This is an old archive page of HWZ prior to revamp. Please visit HWZ for the latest reviews and news.

 

 
» News
 
 


Apple MacBook Pro cannot Display Millions of Colors
Apple and Macintosh | Reads from WWW
Fri 10 Jul 2009



The new MacBook Pros were launched to much fanfare about a month ago. They were advertised to be able to display millions of colors, but according to a report by Tweaktown, this is not possible as the newest MacBook Pros are equipped with only 6-bit panels, which are able to display up to only 262 thousand colors.

Tweaktown - This trouble is all about the colors man. You see Apple says that its new MacBooks have support for “Millions of Colors” this is great right? Well you see it is not all good. Apple uses 6-bit panels as such they are really only capable of supporting 262 thousand colors.

The way they can get away with saying support for Millions of Colors is through the use of a couple of tricks. One is dithering; this is where you combine adjacent pixels to create a different shade. This usually has the effect of reducing the sharpness of the image. You can also use Frame Rate Control or FRC this rapidly cycles through the color pallet to simulate the same range from an 8-bit display.

You might think 262 thousand colors would be more than enough, but considering that many designers depend on the MacBook Pro and color is so important to them, we are surprised Apple would try to pass off a 6-bit panel as capable of displaying millions of colors. Apple has yet to respond.