Apple, sued for monitors that use less colors

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As usual, trying to find more information about a subject, I found that Apple is using lower quality stuff in their monitors. The entry level iMac, macbook and macbook proare affected. From wikipedia:

This isn't limited to apple at all. Almost all LCD screens not explicitly labeled as 8 bit per color channel (or otherwise is a high-end professional LCD) are 6-bit per color channel, including almost all laptop screens.

The reason it's possible to get away with it is that there's a trick called dithering that approximates millions of colors. But of course, it's not true millions of colors.

fo' shizzle??!

Well, most of the time, dithering actually works quite well (especially when the resolution of the monitor is so high that the pixels are very small)

The time when dithering is most noticeable is when you have a smooth color or grayscale gradient across the screen, that utilizes millions of different colors smoothly. Then you can see the dithering - on a high quality monitor, it may not be very noticeable at all, even in this worst-case scenario.

Plus, dithering is the reason why low-cost low-response LCD displays (like the kind gamers use) are possible. True 8-bit/channel color, low response time, and low dead pixel rate are fairly hard to achieve all at once.

Nevertheless, 6-bit LCDs drive certain people nuts. Photographers and (especially) graphics designers are the ones who really need to do with true 8-bit non-dithered color. This is where high-end LCDs with higher response times are used, though some graphics designers swear by the color accuracy of CRTs.

I WAS thinking about getting an iMac or a macbook, but after knowing this I'm again at the starting point
I'm a graphic designer, and I think the color issue is very important for everyone, not only designers or photographers.
I remember some people doing designs on their macbooks and they were so unsure about the colors. If you move just a little, the color changes A LOT...

And if clients have an iMac or a LCD, even worse! The color they'll see probably will be different. Right now LCDs are way too brilliant, about 7300 kelvin and very blue, when in reality they should be set in 6500 (D50) at least. The "ideal" ~5000kelvin is very red, but is closer to what a print will look like.


For me, buying a mac pro (not macbook) right now is way out of my reach, so maybe a hackintosh will be the solution... *sigh*

And yes, I my CRT

oh, didn't realize you're a graphic designer well, you probably know more than me about color accuracy anyways.

There's nothing wrong with the internal chipset in the macbook/macbook pro/imac or even the mac mini. All of them can drive a "true" 8 bit per channel LCD or even a CRT. All it means is that you can't design "on the go" which admittedly is a disappointment.

Daaaamn... that's pretty awful considering Mac is pretty much the de-facto standard for graphic design and imaging

Not Suprised at all. Mac always crams Entry-Level parts into their computers. However its a shame to many graphic designers are just getting screwed by the Ipod King.