deepflame How does your "no dithering on OSX" project go? Would you care to share any knowledge about this? Maybe in the Wiki?

I took a break because of university and other things.

I think I know what needs to be done and how to "rebase" it to be 10.13-10.14 compatible.

deepflame Seems Amulet Hotkey also changes one settings in the IO registry (different approaches for Nvidia and AMD). Did you ask them to kindly share their findings so that people like us may be able to use Apple products again?

@ryans wrote to the original developer of the first version of the KEXT, but I suspect their approach is different from mine and I highly suspect mine will work better.

I've gotten it to a stage where I see on my second Macbook Pro, it makes the dithering "worse" like a broken "flickering" monitor, now to make it better.

deepflame Or maybe we should "spam" Apple support with a request to make dithering optional.

Good luck with that

deepflame Would be great to have some progress here as I cannot use my MBPs for a long time anymore and I am looking for ways to solve this...

I wish I could have better news for you.

          @JTL highly appreciate your explanation here. Would you be open to share your work on Github for others to have a look and contribute via pull requests? Maybe this can be a joint effort.

          @ryans what were your findings from contacting the developer at Amulet Hotkey? Did they seem open to sharing their knowledge?

          • JTL replied to this.

            deepflame @JTL highly appreciate your explanation here. Would you be open to share your work on Github for others to have a look and contribute via pull requests? Maybe this can be a joint effort.

            I wish other people could help but none of this stuff is trivial. I don't mean to sound rude butt talk to me when you have two OS X machines (one as debugging host and the other as "target" where you try and disable dithering on it), a firm grasp of C/C++, X64 Assembly and IDA Pro. Then we can work on this 😃

                JTL two OSX machines (check), firm grasp of C/C++ (kinda check), and then you lost me. Guess I can teach myself assembly and the disassembler but would think that it would not get the highest priority in my life currently. Great that we have someone like you who is into stuff like this... wished it was just setting parameters in the IO registry to turn dithering off 🙂

                  a year later

                  Just as an FYI, I recently tried upgrading my ALL GOOD MacBook Pro (early 2013) running Mojave, to Catalina.

                  And... eye strain. It was that nasty low level type that really sneaks up on you.

                  Anyway, I downgraded - thank heavens I made several backups before the upgrade, and everything is back to normal. Phew.

                  Still, that means there's simply no new Apple gear or software that I know to be safe... and I'm now stuck on old versions of MacOS.

                  I don't think it's so easy. I mean for me the macbook air 2017 with Mojave was bad as the new macbook pro 16 with Catalina.
                  So I think it's a combination of display, OS and GPU drivers. Really hard to understand!
                  At least I understood that is not just a display problem like I thought. For exempla, my desktop PC is unusable for me with the latest version of W10 1909 !

                    Lauda89 I completely understand. In my case this early 2013 MacBook Pro is the ONLY MacBook Pro I know I can use without issues. So far for me with the MacBooks it's been purely hardware related (Windows is another matter). But with Catalina... even my good hardware is no longer "good".

                      2 months later

                      Is there any progress in developing software or contacting amulet hotkey partners?

                      • annv replied to this.

                        yesanton

                        As far as I know, there is no progress in developing the software. Even telling which lines of code are responsible for dithering is problematic (I might be mistaken about the progress, but there is no solution yet).

                        Others contacted Amulet, but did not receive the kext. I do not know the details.

                          3 months later

                          I have managed to obtain the Amulet Hotkey kext injector for disabling temporal dithering on Macs. The version I have is for ATI/AMD GPUs on OX 10.12, 10.13 and 10.14.

                          I don't have a Macbook to hand at the moment, could someone please test this out?

                          Kext file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1HCektw3GjTpQDMY811tikxo0dkWM1Haw
                          Installation instructions: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pvsFnkR9gV4jT_XJEc4ilNF35nPmq94r

                          Waiting with baited breath - I've been hunting for this for 8 years..

                            si_edgey Where did you find this? 😃

                            I believe I read that it checks for Amulet hardware first before loading the kext.

                                diop Where did you find this?

                                😉

                                diop I believe I read that it checks for Amulet hardware first before loading the kext.

                                It doesn't mention anything like that in the documentation so I'm ever hopeful. I might actually buy a Macbook Pro tonight to test it out as Amazon are currently offering returns until the end of June on any product.

                                      This is a great finding! I'm on Catalina, so I do not know if I can install it.

                                        si_edgey It doesn't mention anything like that in the documentation so I'm ever hopeful. I might actually buy a Macbook Pro tonight to test it out as Amazon are currently offering returns until the end of June on any product.

                                        It's the Windows Nvidia tool (nvdithctrl) that supposedly performs a check.

                                        The program will search for attached Amulet Hotkey/PCoIP hardware and will terminate if none is
                                        installed. The program will also terminate if it cannot find an installed NVIDIA driver.

                                            annv This is a great finding! I'm on Catalina, so I do not know if I can install it.

                                            It's hard to know whether it is for 10.12 and later or if it's just for those specific operating systems. My inclination would be to give it a bash but I'm quite gung-ho like that.

                                            diop It's the Windows Nvidia tool (nvdithctrl) that supposedly performs a check.

                                            Yes I had noticed that. The OSX the best bet for now.

                                            • annv replied to this.

                                                  si_edgey I'll try to figure out how to do it when I have a bit more time (this weekend). For now, I have an error on step 3:

                                                  cp: –r: No such file or directory
                                                  cp: /Volumes/AHKinject_SCN371/ahkinject.kext is a directory (not copied).

                                                  It looks like Catalina has its own way of doing things.

                                                    I've managed to install it on Catalina with Hackintool: https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/release-hackintool-v3-x-x.254559/

                                                    It loads the system volume as read/write as needed, allowing to inject the kext.

                                                    I believe the kext is loaded. At least Kextviewr shows it:

                                                    The same is true for kextstat in terminal.

                                                    I cannot tell the difference now, but right after kext install I had some pain in the right eye (not my main eye) and some pressure in the forehead. I hope I'll know if it helps by the end of the week — I have a lot of work with the text at hand.

                                                      annv I believe the kext is loaded.

                                                      Wow - great work @annv!

                                                      annv I cannot tell the difference now, but right after kext install I had some pain in the right eye (not my main eye) and some pressure in the forehead. I hope I'll know if it helps by the end of the week — I have a lot of work with the text at hand.

                                                      As always it'll take a while to settle down so you can properly evaluate, fingers crossed you get a positive result from using it. My finger is hovering over the buy button on the 16-inch Macbook Pro now that we know it can be injected in Catalina..

                                                      • annv replied to this.

                                                            si_edgey

                                                            Yeah, more time is needed.

                                                            At first, I had this message in Hackertool:

                                                            But probably that's because the kext was initially blocked by security in the Security and Privacy section of the Preferences.

                                                            I hope more people try it and tell what they feel.

                                                            And thank you for finding it!

                                                                annv I hope more people try it and tell what they feel.

                                                                Could you please give a quick step by step of how you used Hackintool in this instance in case others want to try installing with Catalina, and at what point you referred to the official instructions for installation? Thanks, and good luck!

                                                                • annv replied to this.
                                                                    dev