Many musicians have giant screens in their live sets, which display incredibly detailed visuals. When you're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not more) on a live setup, it looks really amateurish to have an orange dot in the corner of the screen.
Yes, there are workarounds. But artists shouldn't have to deal with that when it worked perfectly fine beforehand. In addition, the more stuff you add to your setup, the higher chance that something will go wrong.
Professionals who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a live setup are not going to be using the internal I/O of their Macbook/Mac Pro. They're going to have dedicated video output cards that would not be affected by this. Those cards are specifically for having 100% control over the output.
The right call her for Apple is to allow users to give permission to specific apps to disable this but let's not start with the idea that pros are outputting directly from their computers without the right hardware.
>Professionals who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a live setup are not going to be using the internal I/O of their Macbook/Mac Pro. They're going to have dedicated video output cards that would not be affected by this. Those cards are specifically for having 100% control over the output.
Have you ever worked in this industry? Because yes they absolutely are.
The people building the video walls (renting them), and the people actually running the visuals are not the same people.
Of course I have. A VJ with an old Macbook Pro isn't someone for whom this dot makes the display "unusable". If it did, then they wouldn't be using it because they could also have notifications, OS alerts, security prompts, or anything else that shows up on a display come up during their performance.
You meet professionals not taking professional precautions in every field. It doesn't mean they're in the right, it means they're playing fast and loose and hoping common stuff doesn't bite them and their clients.
> The right call her for Apple is to allow users to give permission to specific apps to disable this but let's not start with the idea that pros are outputting directly from their computers without the right hardware.
The unfortunate case with a preference is that as soon as you enable such a permission folks can force users to enable that permission to use their invasive software. The orange dot exists because applications have been abusing privacy by invasively using audio and visual recording to spy on people. The solution to this problem isn't very simple and while the orange dot is causing headaches the lack of an orange dot also causes headaches.
As per my comment - the unfortunate truth is that offering users a choice means denying users the freedom from being creeped on as every app under the sun asks for silent microphone access "for design reasons". We've seen how ineffective app permissions (that can't be selectively restricted by the OS as on Android) have been for iOS devices. Apps boot up and demand access to contacts, your camera and your microphone and if you refuse they quit out.
It can be empowering to users to deny bad choices - since it prevents users from being coerced by malicious software (i.e. tiktok, facebook, instagram - not like virus laden software).
That all said there is some legitimate functionality being lost with this decision.
Just my opinion, but these linguistic contortions undermine your point.
Providing users with a decision in which there is an asymmetry and/or incentives could be setting them up for manipulation. But i think there are ways to balance the asymmetry vs. just removing the choice. A simple report showing which apps were watching/listening along with screen time could be useful, for example.
The OP mentioned a preboot setting specifically which would not be per app and be tricky enough to scare regular users from being tricked into doing it. Sounds like a good solution for Pro users.
I think you underestimate how many places do use the internal I/O. My tiny church has a single iMac doing both recording and running slides. Small concert venues aren't much better.
Some of the conventions I've gone to ran everything in a room off a single laptop. (I've set up such things.)
Concerts aren't much better. Only the largest events and venues have the kinds of "professional" setups you're thinking of.
I really don't understand why you are being so dismissive of many users, just because they don't meet your personal definition of "professional". This change makes some use cases objectively worse, and telling thousands of people to spend hundreds of dollars plus some amount of time to mitigate a change they didn't ask for is not a respectful position, IMO.
I think this change would be fine as a default, but it should be configurable by the end user.
I'm not being dismissive and this has nothing to do with my personal definition of the word "professional". You mis-framing my position doesn't help this discussion at all.
The point is that users never had control of the output on external monitors. This situation is exactly like the situation that's happened multiple times on every OS where someone discovers a way to do something that relies on some function that they either misunderstand or are misusing (think Y2K). Just because it hasn't bitten people in the ass doesn't mean that it's a good way of doing it. People in this thread have commented surprised that Apple hasn't run into this issue during internal uses by its production teams but the reality is that Apple's production teams don't run off the built-in I/O because that's not how you run a video system you need 100% control of.
I agree that Apple should find a way to make this better (or at least hide it on secondary displays) but that's only a workaround. Today it's an orange dot. Tomorrow, it'll just be some other display indicator. The fact is that you can't (and have never been able to) control what displays from the OS on these secondary monitors. The fact that it's just now biting people in the ass is their fault, not Apple's.
One issue is I don’t think software like PowerPoint or Keynote can output to a DeckLink or similar. A quick Google search indicates you need to use ProPresenter, which is a big change for someone who just wants to display PowerPoint slides.
That's partially true but only if you're only looking at DeckLink devices exclusively (which are mostly for full video productions) that rely on some specific things to function. There are other cards that have software that can capture the video from any window and use it as an I/O source. Think OBS but to an I/O device instead of to a virtual camera.
> They're going to have dedicated video output cards that would not be affected by this. Those cards are specifically for having 100% control over the output.
Um, no, how about the built in one worked fine, didn't require me to buy a very expensive additional piece of hardware. This change took away functionality that worked before the upgrade?
> let's not start with the idea that pros are outputting directly from their computers without the right hardware.
If professional means derives income from work, you would be wrong. If pro means works for an organization with unlimited budget, you would be right.
It had the same problem that it still has. The OS can place items on the display that you don't want in the middle of a presentation/performance. The only thing that "worked fine before" is that you were ok with what the OS put there because it was rare for that to happen.
>If professional means
It means that a dot in the upper right hand corner makes the function "unusable". If that's the case, then a professional would not extend/mirror a desktop display. They make sure that they control exactly what is being displayed and you can't (and have never been able to) do that with macOS.
