A letter to Steve Jobs about 6-bit MacBook Pro displays

Image credit: Apple

January 19, 2009

Dear Mr. Jobs:

I have been looking into buying a MacBook Pro. After doing some research on the laptop, I uncovered some evidence [http://mantia.me/blog/macbook-pro-thousands-of-colors/] that it does not have support for “millions of colors” as stated on the Apple website. Instead, the MacBook Pro displays are supposedly only capable of 6 bits per channel, or 18 bits per pixel. This is only 2¹⁸ colors, or 262,144.

I chatted with some “experts” on the Apple Store website. The first two repeated that it was “millions of colors,” but avoided my question when I asked how many bits per channel. The next expert stopped replying when I asked her about the color depth, and the fourth one did the same. The fifth expert, Melissa C., told me it was indeed 6 bits per channel. Here is the conversation I had, as copied and pasted from the chat window:

Melissa	Hi, my name is Melissa C. Welcome to Apple! Would you like some assistance with your shopping?
Me	Sure. I’ve got a question about the MacBook. How many bits per channel is the screen capable of displaying?
Melissa	Hi! One moment please.
	(Long pause)
Melissa	I am looking into this for you. Will this be your first Mac?
Me	Yes. I will be installing Windows on it.
Melissa	Great! How do you plan to use the Mac?
Me	I will use it for photo and movie editing. My scanner can capture 16 bits per channel, and my camera can capture 10.
Melissa	Thanks. It is 6 bits per channel.
Me	Thank you so much!
Melissa	You are welcome.
Me	I’ve talked to many experts before, and they keep on telling me that it’s ‘millions of colors.’
Melissa	When do you plan to get your new Mac?
Me	Probably when Windows 7 comes out…I’m still doing research on Macs.
Melissa	It is many colors. I can get you the supported resolutions too. 1280 by 800 (native), 1152 by 720, 1024 by 640, and 800 by 500 pixels at 16:10 aspect ratio; 1024 by 768, 800 by 600, and 640 by 480 pixels at 4:3 aspect ratio; 720 by 480 pixels at 3:2 aspect ratio
Me	Thank you.
Melissa	You are welcome.

So, the rumors are accurate. The MacBook Pro’s display is only capable of 6 bits per channel. A million is way bigger than 262,144. Even my cheap Compaq FP7317 that I bought nearly six years ago when LCD was considered relatively new can display 8-bit color, or 16,777,216 colors [http://www.lcdnfo.com/html/Compaq__FP7317-lcd-monitor.html].

I admire Apple’s hardware, which is why I want to get a Mac. However, I also like honesty and truth in advertising. In the honesty section, Apple has failed. Terribly.

It all comes down to this: either the technicians, experts, display specialists, and all the websites of the manufacturers from which Apple buys its displays are wrong, or Apple is misinforming its customers about the specs.

I don’t understand why I had to talk to five experts before finding an answer. Why can’t Apple equip its employees with information? Or, why can’t Apple just write it on the website? It only takes 5 characters to do so: “6-bit.” As a customer, I just want to make an informed decision when I make a big purchase, and to do that, I need information. But Apple seems determined to keep that information out of customers’ hands.

Thanks for your time in reading this letter. You probably will not respond because you have other more important things to tend to, like the Apple Tablet (which will hopefully actually be capable of millions of colors).

Sincerely,

Kevin Chen

Got a yellow iMac? Talk to Mark Wilson of Gizmodo.

With all the buzz about the new 27″ iMacs shipping with yellowed or cracked screens, it’s inevitable that someone in the press would receive one of the bad screens and write a public post about it. Well, it’s happened—Mark Wilson of Gizmodo got one of the yellow screens, and when he returned it, he got another yellow screen. (Let’s just hope his second iMac’s box didn’t have a “Return to Sender” stamp on it.) This is what he says about the incident:

Call me paranoid, but I believe it to be true: Yesterday, after posting my threat, Apple tracked down my non-Gizmodo email I used to purchase the iMac and flagged my account to block exchanges. Either way, my hands are completely tied. Luckily, yours are not.

If my conspiracy thesis is correct, we’ve hit a nerve with Apple. So I’m only going to increase my efforts with your help until they publicize and/or fix the yellow LCD issue. Here’s what I could use from you:

Anyone out there who’s in the process of exchanging an iMac for one without a jaundiced screen and receives a replacement January 1st or after, email submissionsATgizmodo.com to let us know if the issue has been resolved. New purchases that turn out to be yellow are great as well. Please be sure to:

1. Use the subject “Yellow iMac”
2. Take photos of this screen test (just make sure to lock that white balance!)
3. Include details like the ship date and how many iMacs you’ve exchanged so far

He also says that if, after one year, the yellow/cracked iMac issue is still not fixed, then he will be pointing it out again. This is a fail on Apple’s part already, and them not admitting and then trying to cover up the problem just makes it a bigger fail. Apple, take a page from Microsoft’s Xbox 360 red ring of death book. Read the full article below.

[Gizmodo]

10balloons.com apparently does not review crowdsourced DARPA Red Balloon data

Today is the day when ten giant red weather balloons are launched at ten different locations on the continental US. This is an experiment by DARPA, the US Military’s experimental branch, to see how social networking can be used to accomplish something a single person cannot do alone. The prize for the first person or group to submit all ten correct locations is $40,000. Needless to say, the stakes are pretty darn high.

This is where sites like 10balloons.com come into play. They try to bring people together to submitting locations of balloon sightings. But the folks at 10balloons.com aren’t even reviewing the results before they are posted for everyone to see, and that makes it so that people can easily mess around with the maps.

The lesson to be learned: review information the general public gives you before posting it online. Although, honestly? That was pretty obvious.

Presidential Security at the White House

Something I threw together. View Full Size»

(in case you haven’t heard yet…)

Guinness Book of World Records, you fail

This is an example of corporate bullying at its worst.

So, awhile back, FailBlog.org posted a screenshot of the GBWR page for the “Most Individuals Killed in a Terrorist Attack.” Underneath it, it said “Break This Record!”

So, as any idiotic legal department would do, the Guinness Book of World Records shot FailBlog.org a cease-or-desist e-mail basically saying that FailBlog.org had better take that page down, because it was “copyright infringement.” Now, this is an exception, because FailBlog.org is using the screenshot for critical commentary and/or parody.

You can read FailBlog.org’s response here.

Ubuntu becomes a Microsoft product?!

According to Dell, yes. Dell has been caught cutting corners on its website by posting above each netbook’s operating system “Microsoft Operating System” and then the name of the OS. Which becomes a problem when the OS is Linux:

You fail, Dell. Epically.

[Via Linuxologist]

Update 1: The mistake is still up.
Update 2: If Dell really was right, what would they call it? Mubuntu? Scary.