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Yes it is. Notifications can pop-up if someone forgets to disable them. Any OS prompts can pop-up on the display. You don't leave those types of things to chanc

Yes it is. Notifications can pop-up if someone forgets to disable them. Any OS prompts can pop-up on the display. You don't leave those types of things to chance.

ratww 5y ago
The "prepared" in my post implies that notifications are disabled. Also notifications won't really be an issue for anyone but people using the machine both for personal and professional stuff. In the worse case, you can have different user accounts. A professional machine used for VJing or even audio recording will have zero notifications.
- dkonofalski 5y ago
  Ok, but OS prompts will. If something crashes, you're going to get a notification on-screen if you're not using dedicate I/O hardware.
  - ratww 5y ago
    Not a problem in practice. On macOS, OS crashes show up on the first monitor, and so do other crash alerts. Also, again, if this is not an amateur thing, the only programs that will be running will be those directly related to the presentation. Also I wonder if we're talking about different scales here. I'm not talking about the 150 inch monitor, I'm talking about video art, VJing, and small scale stuff. macOS works fine for those things.
    - dkonofalski 5y ago
      Not necessarily. It shows up on whatever the active monitor is.
      - ratww 5y ago
        But the "current" monitor is the one with the GUI and the mouse cursor. The secondary monitor is the one being used for external video. There are even dedicated APIs for it. Are you a macOS user? Your other examples talk about Windows Update... the situation in macOS is a bit different, which is a lot of people doing audio/video flock to it. Not everyone needs external hardware, just a MacBook can do a lot.
        dkonofalski 5y ago
        >Are you a macOS user? Yes. macOS is my daily driver and I'm on Monterey. All I'm saying is that, if anyone wants to say that this dot makes their use case unusable, then they have to admit that the current OS setup was always unusable for them because the OS was always able to display chrome on their displays. It may not have happened often or even in a way that they thought was "unusable" but it was able to happen. The only difference here is that they're not happy with the type of OS-level things that are displayed. In my experience, people for whom any kind of errant display items matter use dedicated hardware devices for their I/O. If it didn't matter before because it was only windows/alerts/notifications/whatever, then that clearly doesn't make it "unusable" just "not preferred". I fully agree that there needs to be some kind of option for this on presentation displays but the people saying that SNL wouldn't have dedicated hardware for their displays is asinine.
        ratww 5y ago
        Sure, in theory you are correct. We should seek the more reliable solution. In practice, this is not really a problem for anyone using macOS for small time visuals/performance/presentations, as long as you keep your computer well prepared for those situations. It works 99.9% of the time, which is 100% for most people (even pros) doing it sporadically. Maybe your solution covers a few more 9s, and you need those 9s (I know live broadcasting does), but this is unnecessary for most common folk, and you're dismissing this use case across this thread, which is why I'm answering to you. I feel like the notifications issue you mention is bit of a red herring, because having too many things running in the background will cause problems regardless of using external gear, regardless of them showing on the screen or not. You can't rely on external gear alone for stability, the computer itself has to be stable. And the computer alone being stable is enough for 90% of people. And even if there are notifications... so what? This is people doing it for art purposes, on parties. They learn a lesson and never have to