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Mac Spotting
- Thread starter eyoungren
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No question is ever too basic.
Awww, thanks so much!
I nearly always use VLC. It's a godsend taking snapshots from video files. As you can see, from the menu you just select Snapshot - or hold down CMD-Option-S...
![5BRsEJI.png]()
...and a PNG file is immediately created and stored in your preferred folder.
![lSgVhba.png]()
Behold, a crisp snapshot!
![aDVAJWc.png]()
Unbelievably easy!
It's high time that I sent the the Videolan people a donation considering that I've used VLC across various platforms for almost 20 years now.
I haven’t run into a variance in capture quality between the Cmd-Opt-S Snapshot option and using the system-wide Cmd-Shift-3 to save the whole screen (or Cmd-Ctrl-Shift-4 to copy a selection to clipboard). Have you found there to be an appreciable difference between the in-VLC and the system-wide methods, particularly in recent versions of both macOS and VLC?
With VLC, you can create a snapshot of the current frame from the video file whereas with the internal system facility, it would capture either the whole screen or the VLC application window. Furthermore VLC's option is more focused - I'll receive a snapshot of the frame and nothing else. On the other hand if I use the system-wide option, I'll wind up with screenshots from my dual displays - which is something that I don't necessarily always want or need.
Also, macOS will not allow you to even take a screenshot of anything playing within DVD Player. Here's an example:
Apple even went as far as ensuring that macOS specifically blanks out the contents of the DVD Player window whilst leaving everything else intact if you screenshot the entire display area. As you can see below:
This is absurd and it's obviously the result of Jobs having to kowtow to Hollywood in order to get DVD playback enabled on the Mac. I could just imagine some MPAA exec insisting that this restriction be included - just in case there was a possibility that a DVD could be pirated by generating screenshots of every frame and then exporting them to iMovie to create a silent film. The process would take billions of years to do by hand and would look dreadful but hey, the possibility must be prevented.
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Ah. I hadn’t factored dual displays in the mix.
Now this leaves me wondering what one of @eyoungren ’s system-wide screen caps, with all those displays running, looks like.
Also, macOS will not allow you to even take a screenshot of anything playing within DVD Player. Here's an example:
![glBmaUF.png]()
That’s been a “feature” of DVD Player from possibly as far back at Tiger. I remember having trouble with this on the key lime clamshell G3 waaaaay back in 2007. I have virtually never used DVD Player for anything else since, choosing instead to rely on VLC.
Apple even went as far as ensuring that macOS specifically blanks out the contents of the DVD Player window whilst leaving everything else intact if you screenshot the entire display area. As you can see below:
![dOSE1U6.png]()
This is absurd and it's obviously the result of Jobs having to kowtow to Hollywood in order to get DVD playback enabled on the Mac. I could just imagine some MPAA exec insisting that this restriction be included - just in case there was a possibility that a DVD could be pirated by generating screenshots of every frame and then exporting them to iMovie to create a silent film. The process would take billions of years to do by hand and would look dreadful but hey, the possibility must be prevented.
It’s 19th century kinescope thinking in a 21st century framerate world. Welp.
Earlier versions of macOS wouldn't even allow you to take screenshots at all whilst DVD Player is running. Later they settled for the compromise of just blanking images from the program. Darkly comedic.
Unfortunately on PPC Macs, VLC doesn't feature acceleration for DVD playback and so I'm forced to use DVD Player in that scenario.
Yeah and it's emblematic of the superficial understanding of technology and technological developments amongst many senior figures in the entertainment industry.
I have to admit it’s been a minute since I last tried to play a DVD on a PowerPC Mac with any video player.
![muybridge+animation.gif]()
Yeah and it's emblematic of the superficial understanding of technology and technological developments amongst many senior figures in the entertainment industry.
“Home taping is killing the music industry.
“Home file sharing is killing the entertainment industry.
“Home generative AI is killing the content industry.”
I’m taking a guess on that last one.
