6 ms·

Can you explain? I have guesses but I don't think I understand.

ARandumGuy 5y ago
Many musicians have giant screens in their live sets, which display incredibly detailed visuals. When you're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not more) on a live setup, it looks really amateurish to have an orange dot in the corner of the screen. Yes, there are workarounds. But artists shouldn't have to deal with that when it worked perfectly fine beforehand. In addition, the more stuff you add to your setup, the higher chance that something will go wrong.
- dkonofalski 5y ago
  >But artists shouldn't have to deal with that when it worked perfectly fine beforehand. It didn't work perfectly fine beforehand, though. They just didn't care about how it worked before. Now, suddenly, they do.
- dkonofalski 5y ago
  Professionals who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a live setup are not going to be using the internal I/O of their Macbook/Mac Pro. They're going to have dedicated video output cards that would not be affected by this. Those cards are specifically for having 100% control over the output. The right call her for Apple is to allow users to give permission to specific apps to disable this but let's not start with the idea that pros are outputting directly from their computers without the right hardware.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - thepasswordis 5y ago
    >Professionals who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a live setup are not going to be using the internal I/O of their Macbook/Mac Pro. They're going to have dedicated video output cards that would not be affected by this. Those cards are specifically for having 100% control over the output. Have you ever worked in this industry? Because yes they absolutely are. The people building the video walls (renting them), and the people actually running the visuals are not the same people.
    - dkonofalski 5y ago
      Yes. I currently work in this industry.
      - thepasswordis 5y ago
        And you've never met a VJ with an old macbook pro?
        dkonofalski 5y ago
        Of course I have. A VJ with an old Macbook Pro isn't someone for whom this dot makes the display "unusable". If it did, then they wouldn't be using it because they could also have notifications, OS alerts, security prompts, or anything else that shows up on a display come up during their performance.
        ComputerGuru 5y ago
        Do Not Disturb/Focus is a thing.
        dkonofalski 5y ago
        Not the same thing. Focus doesn't prevent the OS from generating windows or alerts on top of your display content.
        ComputerGuru 5y ago
        You're not typically cloning your main screen but rather outputting to a second display (that doesn't have the focus). It would be very weird indeed for a notification to wind up on that display.
        dkonofalski 5y ago
        Weird but not impossible. The whole point here is that professionals who can't take that chance have always had to use a hardware I/O device because there is no other option.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Wow, this is one of the most misinformed takes I've seen in a while. I know a number of performers who use a Macbook for their visuals, and they absolutely just plug their machines into whatever I/O is available at their venue. I don't know where you're getting this idea that everyone just lugs around a rackmount AV machine, and if they don't they're not truly a "professional".
    - dkonofalski 5y ago
      We're not talking about a rackmount AV machine. We're talking about a tiny device that can output to HDMI. And, again, we are talking about situations where this orange dot would make the function "unusable". Those situations are not situations where a professional uses the built-in I/O and leaves things to chance.
      - palimpsests 5y ago
        there’s quite a few people here replying to you letting you know how there are indeed situations where A/V professionals have and are continuing to use built-in I/O. I have seen the same. A properly prepared machine is immune to the issues I’ve heard you describe in this thread (notifications, etc). It sounds like there’s something about all of these responses that isn’t resonating with you because I see a pattern of responding and letting us know our experiences are essentially invalid, for some reason. Are you able to speak to why that’s important to you? Why does this seem so far-fetched / unbelievable to you?
        dkonofalski 5y ago
        I think you're misreading what I'm saying. I have only been responding to people that are saying that the dot makes this setup "unusable". The machine you're describing is not possible without a dedicated hardware I/O device because the OS always has access to display devices and apps cannot override that. If the dot makes their setup unusable, then the situation prior to Monterey should also have made their setup unusable because the OS could have popped up an alert dialog at any time (or any kind of OS chrome). Using built-in I/O is absolutely fine in professional settings but not for settings where you need complete control of what's being displayed and that's precisely what they're complaining about. They never had completely control of what was being displayed. They were just OK with it because it either didn't bother them often or it wasn't a dealbreaker for whatever they were doing. If you need to know that you're only going to see what you want to see, you have to use hardware I/O. I've never said anyone's experiences are invalid. Stop talking down to me like a child and making things up.
