Q&A with the developer of BetterDummy: from macOS secrets to his motivations

https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/03/apple_m1_drivers/

by laktak • 5 years ago

95 130 5 years ago

disgu• 5 years ago

I remember having this issue a few years back with a 1080p display and a MacBook Pro from 2016. Connecting a Raspberry Pi Zero W yielded better display results than a $3k MacBook Pro, which was really disappointing. I can't believe it's still an issue to this day.

aulin6• 5 years ago

that's a different issue altogether, this one is about macos not supporting 2k and 4k monitors native resolutions, that one was about antialiasing. At some point, when Retina was introduced, Apple decided to completely disable their subpixel hinting so low resolution monitors (if 1080p can be considered low) that can render sharp text on Linux and on Windows look ugly and blurry on macos

tonyedgecombe5• 5 years ago

At some point, when Retina was introduced

It was later than that, if I recall correctly it was available until Catalina although you did need to modify a config file to enable it.

albertopv2• 5 years ago

These are issues I had with linux...so, I will just stick it :)

aulin6• 5 years ago

at least linux has subpixel antialiasing so text still looks crisp on perfectly good full hd monitors...

Gigachad• 5 years ago

Gnome does have an option for fractional scaling but any legacy x11 apps will look blurry. Last I checked this was pretty much just electron and chrome holding things up.

albertopv2• 5 years ago

Ubuntu 21.10 doesn't recognise my asus qhd bought a year ago, max resolution detected is fhd, no issues with windows 10

hollerith• 5 years ago

just electron and chrome holding things up

There are flags you can pass on the commandline to tell Chrome to bypass XWayand. I have been running Chrome (stable channel) that way for many months -- on Gnome 40 set to a fractional scaling factor. No blurriness.

KingOfCoders4• 5 years ago

On the MacBook Air of my wife we had also display problems. If I remember correctly you had to press the option key somewhere on a click to get better resolutions.

https://osxdaily.com/2015/08/27/show-all-display-resolutions...

"Under the ‘Display’ tab, hold down the OPTION / ALT key while you press on the ‘Scaled’ button". Talk about UI.

Before that we had spend quite some money on HDMI cables and USB-C to HDMI adapters and stuff blaming 3rd party products along the way.

encryptluks2• 5 years ago

I think this is probably intentional to try to get people to spend money on a Mac display.

ldrndll• 5 years ago

When you say a "Mac" display, what are you referring to? Apple sells exactly one display - the XDR - and its pricing is such that no one casually buys because their $300 external display isn't working correctly. I very much doubt that is their motivation; it's likely just a (possibly misguided) effort to keep the UI simpler.

cosmotic• 5 years ago

And here I thought this was going to be about the HDMI YCbCR issue. https://spin.atomicobject.com/2018/08/24/macbook-pro-externa...

least2• 5 years ago

I know this is at least somewhat a software issue; as in on many monitors options for display scaling don't even appear. My Dell U3818DW does have retina scaling options, thankfully, but my Asus PG278Q did not when I was using it. I ended up following along to this article [1] to get some retina display options for it.

With that being said, I think the larger issue is that there simply aren't that many high dpi external monitors available, and the ones that do exist are expensive. There are a ton of options for 4k panels in PC laptops that are like 13-17 inch and Apple's retina displays on their iMacs and Macbooks are also high dpi but I can count on my fingers how many true high dpi screens there are for external display options.

Gamers don't really want higher resolution since GPUs can't drive them well natively and games don't really need the sharpness and I imagine that corporations buying hundreds of monitors at a time don't really care about it, either, especially since Windows renders text on them quite adequately. Mac users are certainly longing for some decent monitor options that aren't 5000 dollars, though.

[1] https://medium.com/comsystoreply/force-hidpi-resolutions-for...

pedrocr11• 5 years ago

Here are 118 different 4K monitors starting at 240€:

https://www.worten.pt/informatica-e-acessorios/monitores/mon...

I've bought 3 LG ones during the pandemic and they're great. What other options do you need?

aulin6• 5 years ago

can you confirm they work in retina mode with macs? e.g. anyone tried 27UL500 and can confirm text looks good?

4ad13• 5 years ago

Sorry, but those are not hiDPI. For hiDPI, you need at least 5k at 27 inch. There was a single (!!) LG display (27MD5KL) that met that criteria, but it was discontinued.

