Donux
aiaf is working on forcing a non-dithered signal regardless of the cable being used for Stillcolor 2.0. I brought up your “dirty signal” theory and he believes it to be unlikely.
What is more likely is ColorSync is playing a role and somehow introducing noise into the signal. The only way to prove this is to use the methods aiaf provided on an external monitor. It’s also worth using the dithering slow motion microscope method to try to detect other types on all screens, external included. There’s a useful guide on https://Reddit.com/r/Temporal_noise on how to do this and determine the amount of dithering frames being applied and to calculate the frequency.
Donux Also, specific area I am very interested, is whether apple on purpose creating something on Macbook air (or GPUs are stripped down versions of a real thing), in order to increase sales of macbook pros. Clearly, they might have experienced so-called "product cannibalization" when macbook airs with apple silicon started to absorb some of the pro users.
I don’t think they’re purposely releasing an inferior product any more than the iPhone 16 is not as powerful as the iPhone 16 Pro. The Airs are powerful machines but they are significantly bottlenecked by a lack of a Pro chip, no active cooling, and a more technically inferior screen.
What is likely occurring is a consequence of sourcing incredibly thin LCD screens and utilizing power saving techniques to extend battery life as long as possible. This is resulting in poor voltage causing transistor leakage in addition to utilizing dithering and GPU trickery and power saving settings, further exacerbating the transistor leakage and adding a ton of noise into the signal.
So, no, it’s not a conspiracy - this is just a willful trade off being made by Apple to achieve specific benchmarks. The quality control is atrocious, which makes perfect sense given the low price of these machines. You’re getting hit with very low frequency flicker on a screen that is already missing an entire pane of glass thus reducing diffusion. Connect that to an external monitor and you’re going to get trade offs. What is so different between M2 and M4 that now it can power, what, 2 more external displays AND the internal screen?
The Airs are just poorly designed computers. And this applies to the iPad Airs. There’s no reason a boring, basic work laptop like the Dell Latitude made of cheap plastic can be lacking in the gray color flicker (I tested it) but a MBA has it. Apple is doing what Apple has been doing since the 2007 dithering lawsuit (6-bit + FRC) by using software techniques to fake color depth.
I’m very curious to see comparisons between MacOS Monterey all the way up to MacOS Tahoe. My guess is you’re going to see a worsening of dithering to achieve wide color from Sonoma on.
General rule of thumb a very talented admin of the flicker subreddits told me was never go more than 2 OS generations above what your device shipped on. You’re likely safe for the next OS update (aka iOS 16 if your device shipped on 15) but it’s risky above that. This +1 theory seems to line up with a lot of what iPhone SE users (2020 and 2022 gen) have experienced.
If anyone is interested in testing possible devices, I’d actually recommend the Mac Mini 2018. I’m going to pick one up and try to revert to an older OS and do some tests.
Apologies for not doing more testing myself. I have pretty significant health problems and thus can’t work like I used to (this whole screen sensitivity issue preventing me from working at all) so money is tight. But I intend to give it a shot for cheaper devices soon.
Thanks to everyone who has tested thus far. I’d love to see some more MBP testing here, too.