6 ms·

If your livelihood isn't dependent on that kind of a display, personally, I would try to avoid falling into their trap. I'd call it anti-competitive to have pre

If your livelihood isn't dependent on that kind of a display, personally, I would try to avoid falling into their trap. I'd call it anti-competitive to have previously supported an industry standard, only to then remove that support and push their product as the only way to achieve an equivalent to that standard. I'm not saying the ProDisplay XDR isn't a good screen, or even overpriced in the class of displays it lives in, but there is a major leap between "I write code/documents/etc. all day and like vibrant monitors" and "I do professional multimedia work and need hyper-accurate displays to do my job correctly." Telling all the people who want HDR to go buy a $5,000 display they don't need is a bit of a mean spirited move.

stefan_ 5y ago
The M1 still does DDC, it just doesn't end up exposing the raw bus to software. Which is a perfectly reasonable decision.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  > Which is a perfectly reasonable decision Why is that "reasonable"? How does it ultimately benefit end-users when they can no-longer use userland software to control their monitor via DDC?
  - breakfastduck 5y ago
    They can. This entire article is about how they implemented it on M1 macs. Did you read it?
    - nicoburns 5y ago
      It doesn't sound like it works very well
      - throwanem 5y ago
        That it works at all is a major improvement, and the Raspberry Pi method is worth having as well; I've been working on something very similar since I got my M1 Mini and found ddcctl and Lunar unable to work there, but got little further than building the light sensor before other projects took priority - I expect I'll probably finish this one around the equinox. My work laptop, an Intel Mac, displays to and controls brightness on the same monitor, but I've been using ddcctl with a trivial wrapper script much more than Lunar of late. (Kinda feel a little bad about that, what with the author of Lunar having taken the time to give me tech support on a weird corner case here on HN a while back.) Still going to buy a license and, if I can find a way, set up a recurring donation. This kind of work deserves support.
        alin23 5y ago
        Hey, thank you for the support! I completely understand when users go with something more simple like a CLI or MonitorControl. I do the same myself when I don’t really need the features of a complex app. By the way, I’m not sure if I understood correctly but if you need an external ambient light sensor, Lunar supports that out of the box now: https://lunar.fyi/sensor https://lunar.fyi/sensor
        throwanem 5y ago
        This is incredibly well realized! Currently I'm working with a sensor homebrewed from a reverse-biased LED with a Darlington-pair amplifier - not what anyone would call accurate, but precise enough to calibrate reliably over the range of light values to be found in my office as long as I keep direct sunlight off the transistors. Between that, a Pi, ddcutil, and the currently unoccupied DisplayPort input on my monitor, I'm hoping to brew up something that'll serve well enough - not terribly optimistic on that given that the monitor seems to maintain per-input brightness settings, but worth a try at least. (Also, if it does work, I can add an encoder with a built-in button as a manual override.) On the other hand, it seems likely that, by the time I find that approach to fail, Lunar on Mac mini will be able to do DDC via HDMI - I thought it'd take a year at least after the M1 arch came out for anyone even to get as far as you already have, but clearly I failed to reckon with your dedication to the effort!
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - stefan_ 5y ago