  - ratww 5y ago
    > Professionals who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a live setup are not going to be using the internal I/O of their Macbook/Mac Pro Why not? The internal I/O is pretty good! Except for this issue, obviously.
    - dkonofalski 5y ago
      Because professionals can't take the chance that an in-app notification (from another app) or a menu bar or something else will end up in their output. We're not just talking about an external monitor here.
      - ratww 5y ago
        This is not really an issue with a machine prepared for live performances or presentations. Until now. Portability is essential for some people, and MacBooks have pretty reliable IO.
        dkonofalski 5y ago
        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.
  - kayodelycaon 5y ago
    I think you underestimate how many places do use the internal I/O. My tiny church has a single iMac doing both recording and running slides. Small concert venues aren't much better. Some of the conventions I've gone to ran everything in a room off a single laptop. (I've set up such things.) Concerts aren't much better. Only the largest events and venues have the kinds of "professional" setups you're thinking of.
    - dkonofalski 5y ago
      This isn't going to matter to a tiny church. A decklink is less than $300, and that's if you splurge. A church can get one for like $60. Again, we're talking about "professionals" vs., at best, prosumers and consumers. Those applications are not unusable because of a small dot.
      - rurp 5y ago
        I really don't understand why you are being so dismissive of many users, just because they don't meet your personal definition of "professional". This change makes some use cases objectively worse, and telling thousands of people to spend hundreds of dollars plus some amount of time to mitigate a change they didn't ask for is not a respectful position, IMO. I think this change would be fine as a default, but it should be configurable by the end user.
        dkonofalski 5y ago
        I'm not being dismissive and this has nothing to do with my personal definition of the word "professional". You mis-framing my position doesn't help this discussion at all. The point is that users never had control of the output on external monitors. This situation is exactly like the situation that's happened multiple times on every OS where someone discovers a way to do something that relies on some function that they either misunderstand or are misusing (think Y2K). Just because it hasn't bitten people in the ass doesn't mean that it's a good way of doing it. People in this thread have commented surprised that Apple hasn't run into this issue during internal uses by its production teams but the reality is that Apple's production teams don't run off the built-in I/O because that's not how you run a video system you need 100% control of. I agree that Apple should find a way to make this better (or at least hide it on secondary displays) but that's only a workaround. Today it's an orange dot. Tomorrow, it'll just be some other display indicator. The fact is that you can't (and have never been able to) control what displays from the OS on these secondary monitors. The fact that it's just now biting people in the ass is their fault, not Apple's.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    > The right call her for Apple is to allow users to give permission to specific apps to disable this but let's not start with the idea that pros are outputting directly from their computers without the right hardware. The unfortunate case with a preference is that as soon as you enable such a permission folks can force users to enable that permission to use their invasive software. The orange dot exists because applications have been abusing privacy by invasively using audio and visual recording to spy on people. The solution to this problem isn't very simple and while the orange dot is causing headaches the lack of an orange dot also causes headaches.
    - q-big 5y ago
      > The solution to this problem isn't very simple and while the orange dot is causing headaches the lack of an orange dot also causes headaches. If both options have a disadvantage, give users a choice which of the evils they prefer, for example in the pre-boot environment. P.S. I am of course aware that it is not typical for Apple to give users a choice.
