My temporary fix has been to use an expensive hardware scaler to crop the output when I run into this. You’d think Apple would have plenty of production experts beta testing, I’m sure this will eventually affect their own live events.

Mic input is very useful for receiving timecode to keep production gear in sync.

Yeah, I considered that when I was reading the article. If your content can still look alright being scaled, that'll work. There is definitely some content that won't be quite so forgiving, though.

You’re right. To clarify I’m blacking out the top X pixels to hide the dot, not scaling.

There's a built in accessibility zoom feature in macos, can it also crop out the dot?

Because it's not part of the visuals, which should be the only thing on the output. Maybe it's because I've actually run systems for this exact purpose, but I'm kind of surprised at how difficult this seems to be for some to grasp.

But I don't understand why they're mirroring their desktop to some kind of visual display system? Wouldn't they be using something like a DeckLink for this use-case?

Monitor outputs are for monitors - if you want an application-specific video output you can get that and it won't be a desktop so it won't have this problem.

If you mirror your desktop then yeah... you get whatever desktop UI chrome is on your desktop.

Because most of these displays look like monitors to your system. Using the existing rendering pipelines to a full screen monitor is far easier, and less expensive then custom hardware just to move pixels that the built in graphics card is more than capable of

Ok so it's a quick hack for video output but they're going to run into problems like this. And for example any notifications, system updates, Launchpad, whatever, would also appear. That's how you end up with goofy things like a sign with a Windows 'need to update now' message. If they were doing it properly with a production video output they wouldn't have this problem.

You can call it a "quick hack" if you'd like, but I can assure you that all of the potential pitfalls you mention are taken into account by the people who setup and run these systems.

You're not going to "gotcha!" people who have actually done this stuff.

They're not mirroring their desktop. It's a secondary display running a full screen application.

That's just how this stuff works. Sure, you could use something like a DeckLink, but the vast majority of things like this just use a monitor output.

Thank you! It's crazy to me that anyone that would consider themselves a professional would mirror their desktop for the use cases these people claim to be using. "Mariah Carey playing in front of millions on NYE"? Gimme a break. No one is mirroring the desktop from their Macbook for that performance.

Nobody is mirroring their desktop...

That's how the orange dot is appearing - it's a UI element from the interactive user-interface of macOS, but it's appearing on a video out because they're re-using a monitor signal designed for mirroring or extending you desktop.

That might be pedantic, sure, but the point is that extending is not mirroring.

For the use cases like the one described in the article, that distinction matters. I'm not questioning the usefulness of the orange dot, but rather the people saying the workflow of using a second monitor as output as being invalid and wrong.

Because if I had wanted a little orange dot to be shown to everyone during my performance, I would have put it there.

Artists expect a blank canvas, with nothing there they have not put there.

The dot absolutely makes Macs useless for live visuals. Nobody worth a damn would ever use a system that required an orange dot to appear on the live output.

You can use them for live visuals. You WON'T (and I don't blame you), but you CAN. "Absolutely useless" obviously is intended to be "I'm super mad about this" rather than literally true.

You're picking a really odd hill to die on. Is it that hard to imagine that having random imagery (orange dot) showing on your live work (which a client has paid $$$ for) is a complete no-go for professionals (if you ever want to get hired again)?

Just mildly objecting to the strength of someone's hyperbole is life-threatening?

Just because other people are feeling super aggravated about this completely stupid design decision by Apple doesn't mean it's valid to project that on me as if I'm fighting some battle.

I don't really care about this. I get it, people are upset about a totally indefensible, short-sighted design that impacts people's ability to use Macs to do presentations that will be accepted in professional contexts.

Yes, there's some sense to the hyperbole that says something is "useless" when reality is "this will not be accepted in my field of work". It's still hyperbole. Admitting that it's hyperbole doesn't mean accepting the bad design.

You're just making a semantic quibble. What if the screen was half taken up by goatse and the other half what you wanted to display? Surely you CAN still use it for live video. But you can't.

The quibble is people saying something similar to "this orange dot is as bad as having half the screen taken up by goatse!" and then when someone else says "it's not actually that bad though, right?" they say "it IS THAT BAD!!" And I'm like, "I get that you're mad, but it's really not actually as bad as you're saying". That's not a semantics debate.

I'll take a stab at this.

This is like when you crash a car. Insurance company considers it "totalled". But you can still drive it. The cost of fixing the car is more than the value of the car.

In this case, the negative effect of the orange dot outweighs all utility of the product for the use case. So it's useless in the sense that it's "worse than nothing" by some metric. It's useless in the same way that a shopping cart is useless for commuting to work. I mean, TECHNICALLY, you could commute to work in a shopping cart. But it would be worse than just not using it.

I think that's the point that people are objecting to.

The orange dot doesn't total the presentation the way a totalled-car in a crash does, certainly not necessarily. It's NOT worse than nothing. It's not like a shopping cart for commuting to work.

The point of the replies here overall is that those things are hyperbole. It's NOT about nit-picking the language. It's "well, technically, the car will still drive in this case", it's saying that the orange dot DOES NOT ruin presentations that badly. You can ACTUALLY and PRACTICALLY present with the orange dot.

A better analogy: your nice car gets a rock through a window with a noticeable hole and huge cosmetic crack. You say "I can't drive this now! My car is useless! It's totalled!" And people are like "Dude, it's not totalled." And you say, "This is my professional car for business, I can't show up with a cracked window!" and People are like, "well, you could actually…"

It's not like the software has a bug that inverts all the colors, and people are saying "you could in fact do an inverted-color presentation, it's possible". It's JUST a little dot, and it's bad, but it's NOT as bad as the hyperbole.

For some, it's not that bad. For some it is.

I'll take you at your word that it's not that bad for you. I'll take someone else at their word that it is that bad for them. It probably depends a lot on the context.

If a car with a shattered window is completely unacceptable for some situation for some reason, a person could say (still hyperbolically), "it might as well be totalled". It's still stupid to say "it's totalled!" (and that's not because I'm objecting to the insurance definition).

The orange dot being unacceptable to some people and situations is never something I've doubted in the slightest.

Some people can't seem to grasp that it's perfectly consistent to say "you're being hyperbolic, but your objection is fully sound". It's as though after a crash that results in a shattered window, someone says "it's totalled!" and then if someone else says "it's NOT totalled" they take that to mean that a shattered window is no real problem.

The orange dot is totally stupid, unacceptable in many situations, the decision was atrocious, AND the language people have been using about it is hyperbolic.

So don't update until it's fixed, I don't see the huge issue. You wouldn't update your pro live visual system on the day of release right?