Consumerist
Anyone who has been on the receiving end of an Apple ad campaign in the past 10 years knows that they tend to play fast and loose with the truth in their ad copy. Their towers are the fastest, their laptop is the thinnest, their phone is the most advanced. With so many unchecked exaggerations, Apple sometimes comes across as the consumer electronics version of Donald Trump, augmented by killer industrial and UI designers. Now a law firm in California has filed a class-action suit against the company for misrepresenting its new 20-inch iMac models as being capable of producing millions of colors, when in fact they use a substandard el-cheapo screen that is nowhere near as capable as what's in the 24-inch models.
From the law firm's press release:
Apple told consumers that both the 20-inch and 24-inch iMacs displayed "millions of colors at all resolutions." Indeed, the new 24-inch iMacs display 16,777,216 colors on 8-bit, in-plane switching (IPS) screens, as did the previous generation of 20-inch iMacs. But the new 20-inch iMac monitors do not even come close, displaying 98% fewer colors (262,144).
While Apple describes the display of both the 24-inch and 20-inch iMacs as though they were interchangeable, the monitors in each are of radically different technology. The 20-inch iMacs feature 6-bit twisted nematic film (TN) LCD screens, the least expensive of its type.
The 20-inch iMac's TN screens have a narrower viewing angle, less color depth, less color accuracy and are more susceptible to washout across the screen.
Apple's Web site tells consumers 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, 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 sued over 'inferior' iMac screens" [InfoWorld]
Comments
Who in their right mind would create a monitor that's obsolete by about... 15~25 years?
I really wonder how such a product got onto the shelves... someone should be fired for this mistake. The current stock should be scrapped.
Anyone who takes Apple to task on even a fraction of the bullshit this company feeds the public is all right by me.
Is this a different case that was dismissed because they didn't have enough people to make it a class action?
Yes, this is a different case. The other one was for MacBook LCDs and was settled out of court (it was not dismissed).
The type of panel used in the 20" imac is the same as the majority of LCDs on the market. I wouldn't ever buy one, but most people don't see a difference/care.
Everyone knew the Aluminum 20" had a TN panel, this was in no way a secret. There was a huge stink over this before the computers where even in user hands and many warnings to avoid the 20" Aluminum if you cared about image quality.
I have a 20" imac and I can't tell the difference. I also drink wine out of a box and beer out of a can.
But the MacBook Air is the thinnest laptop.
It's a fact, not an "unchecked exaggeration."
@uberbucket: That is, the people who read forums for disgruntled users knew. People who went by the word of say, the product info page were less well-informed.
That's odd. That's such a retrograde move... Why reduce the colors so badly?
TN panels, whether right or wrong, are industry-wide referred to as capable of displaying 16.2 Million colors - through whatever fancy name each manufacturer calls their dithering. Shoot, Dell even calls some of their 6-bit TN panels HD panels - confusing it even further.
No display _actually_ shows millions of colors without some form of trickery on the eye - be it dithering or something else. Are they lower quality panels than the previous gen? Sure. But it's not playing fast and loose to use the terminology used throughout the industry.
@Spinfusor: Check out this post for examples of thinner laptops from the past 10 years.
[crave.cnet.com]
Apple can claim thinnest on the market right now, that's all. A lie? No. An exaggeration. And the general public assumes it's true because Apple continues to make the claim—hence, "unchecked."
Gasp! Apple has done no wrong! How dare you even suggest that they do something unethical! (/sarcasm)
Thanks for bringing this story out. I saw it on /., but it's good to get it out to the non-technical audience as well, as it's important. Reminds me of the time Apple almost kicked me out of their HQ for asking an IR person if they were going to spend more on security. "There is no problem here, move along."
@johnarlington:
Philistine.
@Chris Walters: I believe the Asus eee laptop is thinner. At the very least, Lenovo's X300 laptop IS thinner and is a full laptop and is a production model. Most of the Macbook air's "thin" look is due to some good eye-fooling design with the way they rounded the edges. It's thin and looks good, but it's definitely not the thinnest.
Oh shit, here come the Apple fanboys... Go iWank your iPuds somewhere else.
@Rask: Im with you 100%
@超外人: Obsolete by 15-25 years? Try to recall what types of display were common in 1993. Then try to remember 1983, when the Apple IIe was introduced.
Yeah, but you'll never get a virus on this monitor because its an Apple. [/sarcasm]
Well I am a bigger Apple fanboy then anyone but I had purchased one of these 20" inch Aluminum iMacs and I am sure P.O'd that Apple screwed us over like this. I'm not looking for any money but I really do think they should do something about this.
