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Comment by palimpsests | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

> 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.

This seems to be the crux of the disagreement in this thread. You're equating the effect of two quite different things:

1. A pop-up that's quite intrusive / potentially embarassing, but has (say) a 1/100 chance of happening any given show, and in any case would only be there for a few seconds; the rest of the show would be unaffected

2. A small but intentionally noticeable orange dot that's there 100% of the show for every show

Yes, if you want to be a top level professional, then you can afford to have neither. But I can certainly imagine people / venues where #1 would be considered a normal cost of doing business, but #2 would not.

That said, if fixing them both is as easy and inexpensive as people in this thread seem to think, then the small "nudge" by #2 to get them to fix #1 is probably beneficial for the ecosystem overall.

>100% of the show for every show

You're mis-framing what I'm saying. The effect is the same. There is something on the display that is unwanted. Regardless of what that thing is, the issue at hand is that people do not want things that they didn't choose to be on the display to actually be on the display. It doesn't matter what that is. In this case, it's a small dot but it could have been a little microphone icon or a camera icon or (like Windows) an orange border around the display or literally anything else.

The fact that it didn't affect some people before is great. They were lucky that they didn't have this happen. All I'm saying is that, for years before this change in Monterey, there have been things that pop-up like this on external displays because external displays do not have the ability to prevent the OS from using a display as a display (with a couple exceptions when used with APIs for exclusivity). That's a known problem with using extended displays and it's been known for a while, regardless of the OS you're using. There's also a solution to that problem that's pretty standard in the presentation/production industry.

That being said... there are now multiple solutions for people that both don't break the intention behind this change (they're slightly technical solutions that most people won't do) and allow for app developers themselves to fix the problem (using the APIs already provided to get screen exclusivity).

The point you're not addressing is that in practice, before this change, people usually had close enough to full control, except for maybe a <1% chance of something going wrong. The OS can, in principle, do anything, but in reality it usually doesn't. Whereas with this new orange dot, there is a 100% chance of it being there.

It's easy to imagine a pretty wide range of people for whom a tiny theoretical risk of the OS going crazy and showing some kind of notification even with notifications disabled is acceptable, but an orange dot that's 100% deterministically guaranteed to be there isn't.

>people usually had close enough to full control

No they didn't. That's literally the entire point. Just because people don't know that or weren't affected by it regularly doesn't change that fact. People are focusing on things like notifications because that was the initial example that I used for ease of understanding but there are literally thousands of things that the OS can display, on any OS, on top of a full-screen window or by kicking the display out of full-screen. Even on Windows, Virtual DJ has has a full-screen mode and errors will kick you out of full-screen and pop-up on that display. All of that is avoidable with an I/O box.

The fact is that if you're not ok with the OS choosing what shows up on your screen, there are ways to do that and they've been industry standard for years.

Hi,

Thanks for explaining, I hear what you are saying about dedicated hardware giving much more control. In the case of this dot and an external monitor / display, and until the OS is updated, that definitely sounds like a great option.

Perhaps I was misreading what you are saying; regarding:

> 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

It sounds like we are in disagreement around current un-usability because of (dot/notifications/etc) implying past un-usability. I get what you are saying in theory, and agree with you.

However, in my life experience, and many others in this thread, I am hearing counterexamples to this statement. The way in which I observed you responding to these statements is what invalidating _to me_. My felt experience is not "making things up".

I do not know your age and I am making no assumptions about that. The intention of my original comment was to: respectfully and kindly share the impact of how I have been receiving your comments, gain more understanding about your perspective on this issue, and offer an (obviously subjective) reflection to you about a communication pattern that I noticed in the comments here.

This sort of reflection is always coming from place of curiosity and so carries an implicit invitation to deepen into greater shared understanding and connection; I have no attachment to you receiving that reflection and I apologize if it did not land well for you. I understand these kind of things do not always translate so well in text.

>My felt experience is not "making things up".

I have never said that anyone was making anything up. Please do not put words into my mouth or make statements on my behalf when I have not said them.

>I apologize if it did not land well for you

This sounds like a abusive partner apologizing. "I'm sorry you made me so mad that I had to hit you"

>I am hearing counterexamples to this statement

You're not hearing counter-examples. You're hearing situations where the person, in the past, was lucky enough to not be affected by the situation they were in. That's great. It's like someone who refuses to wear their seatbelt telling someone that they never wear their seatbelt and they've never been injured even though they've driven 10000000 miles in that car. If reducing your chances of dying in a car wreck is important to you, you would have worn a seatbelt. This is like complaining that the car's seat belt chime wasn't insistent enough after you got into a wreck and are now paralyzed.