care again. If those people are really using Steam on their computers (like you said on another comment), they surely aren't pros worried about performance, reliability, or anything of the sort that warrants a dedicated playback card, so I don't really see this use case (Steam+Blackmagic) existing at all. Surely the default I/O is nowhere near enough for SNL or even for local broadcast, but it is good enough for a large contingent of people that don't need the same reliability that you or SNL needs. And it does works for them in practice, without notifications, and without OS chrome... except for the new orange dot, which is a nuisance.
- EugeneOZ 5y ago
  You can afford a separate laptop for VJing, but don't want to spend $200 to get 100% protection from unexpected notifications, error messages, calls, and orange dot?
  - ratww 5y ago
    What separate laptop? macOS supports multiple accounts, no need for separate laptop. And people don't want to buy a completely unnecessary $200 dongle (it's actually cheaper) for something that worked 100% perfectly before. Is that really hard to understand? If I could have audio inputs/outputs that were good enough for my audio work I would also prefer not using an external audio interface. I often compose on earbuds, and that's fine. For mixing I need something else. Some people might not. Who am I to judge? Also, it's not an "or" option. Pros turn off notifications/internet, and don't leave Steam running when working, like the other poster is saying.
littlestymaar 5y ago
Well, this is a “no true Scotsman” fallacy. In practice they do. It's not frequent but I've seen that a few times and it it's always “fun” to watch. So it shows that there's a lot of professionals out there not following best practices (which isn't surprising to be honest, it's the case in every industry, including super critical ones…). Maybe the orange dot will actually help these people start using best practices in the end… (note that I'm not defending Apple's move when saying so, I really hate their tendency to think there customers are wrong and because they are Apple they know better)
- dkonofalski 5y ago
  It's not a "No True Scotsman" because I'm using their definition of "Scottsman". If someone wants to be able to have full control of what goes on the display, outside of the OS, then they have to have a hardware I/O controller on a Mac. Their only argument is that they were OK with what the OS was putting on there because it didn't affect their specific use case. It's only an issue because they don't like what the OS is doing now. It's great if people got lucky in the past and never ran into an OS prompt or an alert from an app (looking at you, Steam) but that doesn't change the fact that the situation is currently the same as it was before Monterey. Anyone who's saying that a dot in the corner makes it "unusable" has to admit that anything else would have also made it unusable yet they chose to continue without managing the I/O of the device and didn't care.
  - ratww 5y ago
    > looking at you, Steam I really don't believe anyone running Steam on their video computer is worried enough or even serious about reliability to use a dedicated video playback card. Sure it would be nice if everyone used a dedicated card, but it's 100x more important that those people stop running Steam... unless maybe if they're pro game streamers or something. Also, even Steam requires extra permissions on Mac to display the overlays you mention.
    - dkonofalski 5y ago
      I only mentioned Steam because I've had an experience where that happened to someone. They were running some game (similar to Jackbox but it wasn't that) for a conference and were just outputting the display and the Steam update prompt showed up on top of the display. It wasn't a big deal, it was just an example that summed up exactly the types of things I'm talking about. And no, this wasn't a Steam overlay. It was a prompt to restart the Steam app to complete some update. That does not need additional permissions.

