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nightoftune

macrumors member
Feb 3, 2021
47
21
Seems logical but than why has the iPad pro 600nits with the same technologie?
I would love to have the control over the nits. 1000 nits is nothing that you use often, maybe only outside, so i think the degradation is minimal.
 
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tastylemon

macrumors newbie
Aug 18, 2018
23
19
San Franscisco
1.) Battery life

Limiting peak brightness in non-HDR scenarios is an easy way to ensure a longer average battery life. Much could be said about tradeoffs and design principles when deciding to force a limit like this. I'll skip that.

2.) HDR strategy tax

When you are trying to display SDR content on a display that can get very bright, there are 2 "technically correct" approaches: (A) limit the brightness of the SDR content to the SDR reference level (sRGB/Rec709), which is 80-120 nits depending on which spec you use, or (B) just scale the brightness to the display's max capabilities so pure white becomes 1000 nits or whatever the display is capable of.

TVs usually take approach B and make SDR content look as bright as possible. That's good for selling consumer TVs, but it makes HDR worse by comparison (since it can only get dimmer) and is not accurate for media editing/production.

HDR is a big part of Apple's hardware/software strategy – displays, cameras, codecs, color management, etc. It would really dilute the value of HDR if they upscaled SDR content so much that it's hard to distinguish from SDR. So it seems that they've arrived at a middle between approaches A and B. SDR content can be scaled up to 500 nits, but anything higher than that is reserved for HDR.

3.) Reserving headroom for burn-in compensation

The maximum brightness of every (back)light gets lower with each hour of usage – some types more quickly than other types. Any time there are separate backlights for different parts of the screen (local dimming zones or individual pixels), the parts of the screen that are used more often will have backlights that age more quickly, getting dimmer. That's what causes visual "burn-in" over time. That's true for OLED, plasma, mini-LED, micro-LED, and anything else with local dimming.

Apple's OLED displays have a peculiar advantage: Unlike other displays which use the same exact OLED panels, they never display any burn-in effects – even after extended tests. I believe that this is achieved in their proprietary display controller by initially underdriving the display (e.g. limiting to 50% of possible brightness), tracking the lifetime usage of each backlight (each OLED subpixel!), and compensating for each backlight's expected aging/burn-in by selectively boosting their power. And voila, they end up with a display that has equal brightness for its entire lifespan and exhibits no burn-in.

For that magic burn-in compensation to work, they would need to (usually) operate the display at a fraction of its maximum possible brightness, reserving the remaining brightness to later compensate for aging backlights. If this is indeed their approach to burn-in compensation and they've brought the same display controller tech to the mini-LED displays, that would be a good reason to limit the normal operation of the display to a fraction of its peak luminance.
Giving Apple the benefit of the doubt, I suspect it’s because of blooming. This would explain why the iPad Pro goes to 600 nits for SDR.

Both the 16” MBP and iPad have 10,000 LEDs, but the mac spreads them out over a larger area. I suspect the blooming would be more noticeable on the 16” at 600 nits than it is on the iPad.

Apple’s website doesn’t seem to specify how many LEDs the 14” has, only the 16”. I think it has less.
 
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nightoftune

macrumors member
Feb 3, 2021
47
21
Giving Apple the benefit of the doubt, I suspect it’s because of blooming. This would explain why the iPad Pro goes to 600 nits for SDR.

Both the 16” MBP and iPad have 10,000 LEDs, but the mac spreads them out over a larger area. I suspect the blooming would be more noticeable on the 16” at 600 nits than it is on the iPad.

Apple’s website doesn’t seem to specify how many LEDs the 14” has, only the 16”. I think it has less.
I thought the reviews used a YouTube Test that is HDR so likely 1000-1600 nits and its still better than the iPad because of a better diffusor.

So if they dont believe that the iPad has a worse lifespan than a MacBook i see no reason.
 
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theorist9

macrumors 68040
May 28, 2015
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I thought the reason 1,000 nits peak brightness is only available with HDR is this:

On average, HDR content has about 3x the dynamic range of SDR (after all, that's what HDR means: High Dynamic Range). Let's assume the screen has the power supply and thermals to generate a certain average brightness. For that maximum average brightness, you'll get much higher peak brightness with HDR than SDR. If Apple allowed that same 1,000 nits max brightness with SDR, the average brightness would be too high for the screen's thermals and/or power supply.

