Colour aficionados are doing a dance over a post on social media from display expert Ross Young.
It relates to Apple’s latest M4-powered MacBook Pro.
“Big Apple display news, they have adopted quantum dots for the first time,” Young posted. “The latest MacBook Pro’s (M4) use a quantum dot (QD) film rather than a red KSF phosphor film.
“In the past, Apple went with the KSF solution due to better efficiency and lack of cadmium (Cd), but the latest Cd-free QD films are very efficient, feature as good or better color gamut and better motion performance.”\
Apple has long restricted the use of cadmium beyond regulatory limits.
The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration describes cadmium as “a soft, malleable, bluish white metal found in zinc ores, and to a much lesser extent, in the cadmium mineral greenockite.
“First discovered in Germany in 1817, cadmium found early use as a pigment because of its ability to produce brilliant yellow, orange, and red colors.”
It says cadmium and its compounds as “highly toxic and exposure to this metal is known to cause cancer and targets the body’s cardiovascular, renal, gastrointestinal, neurological, reproductive, and respiratory systems”.
Curiously, Apple seems to have kept this piece of information about improved optics on the downlow, for when you wade through the specs of the MacBook Pro range, there doesn’t appear to any mention of quantum dots.
For example, the 14-inch MacBook M4 Pro and M4 Max (2024) specs state:
Liquid Retina XDR display
14.2-inch (diagonal) Liquid Retina XDR display2; 3024-by-1964 native resolution at 254 pixels per inch
XDR (Extreme Dynamic Range)
1,000,000:1 contrast ratio
XDR brightness: 1,000 nits sustained full-screen, 1,600 nits peak3 (HDR content only)
SDR brightness: up to 1,000 nits (outdoor)
Colour
1 billion colours
Wide colour (P3)
True Tone technology
Refresh rates
ProMotion technology for adaptive refresh rates up to 120Hz
Fixed refresh rates: 47.95Hz, 48.00Hz, 50.00Hz, 59.94Hz, 60.00Hz
Configurable with:
Nano-texture display