Yes it is. Notifications can pop-up if someone forgets to disable them. Any OS prompts can pop-up on the display. You don't leave those types of things to chance.

ratww 5y ago

The "prepared" in my post implies that notifications are disabled. Also notifications won't really be an issue for anyone but people using the machine both for personal and professional stuff. In the worse case, you can have different user accounts. A professional machine used for VJing or even audio recording will have zero notifications.

dkonofalski 5y ago
Ok, but OS prompts will. If something crashes, you're going to get a notification on-screen if you're not using dedicate I/O hardware.
- ratww 5y ago
  Not a problem in practice. On macOS, OS crashes show up on the first monitor, and so do other crash alerts. Also, again, if this is not an amateur thing, the only programs that will be running will be those directly related to the presentation. Also I wonder if we're talking about different scales here. I'm not talking about the 150 inch monitor, I'm talking about video art, VJing, and small scale stuff. macOS works fine for those things.
  - dkonofalski 5y ago
    Not necessarily. It shows up on whatever the active monitor is.
    - ratww 5y ago
      But the "current" monitor is the one with the GUI and the mouse cursor. The secondary monitor is the one being used for external video. There are even dedicated APIs for it. Are you a macOS user? Your other examples talk about Windows Update... the situation in macOS is a bit different, which is a lot of people doing audio/video flock to it. Not everyone needs external hardware, just a MacBook can do a lot.
      - dkonofalski 5y ago
        >Are you a macOS user? Yes. macOS is my daily driver and I'm on Monterey. All I'm saying is that, if anyone wants to say that this dot makes their use case unusable, then they have to admit that the current OS setup was always unusable for them because the OS was always able to display chrome on their displays. It may not have happened often or even in a way that they thought was "unusable" but it was able to happen. The only difference here is that they're not happy with the type of OS-level things that are displayed. In my experience, people for whom any kind of errant display items matter use dedicated hardware devices for their I/O. If it didn't matter before because it was only windows/alerts/notifications/whatever, then that clearly doesn't make it "unusable" just "not preferred". I fully agree that there needs to be some kind of option for this on presentation displays but the people saying that SNL wouldn't have dedicated hardware for their displays is asinine.
        ratww 5y ago
        Sure, in theory you are correct. We should seek the more reliable solution. In practice, this is not really a problem for anyone using macOS for small time visuals/performance/presentations, as long as you keep your computer well prepared for those situations. It works 99.9% of the time, which is 100% for most people (even pros) doing it sporadically. Maybe your solution covers a few more 9s, and you need those 9s (I know live broadcasting does), but this is unnecessary for most common folk, and you're dismissing this use case across this thread, which is why I'm answering to you. I feel like the notifications issue you mention is bit of a red herring, because having too many things running in the background will cause problems regardless of using external gear, regardless of them showing on the screen or not. You can't rely on external gear alone for stability, the computer itself has to be stable. And the computer alone being stable is enough for 90% of people. And even if there are notifications... so what? This is people doing it for art purposes, on parties. They learn a lesson and never have to care again. If those people are really using Steam on their computers (like you said on another comment), they surely aren't pros worried about performance, reliability, or anything of the sort that warrants a dedicated playback card, so I don't really see this use case (Steam+Blackmagic) existing at all. Surely the default I/O is nowhere near enough for SNL or even for local broadcast, but it is good enough for a large contingent of people that don't need the same reliability that you or SNL needs. And it does works for them in practice, without notifications, and without OS chrome... except for the new orange dot, which is a nuisance.
EugeneOZ 5y ago
You can afford a separate laptop for VJing, but don't want to spend $200 to get 100% protection from unexpected notifications, error messages, calls, and orange dot?
- ratww 5y ago
  What separate laptop? macOS supports multiple accounts, no need for separate laptop. And people don't want to buy a completely unnecessary $200 dongle (it's actually cheaper) for something that worked 100% perfectly before. Is that really hard to understand? If I could have audio inputs/outputs that were good enough for my audio work I would also prefer not using an external audio interface. I often compose on earbuds, and that's fine. For mixing I need something else. Some people might not. Who am I to judge? Also, it's not an "or" option. Pros turn off notifications/internet, and don't leave Steam running when working, like the other poster is saying.

littlestymaar 5y ago

Well, this is a “no true Scotsman” fallacy. In practice they do. It's not frequent but I've seen that a few times and it it's always “fun” to watch. So it shows that there's a lot of professionals out there not following best practices (which isn't surprising to be honest, it's the case in every industry, including super critical ones…). Maybe the orange dot will actually help these people start using best practices in the end… (note that I'm not defending Apple's move when saying so, I really hate their tendency to think there customers are wrong and because they are Apple they know better)

dkonofalski 5y ago
It's not a "No True Scotsman" because I'm using their definition of "Scottsman". If someone wants to be able to have full control of what goes on the display, outside of the OS, then they have to have a hardware I/O controller on a Mac. Their only argument is that they were OK with what the OS was putting on there because it didn't affect their specific use case. It's only an issue because they don't like what the OS is doing now. It's great if people got lucky in the past and never ran into an OS prompt or an alert from an app (looking at you, Steam) but that doesn't change the fact that the situation is currently the same as it was before Monterey. Anyone who's saying that a dot in the corner makes it "unusable" has to admit that anything else would have also made it unusable yet they chose to continue without managing the I/O of the device and didn't care.
- ratww 5y ago
  > looking at you, Steam I really don't believe anyone running Steam on their video computer is worried enough or even serious about reliability to use a dedicated video playback card. Sure it would be nice if everyone used a dedicated card, but it's 100x more important that those people stop running Steam... unless maybe if they're pro game streamers or something. Also, even Steam requires extra permissions on Mac to display the overlays you mention.
  - dkonofalski 5y ago
    I only mentioned Steam because I've had an experience where that happened to someone. They were running some game (similar to Jackbox but it wasn't that) for a conference and were just outputting the display and the Steam update prompt showed up on top of the display. It wasn't a big deal, it was just an example that summed up exactly the types of things I'm talking about. And no, this wasn't a Steam overlay. It was a prompt to restart the Steam app to complete some update. That does not need additional permissions.