I tried contacting the author to see if he would open source it but he's gone dark and doesn't seem to really exist on the Internet anymore. So I grabbed the source code and modernised it, added additional feature and it's what I've been using ever since. I haven't open sourced it out of respect for the original author however the software does not actually have any license that prevents it so I have been considering what the best approach might be (any ideas?).

*Edit: Whoops! I was confusing refinedHN with modernHN (https://www.modernhn.com)

Are you referring to https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news?

It's MIT-licensed open source.

I've been using a fork (also MIT): https://github.com/alexferrari88/refined-hacker-news

Whoops! I was confusing refinedHN with modernHN (https://www.modernhn.com)

Just use my extension?

Whoops! I was confusing refinedHN with modernHN (https://www.modernhn.com)

Yeah props to Handy, really nice tool.

Did you try the MLX model instead? In general MLX tends provide much better performance than GGUF/Llama.cpp on macOS.

Brother to Jeff Gates?

If you're feeling brave, I've hacked up a way to make proper 4K scaling work, I only have a 60hz screen so it will need some modifications for 120hz but - https://github.com/sammcj/force-hidpi

Impressive, that's quite a feat. It is great that you found a workaround - it gives me hope that Apple will eventually fix this issue. I will hold out for a bit longer an wait for apple to get their act together.

I am still in disbelieve about the issue. I thought I have bought the most advanced notebook on this planet just to find out that it does not support external displays?

Does it support native macOS containers?

It does not. It works through Docker Desktop, Orb Stack, or Colima on macOS.

5k might be a different story, are you actually running it at 5120p with 2.0 scale? You can get that from running `system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType`, if you are running HiDPI with 5k that'd show something like Resolution: "10240 x 5760", UI Looks like "5120 x 2880"

Interesting yeah. Thanks for posting I see:

  system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType

  Graphics/Displays:

    Apple M4 Max:

      Chipset Model: Apple M4 Max
      Type: GPU
      Bus: Built-In
      Total Number of Cores: 40
      Vendor: Apple (0x106b)
      Metal Support: Metal 4
      Displays:
        LG UltraFine:
          Resolution: 4096 x 2304
          UI Looks like: 2048 x 1152 @ 60.00Hz
          Main Display: Yes
          Mirror: Off
          Online: Yes
          Rotation: Supported
          Automatically Adjust Brightness: Yes

To be honest it feels crisp. But good to know maybe I need to upgrade more.

It might be crisp but everything in the UI will be massive leaving you little space to work with.

The 4 values in MaxSrcRectWidthForPipe are sub-pipes within each display controller, not separate display outputs. Every external display controller on the M5 Max has the same pattern: sub-pipe 0 = 6720, sub-pipes 1-3 = 7680. A single-stream 4K display only uses sub-pipe 0. Sub-pipes 1-3 are for multi-pipe configurations (8K displays use 2 sub-pipes, which is why an 8K EDID causes the DCP to assign PipeIDs=(0,2) with MaxPipes=2).

Your scaler clock theory could be right: the single-stream scaler path may genuinely have a lower throughput limit than the multi-pipe path.

Interestingly, the M2 Max uses a completely different IOMFBMaxSrcPixels structure. Instead of per-sub-pipe arrays, it has a flat MaxSrcRectWidth=7680 and MaxSrcRectTotal=33177600 (exactly 7680x4320) per controller. Every external display controller gets the full 7680 budget. Apple seems to have restructured the display controller architecture between M2 and M4/M5 to per-sub-pipe budgets, and the single-stream sub-pipe got a reduced allocation (6720 vs 7680) in the process. Whether that's a hardware change in the scaler or a firmware allocation policy is hard to say without Apple's documentation.

Without it - running 2160p@1x results in very low quality text rendering on macOS.

Yeah that would work, that's just 2k HiDPI, not 4k HiDPI.