I am not carrying any weapons in this conversation.

Nobody is attacking you here.

Yet, I experience your interactions here as carrying defensiveness and un-checked assumptions. That is my experience. That is different from me saying, “you are defensive.”

I am having an experience in this dialogue that feels in opposition to one of the main principles encouraged in this board, which is that of graciousness and good intent. I do not feel you have been reading my comments from that kind of orientation. Perhaps you have and I have misconstrued.

Regardless, I really don’t care enough about this issue to continue engaging with you about it like this.

Take care.

So you made up something that I said or did and then framed it as my fault (something "not resonating" with me) and then want to claim that you're being gracious and discussing from a place of good intent. What un-checked assumptions am I making? Everyone that has responded to me and disagree with me has done so on the principle that this small dot is a "showstopper" that makes their setup "unusable" (it's literally in the title of the article in the OP). All my comments and responses are based on those statements, no assumptions. The difference is that these people feel that it is Apple's responsibility to fix the issues they're having without taking any responsibility of their ignorance on themselves.

And you're right... I haven't been reading your comments from that kind of orientation because your very first comment to me claimed that I had somewhere let someone know that their experience was invalid, which I never did, or that I had somehow claimed that people's realized experiences were far-fetched, which I also never did. How can I assume graciousness and good intent from someone who didn't assume the same of me and then went out of their way to mis-frame what I have been saying? The only time I ever even suggested that something was far-fetched were the people who were claiming that something like this would affect productions like SNL or Mariah Carey on NYE because those are far-fetched suggestions.

That's fine not to continue but please don't pretend that I was the one that engaged with you "like this". You initiated the current conversation, including its tone and intent.

Take care. I hope the new year treats you well.

You posted a ton of comments to this thread (over 60 of them!) perpetuating a massive flamewar, and broke the site guidelines in a whole bunch of places, including outright personal attacks. We ban accounts that carry on this way, and we've had to warn you about breaking the site guidelines more than once in the past.

We don't want flamewars here. Please make your substantive points thoughtfully and without swipes in the future—regardless of how wrong other people are or you feel they are.

Btw, when discussion degenerates to the level of people arguing about what each other did or didn't say, that's a sure sign that the conversation has become tedious and uninteresting to those not involved in the spat, and that it's time to step away from the comment box.

You weren't the only person in the thread doing these things, but (from the subset I've seen), your account was behaving the worst, both qualitatively (in terms of how badly you were breaking the site guidelines) and quantitatively (in terms of how many posts you made and how much fuel you added to the flames).

Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the intended spirit of this site more to heart from now on? I don't want to ban you, but if this keeps happening, we'll end up having to, because it's not what this site is for and it destroys what it is for.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to start a flamewar and I didn't think that posting comments was frowned upon. It's just something I'm passionate about and felt was being misconstrued by people.

Can you clarify where I broke the site guidelines? I don't believe that I've personally attacked anyone but that feels like a subjective measure so I'd like to be clear on what you consider a personal attack (in this thread specifically). I don't feel like calling someone out for mischaracterizing what I'm saying or flat-out being dishonest about what I've said is a personal attack but, if it is considered that by the admins, then I'll stop doing that. If it's something else, then I'd like to be aware of it so I can check myself in the future.

I'm reading the guidelines now and will try to take the intended spirit. I don't want to get banned but I also don't want discussion to be surface-level and I get that there's a fine line there.

Sorry again. I'll do better in the future.

I'm not going to be responding to any more comments on this post to prevent getting banned and I don't know if there's any way for you to respond to my questions outside of here but, if there is and I just don't know about it, please let me know. I'm hardly an expert when it comes to HN and usually just check the threads page to see replies and this is so far down now that I don't want to miss your reply.

You can always contact me/us at hn@ycombinator.com. Don't worry!

(I'll try to respond to your other comment later)

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?

Yes, exactly. If you need to be able to control what goes to the display and take that away from the OS, you need a hardware I/O device.

OS notifications and alerts are just examples of any number of things that could be displayed that are unwanted. In situations where something like that makes the setup "unusable", you have to have a hardware I/O device. There's not another option.

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