[HN Gopher] Apple added an orange dot that's a showstopper for l... ___________________________________________________________________ Apple added an orange dot that's a showstopper for live visuals Author : radley Score : 209 points Date : 2021-12-20 17:31 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (cdm.link) (TXT) w3m dump (cdm.link) | lwansbrough wrote: | The number of people in this thread not understanding the | importance of not having any interference in live visuals makes | me believe this won't be fixed by Apple. Absolutely baffling. | garyrichardson wrote: | Can you explain? I have guesses but I don't think I understand. | ARandumGuy wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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] | munk-a wrote: | > 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 wrote: | > 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. | EugeneOZ wrote: | Malware can make this choice for you and you will never | know about that. | munk-a wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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. | munk-a wrote: | I hope this isn't nitpicking but I don't consider those | linguistic contortions. A minimum wage empowers workers | to receive an (ideally) living wage while, on the | surface, restricting them from being able to sell their | time for ever lower amounts. There are a lot of debates | as to the efficacy and justifiability of things like a | minimum wage but it's important to remember that any | prevailing sense of the linguistic definitions you might | assume is a local effect. Comparing American vs. European | definitions of empowerment is a pretty clear | demonstration of this where in Europe the ability to live | a good healthy life is paramount and restrictions that | promote that life style are generally considered | empowering. | | I do think there might be some other solutions but I also | think the orange dot is, for almost all users, a | perfectly acceptable solution - visually obvious without | being obnoxious. | q-big wrote: | > but I also think the orange dot is, for almost all | users, a perfectly acceptable solution - visually obvious | without being obnoxious. | | That is why the user should be given the choice to | _activate_ it: make it a sensible default choice in the | respective settings. The experienced users who know what | they do should be empowered to make a different choice if | it makes sense for their workflow. | indymike wrote: | > 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 wrote: | >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. | thepasswordis wrote: | >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 wrote: | Yes. I currently work in this industry. | thepasswordis wrote: | And you've never met a VJ with an old macbook pro? | Groxx wrote: | You meet professionals not taking professional | precautions in every field. It doesn't mean they're in | the right, it means they're playing fast and loose and | hoping common stuff doesn't bite them and their clients. | dkonofalski wrote: | 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. | nathancahill wrote: | Reminds me of this: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfUeUCErCmQ | myself248 wrote: | Airplane mode nearly prevents almost all the triggers | that would cause such things to pop up. I thought this | was standard VJ advice; turn on airplane mode before a | performance. | | Doesn't fix the orange dot, but it helps pretty much | everything else. | dkonofalski wrote: | >helps pretty much everything else | | Helps but doesn't solve. There is nothing that you can do | to remove the OS's ability to put things on a secondary | display outside of your control. The only option is to | have a separate I/O controller. | radley wrote: | > because they could also have notifications, OS alerts, | security prompts | | Most will be using HDMI out as a second screen, so those | won't show up | | > Yes. I currently work in this industry | | What do you use for video output? I'm a hobbyist and used | iPad & TouchViz with HDMI plug. I just picked up Resolume | and planned to use a Mac Mini M1 w/ Monterey and HDMI | out. I'm livestreaming, so I'm only doing 1080. | ComputerGuru wrote: | Do Not Disturb/Focus is a thing. | dkonofalski wrote: | Not the same thing. Focus doesn't prevent the OS from | generating windows or alerts on top of your display | content. | ComputerGuru wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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. | ComputerGuru wrote: | Perhaps professionals with a lot of money riding on it, | sure. But for prosumers, the status quo was good enough | that breaking it cannot be justified by "oh it wasn't | perfect so who cares?" | dkonofalski wrote: | That wasn't the status quo. The OS has always been able | to display things on top of full-screen apps and apps | cannot change that. | honkdaddy wrote: | There's a _massive_ difference between an unremovable and | highly visible orange dot and the small chance that | "notifications, OS alerts, security prompts etc." could | pop up. I think it's undeniable that there's a contingent | of people who play live video who will be negatively | affected by this change and I'm surprised so many in this | thread are implying that if they don't own a playback | card, their experience doesn't matter. | dkonofalski wrote: | No one is saying their experience doesn't matter. Stop | arguing straw men. All anyone is saying is that, if | having the ability to control the output that's going to | a display outside of the OS is a necessity, then you need | a hardware controller. That has always been the case. The | OS can always interfere with a full-screen app on a | secondary display. The only reason there's any issue now | is that these people disagree with _this specific feature | of the OS_. It 's not "unremovable". Just turn off | whatever recording device is active and it'll go away. If | you're a bit more tech savvy, turn off SIP and change it | yourself or go to github and built the utility that | already exists to get rid of it. | | All anyone in this thread is implying is that, if this is | important to you, you need to have the hardware to do it. | If Microsoft tomorrow decided to put a Windows logo in | the corner of the screen just to say "fuck you", you | would still be unaffected with a hardware I/O device. | kayodelycaon wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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. | smoldesu wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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. | barneygale wrote: | My friend has VJ'd large clubs and music festivals on her | ancient Macbook without ever using an external display | driver. | | There's not a lot of money in the scene for most people. | They use the software/hardware they have. Hiding | notifications and colourful dots from the OS shouldn't | really be an issue. | palimpsests wrote: | 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? | unethical_ban wrote: | Yeah, I'm watching this unfold and I don't see how the | other person can't see the problem. | | Someone spends a thousand, or two thousand dollars on a | high-end device with state-of-the-art ports and graphics | and processing, and because "OS notifications sometimes | pop up if you don't disable them", real pros buy a piece | of middleware hardware that does nothing but filter out a | software issue? | dkonofalski wrote: | Yes, exactly. If you need to be able to control what goes | to the display and take that away from the OS, you need a | hardware I/O device. | | OS notifications and alerts are just examples of any | number of things that could be displayed that are | unwanted. In situations where something like that makes | the setup "unusable", you have to have a hardware I/O | device. There's not another option. | dkonofalski wrote: | 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. | gwd wrote: | > _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._ | | This seems to be the crux of the disagreement in this | thread. You're equating the effect of two quite different | things: | | 1. A pop-up that's quite intrusive / potentially | embarassing, but has (say) a 1/100 chance of happening | any given show, and in any case would only be there for a | few seconds; the rest of the show would be unaffected | | 2. A small but intentionally noticeable orange dot that's | there 100% of the show for every show | | Yes, if you want to be a top level professional, then you | can afford to have neither. But I can certainly imagine | people / venues where #1 would be considered a normal | cost of doing business, but #2 would not. | | That said, if fixing them both is as easy and inexpensive | as people in this thread seem to think, then the small | "nudge" by #2 to get them to fix #1 is probably | beneficial for the ecosystem overall. | umanwizard wrote: | The point you're not addressing is that in practice, | before this change, people usually had close enough to | full control, except for maybe a <1% chance of something | going wrong. The OS can, in principle, do anything, but | in reality it usually doesn't. Whereas with this new | orange dot, there is a 100% chance of it being there. | | It's easy to imagine a pretty wide range of people for | whom a tiny theoretical risk of the OS going crazy and | showing some kind of notification even with notifications | disabled is acceptable, but an orange dot that's 100% | deterministically guaranteed to be there isn't. | ratww wrote: | _> 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 wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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. | EugeneOZ wrote: | 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? | dkonofalski wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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 wrote: | Not necessarily. It shows up on whatever the active | monitor is. | ratww wrote: | 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 wrote: | >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 wrote: | 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. | | 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. | littlestymaar wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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. | tick_tock_tick wrote: | You're all over this thread trying to gaslight people | into believing a constant dot is somehow the same a rare | chance at an OS notification that you forgot to disable. | People plug there mac directly into shit and that worked | fine; now it doesn't end of story. | ratww wrote: | _> 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 wrote: | >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. | baxuz wrote: | 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? | tedunangst wrote: | I think people are struggling to reconcile "spend $100k on a | presentation setup" and "can't afford $200 output card". | tetha wrote: | But is that actually different from trying to get any budget | for e.g. IT security software, redundancy, backups or any | kind of nonfunctional investment in an IT network - | especially in smaller shops? Putting up my ignorant penny- | pincher hat, I cannot see a difference between a hardware | output card and an HDMI cable in a laptop, at least until | apple put an orange dot there. So let's rather buy more | flyers. | | I'm very much not surprised at saving the wrong pennies. | downWidOutaFite wrote: | While other people are struggling with "it's fine when Apple | forces us to jump through a bunch of undocumented hacks and | workarounds to keep doing what we bought the machine for" | labcomputer wrote: | And still others are struggling with, "How do you not | understand that Apple is trying to balance the trade-offs | between 'allow an app to do anything' and 'protect users | from malicious software'?" | | I think they could do a better job (e.g., a simple setting | in System Preferences that turns off recording | notifications), but to pretend that they're doing this for | no reason at all or that the orange dot is a show-stopper | for _a significant fraction of_ their user-base is just not | making an argument in good faith. | munk-a wrote: | There still exists the classic solution of offsetting video | output through a projector (or on a monitor using vertical | alignment) to place the dot offscreen right? If we're talking | about people dropping tens of thousands of dollars on equipment | that feels like a modestly acceptable short term solution. | phnofive wrote: | I didn't understand the importance and came to this thread to | learn. Please don't assume a lack of prior knowledge reflects | an ongoing lack of curiosity. | jaywalk wrote: | Learning is perfectly fine. But there are people here who | have it explicitly explained to them, and continue on with | the "so what? It's just an orange dot" line of thinking. | AstroDogCatcher wrote: | Suggesting the explanation provided is insufficiently | clear, no? | jaywalk wrote: | Looking through the comments, I can't imagine how else it | could possibly be explained or clarified further. For | this use case, it is assumed that the software producing | the visuals has full control over the output. An orange | dot that cannot be removed means that the software does | not have full control over the output, which is | unacceptable. It's that simple. | nightpool wrote: | From a sibling thread: EDIT: As far as | I know, the best long-term answer here is for apps that | present visuals full screen to "capture" the external | display for exclusive use using an API (https://developer | .apple.com/documentation/coregraphics/14562...), but | that's not super common right now. | | Sounds like it's totally possible for the software to | have full control over the output if it wants to, this | only affects software that runs in a "standard" | fullscreen mode without explicitly taking full control | over the output. | breakfastduck wrote: | Hence making every existing live visual software | available on the mac redundant, unless the update and | make this change. | | It's not a complicated situation to grasp and it is | seriously significant. | gjs278 wrote: | EugeneOZ wrote: | It is not just an orange dot for me. It's a very important | orange dot and I'm very thankful for this dot. | CoastalCoder wrote: | I would hope (guess?) that Apple uses other sources of | information when trying to cater to the creative | professionals. | | (I'm assuming Apple still makes an effort for this segment, | but I really have no idea how they do things these days.) | zenexer wrote: | If I'm forced to choose between live entertainment and a great | privacy feature like this one, the privacy feature is going to | win. Artists will get creative and find workarounds; other | companies will fill the gap, and other commenters have pointed | out cheap hardware that solves this problem. | ratww wrote: | Apple is absolutely not forced to choose. They can provide a | way to override it. Considering how much they love to boast | about this market, I'm pretty sure they'll change it. | jaywalk wrote: | You're clearly not involved in live entertainment, so you're | not making that choice. It's also a false choice, because | Apple could easily preserve privacy while also making their | hardware usable for live entertainment again. Just a couple | ideas off the top of my head would be to allow the user to | choose which display(s) have the indicator (defaulting to all | displays, of course) or adding an additional permission level | for applications that are already approved for audio input to | not show the indicator. | | It doesn't have to be an all or nothing situation if Apple is | even remotely interested in addressing this use case, which | they should be. | labcomputer wrote: | > if Apple is even remotely interested in addressing this | use case, which they should be. | | I think the reality is that the set of people who want the | feature and who would use it in a live professional | environment with expensive hardware _and_ who can 't afford | a $100 dongle from BlackMagic is so close to the null set | that Apple is unlikely to care. | | For goodness sake, _Apple 's own_ HDMI dongle costs $70. | Just spend $30 more and buy the BM one instead. | armchairhacker wrote: | Shouldn't these things be in hardware? Like I know that macbooks | have a green LED next to the camera if they are recording. | | I'm sure there's a way to hack the screen to make the orange dot | disappear. At the least you can intercept the output buffer. | nojito wrote: | How would you disable this without compromising security/privacy? | jackson1442 wrote: | Add another checkbox next to each app in Preferences -> | Security & Privacy -> Privacy -> Microphone (and camera) that | allows the app to bypass the indicator. Users would have to go | to this pref pane and enable that checkbox themselves (with | instructions from the app, probably). | kevincox wrote: | In addition to allowing the users to remove specific | applications from the dot you could let the user decide which | displays the dot appears on. | capableweb wrote: | You allow the user to keep a whitelist of apps they already | knew will be using the microphone/line-in/whatever audio source | and when those apps use any audio source, don't display the | orange dot. | fouric wrote: | The article addresses this: | | > And it does seem there could be a fix here; you already have | to give applications permission to access your mic and camera, | and it seems there should be some way for an app to disable the | orange dot once its permissions are elevated with opt-in by the | user. | | MacOS already has security mechanisms meant to prevent malware | from e.g. installing a rootkit into the kernel, or reading | keychain passwords - one of those mechanisms could be used to | prevent programs from altering whatever setting controls "show | orange notification dot" (which, in a sane design, would be | opt-out - or, opt-in to "disable orange notification dot) on | their own. | nojito wrote: | How does that prevent malicious grants of permission? | | This was a problem with webcams before the light was | hardcoded to the power supply. | fouric wrote: | Hmmm, can you clarify what you mean by "malicious grants of | permission"? Do you mean when a piece of software (malware, | in this case) tells the OS to give it permission to hide | the dot, when the user hasn't consented? | | If that's the definition you're using - MacOS already | guards against that, simply because the orange dot is | already being implemented in software in a way that is | difficult/impossible for ordinary programs to change (but | is controllable by the OS). And, from what I understand, | MacOS already has many settings that are OS-controlled - | you can't do certain things without authenticating yourself | to the OS, and neither can software on your behalf. | | If that's not quite right, I'll have to ask you to | elaborate on what scenario you're thinking of. | togaen wrote: | I don't understand what the problem is. Why does it matter | whether a little orange dot is there or not. | [deleted] | jaywalk wrote: | The orange dot will appear on the live output, which is fed to | an LED video wall/projector/etc. on or near a stage. Completely | unacceptable, and makes Macs entirely useless for live visuals. | chrisseaton wrote: | > Completely unacceptable | | But.... why? Why would a little orange dot offend anyone? | the_fury wrote: | Because if I had wanted a little orange dot to be shown to | everyone during my performance, I would have put it there. | jaywalk wrote: | Because it's not part of the visuals, which should be the | only thing on the output. Maybe it's because I've actually | run systems for this exact purpose, but I'm kind of | surprised at how difficult this seems to be for some to | grasp. | chrisseaton wrote: | But I don't understand why they're mirroring their | _desktop_ to some kind of visual display system? Wouldn | 't they be using something like a DeckLink for this use- | case? | | Monitor outputs are for monitors - if you want an | application-specific video output you can get that and it | won't be a desktop so it won't have this problem. | | If you mirror your desktop then yeah... you get whatever | desktop UI chrome is on your desktop. | jaywalk wrote: | They're not mirroring their desktop. It's a secondary | display running a full screen application. | | That's just how this stuff works. Sure, you could use | something like a DeckLink, but the vast majority of | things like this just use a monitor output. | ehutch79 wrote: | Because most of these displays look like monitors to your | system. Using the existing rendering pipelines to a full | screen monitor is far easier, and less expensive then | custom hardware just to move pixels that the built in | graphics card is more than capable of | chrisseaton wrote: | Ok so it's a quick hack for video output but they're | going to run into problems like this. And for example any | notifications, system updates, Launchpad, whatever, would | also appear. That's how you end up with goofy things like | a sign with a Windows 'need to update now' message. If | they were doing it properly with a production video | output they wouldn't have this problem. | jaywalk wrote: | You can call it a "quick hack" if you'd like, but I can | assure you that all of the potential pitfalls you mention | are taken into account by the people who setup and run | these systems. | | You're not going to "gotcha!" people who have actually | done this stuff. | dkonofalski wrote: | Thank you! It's crazy to me that anyone that would | consider themselves a professional would mirror their | desktop for the use cases these people claim to be using. | "Mariah Carey playing in front of millions on NYE"? Gimme | a break. No one is mirroring the desktop from their | Macbook for that performance. | ratww wrote: | Nobody is mirroring their desktop... | egypturnash wrote: | Artists expect a blank canvas, with nothing there they have | not put there. | quadrangle wrote: | You seem to be confusing two things (well, really just you're | being hyperbolic): | | TRUE: the dot BEING THERE is useless (and undesireable and | bad) | | FALSE: the dot makes Macs useless for live visuals | | Just because something is 100% bad design, bothersome, 100% | negative, and should never have been allowed to happen, does | NOT mean it destroys a product entirely. | | When Mini Coopers were made with the stupidest turn signals | ever (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28661282) that | doesn't make the car undrivable even though there's | ABSOLUTELY no defense of the design. | jaywalk wrote: | The dot absolutely makes Macs useless for live visuals. | Nobody worth a damn would _ever_ use a system that required | an orange dot to appear on the live output. | carlhjerpe wrote: | So don't update until it's fixed, I don't see the huge | issue. You wouldn't update your pro live visual system on | the day of release right? | quadrangle wrote: | You can use them for live visuals. You WON'T (and I don't | blame you), but you CAN. "Absolutely useless" obviously | is _intended_ to be "I'm super mad about this" rather | than literally true. | nullandvoid wrote: | You're picking a really odd hill to die on. Is it that | hard to imagine that having random imagery (orange dot) | showing on your live work (which a client has paid $$$ | for) is a complete no-go for professionals (if you ever | want to get hired again)? | quadrangle wrote: | Just mildly objecting to the strength of someone's | hyperbole is life-threatening? | | Just because other people are feeling super aggravated | about this completely stupid design decision by Apple | doesn't mean it's valid to project that on me as if I'm | fighting some battle. | | I don't really care about this. I get it, people are | upset about a totally indefensible, short-sighted design | that impacts people's ability to use Macs to do | presentations that will be accepted in professional | contexts. | | Yes, there's some sense to the hyperbole that says | something is "useless" when reality is "this will not be | accepted in my field of work". It's still hyperbole. | Admitting that it's hyperbole doesn't mean accepting the | bad design. | cool_dude85 wrote: | You're just making a semantic quibble. What if the screen | was half taken up by goatse and the other half what you | wanted to display? Surely you CAN still use it for live | video. But you can't. | quadrangle wrote: | The quibble is people saying something similar to "this | orange dot is as bad as having half the screen taken up | by goatse!" and then when someone else says "it's not | actually that bad though, right?" they say "it IS THAT | BAD!!" And I'm like, "I get that you're mad, but it's | really not actually as bad as you're saying". That's not | a semantics debate. | recursive wrote: | I'll take a stab at this. | | This is like when you crash a car. Insurance company | considers it "totalled". But you can still drive it. The | cost of fixing the car is more than the value of the car. | | In this case, the negative effect of the orange dot | outweighs all utility of the product for the use case. So | it's useless in the sense that it's "worse than nothing" | by some metric. It's useless in the same way that a | shopping cart is useless for commuting to work. I mean, | TECHNICALLY, you could commute to work in a shopping | cart. But it would be worse than just not using it. | quadrangle wrote: | I think that's the point that people are objecting to. | | The orange dot doesn't _total_ the presentation the way a | totalled-car in a crash does, certainly not necessarily. | It 's NOT worse than nothing. It's not like a shopping | cart for commuting to work. | | The point of the replies here overall is that those | things are hyperbole. It's NOT about nit-picking the | language. It's "well, _technically_ , the car will still | drive in this case", it's saying that the orange dot DOES | NOT ruin presentations _that_ badly. You can ACTUALLY and | PRACTICALLY present with the orange dot. | | A better analogy: your nice car gets a rock through a | window with a noticeable hole and huge cosmetic crack. | You say "I can't drive this now! My car is useless! It's | totalled!" And people are like "Dude, it's not totalled." | And you say, "This is my professional car for business, I | can't show up with a cracked window!" and People are | like, "well, you could actually..." | | It's not like the software has a bug that inverts all the | colors, and people are saying "you could in fact do an | inverted-color presentation, it's _possible_ ". It's JUST | a little dot, and it's bad, but it's NOT as bad as the | hyperbole. | recursive wrote: | For some, it's not that