      - munk-a 5y ago
        As per my comment - the unfortunate truth is that offering users a choice means denying users the freedom from being creeped on as every app under the sun asks for silent microphone access "for design reasons". We've seen how ineffective app permissions (that can't be selectively restricted by the OS as on Android) have been for iOS devices. Apps boot up and demand access to contacts, your camera and your microphone and if you refuse they quit out. It can be empowering to users to deny bad choices - since it prevents users from being coerced by malicious software (i.e. tiktok, facebook, instagram - not like virus laden software). That all said there is some legitimate functionality being lost with this decision.
        jcims 5y ago
        offering choice ~ denying freedom empowering ~ deny bad choices Just my opinion, but these linguistic contortions undermine your point. Providing users with a decision in which there is an asymmetry and/or incentives could be setting them up for manipulation. But i think there are ways to balance the asymmetry vs. just removing the choice. A simple report showing which apps were watching/listening along with screen time could be useful, for example.
  - indymike 5y ago
    > They're going to have dedicated video output cards that would not be affected by this. Those cards are specifically for having 100% control over the output. Um, no, how about the built in one worked fine, didn't require me to buy a very expensive additional piece of hardware. This change took away functionality that worked before the upgrade? > let's not start with the idea that pros are outputting directly from their computers without the right hardware. If professional means derives income from work, you would be wrong. If pro means works for an organization with unlimited budget, you would be right.
    - dkonofalski 5y ago
      >built in one worked fine It had the same problem that it still has. The OS can place items on the display that you don't want in the middle of a presentation/performance. The only thing that "worked fine before" is that you were ok with what the OS put there because it was rare for that to happen. >If professional means It means that a dot in the upper right hand corner makes the function "unusable". If that's the case, then a professional would not extend/mirror a desktop display. They make sure that they control exactly what is being displayed and you can't (and have never been able to) do that with macOS.
      - Dylan16807 5y ago
        > It had the same problem that it still has. It's not reasonable to say it's the "same" problem when they changed it this much. > The only thing that "worked fine before" is that you were ok with what the OS put there because it was rare for that to happen. So rare it may have never happened. So yes, it did work fine. Are you implying that's wrong? There's no way to make a bulletproof setup, after all. Maybe with an external device you get a glitched or blank screen instead of a notification, but any hardware or software could fail. Possible chance of failure is not the same as a constant 100% chance problem, and does not excuse a constant 100% problem.
        dkonofalski 5y ago
        >they changed it this much. They didn't change it much. They added an indicator to the existing OS UI when a recording device is active. That's the only change that was made. As I've said elsewhere here, they could have added anything to the UI in the past and it would have had the same effect. People just didn't care because that stuff didn't affect them. >There's no way to make a bulletproof setup, after all. No one is saying it needs to be bulletproof. If it did and that's important to your production, you'd have backups to switch over to immediately. You're taking what I'm saying out of context and arguing straw men. If a small dot on the screen makes things "unusable" for you, then your setup is wrong. If anything that you don't want on the screen that you didn't put there is important for you, then you need to create your setup to function like that and allow for that. All I'm saying is that there are people all over here, professionals or otherwise, who claim that a small dot on the screen is a dealbreaker for their ability to do their jobs. If that's the case, then they've been leaving their livelihoods up to chance because every OS has the ability to display things on an external display on top of a full-screen application. I'm glad some people were lucky enough for that not to happen but people whose livelihoods depend on that don't leave those things to luck.
  - EricE 5y ago
    use any professional audio interfaces like DANTE? Just activating DANTE causes the stupid orange dot to show, even if you are only sending audio OUT from your Mac to, say, a digital mixing board. There is ZERO reason to force the dot on every display. Restrict it to the display(s) also showing the menu bar and this becomes a non-issue. I can't believe anyone involved in this at Apple thought this was a remotely reasonable thing to do!
- baxuz 5y ago
  I don't get what's so bad about an orange dot in the menu bar? Hopefully they are running the presentation in fullscreen mode anyway?
  - EugeneOZ 5y ago
    It's rendered on the external screen also, even when there is no menu bar. For me, it's good, not bad. I’m sorry that for some people it means they need to do their job a little bit less careless, but the overall importance of this dot is worth it.

