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Author Topic: Shame on Apple  (Read 2357 times)

Roy

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Shame on Apple
« on: May 21, 2007, 09:49:34 pm »

Apple advertises its MacBook portable computers as displaying millions of colours and it boasts about the quality of the displays. For example (from Apple's web site): "17-inch (diagonal) TFT display, support for millions of colours" and "Enjoy a nuanced view simply unavailable on other portables."

In reality, the screens are only six-bit resolution, incapable of such performance, leading two people to start a class action suit. Details:
http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/05/21/di...ysuit/index.php

The screen on my 15" MacBook Pro is by Samsung and the specs are easily found on the internet. It is capable of 262,000 colours, making it a six-bit panel.

Shame on Apple. It is discouraging when the company that tells us it is the leader and innovator in the industry resorts to false claims. But, after the option back-dating scandal, I guess we know a bit about ethics at Apple.

In fairness to Apple, the screen on my MacBook gives pleasing colour, I don't use it for colour-critical work, and it is a very good portable computer.

However, if you are planning to do colour-critical work on a MacBook, you might reconsider.
« Last Edit: May 21, 2007, 11:10:41 pm by Roy »
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Roy

Wayne Fox

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Shame on Apple
« Reply #1 on: May 22, 2007, 01:04:38 am »

From what I can find,  dithering is a technique used quite commonly in most (all?) portables to extend the technical range of a 6 bit screen and allow it to display additional colors. Power consumption of 8 bit  displays are too demanding for laptops.

 From what I researched, the process involves oscillating various pixels between two colors very rapidly, the resulting color as visible to the eye is beyond the capability of the display's native colors, but looks very real to the human eye. It is quite easy to extend the range of the screen to millions of colors this way. This allows the laptop to use a much lower power consuming 6 bit display.  6-bit displays are much faster than 8 bit displays and thus lend themselves to the technique.

To me it would sort of being like suing epson for using 7 colors of ink and tricking my eye into seeing millions of colors.  True, most don't understand the engineering behind the technique, but the fact is the monitor can render millions of different colors to the eye, whether the pixels do it natively or they do it by "dithering".

I'm wondering if any of these guys did any real research before jumping on the class action lawsuit bandwagon or if they just got hung up on the technical specifications of the screen.  I'm not sure the case has any merit.

Admitted I'm no engineer, but it sounds to me like using display dithering to create colors is a pretty logical and acceptable method.  This isn't the same thing as dithering an actual image.

Of course, I've never considered using my MacBook display to do my final editing of an image ... it's fine while I'm in the field, but when I get the the serious editing stages I'm using an external 30" display or a different mac altogether.  In reality LCD monitors are a compromise anyway even if they are full 8 bit. (That is changing soon with impending release of LED backlighting.)

my .02
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nemophoto

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Shame on Apple
« Reply #2 on: May 22, 2007, 10:42:08 pm »

Macbook Pro screens are less than ideal for digital imaging. I'm on a shoot right now. I work with a Sager (also use an Acer Ferrari) with a 15.4" 1900x1200 display. The AD on the shoot has a Macbook 15.4". He complained that images on his notebook looked soft and lacked detail. We looked at the exact same images on my notebook and realized not only were the images razor sharp, but had plenty of detail and punch. (We both happen to use Spyder2Pro to calibrate our notebooks.)

It was obvious that Apple's low-res screen doesn't do justice to images. A pity that in their re-design, they didn't opt for better quality, higher res-screens.
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Tim Lookingbill

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Shame on Apple
« Reply #3 on: May 23, 2007, 01:45:31 am »

I was in two lengthy MacBook calibration troubleshooting sessions a while back, one here and an another over at photo.net. It was indeed determined that the gamut of the Macbook was not suitable for serious color editing. I have a 2000 Pismo Powerbook and the gamut plots of both models are pretty much the same. Mine is unuseable even after calibrating with EyeOne Display.

But the thing is it doesn't seem practical or comfortable editing color on such a small screen anyway due to the zoom levels required for accurate color editing. Antialiasing of color kicks in at certain zoom levels in PS where huge files must be worked on at levels that fill the entire screen to get past this antialiasing which affects proper representation of hue and saturation. It just seems tiresome on a 15-17" laptop screen.

That's why I never used mine and work on an attached 21" Samsung 1100p CRT.

I really don't see how this lawsuit is going to be won. It's seems pretty petty, but if Apple is actually making claims that it's an accurate color editing powerhouse then there may be some legitimate complaint for false advertising. Not sure, I'm not a lawyer.
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