bad. For some it is. | | I'll take you at your word that it's not that bad for | you. I'll take someone else at their word that it _is_ | that bad for them. It probably depends a lot on the | context. | quadrangle wrote: | If a car with a shattered window is _completely_ | unacceptable for some situation for some reason, a person | could say (still hyperbolically), "it might as well be | totalled". It's still stupid to say "it's totalled!" (and | that's not because I'm objecting to the insurance | definition). | | The orange dot being unacceptable to some people and | situations is never something I've doubted in the | slightest. | | Some people can't seem to grasp that it's perfectly | consistent to say "you're being hyperbolic, but your | objection is fully sound". It's as though after a crash | that results in a shattered window, someone says "it's | totalled!" and then if someone else says "it's NOT | totalled" they take that to mean that a shattered window | is no real problem. | | The orange dot is totally stupid, unacceptable in many | situations, the decision was atrocious, AND the language | people have been using about it is hyperbolic. | buildbuildbuild wrote: | My temporary fix has been to use an expensive hardware scaler | to crop the output when I run into this. You'd think Apple | would have plenty of production experts beta testing, I'm | sure this will eventually affect their own live events. | | Mic input is very useful for receiving timecode to keep | production gear in sync. | jaywalk wrote: | Yeah, I considered that when I was reading the article. If | your content can still look alright being scaled, that'll | work. There is definitely some content that won't be quite | so forgiving, though. | buildbuildbuild wrote: | You're right. To clarify I'm blacking out the top X | pixels to hide the dot, not scaling. | modeless wrote: | There's a built in accessibility zoom feature in macos, can | it also crop out the dot? | dangrossman wrote: | Did you read the article? | | "In our particular case, this means that this orange dot | appears on the stage output, which is totally unacceptable for | anyone using macOS as a professional video tool that sends | video output to a video projector." | | Imagine an orange dot appearing on top of every video billboard | in Times Square. | bryan0 wrote: | I'm sure Parent read the article, but the question is why is | this a big deal? For someone not in the live visual space, | it's not immediately clear that an orange dot in the corner | is "totally unacceptable". | | > Imagine an orange dot appearing on top of every video | billboard in Times Square. | | I don't think I would notice or care? | Accacin wrote: | It's their laptop, they are aware that something is | capturing their audio input, and they don't want to be | reminded of that in this particular instance. | | Frankly, it doesn't matter if you would notice or care. | dangrossman wrote: | > I don't think I would notice or care? | | Do you think none of the advertisers, or billboard owners, | would notice or care? | | Those are the clients paying the people that read this site | to create and run their live visuals. | | A 5 foot diameter orange dot on top of their ad is not what | they signed off on. There is money at stake. | | Whether you care or not isn't relevant. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | As a New Yorker, I'd love to have that sort of visual | feedback on the surveillance of Times Square, a public | space. And whether I care is quite relevant. | dangrossman wrote: | Live visuals aren't making a recording, they're reacting | to sound inputs in realtime. That's not surveillance. | | Times Square is already blanketed in actual surveillance | unrelated to live visuals on billboards. | | https://www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/timessquare/ | | https://worldcams.tv/united-states/new-york/times-square | | https://www.mylivestreams.com/webcam/times-square-live- | strea... | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _Live visuals aren 't making a recording, they're | reacting to sound inputs in realtime. That's not | surveillance._ | | Potato, potato. If a billboard has a microphone attached, | it's not unreasonable to put a visual tax on it. (Or the | economic tax of using dedicated equipment. Nobody is | running Times Square billboards off a Mac.) | gumby wrote: | > Imagine an orange dot appearing on top of every video | billboard in Times Square. | | Seems unlikely that whatever's driving the billboards in time | square needs to have the mic on...and that a tiny bit of | postproduction is a burden on the people making said videos. | dangrossman wrote: | > Seems unlikely that whatever's driving the billboards in | time square needs to have the mic on | | There have been many interactive billboards in Times | Square. Some of them are at ground level. The article even | mentions this use case: "Those applications don't even need | to be obviously using audio; live visuals often use mic or | line input to produce sound-reactive animation and the | like" | | > tiny bit of postproduction is a burden on the people | making said videos. | | What postproduction are you referring to? The dot is added | to the video output by the Mac, not added to the video | file. You can't edit it out. | ohCh6zos wrote: | I think I'd love it if every billboard scooping up audio | announced it was doing that. | gbear605 wrote: | If your billboard is recording me, I want you to add the | orange light. _Please please please please._ | gumby wrote: | > "Those applications don't even need to be obviously | using audio; live visuals often use mic or line input to | produce sound-reactive animation and the like" | | Why would anyone want to suppress a warning to the user | that they are being surveilled? | dangrossman wrote: | I can't make myself take this question seriously. | labcomputer wrote: | > What postproduction are you referring to? | | Crop a 20 pixel column? Surely we have hardware that can | do that in real time today... | quadrangle wrote: | Gosh, everyone who was about to be convinced to go buy a Big | Mac will lose their appetite! /s | [deleted] | philliphaydon wrote: | I still don't get it. | | 1) Who uses macOS to run a billboard?!? | | 2) As far as I can tell the orange dot displays in the menu | bar? Does it show in the full screen app??? | spicybright wrote: | 1. Have you never seen a billboard or tv screen | advertisement break before? 90% of the time it's running | windows, and you'll see a very zoomed in top left corner of | the desktop. | | It's absolutely not a stretch someone has a mac mini to run | these. | | That said, only a fool would upgrade to bleeding edge | software in this usecase. | philliphaydon wrote: | I've never seen any billboard or electronic advertising | running on anything running MacOS. The only time I can | think macs were used for anything other than the creation | of the content was when we used to put Mac minis into | broadcasters to deliver the content to. But we put | windows on them. | ggenoyam wrote: | About 10 years ago, I had a job with one of the largest | outdoor advertising companies in Times Square, running | several huge LED displays, including one that used a | camera feed for interactive experiences with the | audience. I don't know too much about the specifics, but | at the time I worked there, all of their screens, | including the one that used a camera for AR stuff, were | driven by Mac Pro towers running OS X. | | So while I can't say if this is still the case or not, in | 2012 many of the times sq billboards were being driven by | macs. | jug wrote: | Yes, apparently it does show in full screen too. | | https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/693969 | | Removing it in full screen ought to be the easy fix for | Apple. By the time you've started the app and are done | fiddlign with it while setting it up for production use, it | should no longer be a surprise that it's using the mic. | | Also, AFAIK apps don't use to autostart in full screen | (might even be against design guidelines) so there should | always be an opportunity to notice any spying in time. | philliphaydon wrote: | Wow I can't believe it displays on full screen content. | :| | khazhoux wrote: | I think the context is if you are using Mac to generate visuals | that get projected on a screen during performances. I guess now | you wind up with an orange dot in top right corner. | | So presumably you'd see a big orange dot in the right-most | screen here: https://i0.wp.com/www.grimygoods.com/wp- | content/uploads/2017... | olyjohn wrote: | Looks unprofessional IMO if you were watching a live stream, | and there was a permanent orange dot on your video. People may | be screen capturing using an external output... | | Would it bother you if Star Wars had an orange dot in the | corner the whole time? People want to make professional videos | and live streams, and not have a constant reminder that there's | a Mac somewhere involved in the video... and this has hosed | people's workflows. | eropple wrote: | Because when you are running video out to a 150" LED wall, that | orange dot is a very large dot. And even were it not, you are | not building your presentational elements around "having some | orange dot on screen". | | "I mean, jeez. They just left the mouse cursor in the middle of | the screen, what's the big deal?" | dkonofalski wrote: | Anyone outputting to a 150" LED wall will have a hardware I/O | card that allows them to control the output 100%. This | doesn't happen in professional settings, only in consumer | (and _maybe_ prosumer) settings. Professionals don 't leave | things like that to chance. | skeletal88 wrote: | To how many people are you going to tell that their | concerns aren't valid and their experiences are irrelevant? | Maybe it's you who is wrong, when so many people are | telling you about the real world problems and uses that | this update is going to ruin? | dave78 wrote: | I've been involved with several live productions in large | arenas where there were multiple very large LED screens (48 | feet wide I think) as well as being webcast to a | significant audience. The A/V budget for these events was 7 | figures. Several semi-trucks full of equipment for A/V. I | don't know if that's professional or prosumer, but it | seemed very professional to me. | | 100% of the computer graphics at these events came from PCs | and Macs with their default video output. Some even came | from the HDMI output on a Raspberry Pi. | | I worked a lot with the production companies behind these | shows and it seemed to be SOP to use a regular Macbook with | Powerpoint to drive the displays. | thepasswordis wrote: | Just want to echo this story. | | Maybe at the super bowl, or the opening of the olympics, | or at some major pop stars tour where _everything_ is | time coded and planned and is the same production every | night, sure. | | But at festivals? Clubs? Whatever NYE party you go to | this year? No. | dkonofalski wrote: | At festivals, clubs, and my own NYE party, a tiny dot in | the corner is not a dealbreaker and wouldn't make the | display "unusable". If it did, I would bring a dedicated | hardware I/O device. | thepasswordis wrote: | We go to different festivals, clubs, and parties I think. | dkonofalski wrote: | Then a small dot in the corner can't possibly be | considered a use-case where it's "unusable" because using | the computer with the default I/O in the manner you're | suggesting means that those people are also ok with | notifications, OS alerts, and _any other OS chrome_ being | OK on the screen. You cannot control the display of OS | functions on the built in I /O via an app. | | That being said, I just don't believe you. A 7-figure | budget with semi trucks full of equipment that couldn't | afford (or didn't think to afford) a video display device | is unbelievable if you want to suggest that a small dot | makes this unusable. | dave78 wrote: | > means that those people are also ok with notifications, | OS alerts, and any other OS chrome being OK on the screen | | All of those things can be controlled though, unlike this | new dot. I've had my personal laptop hooked up to one of | these huge screens with a live audience of 20,000. Yes, | you better be careful to close out your messaging and | Gmail and everything else. But also, since it's running | as an extended display and the program is running in | full-screen mode, the OS generally will not show the | things you mentioned anyway, in my experience. | | An orange dot would not have been tolerated in this | environment. "Unusable" may not be the right word, but | the people who set up these kinds of things are very | particular about how things look, and so is the client | who is paying millions of dollars. | dkonofalski wrote: | If the client is paying millions of dollars, then the | production should be using dedicated hardware I/O. You | saying "the OS generally will not show you things" admits | that it can and sometimes does show those things and | those would absolutely not be acceptable in a million | dollar production gig. That's why we use dedicated | hardware. | dave78 wrote: | I don't understand why you're so combative about this. | You say "professionals never do this", but lots of people | are telling you that sometimes they do. Perhaps it's time | to consider that your experience is not universal? | | In the cases I've been involved