The only external hiDPI displays that exist are the Apple Pro XDR (only works on macOS), and the Dell UP3218K (doesn't work on macOS).

Of course the iMac is hiDPI, but it's not an external display.

It's bewildering how manufacturers keep pushing for this low resolution 4k crap 10 years (!!!!) after hiDPI displays first appeared in laptops.

Reference: https://geizhals.eu/?cat=monlcd19wide&xf=12018_200

sgjohnson6• 5 years ago

Make that an IPS panel and it's only 7 monitors under €300

noir_lord• 5 years ago

Watch the corners.

I bought 3 4K 27” LG ups ones, one the corners blew out (massive bleed til you can’t see the pixels for the white shining through), one is going thr same way and only the newest shows no sign of it (yet).

Going Samsung next time since LG make panels for everyone and I simply don’t trust them now.

least2• 5 years ago

Almost no 4k monitors would be considered high dpi. To achieve 220dpi you need a 4k monitor to be 20 inches. 27 inch 4k monitor 4:1 pixel mapping makes it appear to be 1080p, which many people would not consider to be appropriate for that size monitor. You can use fractional scaling but that comes with its own sets of issues because the pixels don't map correctly.

27 inch 1440p at 100% scaling in Windows or MacOS is what most would be consider appropriate sizing for UI elements and text by default, so in order to achieve high dpi you need a 5k monitor, like the LG UltraFine or the 27 inch iMac.

mdoms• 5 years ago

I would just like to plug my very very expensive 2 year old Intel MacBook Pro into a monitor without the fans immediately running at 100% and cooking my desk. A problem that has gone completely unacknowledged by Apple despite the several hundred pages of forum posts all over the web about it.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2019-16-is-hot-noisy-wi...

Implicated• 5 years ago

Plug the charger in on the right side. [1]

1. https://www.imore.com/heres-why-you-should-probably-charge-y...

smilespray• 5 years ago

Nice to know, as I'm at this moment charging my 2020 top-spec Intel MBP from the left-side port.

No matter. I'm going to sell it anyway. What a fan monster.

niffydroid2• 5 years ago

I had this with my mid 2015 macbook pro. Window server would be using 40% of my resources when using 2 external displays.

sgjohnson6• 5 years ago

macOS still has a completely retarded implementation of DisplayPort MST (i.e. the only supported display is their own 6K display).

It's been growing on me for years, as macOS is my favourite platform, but I could go on a full Linus Torvalds rant about this. Why the fuck can't I use my dockstation that has 2 DisplayPort outputs and 1x HDMI to connect 3 external monitors? It literally works on Windows on the same fucking machine. On macOS all you get is mirroring.

So ultimately the reason is that Apple is completely oblivous to the millions of people who don't use monitors that are made or sold by Apple. Either oblivious or they flat out don't care.

thefz2• 5 years ago

So ultimately the reason is that Apple is completely oblivous to the millions of people who don't use monitors that are made or sold by Apple. Either oblivious or they flat out don't care.

They are not strangers to limiting or breaking existing protocols or standards in favor of their own implementation, and then saying "see? Apple just works".

Take their broken SMB implementation in OSX as an example.

tonyedgecombe5• 5 years ago

Take their broken SMB implementation in OSX as an example.

That doesn't make sense as they completely rewrote their SMB implementation to improve it.

systemvoltage3• 5 years ago

Unrelated but newer Macbook Pros (with M1 Max chips) as well as the Apple Pro Display XDR have entirely gotten rid of ICC profiles which seems crazy to me. Apple's definition of a professional is a more like a hipster. Real pros want no bullshit abstractions and hidden stuff, they want all knobs and switches exposed in all its glory. Btw, if you want to see how bad Apple Pro Display XDR is, look no further than the legendary HDTV Test channel on YT. Totally crushes Apple with straight up numbers and pure unadulterated objectivity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtd7UzLJHrU

iSnow• 5 years ago

Wait, do I get this right that M1 Macs cannot work with monitor calibration tools? I am not a graphics professional but my wife is and we are thinking about buying a M1 Mac - but she needs a calibrated display.