    It's a raw bus? It's like an operating systems idea of a network stack being to hand all software raw ethernet access. It is an obvious concurrency disaster once you have more than one application trying to access it, the data transmitted and control handed over is entirely opaque to the operating system (god knows what monitor vendors sneak over DDC) and most importantly all of these are absurdly low level implementation details that are subject to change. For all you know, they don't even need DDC beyond the initial EDID setup and multiplex the I2C hardware to do something else and can't physically provide this interface anymore.
    - Hello71 5y ago
      https://www.google.com/search?q=macos+send+ethernet+frames&hl=en https://www.google.com/search?q=macos+send+ethernet+frames&h... if you have root access, you should be allowed to have raw device access. the problem seems to be that apple no longer believes in users owning their computers, if it ever did.
      - oblio 5y ago
        Daily reminder that Jobs wanted one of their early computers (Lisa? Mac? Can't remember) to be bolted shut, until he was persuaded otherwise. Similar story with Apple II and expansion slots. It's in their nature. Apple was bound to invent the iPhone.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  It would be reasonable if Apple themselves implemented a way to control the display settings like that.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Why didn't they abstract it, or create a stripped/safe userland option to replace it? If I'm relying on a Mac for work, I can't have them removing essential features from my computer in a simple upgrade. Maybe MacOS needs semantic versioning, or at least some level of communication with the end user about compatibility.
  - slrz 5y ago
    This was never an intended feature. If I understand the article correctly, they were using an undocumented ("private") API which happened to stop working.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      Every API is undocumented on MacOS, what do you want them to do? How are you supposed to discern between zombie XNU code and Good LTS Apple Compliant code?
      - brokenmachine 5y ago
        Rule of thumb: if you paid for an official Apple dongle, all related code is LTS (*until said dongle is deprecated on a whim, of course).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
FireBeyond 5y ago
Precisely. I'd be very happy to have a ProDisplay. I may even buy it for the aesthetics (well, above and beyond everything else - I'm also a professional photographer). But as you say, it's more the attitude. I'm guessing whatever proprietary stuff they've done to drive the XDR at 6K in HDR isn't compatible with DSC, and there's little interest in fixing it.
- pram 5y ago
  XDR uses DSC on any RDNA (5X00) card, it’s not proprietary.
  - FireBeyond 5y ago
    Which makes me wonder even more why DSC is completely non-functional for any other monitor under Big Sur and Monterey.
justin66 5y ago
> Telling all the people who want HDR to go buy a $5,000 display they don't need is a bit of a mean spirited move. Plus an extra $1,000 for the stand to mount it. That never stops being funny.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  I wonder whether we might get to witness audience booing again for another outrageous Apple product as pre-recorded Apple events works great for their goals.
  - klodolph 5y ago
    I think the Pro Display XDR & stand were less “outrageous” and more “aimed at a niche market most of us don’t know much about.” People were expecting something consumer / prosumer and Apple made something aimed at the professional market.
    - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
      > “aimed at a niche market most of us don’t know much about.” Then Apple should have demonstrated the $1000 stand to those niche market separately instead of trying to sell the aspiration of 'Pro' devices to the consumer in an usual consumer event.
      - klodolph 5y ago
        Apple didn’t announce it at an event for general consumers, they announced it at WWDC. WWDC is an Apple event, run by Apple, to announce Apple products. Not all Apple products are aimed at general consumers.
        Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
        You're right, I stand corrected. It was a WWDC, hence original reaction from audience as opposed to usual scripted applause/laughter/camera pans.