with, the computers | generating the displays came from the clients, though the | production company also used Macs with Powerpoint for | creating lower-thirds for IMAG. The client-provided | computers were running a custom software application | designed for displaying data on a secondary screen. I'm | not even sure if Decklink can even do that as the | software just expects to output to a secondary display | (it does not know anything about Decklink). | | Here is a picture of one such event: https://media.beam.u | snews.com/7e/1e/aecd818e4128ab6759358307... | dkonofalski wrote: | I'm not being combative and you're (I'm guessing | purposely) leaving out parts of my statements to try and | argue a point I've never made. I know my experience isn't | universal but, by definition, if people are saying that a | dot in the corner of the display makes their setup | "unusable" then their setup has always been unusable | because the OS has access to put things on their display | at any time. | | If the computers came from the clients, then the clients | didn't care whether something might pop-up on accident. | There's literally no way for someone on the production | side to prevent that with a computer that they don't know | the ins-and-outs of so it cannot be an issue so that's | not the type of situation that I'm talking about. | | I'm _only_ talking about the people who are saying that | this dot makes a Macbook "unusable" for the purpose of | display. That's 100% not true and anyone that needs that | level of precision, as a professional, uses dedicated I/O | hardware to keep exactly that from happening. | dave78 wrote: | > That's 100% not true | | I don't know what else to say. I work with people who put | on live shows for 20,000+, they use PCs and Macs to drive | the display WITHOUT Decklink or similar, and they would | be upset if there was a persistent orange dot on the | screen. If you want to split hairs about whether or not | that makes the new macOS "unusable" in these situations, | then fine, but in the environment I'm familiar with it | would not be tolerated. They would replace the Mac device | with a PC which doesn't have this issue because they | _would_ deem it unusable, even though it can technically | still display images on a screen. | | And despite your repeated comments on this article, it IS | possible to configure a PC to not show any notifications | for use in a live show, between a combination of changing | OS settings, closing unneeded programs, and using the | fullscreen APIs of the OS. This is something that can be | done ahead of time and tested. I've written software that | shows fullscreen on secondary displays on large | projectors for presentation-like purposes and I have | never had an OS notification pop up over the fullscreen | software on a secondary display, even on other people's | machines where they didn't take care to shut down | programs and turn off notifications. Other commenters | here seem to have similar experiences. | dkonofalski wrote: | You don't know what else to say and I don't know what | else to tell you. Those people would also be upset if | anything else outside of a dot popped up on their | display, wouldn't they? Or are they just against dots for | some reason? Hardware I/O devices exist for _precisely_ | this reason. They literally only exist to be able to | control what gets output _outside of the OS_. Just | because you personally never had an OS alert or something | else pop-up doesn 't mean it's not possible or that it | doesn't happen. It does happen, usually unintentionally. | That's why we have I/O devices. | radus wrote: | Here's what it boils down to: | | notifications = low probability | | orange dot = 100% | | The risk of an embarrassing notification got traded for | the certainty of the orange dot. | dkonofalski wrote: | It's not 100% unless you're using an input to record | audio and then it's there for a reason. 99% of the people | in these threads aren't going to see this during their | PowerPoints because they're not recording anything and | the 1% that do and care about the dot should be using a | hardware I/O device anyways because the OS can do a lot | more than just display a dot. Additionally, applications | can also fix this themselves by using Apple's APIs. | labcomputer wrote: | > I don't understand why you're so combative about this. | You say "professionals never do this", but lots of people | are telling you that sometimes they do. | | For what its worth, from someone who doesn't work in this | space, there's something really confusing to me: | | This thread is about professionals who: | | 1. Are displaying visuals at venues with million dollar | A/V hardware budgets. | | 2. For which an orange dot (or anything other than pixel- | perfect outputs) is a complete showstopper. | | 3. Who can't afford a $100 dongle mentioned upthread to | output pixel-perfect graphics from their Macs. | | I'm with you right up until point #3, but I'm really | struggling with the last bit. $100 doesn't even sound | like "prosumer" money to me. If $100 is really a show | stopper for your million dollar business, you need to | charge more. | dave78 wrote: | The root of the issue is that things were working fine | before this change for the particular use case of | computers hooked up to A/V equipment. Perhaps a $100 | dongle can fix it, but the point is that the $100 device | wasn't needed before - people were happy with the way it | was (again, for this use case - I see the value in the | dot for other use cases obviously). | | Furthermore, while I'm not an expert on these $100 | dongles, my understanding is that they do not present as | just another monitor (since that would defeat the | purpose). Thus, you cannot just show anything on their | outputs that you could otherwise show on a monitor, | right? My understanding is the application has to be | written specifically to output to the Decklink (but I may | very well be wrong on this) - if that's the case then the | $100 dongle does not fix every situation here since a lot | of things that get presented may not support it. | sixothree wrote: | How are you going to a 150" LED wall and not processing the | output? I think that's the part I don't get. | kfarr wrote: | Well they may be processing the output but the raw input | has an orange dot so at the very least this is additional | labor to configure additional custom processing. | dkonofalski wrote: | This is not true. If you're processing, you likely are | using hardware I/O so you're not getting the display | output, you're getting raw output. | Macha wrote: | What's the processing system going to do? Blur that side of | the screen? I don't think Photoshop context aware fill is | real time. And both are hacks that will lead to situations | of clearly wrong outputs | quadrangle wrote: | The mouse cursor on the side of the screen is stupid indeed. | But it doesn't make presentations impossible. I think all the | objections here are objecting to hyperbole rather than | defending the dot. | ehutch79 wrote: | Not presentations, Think big musicians/festivals. | quadrangle wrote: | Yeah, I get it. Not gonna be accepted in practice. | _Could_ be accepted though, it 's not literally useless. | Being not as bad as literally-useless doesn't mean | anything about the situation is _good_. | [deleted] | kinghtown wrote: | Visually distracting.. a loss of control in design.. a reminder | of Apple when you are displaying unrelated content.. A live | show doesn't need the visual art to have an orange dot. Im | surprised you can't see how that could matter. | david422 wrote: | If you went to the website www.apple.com and there was an | orange dot in the corner, how long do you think it would be | before Apple changed it? | quadrangle wrote: | Everyone focuses on the dot and can no longer listen to the | content of the presentation? /s | | My honest guess is that the author of the article is SUPER mad | about this out of some _principle-of-the-thing_ about how the | design shouldn 't do this, and they just ran with that in | writing self-righteous nonsense about how this makes | presentations impossible or something. | | It's about as bad as having the cursor show up on the edge of a | live presentation slide. | [deleted] | dangrossman wrote: | "Live presentation" like "the visuals on the video wall | behind Mariah Carey while she sings live for 10 million | people on TV", not "live presentation" like "your PowerPoint | presentation to your 4 coworkers". | | This is a news site for professional digital musicians and | animators. The kind of people that are in charge of making | the digital visuals behind a live performance like I | described. This is not a "principle of the thing" argument, | it's a "this update stops us from doing our job using Mac | hardware" argument. | dkonofalski wrote: | Mariah Carey's team is 100% using hardware I/O devices. | They will not be affected by this change. | quadrangle wrote: | Yeah, I get it. Apple's design is stupid and shouldn't have | happened. But obviously Mariah Carey CAN sing on TV with a | little orange dot. Obviously nobody _wants_ that, and in | practice nobody will accept it. But it remains completely | possible and would not completely destroy her performance. | | The hyperbole here is just so extreme. | dangrossman wrote: | If in practice nobody will accept it, then there's | nothing hyperbolic about the article. | dragonwriter wrote: | The degree to which people are whinging about the use of | "useless" to mean "customers who pay creators for this | work will not accept the result this imposes on it" as | opposed to "it is not theoretically possible to use the | device for this purpose with the misfeature at issue" | is... surprising. | eropple wrote: | If it were about ignoring their lovingly set font | overrides in their browser or their terminal, they'd sing | a different time. Which is perhaps indicative of the | empathy gap, but hey. | dmitriid wrote: | > The hyperbole here is just so extreme. | | You've never been near a show production, have you? I was | involved with an _amateur theater_ that had some | projections during one of their plays. Even they were | _very_ peculiar about what was projected, where, and how. | | One of the projections was a black-and white archive | footage. Yes thank you, I'd love an orange dot there, it | doesn't ruin it at all. | quadrangle wrote: | Honestly, I'm more interested in the way people aren't | willing to laugh about it. | | I mean, yeah, I don't want the dot there. It breaks the | fourth-wall in a way. But there's something to that too. | Society of the Spectacle and so on... | | It's FUNNY to notice how a little orange dot is taken as | such a profound threat. People could do well to reflect | on the whole context a bit. Our dependency on tech and | the way we depend on a few companies who force things on | us, it's all serious, scary, and absurd. And this orange | dot business is not the ultimate example of the problem, | it's a silly one, that yes, I acknowledge is a huge | problem for some people's jobs in practice. | | I've been around show production stuff, and I don't | respect the way everyone takes themselves so damned | seriously in that world. The dadaists were onto | something. | simonh wrote: | They take things so seriously because a lot of money, and | the livelihoods, reputations and careers of a lot of | people, depend on many, many apparently tiny details. | Particularly in live performances every show you get one | chance to get that show right. One. And then you have to | do it again, and again. But getting it right for the next | audience doesn't make it ok that you got it wrong for the | last audience. | quadrangle wrote: | Yeah, I get it. People can be really mad when systems | they rely on get messed up. It makes PERFECT sense that | people are really reactive about this awful design | decision and are saying hyperbolic stuff. The part that | doesn't make sense is the refusal to acknowledge that | it's hyperbole. Although, to be fair, when people are | triggered and reactive, we're rarely in the mood to | acknowledge such nuance. | dmitriid wrote: | In any production things go wrong in a million tiny | details. | | Anything that doesn't have a workaround gets thrown away. | And nope, it's bot a hyperbole. I've seen lamps discarded | because they couldn't be made work _just right_ , and | stage props removed entirely because they looked out of | place for that particular stage. | | "Something is shitty, let's laugh about it and continue | regardless" is what often separates people who don't care | from people who do. Unfortunately, seeing all the shit we | have to put up with daily, those people that do are in | the minority. | quadrangle wrote: | "Something is shitty, let's laugh about it" does NOT | inevitably require "continue regardless" | | The idea that you have to connect laughing with not | fixing things is evidence of being in a triggered, | reactive, threatened state. | | Did I ever suggest that the problem shouldn't be fixed? | | People who can laugh about something are people who | aren't in a state of threat. And yes, those who don't | care are less likely to be threatened. But we can also | find ourselves in situations where we are willing to | laugh and not be so defensive and self-righteous while we | _still_ care about things. | | In our outrage-driven society, that's the _real_ | minority: people who CARE and are also