lstamour• 5 years ago

ICC profiles still exist but maybe they don’t show by default? You might need to option-click to view settings if they go missing compared to previous macOS versions, I’ve been noticing a bit of a streamlining or reorg of settings in recent macOS releases. It’s still documented the normal way though https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/mac-help/mchlf3ddc60d/... - and I can confirm it works still: I needed a specific HDMI output to be rec.709 as it was the only way to get a DVD-quality stream to play correctly on an older HDTV. And it worked great. I also haven’t heard any reports that X-Rite calibration software has stopped working or similar. As far as I know, works great. :)

sunaurus• 5 years ago

Totally crushes Apple with straight up numbers and pure unadulterated objectivity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtd7UzLJHrU

I don't know a lot about either of these monitors, but I don't find it surprising at all that a 30,000€ monitor would be better than a 6000€ monitor. Saying that the reviewer objectively crushes apple by using these two monitors in a comparison seems quite misleading.

systemvoltage3• 5 years ago

The author is just doing what the keynote said with the exact model of the Sony monitor.

klodolph3• 5 years ago

I mean, that video is comparing it against a Sony HX310, which costs $30,000. If you have a budget of $30,000 to spend on a single monitor, by all means, go for it.

systemvoltage3• 5 years ago

Dude, did you watch the Apple Keynote when they released the Pro Display XDR?

They literally claimed to be better than that $30k monitor. It is totally fair to compare it and prove that Apple was wrong.

DarthNebo2• 5 years ago

I'm suffering with underscan on a 1440p monitor while using an intel MBA (2015). The mini-DP port would only work with a VGA adaptor & the 1080p resolution ends up with a vertical black bar on the left as a result of the underscan.

No way to fix this either since macOS Monterey doesn't have any settings to change, ends up showing that a 40" HDTV is plugged in when it's just a 27" 1440p display...

mgraupner• 5 years ago

Ever tried this EDID patch? https://gist.github.com/ejdyksen/8302862

Had to run this script on every MacOS update till Big Sur or Catalina in order to get a perfect picture, otherwise MacOS would detect a TV and not a monitor.

DarthNebo2• 5 years ago

Thanks, I'll check if that fixes it.

pembrook3• 5 years ago

I think Apple is trying to force the hand of monitor manufacturers towards 4k or higher. The entire external monitor industry is such a no-innovation, customer-hostile dumpster fire.

Buy the GHR1050PQS75-UHW204773! It’s got garbage white uniformity, terrible black levels and IPS glow, cheap plastic housing and settings software that feels like it was created in 1994. Wirecutter recommended!

Compare this to the TV industry, where you can get amazing picture quality with OLED and at least somewhat decent levels of software competence.

Meanwhile desktop monitors (something most of us spend 8 hours a day in front of) are stuck using 30 year old LCD tech and most aren’t even 4k yet.

The entire PowerPoint/excel crowd seemingly has no problem spending most of their waking hours staring at giant pixels all day, even if the laptop screen they have sitting next to the monitor has almost 3X the pixel density.

izacus• 5 years ago

The entire external monitor industry is such a no-innovation, customer-hostile dumpster fire.

I last few years we've seen a massive shift towards ultrawide, high (dynamic) frame rate and HDR screens from pretty much all manufacturers. Many of those technologies Apple just didn't support until recently. They still don't support DisplayPort MST for use of many bigger monitors in daisy configurations.

So, what are you talking about? Did you even check the market outside the Apple store?

pembrook3• 5 years ago

Yes, I spent almost a month researching the entire market and every single offering available.

Nearly every ultrawide you speak of has very poor pixel density. 4k spanned across 34+ inches diagonally looks pretty terrible when you view it at the distance most people sit from their monitors.

I can’t seriously be the only one who can tell the difference. Have you ever compared how text looks on your phone or laptop screen compared to most monitors available today?

nickpp9• 5 years ago

Not the OP but for me: I don't watch movies on my monitor so I don't care about HDR, I don't play games so I don't care about dynamic frame rate.

What I need is sweet, sweet resolution! Those ultra-wide or high-frame rate all come at the expense of DPI which is the same with the DPI from 2K monitors...

sgjohnson6• 5 years ago

They still don't support DisplayPort MST for use of many bigger monitors in daisy configurations.