Many musicians have giant screens in their live sets, which display incredibly detailed visuals. When you're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not more) on a live setup, it looks really amateurish to have an orange dot in the corner of the screen. Yes, there are workarounds. But artists shouldn't have to deal with that when it worked perfectly fine beforehand. In addition, the more stuff you add to your setup, the higher chance that something will go wrong.

dkonofalski 5y ago
>But artists shouldn't have to deal with that when it worked perfectly fine beforehand. It didn't work perfectly fine beforehand, though. They just didn't care about how it worked before. Now, suddenly, they do.
dkonofalski 5y ago
Professionals who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a live setup are not going to be using the internal I/O of their Macbook/Mac Pro. They're going to have dedicated video output cards that would not be affected by this. Those cards are specifically for having 100% control over the output. The right call her for Apple is to allow users to give permission to specific apps to disable this but let's not start with the idea that pros are outputting directly from their computers without the right hardware.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- thepasswordis 5y ago
  >Professionals who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a live setup are not going to be using the internal I/O of their Macbook/Mac Pro. They're going to have dedicated video output cards that would not be affected by this. Those cards are specifically for having 100% control over the output. Have you ever worked in this industry? Because yes they absolutely are. The people building the video walls (renting them), and the people actually running the visuals are not the same people.
  - dkonofalski 5y ago
    Yes. I currently work in this industry.
    - thepasswordis 5y ago
      And you've never met a VJ with an old macbook pro?
      - dkonofalski 5y ago
        Of course I have. A VJ with an old Macbook Pro isn't someone for whom this dot makes the display "unusable". If it did, then they wouldn't be using it because they could also have notifications, OS alerts, security prompts, or anything else that shows up on a display come up during their performance.
        ComputerGuru 5y ago
        Do Not Disturb/Focus is a thing.
        dkonofalski 5y ago
        Not the same thing. Focus doesn't prevent the OS from generating windows or alerts on top of your display content.
        ComputerGuru 5y ago
        You're not typically cloning your main screen but rather outputting to a second display (that doesn't have the focus). It would be very weird indeed for a notification to wind up on that display.
        dkonofalski 5y ago
        Weird but not impossible. The whole point here is that professionals who can't take that chance have always had to use a hardware I/O device because there is no other option.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Wow, this is one of the most misinformed takes I've seen in a while. I know a number of performers who use a Macbook for their visuals, and they absolutely just plug their machines into whatever I/O is available at their venue. I don't know where you're getting this idea that everyone just lugs around a rackmount AV machine, and if they don't they're not truly a "professional".
  - dkonofalski 5y ago
    We're not talking about a rackmount AV machine. We're talking about a tiny device that can output to HDMI. And, again, we are talking about situations where this orange dot would make the function "unusable". Those situations are not situations where a professional uses the built-in I/O and leaves things to chance.
    - palimpsests 5y ago
      there’s quite a few people here replying to you letting you know how there are indeed situations where A/V professionals have and are continuing to use built-in I/O. I have seen the same. A properly prepared machine is immune to the issues I’ve heard you describe in this thread (notifications, etc). It sounds like there’s something about all of these responses that isn’t resonating with you because I see a pattern of responding and letting us know our experiences are essentially invalid, for some reason. Are you able to speak to why that’s important to you? Why does this seem so far-fetched / unbelievable to you?
      - dkonofalski 5y ago
        I think you're misreading what I'm saying. I have only been responding to people that are saying that the dot makes this setup "unusable". The machine you're describing is not possible without a dedicated hardware I/O device because the OS always has access to display devices and apps cannot override that. If the dot makes their setup unusable, then the situation prior to Monterey should also have made their setup unusable because the OS could have popped up an alert dialog at any time (or any kind of OS chrome). Using built-in I/O is absolutely fine in professional settings but not for settings where you need complete control of what's being displayed and that's precisely what they're complaining about. They never had completely control of what was being displayed. They were just OK with it because it either didn't bother them often or it wasn't a dealbreaker for whatever they were doing. If you need to know that you're only going to see what you want to see, you have to use hardware I/O. I've never said anyone's experiences are invalid. Stop talking down to me like a child and making things up.
