging” the money pit. Would I not be smart to take advantage of it? Suppose I didn’t? Who’s to blame?
Perhaps the next time I get the urge to return something that’s just not working out for me, I’ll hang on to it a bit longer. Buy > Remorse > Sue > PROFIT!
I am a professional photographer! I doubt that woman would even know the difference as I certainly can’t. I’d like to see some of her work except her works seems to be bogus lawsuits! She definitely needs to get a real life and quick! This is what happens when morons and slimy attorneys hook up! BS, BS and more BS. I hope Apple teaches them a lesson!
I don’t own any Apple computers, so I don’t really have a stake in this. But these law firms are ridiculous. How can anyone possibly distinguish between 16 million and 262,000 colors w/ the naked eye? Who lets these claims go to trial?? I agree, these law firms need to be regulated. Even if they win or settle this claim, how much will the client get? A few thousand? How much will the law firm get? A few million.
What is Apple doing selling a Monitor with so few colors, didn’t that technology get worked out years ago? Advice to all Mac users, turn on the updates the Mac went down first this year at CanSecWest pwn2own. Now you just have cool.
I’m suing Hyundai…their cars aren’t as good as a Lexus, BMW, Caddy or Mercedes. How was I suppose to know?
I am totally neutral on this case since I don’t know the issues, but I have to ask the law firm who is so consumer oriented, “what actual percentage of the winnings went to the clients that they represented in the cases and how much did they pocket?” After the dotcom bust and all the suits I have been asked to be involved in, maybe 20+, I have seen little to nothing as a results of the successful suits. The Legal industry as the financial industry is just another industry that needs to be regulated but hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves yet.
If you can not tell a difference between 16 million colors from 262,144 colors, then go back to watch a black and white TV. You will really enjoy it. If you do not understand technology, do not post some ignorance comments. It is a shame.
Apple cheats its consumers, and it is too bad that it has to take a law suit to settle this. Good luck to the consumers who bought sour “apples”.
Is there such a thing as the death penalty for lawyers?
This is ridiculous. The claims quoted in this article (“No matter what you like to do on your computer — watch movies, edit photos, play games, even just view a screen saver — it’s going to look stunning on an iMac.”) are generic and hopelessly subjective. How is anybody going to argue that in order for, say, edited photos to “look stunning on an iMac” necessitates 16 million colors versus 262 thousand?
If, in Apple’s opinion, 262 thousand color displays are sufficient to produce a stunning image, than this consumer simply made a bad choice. Only if Apple clearly and provably believed it was lieing when it made this claim is there any case here. I don’t see how its possible to prove someone to be lieing when they describe something as “stunning.”
This is what we call chasing settlements.
I own two apple computers, I did my homework and purchased the high end lap top and imac. I am extremely happy with my purchases. Whenever you make large ticket puchase you should do the research. If you are unable to read and compare, then you really don’t have any use for a computer anyway.
Next we will see a class action suit against MacDonalds because they didn’t advice people that eating their food would make them fat. Oh dear god, I hope I didn’t give one of these lawyers an idea.
Oh to comment to the person who said “Apple just wants your money” DUH, they are not a non-profit organization. Do you think there is a company out there that does not want your money?
The crux of their complaint is that the low end new iMac’s monitor is inferior to the previous low end iMac monitor. Sounds like a valid point to me. Apple should let them trade up to the higher end machine for the difference in cost. Stonewalling on customer support is part of what leads to lawsuits. The only mistake the customers made was assuming that the customer experience they had with their old computers would carry over into their new one. Unfortunately this isn’t the only case where quality has gone down and long-term loyal customers got an inferior experience out of some of new products.
here here to Matt’s comments. Litigious crap like this drives prices up and makes everything stratospherically expensive.
Yeah, who cares if they lie trick people into buying their products. Apple has always tried to control every aspect of their products, so they force their customers to buy only from them.
Ipods only work with itunes, and even then only on one computer at a time. can’t remove the battery of the iphone, or use your own headphones (without an adaptor). making their mac lines increasingly harder to upgrade without their help. Their Hardcore refusal to license out most of their software and hardware.
Don’t let Apple fool you, they just want to make money.
this is a bogus lawsuit. who’s going to distinguish between 16.7M and 262.1K colors on a screen? more to the point, do your homework first and quit whinning…
At what point are people going to start taking responsibility for their actions? This is no different than all those people claiming they didn’t know what they were getting when they bought their home. Guess what? YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO SIGN THE PAPERWORK JUST LIKE SHE DIDN’T HAVE TO BUY THE CHEAPER LAPTOP!
“I didn’t know that my laptop only had 264,000 colors in the LCD screen.” Hopefully, she purchased that laptop hopefully AFTER doing her research, though I doubt it. I’m sure the monitor specifications were shown on multiple laptop comparison pages both in print and on the net, and she still purchased it. Now she’s suing Apple because she didn’t shell out the extra money for the nicer screen?