The worst part about this is the fact that macOS does in fact support MST, but only for their 6K (and 5K on older machines, no longer requires MST since DP 1.3) display.

kogepathic2• 5 years ago

I think Apple is trying to force the hand of monitor manufacturers towards 4k or higher. The entire external monitor industry is such a no-innovation, customer-hostile dumpster fire.

Please stop apologizing for Apple's customer-hostile behaviour here. A $2 trillion company should be able to make an external monitor not look like blurry trash when connected to their hardware.

The fact that it takes someone to make a third-party app to fix what Apple can't speaks volumes to how much they care about/understand their customer base. Apple should have tested M1 hardware with hot garbage external monitors, realized the customer experience sucked, and fixed it.

nickpp9• 5 years ago

Don't know about Apple, but maybe those external monitors shouldn't be such "hot garbage"?!

Nullabillity• 5 years ago

I don't give a shit about 4K, colour accuracy, ultrawide, or 120+Hz refresh rates. My cheapo monitors look good enough to me, and I have no interest in dealing with the dumpster fire that is HiDPI.

Applications already know how to deal with subpixel AA, and dealing with one application with poor antialiasing is still vastly preferably to dealing with one application with broken HiDPI scaling.

If monitors could just stagnate in ~2010-2015 tech for all eternity, that'd be great. It's a solved problem, let's collectively move on to problems that actually deserve the attention.

tonyedgecombe5• 5 years ago

I don't give a shit about 4K, colour, ...

I can't go back now, once I got used to high-dpi everything else looks like garbage.

eins12342• 5 years ago

I've been in the market for a new monitor for quite a while now, but haven't found a good fit, precisely because most monitors evidently kinda suck for the price. My requirements are pretty straightforward:

- 400+ nits peak brightness (my room gets really bright during the day, and my current monitor at 250 nits is practically unusable near noon)

- 4k resolution at 32 inch size (so I can use it without scaling while not taking too much desk space)

- < $500 (I refuse to pay more for a 32 inch screen than a 40 inch+ screen in a TV with much better specs)

As far as I can tell, this monitor doesn't exist (suggestions welcome!). Especially problematic is that brightness requirement, every monitor with more than 300 nits brightness I've seen has costed over $1000 for some reason.

At this point I'm probably going to just end up settling for a 40-43 inch TV instead, plenty of those that meet those requirements within the $500 budget, but the last time I used a TV as a monitor, I remember being really annoyed at having to use my remote to turn on the TV after it goes to sleep (turns off?), compared to a monitor which can get woken up by inputs from the connected computer.

Are there any other folks using TVs as monitors here? Curious if people have ideas on how to get around this issue in their own setups?

sgjohnson6• 5 years ago

Are there any other folks using TVs as monitors here?

YMMV, but in my experience cheapo TVs tend to not support 60Hz refresh rate. Most often it's either 24, 30 or 50, and that's absolutely a dealbreaker. It's fine for a TV, not for a computer monitor.

So if you're trying to save a buck, TV is probably not an option.

selfhoster115• 5 years ago

IIRC, if the TV supports commands via HDMI, it can be woken up from sleep without a remote. It requires extra setup on the computer to work.

I "solved" the issue of my preferred screen size not being available by going retro. It turns out that 12+ year old formerly-expensive flatscreens are a bit rubbish with brightness and power consumption, but they are better than "modern" screens for my preferences.

selfhoster115• 5 years ago

Settings software stuck in 1994? Good. I want it stuck this way.

The last thing I want in my monitor is any "software". It's meant to do one thing - display pixels. IoT-ization of screens will just turn them into another "smart TV" product category with unusable UX, ads, always-on connectivity and data collection, cloud profiles (see Razer mice), and 30+ second startup times.

nickpp9• 5 years ago

Maybe it'd be nice if the calibration data could be sent from the OS to be applied directly on the monitor instead of the Video Card?

And I really don't mind when producers gather (anonymized) telemetry data of my usage: maybe that'll get them to improve those damn products.

thefz2• 5 years ago

Hot garbage is a pricey laptop that by design won't play well with very common peripherals to force owners into buying another pricey peripheral.