willing to laugh | and not be in a victim mentality. And to be clear, this | isn 't some fundamental feature like we simply are one | way or the other. These are states we can shift between, | and most people are shifting all the time. | fold3 wrote: | It mostly concern artists that present video such as for art | exhibition or VJ live shows I believe. Any unintended visuals | would kill the immersion, the aesthetics and looks | unprofessional. Like leaving the mouse cursor visible or UI | elements. | | I see that some people above suggested a solution with an extra | hardware device but even though a lot of theses creatives are | using macs, they aren't especially tech literate outside of | their field and have to make do with venue that can use quirky | hardware with sometimes very limited time to set up their | gears. | | This dot is a major pita for these users. | rainbowzootsuit wrote: | My interpretation from the article is that you might imagine | the external display output is a video wall for a concert with | a full screen visual show being synced to music or something, | thus the simultaneous audio capture going on. | GuB-42 wrote: | For the same reason why you may not want to see an orange dot | when you watch a movie in a theater and also the reason art | galleries don't put orange dots in front of artworks. | | It is a special case where Macs connected to a projector are | used to display live visual. The microphone is on, most likely | so that the visuals can respond to sounds, and you get to show | an ugly orange dot to your audience. | | Macs are used a lot in the entertainment industry so it is not | an insignificant problem. | treesprite82 wrote: | For a lot of the examples being given in this thread, like | billboards and movies, I'd actually welcome an orange dot | notifying me that audio is being recorded - since that's not | an expectation I'd otherwise have. Though this probably isn't | what Apple are trying to do, and would need to be enforced to | prevent circumvention. | | The initial example of live shows (specifically the subset of | which where the same device is being used for some kind of | audio input and visual output) is so far the most convincing | example because the orange dot is redundant there. | simonh wrote: | It's not being recorded, the Audi input is being used to | generate reactive video responsive to the audio track. | treesprite82 wrote: | I note "some kind of audio input" for that case. | Notifying of audio-recording billboards/etc. is a | separate case signalled by the dot (which I think could | theoretically be a positive, but isn't practically | achieved with just this change). | kube-system wrote: | From purely a privacy perspective, that is an interesting | comparison. Some art installations that record their | observers _do_ have disclaimers that recording is happening, | sometimes by law. | bena wrote: | That dot is there to let people know that there's a live mic | listening to them and possibly recording them in case they don't | want that, right? | | So basically, what this guy is saying is that sometimes he wants | to show an app that is listening to the audience, but without | letting his audience know that they could be recorded by his | application. | | Here's the crux of his issue. | | "In the interest of security and privacy, Apple on macOS Monterey | has added a prominent orange dot to display outputs when audio | capture is active. That renders their machines unusable for live | visual performance, though, since it's also shown on external | displays. Dear macOS team - we urgently need a fix here. | | The basic idea here is sound - to avoid software hijacking your | camera and audio input and spying on you, essentially, there's an | orange dot to let you know recording is active. But this | essentially makes the Mac unusable for live visuals, since it | impacts external projectors and LED walls and the like. (Those | applications don't even need to be obviously using audio; live | visuals often use mic or line input to produce sound-reactive | animation and the like." | | Here's where I feel he's being disingenuous: | | "Those applications don't even need to be obviously using audio; | live visuals often use mic or line input to produce sound- | reactive animation and the like." | | So they're not using audio, but may be using the microphone or | line input to access sound for "reasons". That's called "using | audio". He's trying to draw a distinction that doesn't exist. He | wants to make it clear he's using audio in a non-privacy- | violating way. And I believe that he is. I do believe he's a | good-faith actor who is just trying to use audio input to enhance | certain presentations. | | However, it has the same behavior as people who do not act in | good faith. This is a prime example of dipshits ruining it for | everyone. There can't really be an exception because then that | exception just gets used by the bad faith actors in the space. | | To solve his problem what he really needs is a monitor/projector | that doesn't show the top however many pixels required by the | menu bar. In a very amateur way, this would be accomplished with | a piece of electrical tape over the monitor. For a projector, | there could possible be a special lens cap that cuts off the | required area. Like a matte lens. | dangrossman wrote: | 1- I doubt anyone at Apple intended the orange dot to be | broadcast to everyone watching their television during a live | musical performance on SNL with visuals in the background. It | is not possible for the performance to be recording any of the | viewers, so there's no possible "dipshit" to be protected from. | | 2- The dot appears on secondary displays running full screen | video: there is no menu bar to crop off. You can only crop off | part of the visuals, or your visuals have to be lower | resolution to produce artificial dead area to crop. | | 3- Apple has never given any indication that they intend to add | indicators that someone else is being recorded by my computer. | The indicators are for the computer owner, to indicate that | software may be recording the owner without their knowledge. | The parties are all different than you're supposing. | dkonofalski wrote: | >during a live musical performance on SNL | | I promise you that the people who do those visuals for SNL | (and every other wacky scenario people are coming up with) | are not mirroring or extending their desktops. They're using | dedicated video hardware for this exact reason. | bena wrote: | Others have addressed 1. | | 2 - The dot essentially forces a bar. It's not an overlay on | the application's graphics. This is what is shown in the | images. So there is something to crop off. | | Not to mention, if it is known, it can be planned around. | This is exactly what television has been doing for years. | There are scan lines that don't get shown on screens despite | being broadcast. | | 3 - This is almost as disingenuous as the article. The dot is | there to inform the user of the device/screen that they could | be recorded. The audience during a performance _would_ | qualify as a user in this case. It 's basically an indicator | saying, "if you can see this, it's possible the device | showing this is recording your audio". That is completely | relevant for an audience. If you think it's not, then why is | it relevant for anyone else. There are thousands of excuses | one can use to justify hiding this information from anybody. | Once you are potentially violating _my_ privacy, it is | relevant to me. | [deleted] | foreigner wrote: | Easy - just incorporate the orange dot in to the design. Surround | the entire scene with orange dots and then it won't look out of | place. | asplake wrote: | Would this impact recording on Screenflow? I won't be upgrading | my main machine until I know for sure. | vbphprubyjsgo wrote: | This is yet another instance of the OS reuse problem, e.g., where | airports, banks, medical terminals, etc have all kinds of | unwanted features because the software is based on booting a GUI | OS desktop and using hacks to make it display the program. Not | valid engineering of course. | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | "Not valid engineering of course."??? | | Yes, it would obviously be much more "valid engineering" to | have each of these devices have their own custom, invariably | much buggier and crappier, OS. | _ph_ wrote: | I am all for features which help the user to control the users | privacy. Having a LED with the web cam for example is a very good | thing. Though it doesn't tell you what is accessing it and | recording you against your will... | | It totally makes sense to display those privacy notifications in | the desktop UI. However, when an app goes to full-screen mode, | the OS shouldn't interfere with the display by default. There are | plenty of szenarios, where the program needs to be able to | control every single pixel of the screen. | dkonofalski wrote: | >There are plenty of szenarios, where the program needs to be | able to control every single pixel of the screen. | | In those cases, there are hardware solutions for this. That's | not the default in any OS right now. Notifications and menu | bars cannot be disabled by apps, for example. They need to be | disabled from the OS level. | _ph_ wrote: | Of course menu bars are disabled by default in full-screen | mode, notifications can be disabled on Mojave at least. That | is the whole purpose of a "full screen mode", that the whole | screen content is controlled by the app. | dkonofalski wrote: | >whole screen content is controlled by the app. | | That is not the purpose of full screen mode. If that were | the case, then notifications and menu bars would be able to | be disabled by the app. They're not. They need to be | disabled or muted by the user at the OS level. | _ph_ wrote: | About which OS are you talking? On MacOS and Linux, a | program can go to full screen mode without any user | interaction. The last time I saw a powerpoint | presentation on Windows, it also didn't have a menu bar | or task bar in presentation model. So what are you | talking about? | dkonofalski wrote: | Let's say you're giving a PowerPoint and an app crashes | in the background (for whatever reason). PowerPoint | cannot prevent an OS alert from popping up on the screen. | macOS has functions to hide the menu bar in full-screen | apps but it does not have functions to stop other OS | chrome from appearing. | _ph_ wrote: | Yes, there are circumstances where the OS is overriding | the full screen mode of an application. Usually only in | the case of very significant events or user interaction - | like moving your mouse to the screen top will show the | menu bar on Mac OS. But all of this isn't shown | permanentely on top of the full screen app and only | triggered by special events. | dkonofalski wrote: | That's not the point. The point is that it can happen | during a performance unless you're using a dedicated | piece of I/O hardware. They give you 100% control over | what gets outputted. Just because people were ok with | what the OS displayed before doesn't mean that that it | couldn't. | _ph_ wrote: | We are talking about different things. Yes, you cannot | 100% prevent a dialog to appear without custom hardware. | And of course, even with custom hardware, the OS could | decide to disable it to stop output to it. | | But this isn't the point. So far, there were full screen | modes and the OS would honor those under regular | circumstances. When I run a Linux VM on a Mac, I can see | the whole Linux desktop full screen. I don't want MacOS | draw colored dots on top of my Linux VM. People probably | don't want yellow dots on their PowerPoint presentation. | dkonofalski wrote: | No, we're not. The only difference in what we're talking | about is that you were ok with the exact same thing as | now because you _liked /agreed_ with what the OS was | putting on the screen. Whether it was because it was rare | or uncommon is completely besides the point. This whole | thread is about people who are saying that the dot makes | the display "unusable". If that was the case, then any | other OS chrome would also make it unusable. | _ph_ wrote: | No, that is wrong. So far the OS didn't display anything | permanentely on top of a full screen app. It was only as | a reaction to user input and exceptional situations. | Especially (under MacOS), when the full screen app was | runninning on a secondary screen. I can only hope/assume, | I misunderstood the article or this is just a bug. | dkonofalski wrote: | No, it's not wrong. That's what I said. It still doesn't | do anything _permanently_. It only does it if you 're | using audio input actively. That's a reaction to user | input. You're enabling a recording device and that's what | triggers this OS chrome. Whether you agree with that is | irrelevant since full-screen mode has _always_ allowed OS | chrome. | _ph_ wrote: | That is something entirely different. When I said active | user input, it was a concrete reaction to a specific user | action, like moving the mouse at the menu area. There is | no such user action, which would be triggering a sound | recording. This is about running applications in the | background. According to the article, that would taint | the full screen mode constantly and not transiently as | the other actions. It is fully sufficently, if that | happens on the primary screen. | dkonofalski wrote: | Then