$99 to receive an update? sounds like a scam...
That $99 price is for the Sketch program. The creator (Alin) just wanted a subscription model similar to it. The pro version of Lunar is $23 for a year of updates and support.
The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs
81–90 of 188 posts
Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs
#82I wouldn't be surprised if Apples ultimate goal was to control the monitor playback ecosystem and implement DRM such that they could get a cut of any medimedia you consume through your Mac. They'd 'curate' the content to prevent you know piracy, or whatever.
Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs
#83Funny, 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…
If you get bored of the polling, there is a tool that does this in an event driven way: https://github.com/haimgel/display-switch/ https://haim.dev/posts/2020-07-28-dual-monitor-kvm/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24357308
Nice thank you. I was originally using udev and launchd to drive actions based on events, but they took up to 10 seconds to switch. A purpose built tool would like the ones you linked I assume would not have that problem.
Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs
#84It's appalling that something like this necessary.
Controlling external displays via DDC was never supported, and only works even on Intel Macs via a "private," undocumented API. It's neither appalling nor even surprising that this wasn't prioritized for the M1 kernel, and it is likewise reasonable that some more reverse engineering would be required.
I know it’s not how it’s supposed to work, but I think once an API is used in real world, and sees useful applications that some users rely on it day to day, it should be seen as “public”.
I never heard of Lunar before but completely understand the use case, all the more so it doesn’t seem Apple is interested in filling that gap outside of its pro display.
Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. The…
> the people working there didn't seem to mind
It's good to remember that, for those people, this is the best job they could get!
Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs
#86Earlier 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.
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.
Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs
#87IMO, this is just proof that WFH productivity is a failure.
No company with a pulse could be this incompetent.
Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Controlling external displays via DDC was never supported, and only works even on Intel Macs via a "private," undocumented API. It's neither appalling nor even surprising that this wasn't prioritized for the M1 kernel, and it is likewise reasonable that some more reverse engineering would be required.
From other comments, it would appear that they did used to support this and only cut it out since Catalina?
It works through at least Big Sur on Intel. Maybe it was previously documented and they pulled the docs around Catalina's release, but this would be the first I've heard of that in at least a year of active interest in the topic, and that makes it difficult to credit on pure assertion. There are almost a hundred comments in this thread, and it's close to midnight here; do you mind linking those to which you refer?
Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It always blows my mind when I compare the value of my company's MacBook Pros to the salaries of our offshore developers. Having said that, when I look at a fully spec'd out Mac Pro, it comes out to $54,000. Add in a fully spec'd out Pro Display XDR, which is another $7k, and that's $61k. According to levels.fyi, L3/E3/ICT2 SWEs at Google/Facebook/Apple get a salary of ~$130k, so just under 6 months of an American ju…
I didn't actually believe you, until I saw that you can spec it with 1.5TB of memory. So yeah, that's where most of the cost comes in.
Re: The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs
#90Great 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.
Can you rent an apartment for like $100/mo or less there?