But the industry, an ever-reducing number of corporations (which are legal people somehow, idk), was never guaranteed a right to exist, in perpetuity. (Though they will fiercely try.)
There was an advertising campaign in the early 2000s featuring high-profile artists urging music-listeners not to use file sharing networks to obtain their recordings. I can't find any of videos from the campaign. They appear to have vanished into the memory hole.
On the subject of musicians, I present Madonna using what looks like a 13" MBA:
These models, I can't identify. Perhaps others can?
??? Is this what you mean?Now this leaves me wondering what one of @eyoungren ’s system-wide screen caps, with all those displays running, looks like.
With the screenshot app you can only capture one screen at a time, or one window, or a selection.
I think she meant a panorama view of all captures, arranged to mimic the layout of your physical screens
Sort… of?
It’s been a number of years since I ran multiple monitors (yes, this makes me an outlier amongst many of the regulars here, most of my experiences being from the Mac OS 9 days). So I couldn’t recall whether a screen cap generated a single png/pdf of all the displays as one big png/pdf, with all displays arranged in the large capture as they’re arranged in the Display prefPane,
What it sounds like instead is, when you do a Cmd-Shift-3 on your Mac Pro, eight discrete png/pdf files are generated, probable with each having identical time stamps and a “-1”, “-2”, etc, appended to each filename.
OK, so the system-wide capture file would resemble much as the Displays prefPane arrangement — with small displays, adjacent to larger-res displays, showing leftover black backgrounds when no monitor pixels are being driven, yes?
Altnerately, I reckon I could buy a couple of display/TB cables I don’t have currently and experiment with them.
I think she meant a panorama view of all captures, arranged to mimic the layout of your physical screens
Yes, what he said.
(Sorry, my brain can’t words today.)
This is exactly what happens.
I think she meant a panorama view of all captures, arranged to mimic the layout of your physical screens
I see.Yes, what he said.
(Sorry, my brain can’t words today.)
Here's the thing (for me). Disabling those shortcuts for screenshots is typically one of the first things I do when setting up a new Mac. Usually that's because I call the screen shot app a different way using either Spotlight or an app launcher or with PowerPC I used to use a screenshot organizer app that sat in the menubar. Primarily my reason to disable screen shot keyboard commands is to make those command keys available for any purpose I need in InDesign or QuarkXPress. Given that there are a lot of keyboard commands for those two apps in general, while also others being reserved for the system itself (like CMD+C, CMD+S and so on), there is often a shortage of acceptable keyboard commands. And taking screenshots with keyboard commands is not in any way a priority of mine.
So, I do see (now) what you're getting at, but I just don't do it that way.
As for a 'panorama', I don't think it does that. That's one of the reasons I screen cap my Photoshop files to show the intended layout.
This however, does not show the additional monitor beneath (it's an older file) and unfortunately a flat representation does not take in to account that the monitors are angled and at various distances.
Not as much as what I'm about to reveal...
...When I was a kid, I came extremely, extremely close to buying the SAM Coupé because I was on a tight budget and it was a pretty appealing machine given my finances and what it offered for the money. Plus, the software was inexpensive too. I even had a couple of phone chats with Alan Miles and Bruce Gordon, both of whom were very friendly and down to earth.
It was clear that they were committed on a personalised level to the SAM and its user base and this was a stark contrast to dealing with faceless corporations where at best, you'd be lucky to speak to someone in customer relations. This strengthened my belief that the SAM would be a good purchase.
In the end, however - I opted for the Commodore Amiga and this was the better choice in the long run because I later discovered that the SAM doesn't even have hardware scrolling abilities or hardware sprites - features that were standard on many consoles and computers in the early 80s, let alone tech that was released in 1989. These were unfathomably bad design decisions that hurt its potential and prospects.
Today, Sam Coupé's are difficult to find - and when they do turn up, the prices are astronomical. In hindsight, I wish I'd gotten one when they were cheap and available - but you can't have everything.
