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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

#41

Post by [deleted] »

Teknoman117 wrote: post #33
FireBeyond wrote: post #30

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').…

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 liv…

[deleted]

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#43

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

stefan_ wrote: post #39
Teknoman117 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 liv…

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

> 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?

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#44

Post by mypalmike »

alin23 wrote: post #16
jareklupinski wrote: post #14

great work! > reading brightness, contrast or volume from the monitor fails about 30% of the time I2C over long lengths of wire isn't the sturdiest physical layer... I would expect the low level I2C handlers to retry a few times on no ACK received, but a retry_count of 5 might resolve most of the issues around a bit flipping on its way through the wire :)

Yes, retrying always fixes the problem. And for the purpose of getting the latest monitor values from time to time to keep the UI in sync, this suffices. I'm more surprised that I2C works at all over the long, thin Thunderbolt cable of my LG. Huge bandwidth going through it for video and the USB hub, lots of current passing through for charging the MacBook at the same time, I'm amazed it works so well.

Is it actually I2C over the Thunderbolt cable? I had assumed it was I2C just between the CPU and video hardware on the motherboard.

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#45

Post by breakfastduck »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #43
stefan_ wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> 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?

They can. This entire article is about how they implemented it on M1 macs. Did you read it?

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#46

Post by colordrops »

Funny, I just started playing with DDC a few days ago. I've got a work (Mac) and a personal laptop (Dell XPS with Linux) that I like switching between. I had a thunderbolt hub, but was getting tired of moving the cable back and forth, and it was also unreliable on the Mac, causing it to heat up and slow down on occasion.

I ended up just buying a pure USB hub with a switch, and running a persistent polling bash script on the Mac and the Linux machines that calls the appropriate DDC commands to switch the monitor input based on which machine the USB hub is switched to. It's fast and works great.

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#47

Post by ingas »

alin23 wrote: post #7
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #4

The XDR works quite well on the MacBook Air, no journey required. Only annoyance is that it has specific ideas which side is up or down when used vertically, and I always turn it the wrong way, first.

Yes, I should have probably written something about that as well. Apple vendored displays have a proprietary protocol implemented over USB so that macOS can natively change the brightness and volume. Lunar can take advantage of that as well as you can see here at `Apple DisplayServices`: https://lunar.fyi/faq#ddc So if you want to Sync the Macbook brightness to the XDR, or sync from one XDR to another, or just get mo…

> Apple vendored displays have a proprietary protocol

OMG. What will be next? Apple vendored flash cards?

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#48

Post by _abox »

stefan_ wrote: post #39
Teknoman117 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 liv…

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

It would be reasonable if Apple themselves implemented a way to control the display settings like that.

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#49

Post by nicoburns »

breakfastduck wrote: post #45
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

They can. This entire article is about how they implemented it on M1 macs. Did you read it?

It doesn't sound like it works very well

Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs

#50

Post by GekkePrutser »

alin23 wrote: post #26
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.

I know, we moved all our European call center operations there in my last job. The low wages are a big attraction for companies. I felt bad that we were paying so little though the people working there didn't seem to mind. For most it was their first job. But it surprised me that wages are that low.

Also, Romanians tend to have excellent language skills in most Latin languages and English so that helps a lot too. They're also really friendly in my experience. I would notice that when I walked around the office people talking among themselves would often switch to English when I was near them so I wouldn't feel left out. And they'd always ask me to join them if I went for lunch alone. And I'm not even a manager :) I was just there to do the technical side.

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