Essentially, this is a 500 nit screen that can deliver short 1,000 nit peaks, but can't do 1,000 nits for longer periods of time.
 
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nightoftune

macrumors member
Feb 3, 2021
47
21
I thought the reason 1,000 nits peak brightness is only available with HDR is this:

On average, HDR content has about 3x the dynamic range of SDR (after all, that's what HDR means: High Dynamic Range). Let's assume the screen has the power supply and thermals to generate a certain average brightness. For that average brightness, you'll get much higher peak brightness with HDR than SDR. If Apple allowed 1,000 nits max brightness with SDR, the average brightness would be too high for the screen's thermals and/or power supply.
They say 1000 sustained and 1600 peak. I dont think sustained means that you should blast it 24/7 but would be great for certain scenarios.
 

fs454

macrumors 68000
Dec 7, 2007
1,986
1,875
Los Angeles / Boston
This was my thought. Even if it was physically possible I suspect it would be bad for the hardware.

Is it though? 1000 nits sustained on the full screen is possible per Apple, 1600 nits for partial areas. Pausing an HDR video that's displaying 1000 nits white across the display works fine, and doesn't damage the display as its what it's advertised to do.

Heck, even 600-800 nits would be a godsend for working outdoors. Doesn't need to max out, but a couple notches of additions daylight usage brightness would be great.
 
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fs454

macrumors 68000
Dec 7, 2007
1,986
1,875
Los Angeles / Boston
There has to be a way to do this…
Take a look at this: https://kidi.ng/wanna-see-a-whiter-white/
edit: macrumors seems to have some sort of link protection that 404s this link but it works if you copy and paste.

Considering tricks like this are possible, I can't imagine we're too far off from this being somewhat of a reality. Funny thing is if you inspect element and edit the HDR text you can replace it with an emoji, but the emoji appears extremely overexposed. I would imagine there's some work to be done on displaying SDR with the correct tone mapping at over 500 nits.
 
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JohnHerzog

macrumors member
Nov 16, 2021
73
38
Take a look at this: https://kidi.ng/wanna-see-a-whiter-white/
edit: macrumors seems to have some sort of link protection that 404s this link but it works if you copy and paste.

Considering tricks like this are possible, I can't imagine we're too far off from this being somewhat of a reality. Funny thing is if you inspect element and edit the HDR text you can replace it with an emoji, but the emoji appears extremely overexposed. I would imagine there's some work to be done on displaying SDR with the correct tone mapping at over 500 nits.
Haha! Wow - now my whole computer feels dim
 

Jazmodo

macrumors member
Dec 8, 2021
38
27
Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
Hopefully something can be figured out, would be a great option to have for outdoor use, even though it would be useless/horrible for indoor SDR usage.

I can't see any reason why it would be blocked completely - these aren't nailed down iOS devices, after all...

Works in Safari for me, but not Chrome
 
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JohnHerzog

macrumors member
Nov 16, 2021
73
38
As mentioned by bill in this thread, I think one solution would be to 'stream' the entire display output in realtime to an ultra-low latency HDR-capable 'environment' wherein everything you do on your MBP is seamlessly captured, converted, and overlayed on top of the computer's native interface; so you are interacting with the computer in SDR 'below' the HDR-enabled overlay that sits on top of everything that you're doing.

HDR in this case would only be/is only being utilized to access the 'HDR-reserved' mostly-untapped brightness capacity, scaled for SDR in a linear fashion and having no actual dynamic range implications.
 
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Miltz

macrumors 6502a
Sep 6, 2013
887
506
Okay, so as most of you are probably already aware, the new miniLED 14 and 16-inch MacBook pros can achieve an incredible 1,000 nits of fullscreen sustained brightness. The catch is that that‘s only available while HDR content is onscreen, which for most people is like 0.1% of the time.

When HDR content is not onscreen, you’re still limited to the same 500 nits, which goes all the way back to the 2016 models. As someone who always has my brightness maxed out and often finds it to still be insufficient, this is super disappointing to me. I thought we would at least get 600 like the miniLED iPad Pro has, which uses the same display technology from the same manufacturer. ._. I have both a 500 nit Mac and a 600 nit iPad Pro and believe me the difference is way more noticeable than you would expect.