stefan_ 5y ago

The M1 still does DDC, it just doesn't end up exposing the raw bus to software. Which is a perfectly reasonable decision.

DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
> Which is a perfectly reasonable decision Why is that "reasonable"? How does it ultimately benefit end-users when they can no-longer use userland software to control their monitor via DDC?
- breakfastduck 5y ago
  They can. This entire article is about how they implemented it on M1 macs. Did you read it?
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    It doesn't sound like it works very well
    - throwanem 5y ago
      That it works at all is a major improvement, and the Raspberry Pi method is worth having as well; I've been working on something very similar since I got my M1 Mini and found ddcctl and Lunar unable to work there, but got little further than building the light sensor before other projects took priority - I expect I'll probably finish this one around the equinox. My work laptop, an Intel Mac, displays to and controls brightness on the same monitor, but I've been using ddcctl with a trivial wrapper script much more than Lunar of late. (Kinda feel a little bad about that, what with the author of Lunar having taken the time to give me tech support on a weird corner case here on HN a while back.) Still going to buy a license and, if I can find a way, set up a recurring donation. This kind of work deserves support.
      - alin23 5y ago
        Hey, thank you for the support! I completely understand when users go with something more simple like a CLI or MonitorControl. I do the same myself when I don’t really need the features of a complex app. By the way, I’m not sure if I understood correctly but if you need an external ambient light sensor, Lunar supports that out of the box now: https://lunar.fyi/sensor https://lunar.fyi/sensor
        throwanem 5y ago
        This is incredibly well realized! Currently I'm working with a sensor homebrewed from a reverse-biased LED with a Darlington-pair amplifier - not what anyone would call accurate, but precise enough to calibrate reliably over the range of light values to be found in my office as long as I keep direct sunlight off the transistors. Between that, a Pi, ddcutil, and the currently unoccupied DisplayPort input on my monitor, I'm hoping to brew up something that'll serve well enough - not terribly optimistic on that given that the monitor seems to maintain per-input brightness settings, but worth a try at least. (Also, if it does work, I can add an encoder with a built-in button as a manual override.) On the other hand, it seems likely that, by the time I find that approach to fail, Lunar on Mac mini will be able to do DDC via HDMI - I thought it'd take a year at least after the M1 arch came out for anyone even to get as far as you already have, but clearly I failed to reckon with your dedication to the effort!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- stefan_ 5y ago
  It's a raw bus? It's like an operating systems idea of a network stack being to hand all software raw ethernet access. It is an obvious concurrency disaster once you have more than one application trying to access it, the data transmitted and control handed over is entirely opaque to the operating system (god knows what monitor vendors sneak over DDC) and most importantly all of these are absurdly low level implementation details that are subject to change. For all you know, they don't even need DDC beyond the initial EDID setup and multiplex the I2C hardware to do something else and can't physically provide this interface anymore.
  - Hello71 5y ago
    https://www.google.com/search?q=macos+send+ethernet+frames&hl=en https://www.google.com/search?q=macos+send+ethernet+frames&h... if you have root access, you should be allowed to have raw device access. the problem seems to be that apple no longer believes in users owning their computers, if it ever did.
    - oblio 5y ago
      Daily reminder that Jobs wanted one of their early computers (Lisa? Mac? Can't remember) to be bolted shut, until he was persuaded otherwise. Similar story with Apple II and expansion slots. It's in their nature. Apple was bound to invent the iPhone.
GekkePrutser 5y ago
It would be reasonable if Apple themselves implemented a way to control the display settings like that.
smoldesu 5y ago
Why didn't they abstract it, or create a stripped/safe userland option to replace it? If I'm relying on a Mac for work, I can't have them removing essential features from my computer in a simple upgrade. Maybe MacOS needs semantic versioning, or at least some level of communication with the end user about compatibility.
- slrz 5y ago
  This was never an intended feature. If I understand the article correctly, they were using an undocumented ("private") API which happened to stop working.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Every API is undocumented on MacOS, what do you want them to do? How are you supposed to discern between zombie XNU code and Good LTS Apple Compliant code?
    - brokenmachine 5y ago
      Rule of thumb: if you paid for an official Apple dongle, all related code is LTS (*until said dongle is deprecated on a whim, of course).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

FireBeyond 5y ago

Precisely. I'd be very happy to have a ProDisplay. I may even buy it for the aesthetics (well, above and beyond everything else - I'm also a professional photographer). But as you say, it's more the attitude. I'm guessing whatever proprietary stuff they've done to drive the XDR at 6K in HDR isn't compatible with DSC, and there's little interest in fixing it.

pram 5y ago
XDR uses DSC on any RDNA (5X00) card, it’s not proprietary.
- FireBeyond 5y ago
  Which makes me wonder even more why DSC is completely non-functional for any other monitor under Big Sur and Monterey.

justin66 5y ago

> Telling all the people who want HDR to go buy a $5,000 display they don't need is a bit of a mean spirited move. Plus an extra $1,000 for the stand to mount it. That never stops being funny.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
I wonder whether we might get to witness audience booing again for another outrageous Apple product as pre-recorded Apple events works great for their goals.
- klodolph 5y ago
  I think the Pro Display XDR & stand were less “outrageous” and more “aimed at a niche market most of us don’t know much about.” People were expecting something consumer / prosumer and Apple made something aimed at the professional market.
  - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
    > “aimed at a niche market most of us don’t know much about.” Then Apple should have demonstrated the $1000 stand to those niche market separately instead of trying to sell the aspiration of 'Pro' devices to the consumer in an usual consumer event.
    - klodolph 5y ago
      Apple didn’t announce it at an event for general consumers, they announced it at WWDC. WWDC is an Apple event, run by Apple, to announce Apple products. Not all Apple products are aimed at general consumers.
      - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
        You're right, I stand corrected. It was a WWDC, hence original reaction from audience as opposed to usual scripted applause/laughter/camera pans.