you didn't understand the article. The dot is only | on-screen when an audio recording device is active. | _ph_ wrote: | I understood that. You are not understanding the problem | or pretending to. Imagine a powerpoint presentation | during a video conference. I don't want the presentation | overlaid by a yellow dot. There was no such thing like | that so far. At minimum, there need to be controls to | prevent that. | dkonofalski wrote: | And I'm telling you _yes there is_. You could still get | an alert from Steam logging in on your full-screen app. | You could get a Windows Visual C Runtime Error that pops | up on top of it. You could get a macOS notification or a | kernel panic report and it would pop up right on top of | your full screen application. Apps _cannot_ override the | I /O system of the OS. | _ph_ wrote: | I never claimed they can. But so far you can run an app | in full screen mode and unless a special event happens, | you won't get something on top of it. The audio indicator | is completely different, because as long there is audio | recording in your system, you don't seem to be able to | get rid of it. At no time. If nothing exceptional happens | on your system, the OS should allow full-screen apps to | run. So far, all OSes did so. | yjftsjthsd-h wrote: | Isn't that Do Not Disturb mode? | marcosdumay wrote: | Hum... What goes or doesn't go into a full screen app | should be controlled by the user at the OS, with no | involvement of the app. | | That still doesn't change the fact that the point in | making an app full screen is to give it control of the | entire screen (or an entire virtual one of your | choosing). | _ph_ wrote: | As a p.s. to my last comment: I just tried a silly Gtk | based tetris I had written some ago under MacOS: hit the | green maximize button and it goes completely full screen. | The only thing you still see is the mouse pointer - I am | sure there is an API to make that invisible too, if one | wanted to hide the mouse pointer. | | I have never ever owened a computer where an application | could not controle the whole screen. Yes, there are | situations, where the OS supersedes the full screen apps | input, but usually they are based on user interactions or | notifications (which can be disabled). | dkonofalski wrote: | >I have never ever owened a computer where an application | could not controle the whole screen. | | Yes you have. Every OS has chrome that cannot be disabled | in full-screen. You may not regularly experience that, | but it does. Imagine you're playing a video game and | Windows Update throws an error. That will be displayed | _over_ your full-screen game window. It doesn 't even | have to be originated by the OS. As long as the OS is | provided with an extended display, it has the ability to | put things on top of whatever your app displays. It may | not happen often but it does happen. That's the primary | reason why dedicate I/O hardware exists. | _ph_ wrote: | As I wrote in the answer to your other comment, I have | never claimed, that there aren't events that can cause | the OS to supersede a fullscreen app. But by default, the | OS does not display additional information on top of a | full screen app. And perhaps we should discuss the same | thing only in one thread. | muhehe wrote: | It's ok. Give it a few weeks, people will get used to it and | several apps will pop up on other platforms so you can pretend | you have expensive Mac. | yob28 wrote: | pahn wrote: | hm, i just tested this on my macbook and the way it seems to work | is certainly breaking live visuals, but at the same time does not | protect people from being recorded: if i start an audio recording | and then watch a film fullscreen, the orange dot does show, but | then vanishes (while still recording the audio). not sure if this | is intentional or a bug, but it would certainly render my | computer unusable for quite some work i do. audiovisuals almost | always are reactive to sound in one way or or another, so you do | record the ambient audio for your video or installation be able | to react to it. | mediocregopher wrote: | I'm all for shitting on apple, but does the orange dot actually | obstruct anything? It seems to just be sitting in the | notification bar being out of the way. | CharlesW wrote: | This is spelled out _very_ clearly in the article, more than | once. | [deleted] | buildbuildbuild wrote: | Visual artists often use secondary monitor outputs to display | media on projectors or large LED walls. Secondary outputs are | also commonly used in broadcast for keyed font overlays among | other things. | | Power users should be able to disable anything. | jjtheblunt wrote: | > I'm all for shitting on apple | | why? | 8bitben wrote: | This is a tough intersection between highly-visible privacy | controls and the ability for artists to use their Macs in live | performance situations where any overlays could be a distraction. | | In the Privacy menu in MacOS now, you can authorize applications | to do things like use locations services and record the screen. I | think it would be reasonable to include an authorization for | audio recording and bypass the orange indicator. Or they could | turn on the webcam green light when audio input is active? | Illniyar wrote: | No it's not. Enable by default. Provide a way to disable for | those who need it, done. | | It's just not apple's way to think users might want to do | things differently. | ridaj wrote: | This is desktops creeping towards an attitude, familiar on | Apple's phones, in which the user is essentially untrusted to | make security decisions. Because let's face it nobody seriously | audits the security of software going onto Macs. The loser is | the user's freedom to enjoy the computer as a true general- | purpose tool. | marcellus23 wrote: | You're assuming malicious intent where none exists. This | feature is a security gain for users -- previously there was | _no way_ to know if your mic was being used. Now there is. | It's giving me extra information I can use to make security | decisions, where previously I had none of that information. | | It's unfortunate it causes problems for some users, hopefully | a fix will be forthcoming, but I believe it's an oversight. | ridaj wrote: | I'm not saying it's malicious, I'm just saying it's a | trade-off. Fwiw I understand the trade-off and it makes | sense to me even as a Mac user. | marcellus23 wrote: | Fair enough. I suppose I would characterize it more as | Apple not trusting developers, rather than not trusting | users. | CoastalCoder wrote: | Maybe this makes more sense if we view this as involving | _three_ parties: Apple, users, and app developers. | | On OSX at least, some apps are developed by third parties | whose code isn't easily scrutinized by Apple or by end users. | | I think Apple's policy helps users navigate that situation | pretty well. But I also can't see any good reason to prevent | users from disabling that feature in a fine-grained way. E.g. | per app and/or temporarily. | snowwrestler wrote: | No it's not; this thread is full of solutions that power | users can apply to avoid or remove the orange dot. | | Apple not taken anything away. What they have done is change | a default. Since defaults matter most to the least savvy | users, skewing defaults toward security makes sense. Power | users can apply extra skill to change the default; that's | what makes them power users. | minhazm wrote: | The webcam light won't work if you're using a laptop in | clamshell mode, or even using a Mac Mini/Pro. I think the best | middle ground for this is to allow users to grant some | permission that allows the app to access the Mic without | turning the orange dot on. | jonny_eh wrote: | Or a simple toggle deep in the system settings: "Show | indicator when using a microphone or webcam". | tedunangst wrote: | Why would spyware not request this permission? | chipotle_coyote wrote: | I think the implication in the post was that the user would | be prompted to grant the permission, so they would have to | click "Yes" when the spyware asked for permission. | unethical_ban wrote: | Were this to be a permission, there would be no legitimate | use case where "hide microphone use indicator" would be a | required function. Anything that requires that should be | flagged immediately as hostile. | ly wrote: | I think the webcam light is completely controlled by the | hardware signal, so the only way to turn that light on/off is | by turning on the webcam itself, which I don't think is desired | either. | jahewson wrote: | I would not assume that is the case, if it's even possible. I | hope it is though! | | https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- | switch/wp/2013/12/18... | kayodelycaon wrote: | 2013... The T2 chips controlling the webcam didn't arrive | until 2017. | [deleted] | lolpython wrote: | This isn't good. Most of the live visuals I've seen are in a | dimly lit room with a black background. Often this is so that | it's hard to see the edges of the screen and the visualization | appears to be floating. Having an orange dot in the corner would | break the immersion for the audience. It's also going to be | larger when projected, maybe a couple inches in diameter. | skytreader wrote: | This is the first explainer in this thread that makes me see | the issue. All this time I'm thinking along the lines of "Okay | you're, projecting video in a wedding. Now there's an orange | dot on the screen. Boohoo." | | So, apparently, I gotta dream bigger. Like museum AVP or | concert/live performance/DJing type of live visuals. Yeah now | an orange dot _is_ a showstopper. | ComputerGuru wrote: | > And it does seem there could be a fix here; you already have to | give applications permission to access your mic and camera, and | it seems there should be some way for an app to disable the | orange dot once its permissions are elevated with opt-in by the | user. | | The obvious caveat is that a hacker w/ local access can do that | themselves to hide their system foothold, which is just par-for- | the-course when it comes to physically compromised machines... | except I'm willing to bet they're more concerned with "jealous | ex" than they are with professional hackers. | | Apple is trying to add features to protect against the | unprotectable instead of just acknowledging that at some point | local access means game over; the only way to do that is to make | it virtually unbearable to use the OS as a regular user (see UAC | in Windows Vista). | exabrial wrote: | Security Features aren't useful if they can't be disabled for | legitimate purposes. Instead they turn into Windows UAC prompts. | zwily wrote: | I think other vendors will start copying the dot, notch-style, so | pretty soon live performances without the dot will seem lame. | adolph wrote: | _I just updated straight from macOS Catalina to Monterey, and one | thing that 's really bugging me is the Microphone Usage indicator | in the top right corner. I have this app called "Background | Music" to help amplify the otherwise terrible audio of my | earbuds. I know it's using my microphone; I don't need this | constant annoying overlay. Anyone know a solution?_ | | https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/qhbt4n/how_to_disabl... | willis936 wrote: | Why is microphone and camera usage indicated through a software | stack onto a display? Shouldn't there be an LED tied to the power | in pin on these peripherals? | vintagedave wrote: | Yes! Just as there is for the camera, there should be a | hardware indicator for the microphone (perhaps enabled by | software for an external mic; ditto for an external webcam.) | | One of the best features on Macs for the past couple of decades | has been the small green light. They should add this, as | hardware, to iPhones and iPads. Software dots on the status bar | indicate to me that the OS people view it as a key issue but | the hardware folk haven't caught up to the issue yet. | formerly_proven wrote: | In the film editing space workstations use dedicated video I/O | hardware which fully circumvents the display/video stack of the | OS to be able to input/output exactly the pixels you want in | exactly the format you want (something that's essentially | impossible using OS facilities, much less in a cross-platform | manner). This seems like a very good application for those cards | (they're not particularly expensive, around 200 bucks [1]). | | [1] | https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/decklink/techspecs... | (4K, PCIe) | https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/ultrastudio/techsp... | (less than 100 bucks, but only 1080p on Thunderbolt) (SDK: | https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/developer/product/capture-a...) | vbphprubyjsgo wrote: | Booting Linux and displaying some graphics on DRM-KMS sounds | much saner. | CoastalCoder wrote: | I'm guessing the downvotes are because your suggestion seems | like a pretty big departure from these users' existing | setups. | | I think the migration costs (including the learning curves) | might seem like a poor tradeoff. | cyberge99 wrote: | And the fact that linux on new Macbook Pros isn't feature | complete yet. | dkonofalski wrote: | I'm 100% certain that most professionals are already using | these for performance displays. I don't know a single person | that doesn't use these cards for exactly this reason. We even | use one for presentations/events at