There was an advertising campaign in the early 2000s featuring high-profile artists urging music-listeners not to use file sharing networks to obtain their recordings. I can't find any of videos from the campaign. They appear to have vanished into the memory hole.
On the subject of musicians, I present Madonna using what looks like a 13" MBA:
![madonna-computer.jpg]()
That looks like it's specifically a 2010 or 2011 13" Air since it has a MagSafe 1 charger with the distinctive 90º head (Airs after 2012 have MagSafe 2 instead).
These models, I can't identify. Perhaps others can?
![34497610-8849821-On_her_Stories_Madonna_wore_a_striped_white_blouse_with_a_black_-m-25_1602912583294.jpg]()
![madonna-6.jpg]()
This one is tricky because we have basically nothing to go on except the . At first it looked like a post-2021 Apple Silicon design with the squarer corners and flat screen back, but I think that's a trick of the light and the foreshortening. The links indicate that these pictures are from late 2020, so that can't be the case.
The gap from the bottom edge of the trackpad to the edge of the laptop is also too small for a post-2021 design. At this point all we can say is that it's somewhere between 2015 and 2020...
The full-height function keys and lack of speaker grilles by the keyboard make this a 2022 13.6" M2 MacBook Air.
The laptop on the right is probably a 2018-2020 13" MacBook Air due to its gold coloration and tapering edge.
I think that this has to be a 2018-2020 13" Air - it tapers to a point and plausibly has the screen-opening cutout in the front of the laptop that goes all the way through rather than rounding off like on a MacBook Pro. Based on the dates in the URLs, this is probably the same laptop as in the first two pictures after the older Air.
More importantly....holy cow I didn't recognise Madge initially...
More importantly....holy cow I didn't recognise Madge initially...
Yet another cautionary tale about the over-indulgence of plastic-surgery that consumes the lives of so many celebrities.
What I would call one of the more challenging Mac Spotting moments I’ve had so far:
![1709798075974.png]( "1709798075974.png")
This is a brief shot from Martha Coolidge’s 1985 film, Real Genius.
Having seen this film tens of times (despite its age, it holds up super well, as does much of its humour), I had only paid notice to the PC and PC clones peppered in a few scenes, mostly as props. As I let the credits roll, I decided to pay attention to various things to catch my eye. In there were thanks to Apple Computer and also Hewlitt-Packard. The latter wasn’t a surprise, but the former was.
So I went back, did the fine-toothed comb (which us sad sacks on here do studiously with cinema and television), and I found the above and realized there is the appearance of two Apple products — one hidden, the other in use, but disguised as something else.
Above, they’re all staring at a large (for the day) colour CRT, but the display and the keyboard appear to be some combination of PC gear, probably from HP (there’s also an IBM PC seen in the lab several times, but mostly as a passive prop). Yet, if you look at what they’re seeing…
![1709798673850.png]( "1709798673850.png")
… as I have (tens of times), I realize what we’re looking at is that familiar, fuzzy “Apple ][ in colour mode”, and we are also seeing the type face used uniquely by Apple for the Apple ][/][+/IIe/IIc/IIgs in 40-char mode text mode.
But that first pic above is noteworthy for what the eyes aren’t drawn to:
At far left, shut off (and invisible in the 4:3 crop used for cable TV), is the telltale form factor of a then-new Apple IIc CRT and keyboard. It is, as far as I know, the only place one sees this IIc during the entire film.
Even so, if one goes back to earlier in the film, we see the same work area and the same large colour CRT, with Laslo typing furiously on a decidedly non-Apple keyboard, as what appears to be a raster graphics screen saver-like program is running (peculiar to see, because nothing is echoed as he types).
![1709799149182.png]( "1709799149182.png")
But now notice what’s missing: the IIc.
In its stead are a box of Dunkin Donuts, an unidentifiable keyboard (seemingly opened for parts), and a box of Wheat Chex (sidebar: anyone else here remember how Chex once came in four, easily colour-coded boxes of red, blue, yellow, and brown? does even knowing this reveal just how old I am?)
