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The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

alinpanaitiu.com

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Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#21

Post by wil421 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #18

Great write-up and a fun read. I was caught off guard by this note: > the delivery guy called me about a laptop: the custom configured M1 MacBook Pro that costed as much as 7 junior developer monthly salaries has arrived! I tried the MacBook Pro configurator and could only get up to $2300 USD (excluding optional software like Logic Pro). I’m sure the price and taxation are higher in the author’s country, but I still…

The resume on the blog says University of Lasi. Google returned something about Romania so is assume that’s where he is.

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#22

Post by [deleted] »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #18

Great write-up and a fun read. I was caught off guard by this note: > the delivery guy called me about a laptop: the custom configured M1 MacBook Pro that costed as much as 7 junior developer monthly salaries has arrived! I tried the MacBook Pro configurator and could only get up to $2300 USD (excluding optional software like Logic Pro). I’m sure the price and taxation are higher in the author’s country, but I still…

[deleted]

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#23

Post by alin23 »

nixpulvis wrote: post #12

Does the gamma solution lower the power use like a proper brightness reduction? And if so, by the same amount? Did you ever attempt to reach out to Apple about how this should be implemented on the new kernel? I would hope there's some forum for this kind of question still.

Unfortunately no, Gamma doesnt reduce the power consumption of the LED backlight of the monitor.

It may in fact increase power use a bit because rendering black pixels needs more energy to excite the crystals.

I haven't contacted Apple because I don't think they are interested in implementing such a thing really. I've written more about why I think that here: https://lobste.rs/s/2zajeu/journey_controlling_external_moni...

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#24

Post by kadoban »

digitallyfree wrote: post #13

DDC is great - I remember saving a Samsung 193P monitor (no buttons and controlled by a proprietary driver that only worked on WinXP) that had its brightness set unusably low by its prior owner. I also remember someone using DDC scripts as a KVM solution by switching the monitor inputs programmatically.

Ya I use DDC as part of a KVM, it works pretty well.

I have a usb switcher with a button, and then my desktop I have coded up to switch the input on my monitor when the keyboard appears/disappears (udev rules trigger that).

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#25

Post by IggleSniggle »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #18

Great write-up and a fun read. I was caught off guard by this note: > the delivery guy called me about a laptop: the custom configured M1 MacBook Pro that costed as much as 7 junior developer monthly salaries has arrived! I tried the MacBook Pro configurator and could only get up to $2300 USD (excluding optional software like Logic Pro). I’m sure the price and taxation are higher in the author’s country, but I still…

Dev says right at the top of the entry that they are writing from Romania. Quick Google shows an average software dev salary of 4800 USD per year. If that’s average, seems like 7x monthly of a junior salary checks out.

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#26

Post by alin23 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #18

Great write-up and a fun read. I was caught off guard by this note: > the delivery guy called me about a laptop: the custom configured M1 MacBook Pro that costed as much as 7 junior developer monthly salaries has arrived! I tried the MacBook Pro configurator and could only get up to $2300 USD (excluding optional software like Logic Pro). I’m sure the price and taxation are higher in the author’s country, but I still…

When I got my first job as a Junior Malware Researcher, I was earning $422 per month. That times 7 is exactly the cost of the MacBook Pro I got (1TB SSD, 16GB RAM)

Yes, I live in Romania, and salaries have been increasing a bit but they're still a joke for junior devs.

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#28

Post by superlopuh »

The Paddle mention is very interesting, I'd never heard of it before. I really hope they make the Sketch-like model an integrated part of the platform, I wish more apps used that revenue model, and I'd like to use it myself for some productivity utilities in the future.

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#29

Post by alin23 »

CodeIsTheEnd wrote: post #17

I haven't used Lunar ( https://lunar.fyi/ ), the app the author built, but it looks fantastic! Clearly great effort has been put into it! I really appreciate this class of application that exposes more hardware functionality to the end user. Flux (which may or may not be a direct competitor) is another great example, as is Halide, the pro camera app for iPhones. They're certainly not flashy, but they can be great qua…

Thanks! Your idea sounds awesome!

I had a great experience using SimplyCoreAudio for that task, I assume you probably already know about it: https://github.com/rnine/SimplyCoreAudio

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#30

Post by FireBeyond »

Apple seems to be making a lot of display related things difficult lately. This, and Display Stream Compression are two.

Just as high refresh and HDR were becoming really mainstream, Big Sur completely broke what was working flawlessly in Catalina (and it has not been fixed as of either 11.5, or the Monterey betas so far - and by completely broke, I mean does not work, at all, for anybody, not just 'some edge case').

With Catalina, my Mac Pro happily drove 2 27" 4K monitors in 10 bit color at 144Hz.

With Big Sur? I can run those same screens at 60Hz 10 bit, or 95Hz 8 bit.

I guess I just need to get a Pro Display XDR...

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