movie theatres just to make | sure that nothing is going to put an errant pop up on the | display. | nitrogen wrote: | Are they capable of realtime GPU-rendered graphics out of the | box, or just video? | chrisseaton wrote: | You can render on your GPU to a texture, then stream that | texture to these devices. No different to rendering to your | screen and then streaming and saving to disk, as you would | do if you were screen capturing. | dkonofalski wrote: | They need a GPU to function. They are just input/output | devices. | odiroot wrote: | How do you operate them? Do they show up as another graphics | card? | dkonofalski wrote: | No. If they did, that would defeat the purpose. Usually, | they have their own setup software or routing software. | Something like Blackmagic, for example, is supported | directly from certain apps. Others let you route windows to | the output. You still need a graphics card for these to | work. They _only_ handle the video input and output. | odiroot wrote: | Ok. I'm on Linux and want to play a movie with VLC | through this thing. Do I need the Blackmagic app to act | as a bridge or something? | dkonofalski wrote: | I'm not terribly familiar with Linux use of hardware I/O | devices so my guess would be yes unless Blackmagic (or | someone else) makes some kind of Linux kernel extension | that would allow you to manually specify that or VLC has | built-in support for external I/O devices. | | Edit: Just checked because I was curious. The default | installs of VLC do not include Blackmagic support but you | can compile versions from the source for Linux that | include it (if you also download the support files from | Blacklink first). | dnet wrote: | Not sure about VLC, but ffmpeg has great support for | Blackmagic, you just have to download the Blackmagic SDK, | compile ffmpeg with Blackmagic support (and the SDK in | path) and then you'll have a separate input/output device | available in ffmpeg. The other great thing about this | approach is that this way audio also takes a dedicated, | integrated path, bypassing OS layers and maintaining sync | with much less effort. | tjohns wrote: | VLC has built-in support for Blackmagic SDI output cards: | | https://github.com/videolan/vlc/blob/master/modules/video | _ou... | | Though a quick search through online forums suggest that | module isn't compiled into Ubuntu's version of VLC by | default, so you may need to compile your own version: | | https://gist.github.com/afriza/cd9ce01a7b47b9bd3f192e95af | 1a0... | dkonofalski wrote: | I can confirm. This is what I was able to find too. You | can compile from source using the support files from | Blackmagic. | lolpython wrote: | What is this equipment called? It sounds like the opposite of a | capture card. | | edit: looking at your updated post, it is called a "playback | card." | NavinF wrote: | Could you give an example of such a card? (model/name) | | Also what's the use case where they can't export the video and | transfer it as a file or byte stream? | buildbuildbuild wrote: | These are great: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/ul | trastudio/techsp... | | Use case: live (minimizing latency), no compression, | compatibility with other gear. | fragmede wrote: | https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/developer/product/capture-a. | .. | | The cheapness of greenscreen effects makes it pretty cheap to | use in TV shows a lot these days though. | buildbuildbuild wrote: | A good suggestion if you have the budget. NDI is also | incredible for this. But small producers rely heavily on built- | in I/O on their computers, and I suspect that the market share | from small/amateur streamers using Apple products outsizes | Apple's revenue from large shops today. | | Big productions can afford Decklinks and media servers like | Disguise D3. | ridaj wrote: | Small producers spend lots of money on equipment in that | range of cost, even for ancillary things like lighting and | cables. I think it's a great recommendation. | thepasswordis wrote: | There are a _lot_ of guys out there with 2016 era macbooks | (cause it still has HDMI) running it into a projector to do | visuals at small clubs and things like that. | | _Maybe_ some of those guys scraped together enough money | to buy one of the new macbooks (since it got HDMI back). | Being forced to spend another $200 to get rid of a stupid | orange dot would really sting. | ridaj wrote: | Those guys can probably crop at the projector though and | not lose too much? Last I played with projectors was | around 2010 and back then crop controls already came | standard | emteycz wrote: | 2015 was the last MacBook with HDMI. Anyways I agree with | you but it's true there is a lot of the richer | professionals too - those who buy the new maxxed out | MacBooks. | DenseComet wrote: | Incredibly, the new Macbook Pros released this year have | HDMI, a SD card slot, and MagSafe. | jinto36 wrote: | NDI is fantastic, having dealt with racks of gear for | switching and video distribution before I get excited about | the possibilities every time I play with it. Dedicated | hardware for bridging NDI to input and output devices is also | appearing. It's a lossy solution (the video is compressed, | unlike SDI/HDMI) but for live productions I'd definitely be | willing to use NDI throughout (cameras -> switching -> | recording/projection/streaming). | | So long as they keep NDI Tools free. It would be great if | they could also eventually build in some of the functionality | of Dante (NDI is something like Dante but for video) since | the Dante software toolkit is very much not free. I think | Newtek has been on the right track. | MayeulC wrote: | They surely have enough money to buy macbooks, and something | like this is a fraction of the cost (seems about 10%). | | Of course, I'm also confident that software workarounds will | exist in the meantime. | ehvatum wrote: | rched wrote: | > MacOS is a strictly consumer-facing platform for running App | Store Apps | | What are you basing that on? Apple markets these products | directly to professionals in a lot of cases. They even sell | professional audio software. | pvarangot wrote: | > for running App Store Apps | | MacOS runs whatever you want it to run if you decide to trust | the developer. | dmd wrote: | As a Mac user who doesn't use and has never used any App Store | Apps, what the ____ are you talking about? | tqi wrote: | > MacOS is a strictly consumer-facing platform for running App | Store Apps, so I'm confused as to who is even objecting to this | feature. | | So true, which is why so many of their products have "Pro" in | the name. | Wowfunhappy wrote: | Stop waiting on Apple. Turn off SIP, find the function | responsible for this, and swizzle it with a no-op. | | This, in my mind, is exactly what makes SIP brilliant as a | default but optional feature. It's fantastic for 95% of Mac | users, who can browse the web and write emails confident in the | knowledge that their microphone is turned off. The remaining 5% | need to do weird crap like run live music shows, and should take | advantage of the escape hatch. | smoldesu wrote: | Unfortunately, "weird crap like [running] live music shows" is | what Apple markets their devices for, and since they're selling | machines that have thousand-dollar price premiums over their | competitors, I should hope their attitude isn't "fix it for | yourself". I know a number of Mac musicians who run live shows | and can neither grok what you just suggested _or_ be bothered | to disable SIP and lose all their iLok plugins before a show. | josephcsible wrote: | > disable SIP and lose all their iLok plugins | | Wait, what? Does this mean that SIP is now de facto mandatory | on macOS, unless you don't use any DRM-encumbered programs? | smoldesu wrote: | My bad, Freudian slip. I meant enable. | Wowfunhappy wrote: | Sorry, I'm actually confused by the reverse--are there | DRM systems which require SIP to be enabled now?! That's | awful! | treesknees wrote: | In theses cases, is audio being input into the Mac and that's why | it shows up, because they're "recording" into the application | generating the visuals? I don't understand why the Microphone | notification is there at all if it's just outputting audio/video. | Are these applications recording audio? Or is it just a result of | the APIs/permissions they end up using? | | Seems like there should be a compromise where apps that are using | line input instead of the physical microphone could be exempt | from the dot. | dangrossman wrote: | The article covered this. | | "live visuals often use mic or line input to produce sound- | reactive animation and the like" | ratww wrote: | Is there a line input on newer MacBooks? I thought the jack | had just mic input! | | Also, does anyone knows whether the orange dot shows up when | you also use an external USB audio interface? If so this is | kind of stupid on the part of Apple. | | The article also mentions that those apps turn on Microphone | capture even when unnecessary, so it seems the dot it's doing | its job, although obviously there was a massive oversight, | and there should have been a special permission to disable | IMO. | rzzzt wrote: | I have one sample from 2011-ish era MacBook Pro that | allowed switching between line-level and mic input for the | input plug, via a dropdown in sound settings. The single | "shared" plugs on Retina units no longer support this, I | think. | [deleted] | ehutch79 wrote: | Yes. the problem is visuals accompanying live music | performance. Even if that particular computer is not being used | for music, many of the visuals are reactive. | RandallBrown wrote: | Yes, the dot is there to indicate to people that they might be | being recorded. There's no way to distinguish if the line input | is just another microphone or not so exempting that wouldn't | solve the issue Apple is trying to solve. | [deleted] | saurik wrote: | It seems like the core issue is trivial to fix: make the orange | dot only appear on the primary display. I don't see any advantage | to spamming the orange dot to every single display output, given | that the primary display is the one the user is presumably | _primarily_ interacting with (somewhat by definition). | phkahler wrote: | >> It seems like the core issue is trivial to fix: make the | orange dot only appear on the primary display. | | Or just have an actual physical LED nearby, maybe in the notch. | They're cheap too, we decorate Christmas trees with them these | days. | gbear605 wrote: | That doesn't help for non-laptop devices, or if the laptop is | running in clamshell mode. | saurik wrote: | In addition to the sibling complaint about using a real | monitor / closed laptop--which I do constantly, making my | primary display a third-party panel from Samsung--I guess I | disagree that a fix that would require retrofitting a new LED | that didn't exist into a piece of hardware could ever be | "trivial" in the way my suggested software update could be | (but then again, I am not a hardware person, so maybe there | is some kind of cheap, magic LED sticker they make these days | that Apple could offer people for free at the Apple Store). | Sidnicious wrote: | I made a very quick hack to deal with this; it should hide the | dot. Improvements welcome: | | https://github.com/s4y/undot | | EDIT: As far as I know, the best long-term answer here is for | apps that present visuals full screen to "capture" the external | display for exclusive use using an API (https://developer.apple.c | om/documentation/coregraphics/14562...), but that's not super | common right now. | ratww wrote: | Great work! | wanderingstan wrote: | Can you explain the approach a bit? Looks like you're finding | the window holding the dot and moving it offscreen? | Sidnicious wrote: | Yes, exactly. I'm sure there are more elegant answers -- plus | watching events so that it can hide the window right away | instead of running in a loop -- but I haven't used the | accessibility APIs much lately and this is the first working | approach I found. | palijer wrote: | On vacation and no laptop, but perhaps someone can add better | readme directions to the patch. | | To us software folks, I t makes sense, but I imagine this'll be | linked to many individuals outside of software who won't know | even what git is or how to get the fix. | ibejoeb wrote: | Is that really all it takes to disable this? I guess if I'm a | malware author looking to do surreptitious recording, I'll have | to bundle these extra 10 lines of code lol... | Sidnicious wrote: | You can, but note that as a user you have to open System | Preferences and check a checkbox to allow said malware to do | this. (Apple locked down the accessibility APIs that let apps | easily manipulate each other a few years ago.) | sildur wrote: | Then I'd simply call this program before recording audio. | Etheryte wrote: | The user has to manually open System Preferences and | allow this program all the same. One place where this | workaround would work for malware is embedding in apps | that are expected to need these rights though. | sildur wrote: | I mean, I'd take advantage of that program. If it's | already installed then it probably has the permissions | granted. So I'd only have to run it before recording | audio. | btown wrote: | On my machine, Dropbox, Alfred, BetterTouchTools, and | Bartender have this permission. Zoom is in the list of | apps that can be given this permission, but