It's not reasonable to say it's the "same" problem when they changed it this much.
> The only thing that "worked fine before" is that you were ok with what the OS put there because it was rare for that to happen.
So rare it may have never happened. So yes, it did work fine. Are you implying that's wrong? There's no way to make a bulletproof setup, after all. Maybe with an external device you get a glitched or blank screen instead of a notification, but any hardware or software could fail. Possible chance of failure is not the same as a constant 100% chance problem, and does not excuse a constant 100% problem.
They didn't change it much. They added an indicator to the existing OS UI when a recording device is active. That's the only change that was made. As I've said elsewhere here, they could have added anything to the UI in the past and it would have had the same effect. People just didn't care because that stuff didn't affect them.
>There's no way to make a bulletproof setup, after all.
No one is saying it needs to be bulletproof. If it did and that's important to your production, you'd have backups to switch over to immediately. You're taking what I'm saying out of context and arguing straw men. If a small dot on the screen makes things "unusable" for you, then your setup is wrong. If anything that you don't want on the screen that you didn't put there is important for you, then you need to create your setup to function like that and allow for that.
All I'm saying is that there are people all over here, professionals or otherwise, who claim that a small dot on the screen is a dealbreaker for their ability to do their jobs. If that's the case, then they've been leaving their livelihoods up to chance because every OS has the ability to display things on an external display on top of a full-screen application. I'm glad some people were lucky enough for that not to happen but people whose livelihoods depend on that don't leave those things to luck.
>It means that a dot in the upper right hand corner makes the function "unusable".
I'm pretty sure professional has nothing to do with dots in the corner. There's really not much to defend about this change, and this change really reduces the utility of macbooks for many people who derive their income from work using that macbook. Hopefully, apple gets the message from users and fixes it.
>I'm pretty sure professional has nothing to do with dots in the corner.
It absolutely does in terms of this conversation thread since that's what the topic of discussion is.
>really not much to defend about this change
Yes, there is. It makes the vast majority of Mac users aware of when their input device is activated in situations where they may not know.
>reduces the utility of macbooks for many people who derive their income from work using that macbook
It absolutely does not. It only affects the very small portion of users for whom the dot is a dealbreaker, that have to capture audio while presenting, that are not technical enough to follow the steps to remove the dot, and that also have never cared before about the OS being able to render chrome on their work/display output.
Because professionals can't take the chance that an in-app notification (from another app) or a menu bar or something else will end up in their output. We're not just talking about an external monitor here.
Yes it is. Notifications can pop-up if someone forgets to disable them. Any OS prompts can pop-up on the display. You don't leave those types of things to chance.
use any professional audio interfaces like DANTE? Just activating DANTE causes the stupid orange dot to show, even if you are only sending audio OUT from your Mac to, say, a digital mixing board.
There is ZERO reason to force the dot on every display. Restrict it to the display(s) also showing the menu bar and this becomes a non-issue. I can't believe anyone involved in this at Apple thought this was a remotely reasonable thing to do!
Wow, this is one of the most misinformed takes I've seen in a while. I know a number of performers who use a Macbook for their visuals, and they absolutely just plug their machines into whatever I/O is available at their venue. I don't know where you're getting this idea that everyone just lugs around a rackmount AV machine, and if they don't they're not truly a "professional".
We're not talking about a rackmount AV machine. We're talking about a tiny device that can output to HDMI.
And, again, we are talking about situations where this orange dot would make the function "unusable". Those situations are not situations where a professional uses the built-in I/O and leaves things to chance.
My friend has VJ'd large clubs and music festivals on her ancient Macbook without ever using an external display driver.
There's not a lot of money in the scene for most people. They use the software/hardware they have. Hiding notifications and colourful dots from the OS shouldn't really be an issue.
there’s quite a few people here replying to you letting you know how there are indeed situations where A/V professionals have and are continuing to use built-in I/O. I have seen the same. A properly prepared machine is immune to the issues I’ve heard you describe in this thread (notifications, etc).
It sounds like there’s something about all of these responses that isn’t resonating with you because I see a pattern of responding and letting us know our experiences are essentially invalid, for some reason. Are you able to speak to why that’s important to you? Why does this seem so far-fetched / unbelievable to you?
I think you're misreading what I'm saying. I have only been responding to people that are saying that the dot makes this setup "unusable". The machine you're describing is not possible without a dedicated hardware I/O device because the OS always has access to display devices and apps cannot override that.
If the dot makes their setup unusable, then the situation prior to Monterey should also have made their setup unusable because the OS could have popped up an alert dialog at any time (or any kind of OS chrome). Using built-in I/O is absolutely fine in professional settings but not for settings where you need complete control of what's being displayed and that's precisely what they're complaining about. They never had completely control of what was being displayed. They were just OK with it because it either didn't bother them often or it wasn't a dealbreaker for whatever they were doing. If you need to know that you're only going to see what you want to see, you have to use hardware I/O.
I've never said anyone's experiences are invalid. Stop talking down to me like a child and making things up.
Yeah, I'm watching this unfold and I don't see how the other person can't see the problem.
Someone spends a thousand, or two thousand dollars on a high-end device with state-of-the-art ports and graphics and processing, and because "OS notifications sometimes pop up if you don't disable them", real pros buy a piece of middleware hardware that does nothing but filter out a software issue?
It's rendered on the external screen also, even when there is no menu bar.
For me, it's good, not bad. I’m sorry that for some people it means they need to do their job a little bit less careless, but the overall importance of this dot is worth it.
Yes, there are workarounds. But artists shouldn't have to deal with that when it worked perfectly fine beforehand. In addition, the more stuff you add to your setup, the higher chance that something will go wrong.