@the123blackjack That's great news, and I hope the tests were not flawed. But we shouldn't have to wait and buy a second-hand device after someone with expensive equipment runs these tests. This information should be published in the specs for every device sold by every manufacturer. Blue light, PWM, temporal dithering, anything that might affect someone with a seizure disorder, migraines, or binocular vision disorder should be readily available for buyers to read. I've just received an M1 from my employer and will be stuck with the headaches and nausea. If I go to them and tell them I need a different device, they will say, "OK, what kind?" And what can I tell them? "Here are a handful of graphics cards which according to some people on a forum do not cause my symptoms"? Until this info is reported in specs that I can refer to when buying or requesting a device (or every manufacturer allows for these "features" to be turned off with simple UI settings) we haven't made enough progress.

I've created a petition to ask Apple to implement some of these things. Please sign if you agree. Also open to comments if there's something about the technology that I've understood, but my focus for the petition is on the consumer experience.

https://chng.it/zNsHDykzqk

    lougro Other companies such as Amulet Hotkey also acknowledge that dithering is used on MacOS. They have tools available to remove it but you need to be using their hardware (which is typically in the several thousands of dollars).

    Temporal dithering is a technique graphics cards use to generate intermediate colors, by rapidly alternating a
    pixel between two adjacent color values. The effect is not perceptible to the human eye. For any compression
    algorithm, such as that used by PCoIP, this results in a significant overhead when dealing with the increased
    pixel color activity.
    Enabling temporal dithering on a machine using PCoIP can result in high bandwidth usage and poor
    performance, even when the display is seemingly static. To resolve this, you must disable temporal dithering
    on the computer where the PCoIP host card is used.
    Temporal dithering is enabled by default on Apple Macs, with no user-visible option to disable it.
    To disable temporal dithering, you must install an appropriate macOS Kernel Extension (‘kext’). The kext
    disables temporal dithering on the local graphics card by changing internal driver settings

        diop Good point. I have read through that resource. I'll include this info as a reference.

          Can we conclude that M2 macbook air is the best Eye care apple laptop currently on sale?

          I feel there is nothing to conclude that. The Temporal Dithering might not be detectable with 240Hz and there are reports at Macrumours the M2 still causing eye strain.

          Even if there is one user who reports eye strain, I would have my doubts. A book does not cause eye strain, a laptop also should not. Like they did not 10 years ago.

            I also have eye problems from macbook air m2, air m1 was much easier on my eyes.

            • Maxx replied to this.

              eyestrainsolutions What kind of problems you generally have? Would be crucial to know if you get bloodshot eyes, or migraines or what and how has it been with other devices, do you have any devices at the moment you can use?

                  Maxx Not easy to explain, but its like glare, as looking directly to a flashlight, it give eye discomfort, my eyes become dry, vision gets worse and eyes feel tired.

                  I use a 12 years old lcdlaptop, and iphone 2020 se. 10 year ipad with cheap chinese replaced digitalizer for some reason also become comfortable. Iphone 6 with cheap chinese screen replacement also become confortable.

                  The confortable screens make colors less vivid and less vibrant, and the “bad” screens make background look grainy.

                    Maxx I see one of two possibilities here.

                    1) The attempt at testing for temporal dithering was inaccurate

                    2) There can certainly be other causes of eyestrain than just temporal dithering

                    However with the first point. I am aware of at least one camera that can a) be connected to a microscope for magnification and b) can record around 20k FPS, but the cost is nontrivial.

                        23 days later

                        I tested on three Macs: 1) 2019 MBP dual graphics, 2) M1 Max Pro, 3) M2 MacAir.

                        Truthfully the M2 MacAir was actually the worst on my eyes. Immediate strain. But all were bad. If the above is correct and M2 doesn't have dithering than JTL you may be right that something else is going on?

                        That's discouraging. I've tried to hire a programmer to disable dithering on the 2019 MBP; couldn't solve for Intel. I contact Amulet. They wrote back and said there's no disabling Apple Silicon yet and their Intel dithering disable kext will only ever work with their hardware.

                        For now I've had to give up and revert back to my 2015 MBP which of course isn't a great solution.

                            Moe3224 You won't believe what's happening with me, I use windows laptop for work that is connected to two external monitors and I use an iPad Pro 11" all day too with no issues. When I connect my MBA m1 to my monitors after 30mins my eyes get really red and itchy, I can't focus on the screen when looking at text.

                            I wouldn't discount font rendering by macOS, which is different than Windows and Linux. This was my issue and had the same symptoms you're having. Even though most may not notice it, the fonts are really blurry, and rendered in a way that makes the eyes struggle to focus on text.

                            The anti-glare coating of the screen blurs the fonts even further, but the font rendering could explain why people are still having problems when using external monitors as well.

                            MAS-76 For now I've had to give up and revert back to my 2015 MBP which of course isn't a great solution.

                            Along with the font rendering, the difference in your 2015 MBP and the newer models is the resolution and amount of nits (brightness) of the screen.

                            I too had issues with the 2019 MBP and M1 MBP, then I switched to a Thinkpad that has around the same resolution and nits as your 2015 MBP, (as well as running operating systems that do not share Apple's techniques for font rendering) and I'm ok now.

                            I believe the higher the resolutions, the worse the problem becomes with Apple's font rendering, as if you leave it at native, the text is hard to read, but if you scale it, then you increase the blur. The font rendering also got worse with newer macOS updates.

                            As for the difference in nits, I notice the problem for me gets worse in light mode, hence I had to keep it at dark mode at all times. Keeping the brightness to full on a 300-nit screen is much better for my eyes than any level of brightness set on a 500+ nit screen.

                            Of course, I'm just speculating with all the above based on my experience, so don't take my word for it.

                            • JTL replied to this.

                                  pushupsandcode then I switched to a Thinkpad that has around the same resolution and nits as your 2015 MBP

                                  Which Thinkpad running which OS exactly?

                                      JTL E15 gen 2, i5 11th gen (no dGPU), the screen is 15" matte IPS, 1920x1080, 300 nits, dual boot Windows 11 and Ubuntu 22.04.

                                      There's also the separate font rendering on browsers (Safari has been reported as being the worst, and in my experience, it has been for me as well) and I'm using an extension for Chrome and Firefox to improve the font rendering on websites. I addressed the details of that here: https://ledstrain.org/d/1835-browser-font-rendering-workarounds

                                        7 months later

                                        Moe3224 Is it just text or something with GPU? You know you can quite easily make text on mac as sharp as on windows using few terminal commands. Also, have your tried switching between color profiles? Regarding ipad pro I am hearing that this one is eye strain free, even see a lot of public people use it too.

                                          2 months later
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