I think I’m going to go buy a Chevy and sue them because it’s not a Cadillac.
You can always tell a biased Apple zealot because they will talk about BMWs at the same time they are talking about Apple products. I think they pick that up while they are genuflecting during Father Steve’s bi-annual rants.
Apple does in fact constantly mislead consumers. Its a carryover from their “Think Different” campaign. They decided to apply that idea to their version of corporate ethics. If the product was represented as one thing but ends up being something else then the complainant has a case.
This lawsuit is incredulous. If she’s using Apple computers for photo-editing and getting paid for her work you’d think she would be intelligent enough to purchase Apple’s high-end machine and not their entry level product. Lawyers love to go after deep pockets…
Apple has been duping its customer’s for years. Now they finally get caught. Look the Ipod touch, it can have so many more apps ut they restrict it. Olnlt the hack that is out releases the true potential.
And here come the Apple Fanboys slavishly defending all of Apple’s idiocy. The fact of the matter is that a lot of REAL people bought the new iMacs and found that the screens are awful. All of them suffer from gradient problems (the 20 inch models suffer from top to bottom, while the 24s suffer from left to right). Apple’s response to this? “Attach an external monitor to your iMac.” Bravo, Apple. Barvo.
Now Now Now, in all fairness, this is America. And i’m sure the constitution protects our right to SUE whoever we want for no good reason in hopes that we can get the company to settle.
*gets update* What?…oh…So it doesn’t say that, huh? So we really can’t bring fradulant claims in hopes to make some money? There is a dire need for tort reform in the US, but it won’t happen because there are many lawyers with wads of cash and political clout that will not allow that to happen.
People like this who sue for their money instead of work for it are making a mockery of our entire legal system. Hey apple gave those guys some money shit I want some too.
“Ms. Sanders claims to have lost “money or property” as a result of Apple’s “unfair, unlawful and fraudulent” actions, although no dollar figure is provide.”
What could she have possibly lost because of this? She didn’t file this suit until the other one about the macbook air and pro was filed and most likely settled. This shows that she had no idea what was going on in her monitor until someone else had brought it up.
At this rate someone will sue Wrigley’s for not having their pleasure and their fun doubled, as their jingle says it will.
This is exactly what is wrong with our legal system. Money hungry lawyers who just love class action suits. And they wonder why people hate these bottom feeders.
The law firm will get 90% of the settlement (if they can find 12 stupid jurors, which shouldn’t be to hard) and each of the participants will get a check for $10.
A-holes like this are why all of us have to pay more for goods and services. I think this is a transcript of the conversation with the lawyer.
“Hey, Apple has 18 billion in cash reserves. If we find something we can sue them for, then they will certainly part with at least a few million of that.” Lawyer 2: “Yea, the BMW 7 series is getting a little long in the tooth. I think I need to move up to the M class. Does your secretary have the paperwork or does mine.” Lawyer 1: “Don’t get too excited yet, we need to find some inept consumer who has supposedly lost their ass because they don’t like the color silver.”
For crist sake
- Analyst: Apple will sell 4.47 million iPhones this quarter
- Best Buy to sell iPhones starting Sept. 7
- Steve Jobs: 60 million iPhone apps downloaded
- iPhone: Trouble in the App Store
- iPhone nano: A rumor before its time
- On the road
- iPhone apps: 1,001 and counting
- Jobs tells Times: No cancer
- Who is to blame for MobileMe?
- Two weeks later, New Yorkers wait 4 1/2 hours for an iPhone
- I do not like Best Buy and would not... More
- say goodbye to the iphone and hello t... More
- Why don't you change the name of this... More
- Eh, I guess you can't get everyone to... More
- An Iphone Nano would be nice, it woul... More
- don't forget you don't need the roku... More
- "My wife is unhappy with the iPhone b... More
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- Make that 60,000,001 sweety.... More
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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.
I would like to address a point that several people have made about the “millions of colors” and how most people cannot tell the difference. It’s true that most people, such as myself, cannot tell the difference in colors, but the issue is larger than that. As a regular user who does not need the machine for professional purposes it is very apparent that the display fades towards the bottom of the screen. This is evident when you read web sites or look at mac applications such as itunes - towards the top of the screen you can distinguish between the blue and white lines but towards the bottom of the screen you cannot. I did not notice this in the store when I bought the machine (was not looking for it) but at home it was immediately apparent. While I brought it in the mac “genius” noticed the difference - on every display model - and said that nothing could be done. Fortunately, I was able to get my refund. I was really disappointed with this because I was looking forward to switching from PC to mac. Apple obviously tried to package a defective project and hide the fact behind a glossy screen and deceptive advertising. A washed-out screen when reading online or viewing applications is very basic, not a minor technical issue that only effects professionals. And I wanted to switch from PC for quality and service ! I hope the lawsuit is successful and forces Apple to be more forthcoming in the future.