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Apple sued over 'misleading' ad claims

Tycoons often come a little unstuck when they market their own products but Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, could soon pay a real price for allegedly talking up too much.

A Texas resident says she is suing the company for deceptive advertising, arguing Mr Jobs and his marketers falsely stated the new iMac desktop can display “millions of colours.”

Chandra Sanders says that in a presentation last year, Mr Jobs failed to point out that, unlike the 24-inch version, the 20-inch iMac displays only 262,144 colours.

Her allegations, filed in a lawsuit in San Jose, California, conclude that Apple “intentionally concealed and/or suppressed the above facts with the intent to defraud.”

In his launch pitch in August, Mr Jobs also said initial users of the iMac “love the new glossy displays” because they make their “photos and movies look way better .”

Not so, argue Ms Sanders’ lawyers. They say the inferior technology of the 20-inch iMac is “ill-suited” to photo editing because of the display's limited colour potential and the distorting effect of the colour simulation processes.

Ms Sanders believes that any shades on top of the 262, 144 true colours the 20-inch version can produce are actually a technological trick of showing several similar tones at high speed.

Her lawyer, Brian Kabateck of Kabateck Brown Kellner, accused the maker of the popular computer of taking advantage of its customers “beneath its good-guy image.”

The Los Angeles-based lawyer expects the suit to attract thousands of other Apple customers, which could result in a class action that may force Apple into paying out millions of dollars in compensation.

The firm added: “Apple is duping its customers into thinking they’re buying ‘new and improved’ when I fact they’re getting stuck with ‘new and inferior’”

“Apple is squeezing more profits for itself by using cheap screens and its customers are unwittingly paying the price.”

In the suit, Apple is accused of “deceptively marketed” its new 20-inch iMac in a way that “grossly inflated the capabilities of its monitor, which is vastly inferior to the previous generation it replaced.”

Apr 3, 2008
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