Put the knife down and take a green herb, dude. (c) Ruffin Bailey 2001-2018

I've been depressed that my Macs won't display 2560x1440 on my 27" monitor. It's not a huge deal, and I realize I'm in an insanely small market -- folks using VGA based KVM switches in 2016 -- but rereading the "35 Days Against DRM" article I've got linked from the banner that's currently at the top of my blog again, I've started wondering...

See, it's not that you can't do 2560x1440 over VGA. My Lenovo and whitebox tower both do it, no problems.* And it's not exactly a DisplayPort issue, as you can get larger resolutions out in other, admittedly digital, formats.

So I'd assumed Macs don't do high resolutions over VGA for one of two reasons:

The driver wasn't written to support them (code to specifications)
The adapter simply doesn't have the guts to pull it off.

And there's some very light, implicit support for Apple knowing they're self-inflicting this limitation in this Apple support FAQ. There's a question there explicitly dealing with max VGA resolution:

2. What is the maximum resolution available for use with the Apple Mini DisplayPort to VGA adapter?

The resolution available with the Apple Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter is 1920 x 1200. VGA displays that use higher refresh rates (such as 85 Hz) at resolutions of 1600 x 1200 or greater may not generate video properly until you lower the refresh rate.

This question wouldn't be here if they didn't realize VGA can go much higher, which is no big surprise.

But is it really a case of either lazy engineers (bad driver) or cheap hardware (bad adapter)?

The other shoe

It makes me wonder if 3rd party USB-C adapters will be similarly limited. If my new guess here is right, they would.

I wonder if this isn't a DRM thing. From the FSF's page (pubbed in 2008):

The new MacBooks contain a hardware chip that prevents certain types of display being used, in an effort to plug the analog hole. Devices such as the HDfury can get around this, but this adds greater cost and inconveinience [sic] to what should be a relatively simple procedure. [emphasis mine]

I wonder if Apple's got some deal that makes it so that they can't allow analog high-definition output (or any content sans DRM) from their machines. That'd make some sense as part of their iTunes deals, perhaps. I'm also suspicious this is why Apple laptops lost their line-in port, so that you can't record what you watch/consume directly, so no Spotify rips, for example. Seems like another really small market, but it's one that Rogue Amoeba figured was worth pursuing, and recently.

Interesting to me that "cable-free" is included. /shrug

Guess we'll see. I'm tempted to take my monitor to the Apple Store to see if the MacBook 12" can use a third party VGA adapter now to output 2560x1440. Before, I was hopeful. After reading the FSF again today, I'm much less so.

* Okay, that's not completely true. The integrated graphics in my ASRock mobo, for whatever reason, wouldn't go 2560x1440, so I stuck a dedicated card (whose 3DMark score was lower than the integrated graphics!) in there which would.

Labels: apple, DRM, FSF, iTunes, vga

If you have a contractor who is billing you for more than 45 hours a week and pretends that they have a life, any life, be nervous, very nervous.

I'm having a hard time billing for things that aren't obviously work (so I'm not). Some I worry about are no-brainers: eating, exercising, travel. Some aren't: Hardware troubleshooting, quick web surfing to take a break before diving back in, blogging about something you learned while working, or working on your own related-but-open source and public projects.

I certainly spent a lot of time troubleshooting hardware in other jobs, but that was hardware that was provided by the company. If they didn't feel like paying for better stuff and backup hardware for me to use while mine was being fixed, well, there's only so much I can do. (That said, I can and have done some stuff, like taking small, modular bits of work and setting them up on personal boxes while I was waiting if I had to.)

Also note when you're working alone, you have fewer built-in breaks. We might hate inefficient meetings, but one thing's for sure, you're ready to work when they're done. Or maybe you have a coworker who is bugging you with a question, and you're forced to get out of the zone. Or even just 20 seconds here and there for a few jokes. When you're a remote contractor, these interruptions that, strangely, also recharge you in many ways, simply don't happen.

Do you charge for the time you use to recharge that you were getting paid for (because they were culturally required) before? (To be clear, generally no, but I can see the argument for a reasonable amount it.)

Some things are closer to kosher, though, I think. I like to write reuseable libraries when there's not a great one for a project's specific use case, and experience tells me I'm going to spend more time shoehorning existing libraries to fit our need than it'd cost me to write something that zaps our needs with an ever-proverbial laser focus. But what do you do with that time? How much time do you have to spend on your own creating it before you can start charging to apply it to your current work? Isn't there some portion of the implementation that's billable?

And what about writing StackOverflow answers or blog posts about technical lessons you've learned while working? I've certainly benefited at jobs taking a second look at something I'd done months or years before, and I'm sure as heck benefiting from others taking the time, some of it work time, to answer SO questions "for" me. Isn't some portion of recording your on-the-job knowledge building billable?

Which is to say that I'd like to know what my contractor is billing me for, exactly, if s/he is billing for more than 45 hours and also seems to have a life. I know I have a good work ethic, if only because I've seen just enough folks at a number of workplaces to know, well, I'm no worse than average (I'm trying to stay modest here. You see how well that's working.)

If you figure 16 hours a day awake, 3/4 and hour for your morning routine (15.25), 1.5 more [total] for lunch and dinner (13.75), one driving (12.75), plus whatever "life" is -- two for evening wind-down and kids (10.75), half an hour writing a stupid blog entry (10.25), an hour or so with your SO (9.25-9.5)... we're already at just over nine left for errands, hobbies (like more programming, natch!), volunteering, and, oh yeah, billable work.

Nine times five is 45. If someone billing 45 isn't putting in weekend work and seems to have a life -- any life, like they're a member of a WoW guild, or talk more than once about going out with friends, or watch a weekday sport, or listen to podcasts -- be suspicious. Be very suspicious. ;^)

Labels: business, indie, life, time