- ratww 5y ago
  > Professionals who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a live setup are not going to be using the internal I/O of their Macbook/Mac Pro Why not? The internal I/O is pretty good! Except for this issue, obviously.
  - dkonofalski 5y ago
    Because professionals can't take the chance that an in-app notification (from another app) or a menu bar or something else will end up in their output. We're not just talking about an external monitor here.
    - ratww 5y ago
      This is not really an issue with a machine prepared for live performances or presentations. Until now. Portability is essential for some people, and MacBooks have pretty reliable IO.
      - dkonofalski 5y ago
        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.
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  I think you underestimate how many places do use the internal I/O. My tiny church has a single iMac doing both recording and running slides. Small concert venues aren't much better. Some of the conventions I've gone to ran everything in a room off a single laptop. (I've set up such things.) Concerts aren't much better. Only the largest events and venues have the kinds of "professional" setups you're thinking of.
  - dkonofalski 5y ago
    This isn't going to matter to a tiny church. A decklink is less than $300, and that's if you splurge. A church can get one for like $60. Again, we're talking about "professionals" vs., at best, prosumers and consumers. Those applications are not unusable because of a small dot.
    - rurp 5y ago
      I really don't understand why you are being so dismissive of many users, just because they don't meet your personal definition of "professional". This change makes some use cases objectively worse, and telling thousands of people to spend hundreds of dollars plus some amount of time to mitigate a change they didn't ask for is not a respectful position, IMO. I think this change would be fine as a default, but it should be configurable by the end user.
      - dkonofalski 5y ago
        I'm not being dismissive and this has nothing to do with my personal definition of the word "professional". You mis-framing my position doesn't help this discussion at all. The point is that users never had control of the output on external monitors. This situation is exactly like the situation that's happened multiple times on every OS where someone discovers a way to do something that relies on some function that they either misunderstand or are misusing (think Y2K). Just because it hasn't bitten people in the ass doesn't mean that it's a good way of doing it. People in this thread have commented surprised that Apple hasn't run into this issue during internal uses by its production teams but the reality is that Apple's production teams don't run off the built-in I/O because that's not how you run a video system you need 100% control of. I agree that Apple should find a way to make this better (or at least hide it on secondary displays) but that's only a workaround. Today it's an orange dot. Tomorrow, it'll just be some other display indicator. The fact is that you can't (and have never been able to) control what displays from the OS on these secondary monitors. The fact that it's just now biting people in the ass is their fault, not Apple's.
- munk-a 5y ago
  > The right call her for Apple is to allow users to give permission to specific apps to disable this but let's not start with the idea that pros are outputting directly from their computers without the right hardware. The unfortunate case with a preference is that as soon as you enable such a permission folks can force users to enable that permission to use their invasive software. The orange dot exists because applications have been abusing privacy by invasively using audio and visual recording to spy on people. The solution to this problem isn't very simple and while the orange dot is causing headaches the lack of an orange dot also causes headaches.
  - q-big 5y ago
    > The solution to this problem isn't very simple and while the orange dot is causing headaches the lack of an orange dot also causes headaches. If both options have a disadvantage, give users a choice which of the evils they prefer, for example in the pre-boot environment. P.S. I am of course aware that it is not typical for Apple to give users a choice.
    - munk-a 5y ago
      As per my comment - the unfortunate truth is that offering users a choice means denying users the freedom from being creeped on as every app under the sun asks for silent microphone access "for design reasons". We've seen how ineffective app permissions (that can't be selectively restricted by the OS as on Android) have been for iOS devices. Apps boot up and demand access to contacts, your camera and your microphone and if you refuse they quit out. It can be empowering to users to deny bad choices - since it prevents users from being coerced by malicious software (i.e. tiktok, facebook, instagram - not like virus laden software). That all said there is some legitimate functionality being lost with this decision.