There are absolutely zero reasons why an M1 shouldn't work with 1080p and above, except the usual Apple greed and lock-in.

norman784• 5 years ago

I have a 1920x1080 144hz display and another 3440x1440 60hz display with a Mac mini m1 without issues. Im curious on what issues do you have with 1080p?

rpdillon2• 5 years ago

Yeah, it's really interesting to read through a thread about MacOS not playing well with third-party displays turn into a discussion about how only Apple makes good displays. That's not the point: as a customer, I prefer vendors to enable me to put together a setup that works for me. Apple seems to be intentionally failing in this regard.

newaccount742• 5 years ago

If that was the case, why doesn't macOS support 8k displays?

If you want an 8k display at 60Hz, your only option is to use Windows.

Microsoft is also the only company that offers a high res 3:2 display (the Surface Studio at 4500x3000 pixels), a size that is more geared towards productivity rather than streaming movies.

It's weird that if you want to get nice displays, Windows is today a better option than macOS.

nickpp9• 5 years ago

Still can't understand why I can't buy a 5k/6k at 27", 30" or 32" display in the non-Mac world.

4K is a rather low DPI, and using it at 150% OS scaling is not that great.

Apple offers such great displays for the MacBook and iMac, with non-fractional scaling and such a good density that sub-pixel anti-aliasing is no longer needed for text rendering.

Why do I have ZERO options for that outside Apple's offers?!

skohan3• 5 years ago

How close is your screen that 4k/27" seems like low DPI? What are you comparing it to?

But I did monitor shopping recently, and what I wish I could get outside the mac world (or even in it) is the form-factor.

Like there are a lot of very nice 4k HDR IPS displays out there today, but nothing I could find in the thin form-factor of an iMac or laptop display.

nickpp9• 5 years ago

Regular distance on my desk, 75-100 cm I guess.

I have a 32" since I want larger text at my age. But it doesn't compare to the Retina display on my MacBook: I can often see the pixels and scaling artefacts.

What I would've liked was 5k at 32" for a perfect doubling of my preferred resolution: 2560x1440.

bzzzt2• 5 years ago

Dell has the UltraSharp UP3218K 8k screen for about 4 grand.

pelorat• 5 years ago

Because you get what, 60Hz at best on those Apple display. 60Hz is not enough any more.

nickpp9• 5 years ago

I like high frame rates, but if I have to choose, I will go for high pixel density every time. But I'm not a gamer.

Here's to hoping that someday we'll get to enjoy both!

selfhoster115• 5 years ago

60 Hz is definitely enough. The vast majority of video content stops at 60 Hz. Applications and games may benefit from 120 or 144 Hz refresh rates, but for the latter, it also means that you're pushing a lot more pixels through your graphics card - which may well not keep up.

IMO, 4K60 is a reasonable choice for those that prioritise resolution over refresh rate.

tonyedgecombe5• 5 years ago

You can't even buy the Dell 4K 24" anymore. My guess is buyers don't know what they are getting so just go for size.

Gatsky2• 5 years ago

BetterDummy solves mouse stutter on external displays as well! (M1 air with 1080p monitor)

Does nobody at Apple use external monitors??

nickpp9• 5 years ago

I'm guessing the use the 32" 6K XDR...

niffydroid2• 5 years ago

I've got 2 AOC monitors (2369M + 2490W1), On my mid 2015 macbook pro I had no issues (apart from window server using all my resources when they were plugged in). I'm the new M1 Macbook pro(work laptop) I'm finding quite often I am getting small vertical bands on both monitors randomly, these are more noticeably when using dark themes. I've changed cables and colour profiles and not really fixed it. I've not had this with my old laptop or even my desktop pc.

I would swap them out for 4k displays but it's just too expensive for me. I have been using my glasses more to use my monitors thinking my eyesight is getting worse but it could just be the monitors...

solarkraft• 5 years ago

My 4K monitor looks and works perfectly fine on my M1 Mac ... when it works. I've had many connection issues with the dongle I haven't had on another computer running Linux. Some days it just switches on and off seemingly randomly in the span of 10 seconds to 30 minutes. In the last few days it has been fine. I won't be surprised when it appears again.

harha• 5 years ago

Using Citrix is also catastrophic both on the 5K iMac and the Retina MacBook Pro (and probably others too). Not sure who's to blame for that. Curious to see if this tool solves the issue.

Q&A with the developer of BetterDummy: from macOS secrets to his motivations

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