@Chris Walters: The MacBook Air goes from .16 to .76 inches thick. The X300 goes from .73 to .92. How is the X300 thinner?
The EEE PC is also thicker than the Air. I couldn't find thickest/thinnest measurements, but this picture, even when you don't count the feet, shows that the EEE is thicker.
When did Apple claim to have the thinnest laptop ever? It never did, nor did I claim it did in my earlier comment.
@Spinfusor: Sorry, the first two paragraphs were for FLConsumer, and the last one was for Chris Walters. And I didn't even do the tag properly...
@Spinfusor: "When did Apple claim to have the thinnest laptop ever? It never did, nor did I claim it did in my earlier comment."
The MacBook Air, Apple's latest Intel-based laptop, is the lightest, thinnest laptop Apple has ever constructed, and according to Apple, it's the thinnest laptop ever made.
[www.macworld.com]
"We've built the world's thinnest notebook-without sacrificing a full-size keyboard or a full-size 13-inch display," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO.
[www.apple.com]
It of course is not the thinnest laptop ever made, but they did say it was at the time.
@Riddar: Thank you for correcting me.
(I probably should have looked at some articles on the MacBook Air's release before I said "it never did." It should have been, "I don't remember it doing.")
Apple gets sued all the time. Ho Hum. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact they have $18 Billion in cash.
Of course, i don't have a new iMac so I really don't care.
@Riddar: Next thing you'll tell me that Apple's claim of having the very first 64-bit desktops was also false.
/sarcasm
@uberbucket: ...?
But they are the most creative 260k colors IN THE WORLD!.
Uh-oh! Some people said something bad about a macintrash product! Beware of the Apple fanbois!!!
@Darkwish: And you all know that if this happened with a non-Apple product, the Apple freaks would be all over it saying how superior Apple products are to everything else.
I'm an apple fan-boy i guess. But i am with a strong measure of cynicism. As a professional user I understand and scrutinize machine specs before i make a purchase. I use a Mac simply because in my experience, i can spend more time doing actual work than keeping my computer running smoothly. The general public, especially the demographic targeted by the imac/consumer apple products is probably more enamored with the easy to use software (ilife stuff) and would probably be easily duped into purchasing on that point alone. I do think it's shameful that Apple would start skimping on hardware components while maintaining relatively high price tags...especially for machines that come ridiculously underpowered (RAM - go to an apple store and check installed ram - for appearance - vs. included ram) Apple is an innovative company, perhaps more so in marketing than in real innovation.
Ha ha! Apple is teh suck!
Seriously, how much longer can this company get by on the momentum it built up in the desktop publishing industry in the 80's? It's got to run out sooner or later, right?
Apple makes nothing more the glorified PCs anymore, the hardware is not different then anything else out there. All you pay for is the OS and the shiny laptop/desktop, and the elitist attitude that comes with it.
@senor_tron: Agreed. I'm in the same boat you are. As an Apple fan (obviously), I'm ashamed of their hardware slips here lately. It's a shame, too, because the 20" iMac was going to be my model. But not now, not unless they add some colors.
RE: the "/sarcasm tag," thanks everyone for letting us know. Now if only we could get a "/I'm-not-a-polite-commentor" tag...
They forgot to take into account the enhancement feature that comes from touching Apple products. See Link:
"http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/04/01/something-rotten-with-apple/"
[www.downloadsquad.com]
That's pretty terrible even for apple. Which of their genius workers thought hey, lets just reduce the colours by 98%. Then! Lets lie about it! Hahaha they'll never know!
So if no current monitors are capable of "true" millions w/o software tweaks, and many other vendors also uses the same tech as the 20" iMacs, does anyone out here have comparisons or results from testing labs? Is it something noticeable or only something that you'd need a spectrometer to guage?
@Chris Walters: Umm, someone coming out with a notebook using a chip unheard of (thus unusable to most apps/OSs?) doesn't count as a notebook in the sense that consumers would recognize. A Transmeta chip? On a laptop that came out w/in the past five years? C'mon - it's a footnote in an archaic engineering blog. I'll kindly leave the other specs out of your example to avoid further embarrassment. Looking at the choices from PC vendors, MacBook Air IS crazy-thin. And fully functional. And waaay sleek.
@ehrgeiz: Neither does Dell, Gateway, Lenovo... Have to break the news to you: they don't fab their own chips either. Your expectations for what a computer mfr does is out of date by, oh, thirty years. But stay happy with your ugly, virus-ridden, quasi-functional computer out of the box!
