si_edgey

What I could do is to unload the kext and check whether the behaviour described in the message above goes away. I just need to investigate how to unload the kext the right way, since I'm new to all this.

    That's interesting that you're noticing some difference at the boot-up screen, comforting to know that it is doing something. After I spoke to the original developer he confirmed that it does do exactly what we want it to, but it checks for hardware belonging to the company that it was developed for - perhaps it does this after you log in. I'm guessing your MacOS desktop doesn't look any different?

    We just need to find a way to bypass this check!

      si_edgey

      I managed to unload the ahkinject.kext files, and nothing has changed. It turned out that both the glitch halfway through the loading process and that washed-off effect in the initial page where I select the account, well they were not related to the Amulet Hotkey kext but they are instead just some Apple bugs introduced in this latest release. Not surprising, since the quality of software updates by Apple has been appaling for some time now.

          a year later

          erwin Hey Erwin, how do we fix this? Do I need to get someone to change the code? If so, what kind of coder?

            17 days later

            si_edgey

            Hi @"si_edgey" -- are you able to share any more details on this? Note that the kext only works with AMD/ATI GPUs, I don't think it will work on Intel GPUs.

                ryans

                I'm afraid I have long since abandoned Macbook laptops - they just won't work for me, and I also believe that Apple is intending to deprecate the KEXT system in favour of System Extensions, which would mean a rewrite of the code.

                The main issue is that the KEXT checks for the Amulet hardware being attached by USB - so you could reverse engineer the code to bypass this check but I'm not entirely sure who to approach to do that. The key info the developer gave me was:

                1. Crucially, they were only able to develop the kext because of a tight relationship between the company he was working for and ATI/AMD, who guided them on how to tweak the right parameters to disable the dithering. They didn't speak to Apple at all, this was done entirely with ATI/AMD as temporal dithering exists at the GPU driver level in MacOS - it's an abstraction the kernel has no interest in handling directly, it just tells the GPU/driver what colour it was where in the framebuffer
                2. There is a hardware check as a 'dongle' for the kext. This could be bypassed by patching the kext to USB vendor ID that the kext looks for to verify hardware. I think this is where we should focus our attention as once bypassed it will at the very least allow us to rule out temporal dithering as the root cause of our issue in MacOS.

                Hope that helps somehow!

                  9 months later
                  5 months later

                  @JTL we're you ever able to program a solution? I'd love to message you for more info. I've tried to inject the AHK kext, but it was no help - I assume because of the hardware/software check. Desperate to find a solution on disabling dithering on a 2019 MBP

                    5 days later

                    MAS-76 Does the MacBook Pro 16'' 2019 have dithering with both (integrated and discrete graphics cards)? Or you use 13'' laptop which has integrated graphics card only?

                        NewDwarf yes both the Intel and AMD have dithering. But from what I’ve read you should be able to disable on both.

                            MAS-76 Thanks. I found the way to disable dithering on any integrated Intel GPU regardless of the macOS version. I will definitely share it soon but currently I keep it private.

                            I am looking for the driver list used by the AMD Radeon GPU. Maybe you can share this list?

                                a month later

                                NewDwarf I'd definitely be interested. I went down the road with a programmer. He was able to disable dithering on the Intel graphics but not the AMD. Almost bricked the whole machine.

                                Were you able to make both work?

                                    MAS-76 I was able to disable dithering only for the Intel graphics card.

                                    I don't have 16'' MacBook thus I didn't work on disabling dithering on the AMD based cards.

                                        MAS-76 'bricked' the machine? if you just mean rendering the operating-system inoperable having a backup of the kext directory thats restored in single-user mode and clearing the kext-cache should get you going again.

                                        sadly the steps for this can vary on the operating-system version. the internet is your friend.

                                            axel No. You can't imagine how easy is the solution 🙂

                                            It is not display settings and direct kext level manipulations.

                                            Sorry, but I cannot reveal this information right now for some reasons.

                                            Probably, I will do it in three months.

                                                ryans Not exactly. But it would be interesting to hear your idea.

                                                    NewDwarf

                                                    Why keep it a secret?

                                                    Can you at least tell us whether it gave you positive results?

                                                        dev