I'm testing as many MacBooks as possible. Here are the results.

macsforme Did you tried with the following version of the command?

ioreg -lw0 | grep IODisplayEDID | sed "/[^<]*</s///"

If you put every answer line into an edid-decoder like this one: https://hverkuil.home.xs4all.nl/edid-decode/edid-decode.html you could get much more details of your panels, like the vendor and date in which they were manufactured among others.

RobC Yes, I tried the command as you posted it. As I stated, all the info is the same when parsed. Manufacturer: APP; Model: a02e; Made In: week 4 of 2015; Serial Number 0; Monitor Name: Color LCD.

Sonnis Could you please tell what is the panel manufacturer of this laptop you have used? - "MBP 14" M1 Pro" which caused very minor symptoms for you. This could be a really good purchase once the panel details are known, since on the second hand market these laptops already going quite cheap, yet still very powerful.

macsforme I suspect you are right about VBIOS being stored on the main firmware chip (especially the Intel integrated VBIOS, but likely the discrete AMD VBIOS as well). My initial tests consisted of reconstructing an old firmware image (with some help from some guys on the MacRumors forums) from a combination of donor dumps found online and Apple's own .fd firmware images from their macOS installers (specifically an old version from the El Capitan era).

If you have any forum threads or information from elsewhere I might be of interest.

If you sent me the firmware dumps/images in question I might be able to take a look as well.

Also interestingly, someone on this board (maybe you? ) found an "AMDFirmware" update script in macOS installers, which seemingly suggests an AMD VBIOS update outside of the main firmware, but that could also be for different GPU models (such as those in desktop machines).

Not sure I recall that exactly, but what I do remember is some desktop Mac systems used GPUs similar to the same model as commodity PCs but had "Mac Edition" VBIOS firmware for them and it's a thing to flash cards sold for PC use with "Mac Edition" VBIOS's to improve Mac compatibility. So that's some prior art for differences between Mac and PC VBIOS's, but considering what else I said I wouldn't be surprised if the situation with Macbook's is different enough that might not be relevant.

Donux In your case try:

ioreg -lw0 | grep IODisplay | sed "/[^<]*</s///"

If you put every answer with the "00ff…>" format into an edid-decoder like this one:

https://hverkuil.home.xs4all.nl/edid-decode/edid-decode.html

you could get much more details of your panels,

MAS-76 Thank you for sharing!

I found this documentation (see link) for AHKinject_SCN078.dmg on the internet. The document is from 2016. So I maybe the DMG was build for older MacOs versions, perhaps you can try to downgrade to MacOS (Catalina?) and try again. I currently don't have a macbook with amd card, but I am going to look if I can find one to try.

https://docplayer.net/28661617-Temporal-dithering-is-enabled-by-default-on-apple-macs-with-no-user-visible-option-to-disable-it.html

JTL This is the post from you I remembered. After a cursory look, those firmware payloads look like they're possibly for later Macs (iBridge references, web searches returned AMD Vega references, etc.), so not affecting my 2015 machines. I also found a few posts here suggesting that later 2015 MacBook Pro display panels replaced by Apple due to "staingate" may be harsher on the eyes. I can also confirm that one of my 2015 machines has a harsh panel while another has a calm panel (subjectively). The other two have not been tested extensively yet.

So far I have not found good/bad machine differences that I can confidently attribute to firmware (my research continues). If I discover anything, I would be happy to collaborate over analyzing the differences.

MAS-76 @Hunter20
I have 2019 16'' with Radeon Pro 5300M

Running Ventura 13.6.1

Was able to load the kext fine

$ kextstat | grep -v apple

Executing: /usr/bin/kmutil showloaded

No variant specified, falling back to release

Index Refs Address Size Wired Name (Version) UUID <Linked Against>

178 0 0xffffff7f971eb000 0xff6 0xff6 com.amulethotkey.driver.ahkinject (1.1.1d1) C89AB321-97E6-3C86-ACBA-6498B6DCC100 <6 3>

tbh I'm not sure if I see/feel any difference.
btw I'm also using BetterDisplay, with the virtual screen the screen already felt more "static", thus not sure if that was already disabling dithering, so I do not see further improvements.

macsforme This is the post from you I remembered

Oh yes that.

I see two possibilities here.

1) It's for later desktop Mac hardware.
2) It's for later laptop Mac hardware (as well), because as my later understanding indicates most laptops store the VBIOS as part of the system firmware and not on a separate flash like a desktop GPU.

So far I have not found good/bad machine differences that I can confidently attribute to firmware (my research continues). If I discover anything, I would be happy to collaborate over analyzing the differences.

If you PM me we can discuss analysis of firmware. Door's always open

Lauda89 You can try the BetterDisplay method. Mirror your screen to your monitor to see if you feel relief

Hunter20 The betterdisplay app helps a bit with the build in monitor, instead i don't see any difference with the external one.
I've ordered a new USB C display port cable let's see if it will fix the problem...

Sonnis Just a curiosity: how did you manage to try so many macs? Bought in apple store and returned? I thought you got banned the acount with so many returns..

I never owned any old Macbooks (2010-now) and only have M1 and I would say that eye strain starts to kick in after just 40 minutes or so. What I did is that I changed color profile to sRGB to limit the color space (so it would not use fake colors to emulate P3), changed color profile to sRGB in Firefox as well (there are settings in about:config starting with gfx), disabled dock (it appears only when I move cursor on it) and its animation (as well as lots of other system animations), enabled contrast, disabled transparency. Only after all these manipulations the laptop is somewhat bearable to use.

Still it is years behind my old but still working iMac 2012 which I find the most comfortable computer to use as it does not cause any eye strain at all. Whats important to note is that I use multiple Mac OS X versions on it, each on different SSD – original 10.8 Mountain Lion, 10.10 Yosemite and 10.12 Sierra. Was thinking of updating it to Mojave but I don't like the performance, still I need it for some software that is no more aupported (and I cannot find old versions of it)

GBowler Hey! Im really curious how the Dasung display is working for you? Is it a gamechanger for your eye? How is it like using the mouse? Is it fine or too much of a lag to be usable? Thanks

d_slettebakken it is really impressive what they've managed to do and if I worked with code or was a writer it would probably be perfect, but most of my work is video editing… my idea was I can get a clean AV feed out of the editing software using Blackmagic Hardware, this bypasses the GPU so doesn't suffer dithering or whatever other rendering issues… so I can see the output of what I'm doing perfectly on say a 5" video monitor and then the idea was my editing timeline is on the eink… it honestly does work well… but I do still have one comfortable MacBookPro so I just can't bring myself to faff with the eink when I have a comfortable MBP, once that MBP is toast though…. I'm very reassured knowing I have someway of working once I am forced down that route..

GBowler I also have the Eazeye and the weather is just too overcast to get a sense of that yet… I do look forward to putting it outside in summer and seeing if there's any chance of that working… feels like it could.