      - jcims 5y ago
        offering choice ~ denying freedom empowering ~ deny bad choices Just my opinion, but these linguistic contortions undermine your point. Providing users with a decision in which there is an asymmetry and/or incentives could be setting them up for manipulation. But i think there are ways to balance the asymmetry vs. just removing the choice. A simple report showing which apps were watching/listening along with screen time could be useful, for example.
- indymike 5y ago
  > They're going to have dedicated video output cards that would not be affected by this. Those cards are specifically for having 100% control over the output. Um, no, how about the built in one worked fine, didn't require me to buy a very expensive additional piece of hardware. This change took away functionality that worked before the upgrade? > let's not start with the idea that pros are outputting directly from their computers without the right hardware. If professional means derives income from work, you would be wrong. If pro means works for an organization with unlimited budget, you would be right.
  - dkonofalski 5y ago
    >built in one worked fine It had the same problem that it still has. The OS can place items on the display that you don't want in the middle of a presentation/performance. The only thing that "worked fine before" is that you were ok with what the OS put there because it was rare for that to happen. >If professional means It means that a dot in the upper right hand corner makes the function "unusable". If that's the case, then a professional would not extend/mirror a desktop display. They make sure that they control exactly what is being displayed and you can't (and have never been able to) do that with macOS.
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      > It had the same problem that it still has. It's not reasonable to say it's the "same" problem when they changed it this much. > The only thing that "worked fine before" is that you were ok with what the OS put there because it was rare for that to happen. So rare it may have never happened. So yes, it did work fine. Are you implying that's wrong? There's no way to make a bulletproof setup, after all. Maybe with an external device you get a glitched or blank screen instead of a notification, but any hardware or software could fail. Possible chance of failure is not the same as a constant 100% chance problem, and does not excuse a constant 100% problem.
      - dkonofalski 5y ago
        >they changed it this much. They didn't change it much. They added an indicator to the existing OS UI when a recording device is active. That's the only change that was made. As I've said elsewhere here, they could have added anything to the UI in the past and it would have had the same effect. People just didn't care because that stuff didn't affect them. >There's no way to make a bulletproof setup, after all. No one is saying it needs to be bulletproof. If it did and that's important to your production, you'd have backups to switch over to immediately. You're taking what I'm saying out of context and arguing straw men. If a small dot on the screen makes things "unusable" for you, then your setup is wrong. If anything that you don't want on the screen that you didn't put there is important for you, then you need to create your setup to function like that and allow for that. All I'm saying is that there are people all over here, professionals or otherwise, who claim that a small dot on the screen is a dealbreaker for their ability to do their jobs. If that's the case, then they've been leaving their livelihoods up to chance because every OS has the ability to display things on an external display on top of a full-screen application. I'm glad some people were lucky enough for that not to happen but people whose livelihoods depend on that don't leave those things to luck.
- EricE 5y ago
  use any professional audio interfaces like DANTE? Just activating DANTE causes the stupid orange dot to show, even if you are only sending audio OUT from your Mac to, say, a digital mixing board. There is ZERO reason to force the dot on every display. Restrict it to the display(s) also showing the menu bar and this becomes a non-issue. I can't believe anyone involved in this at Apple thought this was a remotely reasonable thing to do!
baxuz 5y ago
I don't get what's so bad about an orange dot in the menu bar? Hopefully they are running the presentation in fullscreen mode anyway?
- EugeneOZ 5y ago
  It's rendered on the external screen also, even when there is no menu bar. For me, it's good, not bad. I’m sorry that for some people it means they need to do their job a little bit less careless, but the overall importance of this dot is worth it.