MacOS – Andy's Tech Blog

DisplayPort – OSD Brightness/Contrast/Colour Controls Disabled!

July 19, 2022July 19, 2022 Andy Leave a comment

Either I am terrible at using Google in 2022 or it’s out to get me. Whenever I search this issue, all I get is results for MacOS, and no clear answer as to why for some reason when I have a monitor – 4K UHD in particular connected via DisplayPort it locks out the ability to change the brightness, contrast and other colour controls?

Not sure how clear it is on the photo above, but as you can see the HDR setting is white, the rest are a shade of grey. This is on an Asus TUF Gaming monitor, but the same is also true for both my Lenovo 4K UHD monitors at work desk.

I posted about this in a Facebook group full of IT technicians, and basically the responses were as if I’d just entered the profession with zero IT knowledge (sadly not, been doing this 16 years now!).

My work arounds for this which I really don’t want to do in all honesty – Switch to HDMI and potentially lose the full ability of this monitor or find an app to control it over DDI/CI (which the app I did find was hopeless and now is no longer developed).

I am hoping that this page gets indexed, and other people who are as frustrated as me share their experience on this one.

Apple MacBook Pro M1

February 9, 2021February 9, 2021 Andy Leave a comment

I recently went and bought a base model Pro M1 as my 2013 Air is now on it’s third battery in less than 2 years thanks to ebay. My 2012 pro which I use for djing is starting to show it’s age however this computer won’t replace it unless either a mircle happens and bars open again as it is still functional. Also the M1 Air was sold out, no biggy because I actually when I come to think of it perfer the Pro in many ways.

Either way, it wasn’t a wasted purchase as I work for a managed service provider and it’s good to get ahead of the curve because clients will start buying M1 stuff and I am considered the Mac guru in the office so might as well keep that crown.

My thoughts? Mind. Blown. I knew ARM was getting pretty good in phones, but I really underestimated how these CPUs are compared with it’s x86_64 counterparts. ARM is in everything from your router to your toaster and probably lightbulbs so I’m thinking well it can’t be all that great and how can you compare ARM to Intel etc… How wrong I was.

The speed of these things just unzipping a file, booting up and even emulating 64-bit Intel is just insane. I even had the scenario of ARM emulating Intel emulating a Motorola 68000 based Amiga 500. As a DJ I had to also try out Pioneer’s newly released M1 drivers, and installed Serato DJ which is Intel and no where near supported. Guess what? Absolutely pooed over my 2012 in everyway.

My biggest fear? It does not get supported for as long, or last as long as my old Intel Macs. The “soldered” nature does make me sad because if something does fail you can’t replace it like you could with the 2012 RAM and HDD/SSD and the 2013 Air SSD but overall reliability hasn’t been an issue for me.

Second Hand Laptop?

March 4, 2020March 4, 2020 Andy Leave a comment

One of my side hobbies along side fixing anything that has a plug is playing DJ in night clubs and bars.

I often find myself browsing DJ groups on social media and seeing posts about other DJs looking to source a new laptop and the age old arguments over whether you should spend a little, or spend a lot and whether you should go with a Windows computer or Apple MacOS computer.

But something else caught my eye when looking at some of the suggestions. The price gap between a second hand laptop, a new laptop and the outrageous prices being charged for hardware that is clearly very dated.

NewEgg is a fine example of a retailer and it’s sellers playing on technical inability and lack of understanding of computer specs.

Example

Filters used: Intel Core i5, 8GB RAM, 250-500GB Storage.

For around $440-445 Canadian, what do you get? A 6th Gen (Q3 2015), a 4th Gen (Q2 2014) and a 2nd Gen (Q1 2011) all with very similar solid state storage sizes. Where is the logic in this when you compare the brands, the age and certainly the benchmarks?

Looking at the various benchmark sites, and comparisons of spec’s the 6300U vs the 2520M – There is a big difference between these two. Across the board the 6300U is about 20% faster in all areas, and has a far lower TDP at 15W vs 35W, meaning battery life and performance be far better.

When you compare the 6300U and the 4210M on the benchmarks they are pretty much identical however the memory speed supported on the 6300U is far faster, and the TDP again is far lower with the 4210M being rated at 37W.

For just a mere $200 more (granted they’re currently on sale, and budgets don’t always stretch!) you can jump up to the latest 10th Generation processors or 8th generation. Again some outrageous pricing between generations! That said the jump from 8th to 10th generation comes with a mix of opinions.