the | permission is disabled by default and Zoom works fine | without it - though the very fact that some may have | given this permission to Zoom might be a cause of alarm! | And it's possible Apple may patch away the ability of | accessibility tools to mess with this, without giving a | better system-level way to disable it... | zorgmonkey wrote: | If I had to guess Zoom is probably using the | accessibility API to implement their remote control | feature. I don't know enough about the other apps to | guess why they need it, but dropbox needing accessibility | permissions does sound strange. | chipotle_coyote wrote: | > As far as I know, the best long-term answer here is for apps | that present visuals full screen to "capture" the external | display for exclusive use using an API... | | If I'm understanding you correctly, that means there's already | a supported workaround for this if apps just use that API? I | don't want to downplay the annoyance of this for apps that | _aren 't_ using that API, but this suggests there's already an | official answer. | | I'm mildly surprised the orange dot shows up in full-screen | apps; I was going to suggest that might be the easiest "fix" | for Apple to make that doesn't require either adding a new | security setting or taking away the indicator entirely -- have | it only show up in the menu bar, and not when the menu bar | isn't present. | stefan_ wrote: | Grabbing into a different programs UI to move some dot off- | screen by 99999 pixels does not exactly rise to the level of | an API. | csydas wrote: | I'd like to ask a follow-up also as I don't do any Mac dev, | but has this API been around for a bit then? Like Monterey | has been out for a bit and it's a little surprising that this | article and the subsequent discussion is only popping up now, | especially if there is an API answer to it already. | | I ask earnestly if the change is really such a substantial | one? | | I have mixed feelings after reading the comments as I think | that there are fairly valid arguments in both directions | (e.g., that the solutions are plentiful, but also that | workarounds aren't really a solution), but the arguments feel | a bit empty if there's a "right" way to be handling the | visuals that just isn't being used. | | As a user I like the change in general as I have caught | naughty applications that try to use mic input when I really | don't want it, and my misclick/absentmindedness is not | uncommon, so seeing such things helps a lot as I don't really | think it's reasonable to constantly be checking the various | app permissions to make sure they're what I want. This is a | good reminder for me. | | But I totally get not wanting the dot, as it's even been a | prank on a site I go to to have a tiny red pixel just to | annoy people (and it's a prank I've used). So I get the | frustration with an unexpected visual. But, if there's a way | to do the same activity by having the app utilize the correct | API, it seems like an issue that is solved in the next update | from these visual production apps, no? | shortformblog wrote: | That you built this in such a short span of time is impressive, | and really does a great job undercutting the "security" reasons | for the dot to be there. | klodolph wrote: | I don't think this undercuts the security reasons. I think | the general idea is that if you leave Zoom / FaceTime / OBS | open and recording, the orange dot is there. Same dot, same | place, no matter what app you are using, as long as the | developer doesn't disable it. | | Using the API to disable the dot requires some pretty scary | permissions to be enabled on the app disabling the dot. | bww wrote: | Sure, a program couldn't have a level of access that it's | not supposed to have. Let's design security beginning with | that assumption. | Starmina wrote: | Thanks, Seems to work great. | | Hacky way to have it running all the time : | | I put this into a bash file to run the loop in the background | at boot. | | Just add the .sh in Preferences > Users & Group > Login Items | | Then don't forget to chmod +x the bash file so it can be run. | | -- | | #!/bin/bash | | nohup bash -c 'while :; do /Users/starmina/Scripts/undot/undot; | sleep 1; done' </dev/null >/dev/null 2>&1 & | | -- | | I'd be glad to hear a of a better way to do it. | beervirus wrote: | >showstopper | | That's a funny word for "extremely minor visual artifact." | modeless wrote: | Maybe you could use the accessibility zoom feature to zoom in | slightly and crop it out? Silly workaround though. | madrox wrote: | People on Windows are about to go through a similar experience as | Microsoft removes ways of capturing your desktop without an | obnoxious orange border around the window being recorded. The | logic is there...you want it obvious and in the user's face if | something malicious is watching them, but it makes benign use | cases obnoxious. | | Stuff like this is bad security design because it punts | responsibility to the end user. It doesn't actually stop anything | bad from happening. If your design can't decide whether to stop a | program from capturing the mic, how do you expect my grandma to? | MikusR wrote: | The border is on screen, but not in captured video. | Diggsey wrote: | Except microsoft actually listened to feedback before rolling | this out everywhere: | | https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/uwp/api/windows.graphics.ca... | | Plus there's almost certainly some registry key you could | change to turn it off on a per user basis. | mikequinlan wrote: | An orange dot "renders their machines unusable"??? That seems | like an over-reaction. | kazinator wrote: | Is this dot anything more than a software feature? If so, its | absence doesn't actually prove that sound isn't being monitored. | | What you want is a dedicated LED that is routed directly to the | sound input being on at the circuit board level: like the | amplifier is on, or that path is enabled by hardware or whatever. | Even then, if the meaning assignment is "LED glowing = sound | monitored", you cannot trust it entirely: the LED being off could | mean that the LED itself is faulty. But at least you know that | the mechanism cannot be tampered with by software. | jackson1442 wrote: | yeah, i don't use a screen lock on my computer because a | sophisticated attacker would just pull my data off my ssd since | the decryption key is stored in memory anyways. | | it is much more valuable to have an indicator that your mic IS | hot than having no indicator at all, not to mention adding an | led indicator does fuck all for people who don't buy the | $currentYear+1 laptop. | aimor wrote: | Maybe someone can stick a little reindeer face behind it. | htunnicliff wrote: | http://archive.today/bi8UU | kayodelycaon wrote: | Well... that was a mistake on Apple's part. | | Got to wonder who made this decision and how many people reviewed | it before it was deployed. Then again, most people aren't doing | audio recording while using Keynote (or Powerpoint). Something | like this could very easily fly under the radar across the entire | company. | | This looks like one of those problems where the edge cases are | damned obvious in hindsight but aren't noticed until it hits | production. Happens to everyone with a non-trivial product. | | The real problem here is Apple has a history of ignoring these | design mistakes for a very long time. Even when they do fix | things, they have tendency to hide any mention of it. It will | probably be suddenly and quietly fixed months later in some | future point update. | fsflover wrote: | > The basic idea here is sound - to avoid software hijacking your | camera and audio input and spying on you, essentially, there's an | orange dot to let you know recording is active. | | Instead, I prefer to use devices with a hardware kill switch for | camera and microphone, e.g., https://puri.sm/products/librem-14. | ComputerGuru wrote: | This thread has exposed a very weird dichotomy between HN users | that believe that they (as owners/operators of the device in | question) should ultimately be in control of what their machine | outputs - down to the pixel - at least if and when they care to | do anything about it, and those that accept it's our role to just | take whatever bones the manufacturer's are kind enough to throw | our way, apparently unless and until it is an egregious violation | of what one considers to be "the" line that shouldn't be crossed. | | As a hacker without a horse in this particular race (Macs and I | parted ways a long time ago), it's definitely interesting to | observe the interactions between the two groups in this thread! | | IMHO the fundamental difference between the two sides is that | when it's posited as a dogmatic matter, it's immediately clear | whether or not your (perceived) rights have been violated (Can | you do X? No => Violation, Yes => Keep chugging along) but for | the latter group it becomes not just a question of whether or not | X is possible but also whether or not each individual can agree | that X should/shouldn't be determined by the vendor/manufacturer | (c.f. the recent hullabaloo about on-device scanning). | | I see similarities to the concept of "I may not agree with what | you are saying, but I will fight to the death for your right to | do so," which just makes it so much easier to agree on whether or | not rights are being infringed, regardless of it's something | you'd want to engage in yourself or otherwise. | dkonofalski wrote: | That's a bit of a false dichotomy, though, because there also | exists the group of people that are the intended audience for | this feature that is so dreaded by this small minority. The | large majority of users benefit from being made aware when an | application is using their microphone as it helps them see | whether that's being done without their consent. Apple could, | in theory, put in a toggle to allow more seasoned users to | choose to hide that function but then that toggle will just be | used to compromise the whole point of the feature for the | majority of their users. | | Case in point, my mom is getting paranoid about this stuff | after watching stuff on Netflix and CNN about how Facebook is | "listening in" on her. I can easily just tell her to watch for | the dot and know, with reasonable certainty, that she didn't | install some app on her own that would hide that. | CamperBob2 wrote: | What they're missing is that the next feature Apple removes, | cripples, or otherwise takes out of their control will be one | that _they_ care about. | | General purpose computing was supposed to be for everybody, not | just approved use(r)s. Apple once told me that. It was a long | time ago. | snowwrestler wrote: | There are at least three ways mentioned in this thread to avoid | this orange dot. | | - The app outputting video can use an OS-level API to capture | and fully control the external display. | | - The Mac owner can use a playback card to output a clean video | stream. | | - The Mac owner can use their root control of the machine to | disable the dot. (A short script to do so is currently the top | comment.) | | So really, Apple has not taken away rights here. Clean video | output is still possible. They have changed a default, though. | based2 wrote: | AWS has an IBM blue dot for alerts. | bragr wrote: | capableweb wrote: | This has the be the weirdest requirement I've heard from | someone who wants to read a blogpost on someones website. Why | it matters if it's behind a CDN or not? | | Problem is that the person hasn't handled even a small amount | of usage load before, even the cheapest instance from | DigitalOcean + NGINX can handle most loads you throw at it if | configured properly for static content, which it almost is by | default when you install it. | Kiro wrote: | A single $5 Digital Ocean droplet should be able to handle tens | of thousands requests a second without any CDN or load | balancing. | [deleted] | radley wrote: | > http://archive.today/bi8UU | | thanks @htunnicliff | WJW wrote: | HN: Centralization is the purest form of evil, you should self- | host everything! | | Also HN: If you don't put your site behind a CDN I won't even | bother reading it because I will lose interest during the 90+ | seconds it takes to load. | | (And yes I know that these posts are not usually made by the | same people, but it still amuses me to see posts with such | radically differing views on the front page at the same time) | vbphprubyjsgo wrote: | Well congratulations, you are the one person in the world who | bothered to go dig into the network before opening the page and | save him one millisecond of CPU time. | hddherman wrote: | It might be a conscious decision to support a decentralized | web. We can't just host everything on the servers of Big Tech | and act surprised when an outage takes down a huge chunk of the | web. | emerongi wrote: | Using the internet is a showstopper? | MayeulC wrote: | Why though? It works for me, the page didn't struggle at all. | I've seen all sorts of single hosts on underpowered machines | handling the extra load just fine, as long as it didn't require | much server-side (static websites). Take the solar-powered | server from lowtechmagazine for instance. | hdjjhhvvhga wrote: | These days its harder and harder to know whether someone is | actually complaining or if they are being sarcastic. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-12-20 23:00 UTC)