Amazingly, it looks like Apple has not learned its lesson from all the complaints regarding the MacBook displays and has decided to take customers for a ride with the new iMacs.

There weren't many complaints when Apple took the 17-inch iMac to the back room and made all current iMac have a 20-inch screen or bigger. After all, Apple has a reputation for phasing out older technology and pushing the latest in its products. Unfortunately, not all was as it seemed and reports are starting to pour in from new iMac users that are quite disappointed with the quality of the displays in the new iMacs.
Unlike the LCD panels in the previous generation iMacs, the ones in the new aluminum models are in fact 18bit versions, meaning they cannot display the range of colors that 24bit panels can without making use of dithering. While this may not be a big deal for many iMac customers, those who work a lot with photos and images will see the horrible difference.

Reviews from sources such as Macworld have already pointed out the inferior screen quality of the 20 inch models, but now more and more users are beginning to see it. The issue is not as much the quality of the display itself, but the fact that Apple is misleading in the information it gives about the displays. The official site makes no mention of the color depth of the screen and you have to really dig to find the line "Millions of colors at all resolutions." Unfortunately, millions of colors with dithering is not the same as true millions of colors, and when working with images that becomes all too clear. Why hasn't the company simply given the true numbers, so that people could make the right choice? For the majority of buyers it won't make any difference, but for those who need 24-bit truecolor, the 20-inch model is simply a rip-off. The fact that Apple has done this is even more surprising considering exactly the same complaints the company received over the screens found in its portables.