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.

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.