Given that these are Macs and we have a much higher level of control over the system compared to something like an iPad, would it be theoretically possible to “hack” our way to higher fullscreen SDR brightness? If so I would love to just raise it to 600, and I’d happily take the battery hit. It seems like something that may be possible given that this is a simple artificial limitation, but I need someone with a deeper understanding of macOS to weigh in.
As someone who upgraded from a 2016 model the screen on my 16" MBP is a lot brighter than my previous model to the point that it hurts my eyes and I have to lower the brightness a lot more than the 2016 model. I'm not sure how much you brightness you need, or that will be useful.
 
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JohnHerzog

macrumors member
Nov 16, 2021
73
38
As someone who upgraded from a 2016 model the screen on my 16" MBP is a lot brighter than my previous model to the point that it hurts my eyes and I have to lower the brightness a lot more than the 2016 model. I'm not sure how much you brightness you need, or that will be useful.
The brightness is still only 500 nits - the same as the 2016 models. Look at the technical specifications: https://support.apple.com/kb/SP749?locale=en_US

I would prefer a brighter screen to battery life.
 
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collin_

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 19, 2018
583
888
The brightness is still only 500 nits - the same as the 2016 models. Look at the technical specifications: https://support.apple.com/kb/SP749?locale=en_US

I would prefer a brighter screen to battery life.
It’s still quoted at 500, but it’s a bit brighter anyway, and people have demonstrated this in videos (I think like 40 nits brighter). I would still like to find a way to “unlock” higher SDR brightness if possible, though.
 
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Beau10

macrumors 65816
Apr 6, 2008
1,406
732
US based digital nomad
As someone who upgraded from a 2016 model the screen on my 16" MBP is a lot brighter than my previous model to the point that it hurts my eyes and I have to lower the brightness a lot more than the 2016 model. I'm not sure how much you brightness you need, or that will be useful.

My 14" peak brightness seems identical to my 2019 16" for normal use, both in dark and bright (outdoor) use. I often use these machines side-by-side as the 16" is work issued and the 14" is used for personal (software dev) projects.
 
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Jazmodo

macrumors member
Dec 8, 2021
38
27
Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
Just clocked this on an HDTV youtube video, on the ProDisplay XDR, looks like you can crank the brightness all the way past 1500 nits on a 10% window - although it doesn't show how this was done (regular desktop, or with test HDR video)

 

JohnHerzog

macrumors member
Nov 16, 2021
73
38
Just clocked this on an HDTV youtube video, on the ProDisplay XDR, looks like you can crank the brightness all the way past 1500 nits on a 10% window - although it doesn't show how this was done (regular desktop, or with test HDR video)

I think with the next iteration of the Display there will be marked improvements that will certainly increase the competitiveness of the display vs. higher-priced, 'professional-grade' products. Although, I'm not sure the device will be utilized predominantly by consumers for this purpose but more so chiefly, as the gentleman in the video said, for content consumption and not content creation.
 
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anshuvorty

macrumors 68040
Sep 1, 2010
3,482
5,146
California, USA
Ah, not too surprising. I wonder where the range values are stored. Maybe the display driver? Or in CoreGraphics? I may poke around to satisfy my curiosity...
These days, most of the configuration settings are stored in the read-only volume and as a normal user, you can't really edit those files...

Apple has really locked down macOS in recent versions and made it more and more difficult, if not impossible, for enthusiasts such as ourselves to dig through the OS and make unauthorized changes....
 

leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,521
19,674
These days, most of the configuration settings are stored in the read-only volume and as a normal user, you can't really edit those files...

Apple has really locked down macOS in recent versions and made it more and more difficult, if not impossible, for enthusiasts such as ourselves to dig through the OS and make unauthorized changes....

The OS is as open as even, Apple gives you well-documented tools to remove all and any protection layer. Even give you custom kernel support (which they never did before). At the same time macOS is not designed to be tinker-friendly on the low level. It’s not Linux. And there is nothing wrong with it. Apples opinionated defaults are rather sensible.
 
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