@Spinfusor:
The Mac Towers were the fastest Desktops also. Apple had exclusive access to Intel Dual core 3GHz chips for at least several months.
I was very surprised how long Intel held out on a broad release.
So.. for quite some time, Apple was the only vendor in the world with a 2 x Core2 Dual desktop at 3GHz.
As a side.. PC Mag benched the MacBook Pros and noted that they ran Vista faster than major maker "PC" laptops with the same processors. :-P
I'm always confused at how much some Windows users absolutely hate Apple, never having used one. My brother is one of them.
@Riddar: Note Jobs used present tense, and it's accurate for all current mainstream (read: fully functional) models on the market when he spoke.
Look, it's a specialized beast. Not for everyone. You want a clunker, well, this is America. Have at it!
For me, the screen is the leastest problem of Apple laptop products: at Apple prices, videocards included in their laptop are a total SHAME !
You should expect MUCH MORE than the rotten Intel x3100 for the macbooks and AIR and the 8600 GT is just BARELY acceptable for the Macbook Pro...
@Dude27:
You realize the Macbook Pro is a professional, not a gaming, laptop.
It's meant to run Office, compile code...
It's not a professional CAD station,
it's not a gaming rig.
BTW, my 2 year old MBP runs WoW just fine, even in OS X 10.4. 10.5 has multi-threaded OpenGL.
I can't speak to the latest models but my model has had persistent problems with the firmware and Sleep-mode. Nothing that's a show stopper but annoying (I dock to a monitor every day).
It's hilarious that, for all their pissing and moaning, Mac-haters don't use them so they have no idea what the REAL problems are. Here's what I see [running an IT shop].
- White G4 iMacs have a high failure rate.. generally bad Caps [same as Dell] and frayed wiring.
- MacBook Pros (early iterations at least) have crappy batteries. Their life is pretty short. Within a year you tend to see a noticeable decrease in battery capacity. I got my 2nd battery last month and I would have got one a year ago if I spent more time away from a plug.
- Early G5 towers had quite a bit of problems with the thermal sensors
I'm actually struggling to think of any pervasive problems though I'm sure there have been some more.
In general I think their QC has gone down significantly since their marketshare has skyrocketed. Before the PC guys whine, doubling US market share of new sales in the past few years is rocketing. Rumors are Apple may post ~13% of US sales in Q1 08. They were 3.6% not all that long ago.
In the old days, Macs would run forever. I have a Mac II at the other end of my building running a Mass Spectrometer. It's got a 5.25" 80 MegaByte [not GB] hard drive which I need to updgrade. In the old days, we very rarely had a broken Mac, almost never in fact. On average we would pull them after 5 or so years when they became obsolete. I've got plenty around that are at pre-2000.
@StevenBandyk:
First, I'm not a Mac-Hater because I use two at home (one Powerbook Titanium and one Imac 20" white)...
and second, yes, I'm well aware of the other problems : poor DVDrom drives, overheating Hard Drive, Laptop keyboard too fragile, or bad mighty mouse concept (good at first but too fragile: the mini trackball fails on the long run !) etc...
But yes, At equal price with a PC laptop, you GET MUCH MORE with a PC in term of power and usability... with Mac, the many extra bucks you pay are just for the hyped brand !
@Riddar:
T'was a joke. There was a marketing campaign where Apple claimed to have the very first 64-bit desktops, which is patently false.
@Spinfusor: is one of the thinnest laptops, not the thinnest.
Anyways I'm not surprised at this false advertising of apple. Their products are inferior so they feel they need to advertise it as being better than it really is.
@The Marionette: More thoughtful specifics from an Apple hater. What problems have you had with a Mac?
@StevenBandyk: Your brother is a great example of the following phenomena: 90% of Windows users have never used a Mac, whereas 90% of Mac users have to use Windows at work every day. IMO this puts MAc users in a better position to compare the two.
@uberbucket: Ah! Sorry, must get morning coffee before claiming to misunderstand posts next time.
@Trai_Dep: Wow, you're an Apple fanboy to a degree that I don't think I've seen before.
But hey, if you want your generic computer that looks exactly like every single other one out there that's designed to fall apart/explode/stop working/need replaced in 3 years just for the "ooh, shiny!" OS, then by all means.
For the record, none of the other (Windows-based) PCs I've ever operated have been "virus-laden" or "quasi-functional" -- they've all worked, right out of the box, and for several years afterwards.
Even most other computers I have to take a look at have something wrong that wasn't directly related to Windows's fault, either. But okay!