So that there is some dirt-old Mac Spotting in Real Genius without actual Macs, but Apples contemporary to the Macintosh 128K and 512K era.
And a bonus of more colour CRT display of Apple II fuzzy colour type (which the 8-bit Guy once explained why and how that artifacting was specific to how Apple handled colour, but I have since forgotten and don’t feel like digging it up).
![1709799685073.png]( "1709799685073.png")
Shortly after the above, the camera shows Laslo’s hands typing furiously on a non-Apple keyboard I can’t identify…
![1709799557321.png]( "1709799557321.png")
…but it pans upward, uninterrupted, to this.
![1709799602607.png]( "1709799602607.png")
This is a brief shot from Martha Coolidge’s 1985 film, Real Genius.
Having seen this film tens of times (despite its age, it holds up super well, as does much of its humour), I had only paid notice to the PC and PC clones peppered in a few scenes, mostly as props. As I let the credits roll, I decided to pay attention to various things to catch my eye. In there were thanks to Apple Computer and also Hewlitt-Packard. The latter wasn’t a surprise, but the former was.
So I went back, did the fine-toothed comb (which us sad sacks on here do studiously with cinema and television), and I found the above and realized there is the appearance of two Apple products — one hidden, the other in use, but disguised as something else.
Above, they’re all staring at a large (for the day) colour CRT, but the display and the keyboard appear to be some combination of PC gear, probably from HP (there’s also an IBM PC seen in the lab several times, but mostly as a passive prop). Yet, if you look at what they’re seeing…
… as I have (tens of times), I realize what we’re looking at is that familiar, fuzzy “Apple ][ in colour mode”, and we are also seeing the type face used uniquely by Apple for the Apple ][/][+/IIe/IIc/IIgs in 40-char mode text mode.
But that first pic above is noteworthy for what the eyes aren’t drawn to:
At far left, shut off (and invisible in the 4:3 crop used for cable TV), is the telltale form factor of a then-new Apple IIc CRT and keyboard. It is, as far as I know, the only place one sees this IIc during the entire film.
Even so, if one goes back to earlier in the film, we see the same work area and the same large colour CRT, with Laslo typing furiously on a decidedly non-Apple keyboard, as what appears to be a raster graphics screen saver-like program is running (peculiar to see, because nothing is echoed as he types).
But now notice what’s missing: the IIc.
In its stead are a box of Dunkin Donuts, an unidentifiable keyboard (seemingly opened for parts), and a box of Wheat Chex (sidebar: anyone else here remember how Chex once came in four, easily colour-coded boxes of red, blue, yellow, and brown? does even knowing this reveal just how old I am?)
So that there is some dirt-old Mac Spotting in Real Genius without actual Macs, but Apples contemporary to the Macintosh 128K and 512K era.
And a bonus of more colour CRT display of Apple II fuzzy colour type (which the 8-bit Guy once explained why and how that artifacting was specific to how Apple handled colour, but I have since forgotten and don’t feel like digging it up).
Shortly after the above, the camera shows Laslo’s hands typing furiously on a non-Apple keyboard I can’t identify…
…but it pans upward, uninterrupted, to this.
2020 or later 13” MacBook Pro.
The smaller Touch Bar with physical escape key, as well as the half-height side arrow keys, indicate that this is after the 2020 redesign.
Pretty bold move to replace your body armor with something that contains a lithium battery…
Pretty bold move for a product line which had taken thinness to a feasible limit — 1.56cm “thin” — and touted it as a net benefit for the robustness of the product (even as, were it to have fallen from the seat of a sofa onto a tiled floor, the display would fail and one wouldn’t be able to fix it without paying Apple — and only Apple — virtually the remaining exchange value for the laptop).
Now, had that laptop been a unibody MBP (2.41cm “thin”), then those pictures might never have come to pass. (I’m also talking trash, because I don’t know anything about bullets and piercing power.)
But that, I guess, is the — ::clears throat conspicuously:: — “Z”-factor, innit? 🤷♀️