Donux
WhisperingWind
I can’t speak to the generation of chips after M3, but from conversations I’ve had with people who worked for third party software companies who needed to reverse engineer the M1 and M2 chips to get their software to work (display calibration and color software) there definitely were differences among base M1 and M2 chips depending on the configuration (RAM and SSD) and model of the device. This has been seen on this forum through anecdotal reports when connecting an 8 GB RAM 256 GB SSD M1 MacBook Air and an M1 8 GB 256 GB M1 Mac Mini.
I’m very curious about what might happen if I pick up a 8/256 M1 13” MBP Touchbar compared to @WhisperingWind’s 16 GB version. I continue to vacillate between whether it’s better to use underpowered, base model Macs (less GPU cores, less SSD and RAM) and whether that will result in less harmful processing or whether it’s better to use something crazy powerful like a Mac Studio M3 Ultra. I read a post by a user on Reddit who had bad eye strain with a Mac Mini and a Studio Display, but a Mac Studio resolved it.
I picked up a green M4 16/512 iMac and 2 Citrus MacBook Neos, 1 from Apple and 1 from Best Buy. I’m wanting to also get a M1 13” MBP Touchbar either with the 8 GB or 16 GB configuration. I briefly tested the Macs at the Apple Store on 26.5 and found them much worse than 26.4 (curious what @markdotpeters5 might think of 26.5 on his Mac Mini), but again it could just be me.
I tested multiple MacBook Neos in store and I kid you not the only somewhat tolerable ones were the 2 Citrus Neos with the 512 GB configuration. The other colors and other configurations were bad. I don’t get this at all.
I’m very severely affected by the temporal dithering Apple uses - it can cause a seizure aura within seconds. It doesn’t help that Apple’s Store OS is apparently a different imaged OS according to an employee at the store I spoke to who had worked for Apple for decades.
I’ve tried an Eizo CS2740 a friend sent me, which I still have, but which causes the same seizure aura even when no computer is connected. This makes me believe it might be something to do with Eizo’s uniformity correction because the screen saver that starts up is gray. Eizo is applying something similar to Apple’s Uniformity2D to manage blacks and backlight bleed. I can’t even tolerate this display long enough to mess with settings. Eizo’s product manager told me it uses KSF backlighting and has no PWM and no FRC. What’s interesting though is that it does support a vertical scan of 15KHz for support of older, CRT-style emulation, according to the product manual. It’s what you hear when you turn on a CRT TV or some monitors. Causes an immediate seizure aura for me, when I’ve tested them. So for me this is clearly a health issue more than anything
Anyway, the point of these anecdotes is that removing PWM and FRC will allow us to isolate whether there are additional triggers. MacOS Tahoe is such a strange beast, too, in that I rarely hear success stories involving that OS. But other users have detected no temporal dithering via capture card with that OS. Yet it’s still problematic on external displays. Which is not dissimilar to the issue some of us have faced where MacOS still isn’t comfortable even with Stillcolor and an 8-bit connection to an external display. Which makes no sense. Yet we have seen this too often to dismiss it.
I don’t have an explanation for why the Neos at certain configurations seem at least somewhat more tolerable compared to the other Macs. I know the Neos go into swap memory a lot more often than other Macs because of the A18 Pro chip’s limitations. It also can’t draw a 5, 6, or 8K image and then scale it down like other M-series chips, and is limited to 4K at 60Hz on external displays. I believe most older iPhones can only output 1080p to an external display, but I could be wrong. This relates to my earlier question about whether it’s better from a display comfort perspective to have a weaker chip vs. a stronger chip. Most of us tend to have more success with iPhones of some type compared to modern Macs, so I also wonder if there are differences here. It’s partially why I chose the green iMac, as I know users on here like @DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs actually found the green M1 IMacs usable, possibly due to the custom color coded OS for those Macs, for which the Neo is the only other Mac to have to my knowledge.
It’s very frustrating because it’s easy to get into an unscientific place very quickly. It’s not what I’d prefer to do because it doesn’t really help anyone if we cannot reproduce what is going on and prove cause and effect. But I tried multiple times to get even vague answers from Apple as to what devices - discontinued or currently available - and OS’s might be usable based on my experience and that of others on this forum. But they were unwilling to even point me in any direction for legal reasons. Eizo similarly told me to kick rocks. This is why my interest is primarily in the M1 machines now, because it will likely take multiple DFU restores testing different point releases of MacOS to see if there are changes. I wish it were possible for someone to create a fork of Stillcolor for MacOS Big Sur, as I’d like to test that OS on the 13” M1 MBP with dithering disabled.